November 13, 2006
Power third - and rookie of the year
Will Power got some consolation for his recent hard luck at the Gold Coast with his first Champ Car podium in Mexico this morning, which secured the series rookie-of-the-year title for the Queenslander.
Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, who crashed into Power as the Toowoomba star led the Gold Coast Indy, today bumped Englishman Justin Wilson on the last lap in Mexico City to take his seventh victory in the 14-race series which he had already won.
Wilson, driving with a wrist not fully recovered from the break that forced him to miss the Australian race three weeks ago, secured second place in the series, worth $50,000 more than finishing third.
Autosport reports that, "had it not been for the mesmeric battle out front, the star of the race would have been Will Power, who was exceptional when the rain started to fall on lap 26 of the 66-lap event. The Team Australia driver relentlessly hunted down Bruno Junqueira, eventually pressuring the Brazilian into running wide at turn one."
Power wound up sixth in the championship. Fellow Australian Ryan Briscoe, Wilson's RuSPORT teammate for his second Champ Car start, finished two laps down in 14th place in Mexico. The race marked the end of Lola's glorious participation in the series, but several of the group producing the new DP01 Panoz chassis for 2007 are former Lola employees. Australian entrepreneur Paul Stoddart, who owned the Minardi Formula One team for five years, is expected to confirm his takeover of a Champ Car team within days.
Steady Kelly takes V8 lead
The V8 Supercar Championship pendulum has swung the way of Holden's Rick Kelly. While Ford's Craig Lowndes won Bathurst and was on target for the season title, he now finds himself 73 points behind Kelly with two rounds remaining -- in Bahrain on November 23-25 and at Victoria's Phillip Island on December 8-10.
Kelly's teammate, Garth Tander, won the Tasmanian round for the second straight year, with victories in Sunday's two 140km races after an engine problem restricted him to fourth in the first race at Symmons Plains near Launceston. Jason Bright won that first 100km race and wound up just one point behind Tander for the weekend, with his Ford Performance Racing teammate Mark Winterbottom taking the third podium position.
Kelly notched three top five finishes to be fourth overall for the round while Lowndes was in strife after troubles that saw him finish the first race in second last place. He was ninth and seventh in the other two to be 12th overall for the weekend in his new Falcon.
It was another horror round for Holden Racing Team leader Mark Skaife, while HSV Dealer Team's Kelly now finds himself in the box seat for the title without having won any of the 11 rounds so far. "After Bathurst we decided we had to take a more aggressive approach to each round, but after the past two rounds we will now return to the more conservative approach that has served us so well this season," Kelly says. "Bahrain is an unknown quantity, but we are feeling fairly confident that we can give that round a shake."
Lowndes says he and his Triple Eight team "did the best we could with the cards we were dealt from Saturday", when they lost the championship lead, and focused on minimising the gap to Kelly. "There are still six more races, and 600 points, before the championship is decided, so I don't think 70 points is really that much difference. I will be focusing on making sure we remain competitive throughout. We had no problems with the new car -- it ran faultlessly. We attacked pretty well this weekend, and we'll do the same at Bahrain and the same at Phillip Island. We've just got to qualify better and stay out of trouble."
Kelly has 2861 points, Lowndes 2788, Winterbottom 2589, reigning champion Russell Ingall 2428, Tander 2416, Bright 2298, Steven Richards -- in a Holden now but set to replace Bright at FPR in '07 -- on 2235 and Gold Coast Indy round winner Todd Kelly 2204.
Reindler on A1 podium
The third round of the A1 Grand Prix "World Cup of Motorsport" in China was farcical, but Karl Reindler -- deputising for Ryan Briscoe -- gave Australia its second podium of the season in the feature race. Italy won the round courtesy of former International Formula 3000 runner-up Enrico Toccacelo.
Practice on the first day of the meeting at Beijing's new 3.2km Jingkai street circuit was cancalled because a hairpin was too tight for the cars to get through, requiring overnight modifications. Then, in a reminder of an incident at the V8 Supercar race in Shanghai last year, a manhole cover came loose, which meant there was no qualifying session and the grid was formed on practice times.
Jeroen Bleekemolen of Holland won the early 15-lap sprint race by 1.5 seconds ahead of Mexico's Salvador Duran with Toccacelo third. There was barely any overtaking in that safety car-dominated sprint, but Reindler gained two places, starting 14th and finishing 12th.
Toccacelo won the 63-lap afternoon feature race, which was marred by several incidents and shunts, from Great Britain's Oliver Jarvis while Reindler made up another nine places to finish within six seconds of the Italian. "The race just fell into our hands, pretty much," Reindler says. It was a mixed-up race. It's been a mixed-up weekend."
Toccacelo had inherited the lead after Bleekemolen crashed and Germany's highly-rated Nico Hulkenberg pulled out with gearbox woes -- costing his country the series lead. Mexico now heads the points table with 24, from Germany on 22, Great Britain 20, Italy 19, Malaysia 17, with Australia, Canada and Czech Republic equal sixth in 16, ahead of first-season champion France and Holland on 15. The next round is at Sepang in Malaysia on November 24-26. Australia's round is at Sydney's Eastern Creek on the first weekend of February, while China has another round, at Shanghai, in April.
