MOTORSPORT: 17 brands for Bathurst's Easter enduro

Easter line-up

A final entry list has been announced for the Bathurst Six-Hour production car race on Easter Sunday, April 1, with 62 cars comprising 17 brands and 38 models.

The list contains 11 Holdens and BMWs, eight Mitsubishis, six Toyotas and five Subarus.

While the overall entry is two short of the record Bathurst field of 64 cars that started last year's Six-Hour, there are more pure production cars this time. (Five saloon cars entered last year were not eligible this time.)

More than half the field (33 cars) are in the A1 (extreme performance - forced induction) and A2 (extreme performance - naturally aspirated) classes from which the outright winner is expected, with the rest spread across another five classes.

Key contenders for outright honours are a Sherrin Rentals BMW M4, Morcom Motorsport's Ford Focus RS, Mark Eddy's Audi TT RS and the Garth Walden Racing and Rod Salmon-entered Mercedes-AMG A45s.

Production regular Dylan Thomas will campaign a Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X RS and a brand-new BMW M3 will be driven by former production car champion, Beric Lynton.

Eight of the nine entries in A2 are Holdens, with a variety of HSV models to be challenged by a Mercedes-AMG C63S.

Event director James O'Brien that, while more later-model cars continue to be built for the Six-Hour, the race "remains an avenue for privateer runners and family teams on a modest budget to be able to compete at Mt Panorama".

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Ecclestone fuels flames of F1 rift

A year after he was edged out of the 'driver's seat' of Formula 1 management, and a month before the new season starts in Melbourne, 87-year-old Bernie Ecclestone is stirring the pot.

Although F1's American owner Liberty Media made Ecclestone F1's 'chairman emeritus', he has been ostracised, with Liberty chief Chase Carey rarely seeking his advice and not wanting him at races.

Carey wasn't happy when Ecclestone said soon after he was sidelined that he wouldn't pay to watch a grand prix with the modern hybrid cars.

Now, Ecclestone has poured fuel on the flames of a rift between Liberty and F1's top teams, especially Ferrari, over technical regulations beyond 2020 and the prizemoney structure.

Liberty is pushing for a variation of the existing V6 hybrids from 2021 with rules that would make it affordable for other suppliers like Cosworth and Ilmor to build power units to compete against Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Honda.

It also wants to even up the split of the financial pie by scrapping the huge bonuses the top teams get (in Ferrari's case US$100 million, irrespective of where it finishes in the world championship) for their historic contribution to the sport.

FCA and Ferrari chief, Sergio Marchionne, has threatened to pull the sport's oldest and most glamorous team out of F1 if it doesn't get its way on the new engine rules and loses its automatic annual bonus.

While such threats have come from the Italian stable in the past, without amounting to much, Ecclestone says Marchionne (approaching retirement but sure to retain immense power after his financial success for the Fiat empire) is not a man to be messed with.

"Formula 1 is Ferrari and Ferrari is Formula 1 - I would hate to see Formula 1 without Ferrari," Ecclestone said, adding that some circuit promoters as well as teams would follow it if it were to initiate a rebel series.

Curiously, especially having been dismissive of the four-year-old Formula E in the past, Ecclestone has suggested that F1 go all-electric.

"The only thing you would miss would be the noise… [but] I do not believe that people could not come up with something to make more or less the old F1 noise," he said.

"They (Liberty) would need to have the balls to do it. I think they will have to do it."

More attractive to Ferrari though, as mentioned here previously, could be the prospect of a common platform for top-level sports car racing that would allow it, and other manufacturers, to race in what is now the European-based World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the American-based International Motor Sport Association (IMSA) series.

Rules that allowed the same cars to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, as well as at circuits such Spa in Belgium and the Nurburgring in Germany, and in Asia (perhaps even Australia) and at America's Daytona and Sebring would be enormously appealing to manufacturers.

Under the differing rules now, the only manufacturer in the WEC's top (hybrid) tier now is Toyota following the withdrawal of Audi and Porsche, while IMSA's simpler and cheaper rules have attracted Acura (Honda), Mazda and Nissan to take on the dominant Cadillac.

Ferrari hasn't been a player in top-level sports car racing since the 1970s (although it has been active at the GT level), but the lure of returning to Le Mans (which it last won outright in 1965), as well as the American endurance classics, could be mightily enticing to it, as an alternative to F1.

And the prospect of racing against, and beating, the famed Prancing Horse could well draw many other makes as well.

Toyota's American champion's car dodgy

NASCAR champion Martin Truex Junior's Toyota failed three inspections in the lead-up to the second round of the Monster Cup at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The issue was the rear wheel alignment and rear toe. One of Truex's crew was banned from working on the car for the weekend, while another failure would have also meant a ban for crew chief, Cole Pearn.

Truex had to start the race at the rear of the field but finished fifth as Fords driven by Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas Racing), Brad Keselowski (Team Penske) and Clint Bowyer (Stewart-Haas) finished one, two, three.

Joe Garone, president of Furniture Row Racing for which Truex races, had disputed the accuracy and consistency of the optical scanning NASCAR now uses to inspect cars.

"Of course they are going to say that," said NASCAR senior vice-president of competition, Scott Miller.