MOTORSPORT: A celebration of talent

Webber plays his part in Red Bull perfection
What a difference three weeks has made to the Formula One season. After the opening round of the world championship in Bahrain there were fears of a boring, processional season.

Yet three rounds into the championship there has been some stunning racing, aided by weather conditions -- rain at start of the race in Melbourne and again during qualifying in Malaysia, which shook up the grid, leaving the Ferraris and McLarens near the back of the field.

Still there are doomsayers, and foremost among them is F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone who has said:  "Don't be fooled. We have got to do something. For the first time the teams have realised that they have to do something about it. We don't need reverse grids, we just need more overtaking."

Now this is pretty rich from Ecclestone. The authorities make the rules then he wants to put the onus on the teams, rather than those authorities, to ensure it is a good show.

Ecclestone's "solution" is to "make the front wing smaller and get rid of the double diffuser", see here. Well the double diffusers will be gone at the end of this year anyway, and it was the authorities that imposed the ridiculously big front wings (and narrow rear wings) that F1 has this season.

As always, Ecclestone has the answer to the problem he sees. "Why not just get a beautiful girl in and draw out the drivers for the top 10 (on the grid)?"

We're all for pretty girls here, but enough of the nonsense. F1 is doing just fine now -- as a sporting contest -- because it has enormous depths of driver talent and, more importantly, it has five competitive teams, rather than the usual two or three.

Under the new scoring system -- with 25 points for a win, 18 for second, down to 1 for 10th place -- there are only nine points between the championship leader, now Felipe Massa, and seventh-placed Robert Kubica. Better still the top five drivers are bracketed by just four points.

Massa, back from that nasty eye injury last year but yet to win a race this season, is two points ahead of his new Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso, the Bahrain winner who -- despite not finishing in Malaysia after his engine blew on the second lap -- is now tied with Sebastien Vettel, who finally got the victory in Malaysia that mechanical gremlins denied him at the first two races.

Melbourne winner Jenson Button is just another two points back, tied now by Nico Rosberg, who notched his first podium of the season at Kuala Lumpur's Sepang track -- and the first for Mercedes-Benz as a works team for 55 years!

Australia's Mark Webber did pretty much what he should in Malaysia -- put his Red Bull-Renault RB6 on pole position by a mammoth 1.3 seconds when he had the right tyres -- intermediates -- for the conditions at crunch time in qualifying, then tailed teammate Vettel throughout the race to give Red Bull Racing a quinella.

Some will criticise Webber for losing the advantage pole position gave him by the first corner. It seems from his comments in the post-race press conference that Webber was a little disoriented as the cars got to that first corner -- about just where Vettel, who had started directly behind him in third, and Rosberg, from the outside of the front row, were.

Sure Webber surrendered that valuable pole position and looked to have been overly cautious as he went wide approaching turn one.

But to have risked contact, particularly with Vettel, at Turn One would have been crazy. Vettel had the edge as they neared that first corner and once he was in front the race for the Red Bull pair was always going to be run on his terms.

The one-two finish gave the team, which had languished fourth in the constructors' world championship after Melbourne when it clearly has had the quickest car all season, the maximum 43 points from Sepang. It has leapfrogged Mercedes on the constructors' table, is hot on the heels of McLaren but still 15 points in arrears of Ferrari.

All things considered Webber's second place was just what he needed.

Vettel commanded this race from start to finish, as he looked set to do in Bahrain and Melbourne until spark plug and wheel nut problems respectively. The 22-year-old German wonder is right back in the hunt now for the world title for which he was the pre-season favourite.

Although the rain that had been forecast for race day in Malaysia failed to eventuate, the race -- and the grid -- produced plenty of special moments.

Lewis Hamilton's overtaking was something to behold and Robert Kubica again was super-competitive, even if two places back from where he was in Melbourne.

Adrian Sutil's fifth place for Force India confirmed the suspicion we've had for quite a while that, in good machinery, yet another German is up near the very best in a very talented field.

Button's eighth place does not look spectacular on the classifications sheet but, without any safety cars, he was only 10 seconds behind sixth-placed teammate Hamilton who had looked so blisteringly quick. Button is now a very complete F1 ace who knows how to put a championship campaign together.

