Betta days behind Bathurst winners
The livery on the Ford Falcon that Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup drove to victory at Bathurst last Sunday has already been consigned to history. The Triple 8 team's major sponsor, Betta Electrical, has gone into receivership. Vodafone is set to become Triple 8's major backer next season - indeed, so major it will reportedly be the biggest team sponsorship in Australian sports history - while LG is likely to become the predominant name on the Lowndes and Whincup cars for the rest of this season. Triple 8 knew before Bathurst that the Betta receivership bombshell was coming and it seems the team has got its money, at least up to this point. Meanwhile, Whincup is set to have his contract extended until the end of 2008. A deserving reward for his sterling efforts.Brakes on VE Supercar launch
Holden has postponed plans to show its new VE Commodore V8 Supercar today, according to today's Auto Action magazine, but may still do so before next week's Gold Coast Indy because the prototype is due to return to Woomera in South Australia soon for official aerodynamic testing. Holden's motorsport department is not happy about Auto Action editor-at-large Mark Fogarty already revealing so much about the car, including scoop pictures two weeks ago by Stealth Photos.
Back to square one for red men
Todd Kelly and Garth Tander are set to trade places again now that the endurance races are out of the way and Rick Kelly is Holden's only challenger to Lowndes for the V8 Supercar crown. Expect to see "Toddler" back at Holden Racing Team and Tander with Toll HSV at the Gold Coast next week.Briscoe makes two for Indy
As tipped here on September 27, Ryan Briscoe will race a Champ Car at the Gold Coast for the RuSPORT team in place of injured Brazilian Cristiano Da Matta. Briscoe will be the second Aussie in the race, along with Will Power representing Craig Gore's Team Australia.Briscoe's deal also takes in the final round of the Champ Car season in Mexico on November 12. Perhaps the team should be called RooSPORT for these two races! It has fielded just one car, for lanky Englishman Justin Wilson, since Da Matta hit a deer in testing more than two months ago.
Briscoe and Da Matta were in the Toyota F1 squad together and the Aussie became the team's Friday driver at Formula One world championship rounds in late 2004 after Da Matta was fired.
Last year Briscoe moved to the Indy Racing League with Chip Ganassi but that association ended with an horrific crash at the Chicagoland Motor Speedway in which he suffered two broken collarbones, broken arms and legs, a bruised lung and concussion.
This year he has done four IRL events with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, scoring two top 10 finishes, including third place at Watkins Glen. Most recently he has represented Australia at the opening round of the second A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, finishing third at Zandvoort in Holland, and he has been with Holden Racing Team at the V8 Supercar endurance races - although he didn't get to do a lap in the Great Race at Bathurst last Sunday after Jim Richards crashed.
Briscoe says Surfer's Paradise will be "a very special race" for him. "It's been my goal since the beginning of the year to race in Champ Car and I'm with a top team, so it's a really exciting opportunity for me," he says.
Le Mans for FPR men
Ford Performance Racing's 2007 drivers will be part of Aston Martin's squad for next year's Le Mans 24-hour sports car classic. David Richards, the world rallying and F1 identity who controls FPR through his Prodrive operation, has confirmed that FPR has signed its replacement for Jason Bright. It's Steven Richards, although because of his contract with Larry Perkins' Holden team, it won't be announced until January. Mark Winterbottom, still third in the V8 Supercar Championship despite not even getting a lap in the Great Race that Bright led early, will be Richards' FPR teammate and part of the Aston Martin assault headed by Richards, who is set to return to F1 in 2008 with a new, 12th team.Denyer pays a high price
TV personality Grant Denyer did a commendable job in partnering Alex Davison to ninth place in one of Dick Johnson's Falcons on his debut in the Great Race but could feel hard done by. Denyer has been slugged $10,000 for arriving late for an official autograph session after a radio interview ran over time. The fine was $5000 but doubled when he appealed against the severity. Denyer's Channel Seven colleagues, particularly Sunrise host David Koch, were peeved that the dancing star and weatherman's on-track efforts were largely ignored in the Channel 10 broadcast. That's something Seven can remedy next year when they take over the telecasting of V8 Supercars.Leniency for Team Kiwi
V8 Supercar authorities are likely to take a more lenient view of Team Kiwi missing the rest of the season after its Commodore was destroyed in Paul Radisich's spectacular crash at Bathurst. The one-car team, which is switching to a Falcon next year, faces fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for missing the remaining races but is expected to be spared.Radisich, who made his 100th V8 Supercar start at Bathurst and turned 44 on Monday, is still in Nepean Hospital at Penrith with a broken ankle, broken sternum and bruised ribs but is not deterred. V8 development series driver David Clark, who was involved in Friday's crash that ultimately claimed the life of Mark Porter, is out of intensive care but likely to remain at Nepean Hospital for several weeks after his punctured right lung and pelvis, right arm and leg fractures.
New life in circuit idea
The idea of a second circuit at Bathurst, with the proposal that it be called Peter Brock Raceway, appeared to have foundered on the eve of the Great Race, but it's alive again. NSW Premier Morris Iemma supports the idea although he says he would need a fuller briefing to be totally convinced. Bathurst Regional Council is concerned at the prospect of a second circuit, which would use the existing start-finish straight and pit facilities, being owned by the developers of the new resort at the mountain. Premier Iemma is upbeat about the prospect of more events at Bathurst and says that is why the government is legislating to allow up to five a year. He's at odds on that with V8 Supercar chief Tony Cochrane, who says any event there costs at least $4 million to stage.Green light for black rookie?
Black British driver Lewis Hamilton could make his Formula One debut at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix. Hamilton, 21, whose family hails from Trinidad, is a short-priced favorite to partner Fernando Alonso in the McLaren team next year, but McLaren chief Ron Dennis is coy about whether he may give this year's GP2 series champion his "baptism" at Interlagos in Sao Paulo next week. "If Lewis was given the opportunity to race in Brazil and again in Australia next March, he'd almost definitely go better in Melbourne - not through driving, just having put in test mileage," Dennis says. An F1 snout says, though, that judging by the long faces in incumbent Pedro de la Rosa's camp at Suzuka's famous Log Cabin party last Sunday night Hamilton will get his start in Brazil.Vroom with no view
Anyone who thinks that too much of what happens in F1 is hidden from view is about to have their suspicions confirmed. Plans for rebuilding the television commentary boxes at Spa when the Belgian GP returns to the F1 championship next year don't include any windows! TV commentators generally call races off screens, but the F1 broadcasting community is incensed that they won't be given the opportunity to look out a window at Spa.
