A triple champion in world's toughest series
In motor racing there are championships and there are championships.
The winners of championships may be pretty much equally happy, but to those looking on some championships matter much more than others -- and some take a lot more to win, and are won much more in championship style.
Lewis Hamilton's recent Formula 1 world championship success was something very special.
The youngest winner, the first black winner, an odds-on favorite who looked to have let it slip away only to recapture it on the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season.
Now Jamie Whincup is on the cusp of a very special achievement in V8 Supercar racing.
Whincup has won his past seven races.
Someone told us he'd won 13 in all this year.
He may clinch the title at Tasmania's Symmons Plains this weekend.
It will be richly deserved, even if it is better for everyone that it goes down to the last round -- the Oran Park finale in Sydney two weeks later.
Another fine achievement this year has been the IndyCar success of Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon.
On a lesser scale, there's been the 15 race victories in Europe this season by West Australian teenager Daniel Ricciardo and his West European Cup title in Formula Renault.
But the really special championship victory in our eyes is that of Jimmie Johnson (pictured) in NASCAR's Sprint Cup in the past 24 hours.
It is Johnson's third straight success in the premier division of American stock car racing, probably the toughest four-wheel motorsport series in the world.
Only one other driver has won NASCAR's Cup three years in a row -- Cale Yarborough in 1976, '77 and '78.
Richard Petty didn't do it, nor did Dale Earnhardt Senior, despite them each winning seven NASCAR championships.
The Sprint Cup is a 36-race series. That's twice as many races as F1. More than twice as many as V8 Supercars.
Admittedly, NASCAR does get a little distorted by The Chase.
A little after the two-thirds mark of the season the points of the top 12 drivers are effectively discarded and they are pretty much equalized, with just the slightest reward for victories to that point, and the competition starts all over again in The Chase -- the final 10 rounds - to the title.
Pre-Chase the star of the NASCAR show this year had been Toyota driver Kyle Busch.
Indeed, in the eyes of many he still was the superstar over the course of the season, but through The Chase it was Johnson who was the cream that came to the top.
Not much has gone right for General Motors of late, but Johnson delivered in spades for GM -- and Hendrick Motorsports -- in a Chevrolet.
Carl Edwards, in a Ford, took the fight to the wire, winning the final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway -- his ninth victory of the year.
Johnson, who finished in the top 10 in all but two of the last races, needed only to wind up 36th to secure this third title, but he finished 15th and led a handful of laps while Edwards led the most.
Johnson ended up 69 points ahead of Edwards, who also won the final round of the second-tier Nationwide Series a day earlier but was the bridesmaid in that championship too -- to another Chevrolet driver, Clint Bowyer.
Nowhere in the world does a championship have to be pieced together more than in NASCAR.
Edwards went to bed last night knowing "we won some races and just got beaten by a true champion".
Johnson is not a name greatly known in Australia, other than by those who watch NASCAR on Foxtel -- or Channel 10 High Definition when it's screened.
Correct us if we're wrong, but we thought 10 HD was going to show all the NASCAR races this year, but from what we could see early Monday it preferred the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the San Diego Chargers to the title-decider in what is, in may respects, the biggest motor racing series in the world.
But we digress a little there...
Drivers usually get the bulk of the kudos in championship success, but clearly Johnson has a super team around him, and his crew chief Chad Knaus became the first person in that role to notch three consecutive NASCAR crowns.
To us, the points that put the success of Johnson/Hendrick/Knaus in perspective are:
- That together they have won eight of 30 races in The Chase the past three seasons -- a phenomenal strike rate in this form of racing.
- That Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champion and fellow Hendrick and Chevrolet driver, could not win a race this season against this kind of opposition for the first time since his 1993 rookie season.
This is motor racing competition at its very best.
Knaus says: "We don't want to do anything but race and win races and win championships."
NASCAR's absolute peak was a year or two ago.
Its TV ratings have gone a little soft since then, the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow -- a generic machine with only engines and manufacturer badges to differentiate -- has not been as straightforward as it seemed it should have been, and now the economic meltdown is biting.
With the American car makers staring at collapse, in an urgent move to cut costs NASCAR has banned all testing ahead of and during next season, and up to 1000 jobs are expected to be lost in the US stock car racing community within days.
The JTG Daugherty outfit for which Australian Marcos Ambrose races has just laid off a dozen workers.
The season ended rather mixed, even unfortunately, for Ambrose.
Sure he finished in the top 10 in the Nationwide Series, driving a Ford, but the chance to guarantee himself a start in the first five Cup races of next year -- beginning with the Daytona 500 -- went horribly wrong in Florida.