Webber is now eighth in the drivers' championship -- six points behind seventh-placed Kubica. The Australian is lower in those standings than he ought to be in the RB6 that is a super car, but at least he is now getting it together after the blemishes of the Bahrain and Melbourne races.

A rear wheel nut cut short Michael Schumacher's race at Sepang and he is 10th in the championship. It may still be too early to say the seven-time world champion's comeback has been a failure, but -- for all the hype of the off-season, it has been largely a non-event on the track to date.

Younger teammate Rosberg has shaded him all season and, without the advantage of the limitless budget and heaps of testing Schumacher enjoyed in his Ferrari days, it is hard to see him featuring much more prominently.

Youngsters Jaime Alguersuari (Scuderial Toro Rosso) and Nico Hulkenberg (Williams) provided some thrills in Malaysia -- in the race and qualifying respectively. Spaniard Alguersuari and German Hulkenberg have each now scored in the championship, although it ought be remembered that's only because the points system has been extended from eighth to 10th this year.

Still, it was terrific to see that apart from the enormous talents at the pointy end of the field which we've known about for a while now there are yet others emerging.

There may yet be some dull, processional races in Europe, or even at the next round in China on April 18. But from what we've seen the past two rounds, and not just because of rain, we reckon there are grounds for optimism about a terrific season.

And if it turns out otherwise it still won't be right to lay the blame on teams only adhering to technical rules imposed on them.

Formula One drivers' world championship standings after 3 of 19 rounds -- Felipe Massa  (Brazil, Ferrari) 39 points, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 37, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 37, Jenson Button (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 35, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 35, 6. Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 31, Robert Kubica (Poland, Renault) 30, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 24, Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 10, Michael Schumacher, (Germany, Mercedes) 9, Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy, Force India-Mercedes) 8, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Williams-Cosworth) 5, Jaime Alguersuari (Spain, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 2, Nico Hulkenberg (Germany, Williams-Cosworth) 1.

F1 contructors' world championship standings -- Ferrari 76 points, McLaren-Mercedes 66, Red Bull-Renault 61, Mercedes 44, Renault 30, Force India-Mercedes 18, Williams-Cosworth 6, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 2.

New spotlight on Oz GP start time and audience
Australia's twilight GP remained in the spotlight over the Malaysian race weekend, with news the world governing body of motorsport, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), had done light testing in Melbourne -- and found it to be unsatisfactory, and bordering on unsafe, at the end of the race.

It was Michael Schumacher who broke the news.

Robert Kubica tossed up the idea of staging next year's Melbourne race early on Sunday morning so that it's beamed into Europe on Saturday night.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairman Ron Walker thought it impertinent of mere drivers to have opinions on race times and branded them, collectively, prima donnas.

What will be interesting to see now is just whose decision it is on the start time next year -- the FIA or Bernie Ecclestone's commercial arm -- or spine -- of the sport. Despite Walker's grandstanding it ultimately won't be the AGPC's.

If it is a matter of safety we would expect the FIA to prevail, and Ecclestone to come into line with it on that score, even if his preference is for a night race in Australia -- which he's not going to get from the Victorian government.

The later start in Melbourne -- 5pm the last two years -- has been on the pretence of it working better for international television. However, that argument is now in serious question -- especially judging by the initial figures from Britain after the March 28 race.

The live telecast of this year's Oz GP at breakfast time in Britain drew 1.95 million viewers on the BBC. That was 150,000, or 7.14 per cent, less than the 2.1 million viewers who watched Melbourne's first twilight race live in Britain last year.

A replay of this year's race -- from 1pm, London time, on the day of the event -- drew 2.56 million viewers -- 240,000, or 8.57 per cent, less than last year's 2.8 million. These figures are from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) -- Britain's equivalent of Australia's OzTAM ratings agency.

Britain is the hub of Formula One and British drivers have won the race at Albert Park three years in a row.

Jenson Button triumphed for the McLaren team this year after his shock victory for BrawnGP on its debut last year. Lewis Hamilton won in 2008. That Hamilton victory -- in a race that started at 3.30pm, or pre-dawn in Britain -- drew 3.9 million viewers on commercial network ITV when shown on delay that day.