Rossi rallies but no Loeb
This week's Rally New Zealand, the penultimate round of the world championship, will be without world champion Sebastien Loeb but is assured of massive international attention with MotoGP icon Valentino Rossi driving a Subaru. Event general manager Paul Mallard says Rossi's participation is like having Tiger Woods there to play in a golf tournament.
Frenchman Loeb is not driving for the third round since breaking an arm in a cycling accident, but he will attend Rally NZ and take part in reconnaissance as research for next year.
The rally's base has moved south this year from Auckland to Hamilton. All the 17 stages are west of Hamilton, many hugging the Tasman Sea coastline. Some have not been used since the mid-1990s. Only four are the same as last year. The Mystery Creek Events Centre near Hamilton will have an indoor service park and a super special stage to be used on Friday and Saturday nights.
Australians Chris Atkinson and co-driver Glenn Macneall are hoping to translate the speed they showed at the start of the recent Rally Australia into a rewarding result. "It's going to be a tough rally with some long stages," Atkinson says. "We'll be looking to continue the good pace we showed at the beginning of Rally Australia, although I'll be looking forward to a bit of a change of fortune too. I've done Rally NZ twice before -- last year I finished seventh with Subaru and the year before that I was driving a Group N Impreza -- but we're going to be using some new roads for this year. In terms of a result, we'd hope to be running in the top five and, if we can do that, there's always the chance of being in the hunt for a podium."
Ford can clinch the manufacturers' title if it outscores Kronos Citroen by three points in NZ. Six victories in the first season of the new Focus RS World Rally Car, five for Marcus Gronholm and the maiden win for teammate and 26-year-old Finnish countryman Mikko Hirvonen in Western Australia last month, have already made it the most successful WRC year for Ford in terms of wins.
Like Atkinson, Hirvonen has only had two previous starts in NZ but says "that shouldn't be a problem because almost all the stages are new for everyone and knowledge of the roads won't be a factor".
Montoya: now for real NASCAR
Prominent US team owner Chip Ganassi is expected to confirm within a day or two that he will give Juan Pablo Montoya his NASCAR big-league debut in the final round of the Nextel Cup at Homestead-Miami next weekend. Montoya has now driven three Busch Series races and, while he finished on the lead lap at Phoenix in Arizona at the weekend, he was in 20th place. Reigning Indianapolis 500 winner made his stock car debut in the race but "kissed" the wall early and went a lap down. Late in the race Hornish got caught up in an accident and was classified 35th of 43 starters. Montoya qualifying 11th and Hornish 27th.
Ambrose: something from nothing
Marcos Ambrose says he "salvaged something out of nothing" by finishing 15th in the Casino Arizona 150, the NASCAR pick-up truck series race at Phoenix.
The Aussie had qualified his Ford F-150 seventh, making it the highest Ford and him the highest rookie in the field of 35. He ran sixth early in the race but was blocked on his pit stop, dropping him to 13th, and he was then given a drive-though penalty for having one too many crew members over the wall at the stop, sending him to the rear of the field and he eventually went a lap down. However, he made a late charge and in one move passed four trucks in one move. That made him the second highest finishing rookie. Miami next weekend will be his final race of his debut season in the US. He is 19th in the series.
Raikkonen in for short haul?
Michael Schumacher's replacement at Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen, reckons the German seven-time world champion's records can be broken -- but not by him.
Finn Raikkonen has already flagged that the three-year contract he has signed with the Scuderia may be his last in F1.
"With the correct car and team, Michael Schumacher's records are there to be broken," Raikkonen told Germany's Bild newspaper. "I am convinced that his record do not have to be for there for eternity. I probably won't emulate him. I will not drive long enough to win seven titles. Perhaps my Ferrari contract is already my last.
"If Ferrari wants me to, I will work every evening until 10pm. I am not afraid of hard work. My goal is always the same: That is my natural goal. Whether I reach that immediately, is difficult to say. My hardest opponent will not be world champion (Fernando) Alonso (who has replaced Raikkonen at McLaren-Mercedes after two world titles with Renault), but I think my team colleague Felipe Massa."
Kangaroo TV top invention
A hand-held device known as Kangaroo TV that beams video, audio and telemetry data to trackside fans at F1 and NASCAR races has been named one of the best inventions of the year by Time magazine. Fans can follow in-car cameras, watch live timing data and listen to car-to-pit radios.
Bernie sinks Spanish hopes
Talk of a second Formula One Grand Prix in Spain because of Fernando Alonso's back-to-back world titles has been downplayed by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. The venue that has been touted is Valencia, about 235km south of Barcelona, which already hosts the Spanish GP and has a contract to 2011.
Renault commits forever
Until recently Renault's future in F1 was doubtful. Now the company's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, and its F1 team president, Alain Dassas, have vowed that it's in the sport long-term. Dassas says Renault will be on the grid 'for good'.
Silverstone arks up
The British GP's future seems to be forever a subject of controversy. The British Racing Drivers' Club, owner of the Silverstone circuit, has taken umbrage at Bernie Ecclestone's plan to alternate the French and British GPs. Ecclestone has proposed that Silverstone have a GP in 2008, 2010 and 2012 without having to make the £30m upgrade required if it is to stage the race each year beyond 2009. BRDC chairman Stuart Rolt says "that would be sending the wrong message to the sport and the local community about the race's future".