The Toyota that Ambrose was driving, for Michael Waltrip Racing under a recent arrangement with JTG Daugherty, was put into the wall at Homestead-Miami by Reed Sorenson's Dodge.
The time lost on repairs relegated Ambrose to 42nd -- 45 laps down.
Crucially it meant that Michael Waltrip Racing missed out, by 13 points, on 35th position on the owners' points table, which is what would have assured starts in those first five races next season.
Ambrose drove 11 Cup rounds this year, initially in a Ford and then switching to Toyota.
His best Cup result was third on the famous Watkins Glen road course in New York while his best on the ovals was 18th at Phoenix in the penultimate round.
He's slated for a full Cup season next year, in a Toyota under the Waltrip umbrella.
It's going to be tough.
All credit to him for having survived three years in American stock car racing already, but that Johnson/Hendrick benchmark just emphasizes how far our boy has got to go before he tastes anything like the success he knew at home in V8 Supercar titles in 2003 and '04.
NASCAR Sprint Cup final driver standings after 36 races: Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 6684 points, Carl Edwards (Ford) 6615, Greg Biffle (Ford) 6467, Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 6408, Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 6381, Jeff Burton (Chevrolet) 6335, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 6316, Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 6214, Tony Stewart (Toyota) 6202, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 6186, Matt Kenseth (Ford) 6184, Dale Earnhardt Junior (Chevrolet) 6127.
NASCAR Nationwide Series final driver standings after 35 races: Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 5132 points, Carl Edwards (Ford) 5111, Brad Keselowski (Chevrolet) 4794, David Ragan (Ford) 4525, Mike Bliss (Chevrolet) 4518, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 4461, David Reutimann (Toyota) 4388, Mike Wallace (Toyota) 4128, Jason Leffler (Toyota) 4086, Marcos Ambrose (Ford) 3991.
More later in the week on the V8 Supercar Championship penultimate round in Tasmania but for now a snapshot reminder of the championship picture.
V8 Supercar Championship driver standings after 12 of 14 rounds: Jamie Whincup (Ford) 2916 points, Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 2729, Garth Tander (Holden) 2624, Craig Lowndes (Ford) 2367, Steve Richards (Ford) 2178, Will Davison (Ford) 2153, James Courtney (Ford) 2136, Rick Kelly (Holden) 2046, Russell Ingall (Holden) 1908, Steven Johnson (Ford) 1837.
Previous 10 Symmons Plains round winners: 1994 Mark Skaife (Holden Commodore VP), 1995 John Bowe (Ford Falcon EF), 1996 Craig Lowndes (Holden Commodore VR), 1997 Greg Murphy (Holden Commodore VS), 1998 Craig Lowndes (Holden Commodore VS), 1999 Mark Skaife (Holden Commodore VT), 2004 Russell Ingall (Ford Falcon BA), 2005 Garth Tander (Holden Commodore VZ), 2006 Garth Tander (Holden Commodore VZ), 2007 Jamie Whincup (Ford Falcon BF).
Toyota's ARC -- and the lessons from it
We've talked a lot already today about championships and we were pleased for Neal Bates and Coral Taylor (pictured) to see them clinch a fourth Australian Rally Championship together at Coffs Harbour at the weekend -- 13 years after the hat-trick they scored in the mid-1990s.
They've been distinguished competitors in Australian motorsport for a long time now.
Toyota took the ARC manufacturers' title in the first season it had run Super 2000 Corollas for both Bates-Taylor and its champions of the past two years, Simon and Sue Evans.
It's often said, when there is any question about the strength of a championship, that you can only beat the opposition you're up against.
True enough, too.
But there's no way we can regard these ARC successes the same as we do those championships mentioned earlier.
The Toyotas have been the sole factory entries in the ARC this year.
Bates and Taylor have got the job done, setting the standards all year, although they finished well down the line in the atrocious conditions in both heats at Coffs Harbor.
The Evans duo made a bit of a mess of their first season in an S2000 car, ending this championship behind Simon's younger brother, Eli, and his co-driver Chris Murphy in a privateer Subaru Impreza WRX.
Although the Toyota-mounted Evans crew won the first heat at Coffs -- and seven of that day's nine stages -- it was Eli Evans who won the second, after his brother had transmission problems, and emerged from the weekend as an ARC round winner for the first time.
Another star of the weekend was British champion Guy Wilks, up against the four-wheel-drives in a two-wheel-drive Honda Civic Type R.
Wilks won two stages in the first heat, was second on another four, and finished 30 seconds behind Simon Evans on Saturday.
A rollover Sunday put Wilks and co-driver Phil Pugh out of the event but they had made quite an impression.
Wilks said it had been "good fun to spank the 4WD cars".
You can read more about the Honda effort in our review here.