This year's 2.56 million viewers for the afternoon screening in Britain represented a drop of 1.34 million viewers, or 34.35 per cent, for the replay there in two years.

Research by London sports media analyst Kevin Alavy, of the company Initiative futures sport + entertainment, has found that the live audience for Melbourne's GP in 55 countries that account for 95 per cent of the world economy was less than 32.8 million viewers in each of the four years 2006-2009. That is less than 10 per cent of the global audience long claimed for the race.

In Australia on March 28 this year 1.18 million watched the GP on TV in the five major capital cities -- 816,000 on Channel Ten and 367,000 on its digital offshoot OneHD, according to OzTAM.

Interesting in the OzTAM figures that day were the numbers for the four-hour Raceday lead-in program to the GP race telecast. Raceday included a non-championship V8 Supercar race.

On Channel 10 that program had a five-capitals average of 363,000, with another 154,000 on OneHD -- a total of 517,000.

That number is not purely for the V8 Supercar race but a program that was broader and went much longer than the 13 laps of that race.

However, it was a bigger number than the 476,000 in the five major capitals for the second, Sunday leg of Adelaide's Clipsal 500 -- on which we commented on here.

Again we stress that it is not an apples-with-apples comparison, but such things might become increasingly pertinent when it comes time for negotiation of the V8 Supercar telecasts from 2013.

That's a fair way off yet, but there are smoke signals that the top brass at the Seven Network have not been happy with the championship numbers to date this year, especially in Sydney and Melbourne -- and with three of the first four rounds outside Australia, including the next at Hamilton, NZ, on April 17-18.

It won't be in the World Rally Championship with which Queenslander Atkinson was a Subaru factory driver for several years until that company's withdrawal at the end of 2008, but with Proton in the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship.

"I'm coming back with one of the few manufacturer seats available in the sport," Atkinson said. "It's a good championship with a lot of competition."

Still only 30 -- quite young in rally terms -- Atkinson added: "I drove a world rally car for five years and I'm sure I can still drive a rally car quickly."

The first Asia-Pacific event for Atkinson and Belgian co-driver Stephane Provot will be in New Zealand on July 3-4.

Meanwhile, French six-time world champion Sebastien Loeb's victory in the weekend's Rally of Jordan was his 56th in the WRC. The Citroen superstar finished 35.8sec ahead of Finland's Jari-Matti Latvala in a Ford.

Norwegian Petter Solberg was third in a private Citroen.

Finland's 2007 Formula One world champion Kimi Raikkonen finished eighth for Citroen for his first points in the WRC which he joined full-time this year.

Both manufacturers took care to avoid their leading drivers starting first -- and thus sweeping the roads for those behind -- on the final day.

Citroen instructed second-placed Sebastien Ogier, whose car had an electrical problem, to check in early for the opening stage of the last day -- which forced the young Frenchman to run first while wrecking his hopes of a podium finish.

Ford asked Mikko Hirvonen, usually its main challenger to Loeb but out of the reckoning for victory in Jordan after hitting an earth bank on Friday, to check in early so that he could run ahead of countryman and teammate Latvala.

Loeb added: "Tactics are part of the game and it's down to the teams to do what they want. I'm just the driver.

"It's been a good rally for us and, with a 31-point lead over Mikko Hirvonen, it means it has been a good start to the season.

"I really had to go flat-out because Jari-Matti was going very fast and made me push to the limit all the time."

Drivers' world rally championship standings after 3 rounds -- Sebastien Loeb (France, Citroen) 68 points, Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Ford) 43, Mikko Hirvonen (Finland, Ford) 37, Petter Solberg (Norway, Citreon) 35, Sebastien Ogier (France, Citroen) 33, Daniel Sordo (Spain, Citroen) 24, Henning Solberg (Norway, Ford) 18, Matthew Wilson (Great Britain, Ford) 16, Federico Villagra (Argentina, Ford) 12, Xavier Pons (Spain, Ford) 5, 12 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Citroen) 4, Mads Ostberg (Norway) 4.

Constructors' world rally championship standings -- Citroen Total WRT 101 points, BP-Ford Abu-Dhabi WRT 87, Citroen Junior Team 48, Stobart VK M-Sport Ford WRT 44, Munchi's Ford WRT 16.

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