Race car drivers have been fired for a litany of reasons since the sport was formed more than a century ago. Poor performance is the most common reason for getting a pink slip. Shoddy communication skills, the inability to develop a chassis, excess drinking, drugging, womanizing, slagging off sponsors, embarrassing the team in print, on TV, or the radio, and a host of other reasons for termination have been recorded.

And thanks to England's Mike Conway, we can add a new one to the list: Not being German.

The IndyCar race winner, who now serves as one of Toyota's elite LMP1 drivers in the FIA World Endurance Championship, spent 2016 moonlighting in the FIA's all-electric Formula E series and just learned his services will no longer be required by the French Venturi team.

Marshall Pruett

Venturi's press release, which welcomed Germany's Mario Engel to the team, failed to thank or mention Conway in any capacity.

"It is a great satisfaction to welcome [Mario]," said Venturi team coordinator Franck Baldet. "He is already deeply involved in the team through the season 3 car preparation. He knows our new engine – the VM 200 – FE – 02. He did most of the testing sessions accumulating hundreds of kilometers behind the wheel. He is efficient and accurate in his comments to our engineers, always available for the exchange that will increase the performance of the vehicle."

Thanks to Autosport, which sought a deeper explanation from Baldet, it was determined the Briton's firing "was aided by a sponsor request for the team to field a German driver."

Maybe he should consider renaming himself Mïke Cönwäy to make sure it doesn't happen again.

VINTAGE DILEMMA

Marshall Pruett

It has taken me a good 10 years to arrive at the conclusion that enjoying a vintage racing event requires a serious disconnect between the past and present. I'm old enough to have seen a fair number of the 500-plus cars that will compete at this weekend's Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion when they were new or active, and with those memories plugged into my brain, turning up to see the same cars lap Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca at half-speed is always hard to reconcile.

It's why the NFL doesn't have a Senior's League where legends of gridiron—creaky and aged—return to throw underhand passes and gingerly jog into the end zone for our amusement. If you've seen Joe Montana and Jerry Rice in their prime, there's nothing fun about watching Hall of Famers attempt to play with diminished capabilities. And that's where my personal disconnect with vintage racing has developed.

You can't buy Joe or Jerry, but if you have the means, you can purchase motor racing's equivalent of a Montana or Rice and drive a Le Mans-winning Porsche 962, Formula 1 world championship-earning Williams FW07, and other mechanized icons. And if you've seen those cars driven at maximum attack by their original pilots, you might share my disposition and find watching those monsters operated in limp mode hard to swallow.

I won't pretend it's anything other than elitist when I download the entry list for events like the Monterey Reunion and scan the driver names before browsing the car marques and models. Grand Prix motorcycle legend and former CART IndyCar driver Eddie Lawson is driving a 1977 Wolf WR4 F1 car? Awesome! Le Mans winner Justin Bell is strapping into a 1996 McLaren-BMW F1 GTR? I'm there! IMSA veteran Rick Knoop is climbing into a 1972 McLaren M8F Can-Am car? Brilliant!

This asshole-ish affliction could be mine, and mine alone. I envy those who find pleasure in watching a gorgeous vintage racecar plod through a corner in second gear when it's capable of sailing by flat in fifth. If they aren't being driven properly, I get sad, but when a modern pro or legend gets ahold of one, all's right with my world.

PUNCHY MCPUNCH PUNCH

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His parents named him Petru Florescu, but I think "Punchy McPunch-Punch" sounds better after the 17-year-old Romanian driver threw a left jab into the chest of teammate Devlin DeFrancesco last weekend at the aptly named Knockhill circuit in Scotland.

The pair, competing in the British F4 series for Carlin Racing, became entangled when DeFrancesco crowded Punchy McPunch-Punch and sent both cars into the barriers.

Canada's DeFrancesco, who was blissfully unaware of the rage building within his teammate, told Autosport "I wasn't expecting it" after Punchy let his fist do the talking.

McPunch-Punch was excluded from the event by the series and DeFrancesco was assessed a 10-spot grid penalty for the next race.

INDYCAR PORN

Mecum Auctions

I'm unable to adequately describe how much I want this car and the lowdown, degrading level of things I'd do in order to acquire the funds to buy it. Among the last of its generation—before the trend towards size-zero packaging and narrow everything became the norm in Indy car, Al Unser Jr's Galles-Kraco Lola T90/00-Chevy is a beautiful representation of CART's golden era.

And it's cheap. At least for a vaguely modern Indy car with a functional engine. Plus, I know all the right people at Ilmor to get it up and running. I wonder if the people at Mecum would let me put it on layaway.

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