Eli Evans took third in Saturday's heat, ahead of the Mitsubishi Lancers of local Nathan Quinn (Evo V) and Michael Boaden (Evo VII) and the Subaru Impreza WRX of Michael Guest.
Sunday it was young Victorian Glen Raymond in one of the superseded Group N prototype Toyota Corollas in second place, 23.9 seconds behind Eli Evans, with Quinn in third.
So Evans E., Quinn and Raymond were the drivers on the podium, with Evans S. fourth for the weekend, Spencer Lowndes fifth in his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX and then Bates sixth.
After a modest outlay on this championship, Toyota will be able to leverage its success in its advertising and marketing.
That advertising won't highlight that it had nothing much to beat.
While no doubt it will give kudos to Bates and Taylor, it won't highlight either that perhaps there is a lesson in this success for Toyota on grander scales.
It has contracted out to Neal Bates Motorsport, under the banner of Toyota Racing Development, the construction, preparation and maintenance of the S2000 Corollas, as it did the Group N prototypes previously and the Celicas in the '90s.
Perhaps its F1 team, so notoriously unsuccessful in seven years in grand prix racing, might be better hived off to a specialist motorsport operation because its way -- "the Toyota way" -- has produced little other than embarrassment to date.
In Australia next year Toyota may get some more opposition if talk of Honda running a full ARC season with Alister McRae, brother of late world champion Colin and himself a British champion, comes true.
Mazda, too, has shown interest in competing, but no sign of the Subaru and Mitsubishi factories returning.
The championship will start earlier next year, with the Tasmanian Tarmac Challenge on February 14-15.
Running in regional areas is one of the ARC's strengths, but also one of its weaknesses.
The championship makes next to no impact in capital city markets and remains a long, long way from being an alternative major championship to V8 Supercar racing for Australian motorsport fans to get interested in.
Pity that, but a reality.
Australian Rally Championship final driver standings: Neal Bates (Toyota Corolla S2000) 445 points, Eli Evans (Subaru Impreza WRX) 337, Simon Evans (Toyota Corolla S2000) 320, Spencer Lowndes (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) 284, Glen Raymond (Toyota Corolla Group N-P) 246, Michael Guest (Subaru Impreza WRX) 194.
Alonso tops, Shanghai on skids and Montreal dead
Pardon our undisguised bias, but we were pleased to see that in the more unashamedly-biased British press, indeed in the bastion of Fleet Street, the venerable The Times, that Formula 1 fans, presumably mainly British, voted Fernando Alonso the year's top driver, a whisker ahead of Lewis Hamilton with Felipe Massa third.
Australian Mark Webber came in 10th in the poll.
A very accurate, perceptive, take on the season by the voters, we reckon.
To matters of potentially greater importance for the F1 championship now, and it seems that the Chinese GP may almost have run its race, in Shanghai at least, and Montreal has waved the white flag of surrender on its much-loved GP.
Shanghai, which spent US$240 million on its circuit before its first GP in 2004, is making noises that it can't see the value in going on beyond its contract to 2010.
F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has made the point that the Chinese official doing the whingeing, Qiu Weichang, works for the race promoter rather than the decision-making government, which presumably pays the race fee.
Ecclestone says there is a five-year option beyond 2010, that he'll have a chat to the right people in Shanghai, but that in any case there are plenty of other Chinese cities capable -- and perhaps interested -- in having the race.
The Canadian situation is of greater relevance to Australia, because the long-running Montreal race is the round of the F1 world championship that is most like that in Melbourne, and previously Adelaide.
Montreal was shocked to see itself dropped some weeks ago from the 2009 calendar and fought vigorously to regain its place.
However, it has now thrown in the towel -- at least on '09 -- on the basis that Ecclestone's terms, or financial demands, were just too tough.
The Canadians claim Ecclestone wanted US$31 million for next year, with annual increases that would have made the five-year total US$175 million.
North America is now left without a GP next year, with the US having dropped off the calendar this year and no sign of an imminent return -- either at Indianapolis or any other American city.
The car manufacturers competing in F1 -- Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Renault and Ferrari -- are not going to be happy about this outcome.
France had already scratched itself from next year's calendar, and there is growing opposition to the idea of a race at Disneyland in Paris in future rather than the traditional Magny-Cours.
Plans for an Indian GP in 2010 have been postponed at least a year.
F1 may be starting to feel the effects of the global economic meltdown, and now Ecclestone's headaches are compounded by reports that his wife, Slavica, has departed the family home in London for an apartment -- and may sue the 78-year-old billionaire for divorce.
Apart from the pure business issues to deal with, it is only going to be a growing concern to the F1 industry -- particularly the manufacturers -- that the business is so much in the hands of an elderly man, even if he thinks he is indestructible.
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