MOTORSPORT: 55 cars for Bathurst 12-Hour

While the entry list has been announced today, teams have not yet been required to finalise driver line-ups.

Former FIA GT1 world champion team Vita4One Racing from Germany will race in Australia for the first time, entering two BMW Z4M GT3s for the 12-Hour.

Vita4One, headed by Michael Bartels, won the FIA GT Championship every year between 2006 and 2009 and won a world championship in 2010 running the Maserati MC12.

The GT3-outright (Class A) field for the 12-Hour includes the event’s reigning champion,  Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport with its Mercedes-Benz SLS AMGs, and 2012 winner Phoenix Racing with its Audi R8 LMS Ultra heading that brand’s assault as it tries to notch a third win in an event growing in international recognition.

Also on the entry list are Spa 24-Hour champion HTP Motorsport with its SLS AMG and current-specification GT cars from Ferrari, Lamborghini and Chevrolet.
Nissan Motorsport will give the GTR Nismo GT3 its Australian debut at The Mountain.

Class B (GT3) will include the first appearance outside the Carrera Cup of the MY11-specification Porsche 997 GT3 Cup Car entered by several strong teams.

The full entry list can be viewed at www.bathurst12hour.com.au

V8 touring car triple-header at Pukekohe
New Zealand is going crazy for V8 touring cars. It had already been announced that NZ’s V8 SuperTourers would be on the program for the V8 Supercar Championship round at Pukekohe on Anzac weekend at the end of April.

Now comes news from across the Tasman that the NV8 Touring Cars also will race there.

Former V8 Supercar driver Jason Bargwanna is racing a Toyota Camry in that series, taking two wins at Pukekohe last month, Nissan is set to join it with its Altima and there is talk of a European brand car on the way as well.

The two NZ touring car championships have feuded for two years but not only will they race at the same event at Pukekohe but also at the NZ Grand Prix meeting at Manfeild Park in early February.

The 32-year-old from Sydney has been chosen from among more than 50 possibilities to fill a vacancy in Chip Ganassi’s four-car IndyCar team created by the forced retirement of Scotsman Dario Franchitti, who had been advised not to risk further concussion.

Briscoe, who lost his full-time IndyCar driver with rival Team Penske a year ago, has joined New Zealander and reigning series champion Scott Dixon, this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan and rising American star Charlie Kimball in the Ganassi line-up.

Kanaan will fill the seat previously occupied by Franchitti with Briscoe in the car that Brazilian Kanaan had previously been assigned.

The newly-compressed IndyCar season, with 18 races between late March and late August, should allow Briscoe to return to Australia for the V8 Supercar enduros in September-October.

He was third with Russell Ingall in a Holden Commodore at the Gold Coast 600 this year.

Briscoe has now gone full circle in IndyCar as Ganassi was his first team in America in 2005.

He was placed there by Toyota, for which he had been a Formula One test driver, but his debut season ended with massive injuries from a fiery crash at Chicagoland Speedway.

Later his career was resurrected with Penske, with whom he won seven IndyCar races in five years – and came close to the 2009 title but made a crucial mistake at the Japanese round.

Briscoe started the 2012 Indianapolis 500 from pole position for Penske and returned there this year in a one-off drive for Ganassi, finishing 12th.

The rest of this year he spent driving six Indy races for Panther Racing and sports cars in America.

He had been expected to join Panther full-time next year but it has had difficulty raising sponsorship.

Ganassi, which has won 10 IndyCar championships – including five of the past six -- and four Indy 500s, picked Briscoe for his experience.

Among others considered for the drive in the team switching from Honda to Chevrolet engines were Canadian Alex Tagliani and likely F1 refugee Paul di Resta, a cousin of Franchitti.

Penske has reverted to a three-car Indy team for next season, recruiting Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya – a former series champion and Indy 500 winner for Ganassi and for several years one of its NASCAR racers – to join Aussie Will Power and Brazilian Helio Castroneves.

Lieb has been a visiting international at some V8 Supercar endurance races the past three seasons, including with Jonathon Webb’s Tekno Autosports at this year’s Bathurst 1000.

He is best known in the motorsport world for breaking seven minutes for a lap of Germany’s famed old Nurburgring circuit in Porsche’s new petrol-electric 918 Spyder hypercar in September.

Hartley is a former Red Bull junior driver and contemporary of Webber’s replacement at Red Bull’s F1 team, Daniel Ricciardo.

The Kiwi has raced sports cars in Europe the past two seasons.

The other three drivers in Porsche’s squad for its new Le Mans challenger, christened the 919 hybrid, are German Timo Bernhard, Frenchman Romain Dumas and Swiss Neil Jani.

The manufacturer has not yet confirmed the configuration of the car’s turbocharged petrol engine but Autosport has reported that it is understood to be a V4.

One of the 919’s two hybrid systems is an exhaust-driven Motor Generator Unit Heat system like those to be used in F1 next year.

Mexican Sergio Perez, dumped by McLaren after just one year, has joined Force India, which already had recruited German Nico Hulkenberg from Swiss team Sauber.

Perez lost his place at McLaren to Danish rookie Kevin Magnussed but his reputed $20 million-a-year sponsorship from Mexican telecommunications company Telmex -- owned by Carlos Slim, said to be the world’s richest man – appears to have helped him get the Force India drive.

German Adrian Sutil, dislodged from Force India, has joined Sauber in what amounts to a swap with Hulkenberg.

Sutil’s former teammate Paul di Resta is yet to find a drive for 2014.

Only four F1 seats remain to be filled and Aussie Ryan Briscoe has taken the IndyCar drive at Chip Ganassi Racing left vacant by the sudden retirement of Di Resta’s cousin Dario Franchitti.

Under F1’s new disciplinary rules any driver who amasses 12 penalty points during a 12-month period will be given a one-race ban.

2014 Formula One driver line-up:
Red Bull Racing -- Sebastian Vettel (Germany), Daniel Ricciardo (Australia)
Mercedes-Benz -- Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain), Nico Rosberg (Germany)
Ferrari -- Fernando Alonso (Spain), Kimi Raikkonen (Finland)
Lotus -- Pastor Maldonado (Venezuela), Romain Grosjean (France)
McLaren -- Jenson Button (Great Britain), Kevin Magnussen (Denmark)
Force India -- Nico Hulkenberg (Germany), Sergio Perez (Mexico)
Sauber – Adrian Sutil (Germany), other to be announced
Toro Rosso -- Daniil Kvyat (Russia), Jean-Eric Vergne (France)
Williams -- Valtteri Bottas (Finland), Felipe Massa (Brazil)
Marussia -- Jules Bianchi (France), other to be announced
Caterham -- Both to be announced

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