Off the Tracks, Turmoil Aplenty With the 2013 racing season at its midpoint, more or less, two of the biggest series are finding that it's anything but business as usual. Each of those series, the Formula One world drivers championship and the Nascar Sprint Cup, have shown cracks in their armor in recent months. Taking one at a time, Formula One is tripping over its own regulations, its teams are running out of money, and the fields are not full. Add to that the indictment of Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One Management chief, for bribery. The charges, by a German court, involve an episode from seven years ago and that has been common knowledge for some time. Whether the Ecclestone case goes to trial has yet to be decided, but the other half of the $44 million transaction, a German banker, has admitted guilt. On matters more directly concerned with racing, most of the first 10 events of the year (there are 19 counting for the title) found teams preoccupied by complicated new tire-change regulations, which reduced many races to guessing games. Those who guessed right were the winners. And the image of Pirelli, the series" tire supplier, suffered mightily. Almost forgotten in the midst of all this is the fact that the world championship fields are two teams short. The regulations allow for 13 teams and 26 cars, but there are only 11. The organizers present Formula One to potential sponsors as a prime marketing opportunity, yet few companies are taking up the offer. The competition side, despite the tire problems and a field that includes a number of also-ran teams, has produced excellent racing among the roughly half-dozen top-tier drivers. Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, the three-time champion, has the aerodynamic expert Adrian Newey in his corner, has won four of the 10 events and is well in the points lead ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, driving for Lotus, and Fernando Alonso, Ferrari's team leader. If any big change can be expected in the second half of the season, it may come from the Mercedes team, which after several years of failure is finally producing a competitive car for its new hire, Lewis Hamilton. The next race on the calendar, after the one-month summer break imposed by Ecclestone (including one two-week period in which no one is allowed to enter their racing team's factory) is the Belgian Grand Prix on Aug. 25. Nascar isn't taking any midseason layoff, but some of its fans are. Nascar is facing lower television ratings and a $400 million overhaul of a premiere track, the Daytona International Speedway. Amidst the ratings skid, ESPN is jumping ship, and the NBC Sports Network has picked up the option for the last half of the season, starting in 2015. The France family, which controls Nascar and the International Speedways Corporation, owns Daytona and 11 other tracks. The family's policy has long been "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," so this investment, which among other things will reduce the number of seats from 147,000 to 101,000, is remarkable. On other fronts, IndyCar is still rolling along, producing good racing, but it still has not recovered from the mid-"90"s attempt by car owners to show promoters who would run racing. They didn't. If there was one outstanding effort in the first six months of the sport in this country, it was the performance of Sebastian Loeb at Pikes Peak. The nine-time world rally champion drove a specially prepared 875-horsepower Peugeot to a staggering 8:13.8 for the 12.4-mile climb, bettering the old record by more than a minute and a half.