MOTORSPORT: A mid-year silly season

Forget more manufacturers or major cost cutting in V8s
The month-long break in the V8 Supercar Championship has set off a mid-year silly season.

Without any racing between the chequered flag in Perth on May 11 and June 8-9 at Melbourne's Sandown, tongues are wagging about a new manufacturer or more on the traditional Holden-Ford patch.

Part of these stories is that the V8 Supercar authorities are now more open to the idea of new players. The other part is the floating of the names of other marques that some seem to think might be interested -- or that they would like to think could get interested.

Like us, you've probably heard or seen the names being tossed around ... Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, and Chrysler. Sorry if we've missed one, but feel free to throw in any others you like.

But the challenge for anyone putting these names about as potential starters in V8 Supercar racing is to provide any evidence of them being even remotely interested. We cannot see the slightest sign of it with any of them.

The two names occasionally put in play before this latest bout of silliness were Mitsubishi and Toyota.

Mitsubishi has now canned its A380, so it's definitely out -- and was never going to have the budget to be in anyway.

And why would Toyota need to bother about going V8 Supercar racing? It's now selling more vehicles in Australia than Ford and Holden put together without going anywhere near circuit racing.

Most of the other marques mentioned are already in Formula 1 and a couple in the DTM -- the German Touring Car Championship. That's more than enough for them, instead of coming to play racing in a small, isolated market like Australia -- or even Australasia.

The other nonsense that has resurfaced during this silly season is the notion of cutting $1 million off the annual cost of running a V8 Supercar. Nice idea perhaps, but this isn't going to happen either.

It's not so long ago that there was a much-trumpeted move to introduce a spending cap on V8 Supercar teams. Indeed, we seem to recall that it was supposed to be in place early last season.

But it all evaporated, and we can't see this new move, however well intentioned, being any more successful -- no matter how welcome it might be to struggling smaller teams, especially if Australia's general economic circumstances deteriorate further in coming months.

And the reason we say it won't happen is because Australian V8 Supercar racing is now dominated by big British team operators who are just not going to be constrained while ever they can tap into the money to spend to win.

The cars running around on our tracks are still Commodores and Falcons and the drivers are still Aussies or Kiwis, but -- as we have said before -- the V8 Supercar Championship is now effectively a de facto British touring car championship.

Whoever likes to think they're in charge of the show ought think again, because the guys calling the tune in this caper are Tom Walkinshaw, David Richards and Roland Dane -- all from that little patch of dirt in the North Sea.

The championship's still got a lot going for it, but success in it is largely out of Australian hands -- other than the couple literally on the steering wheel.

And just back to the number of competing manufacturers.

We hear there's some research floating around the Melbourne headquarters of one of the car companies now involved strongly suggesting it get out of racing and concentrate on other priorities, like smaller and more fuel-efficient cars.

If it went that route that would mean just a solitary manufacturer left -- so we'd be left with a one-make series!

Countdown to Mosley's day of reckoning
D-day is looming for Max Mosley next Tuesday.

That's the day of the vote of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) in Paris on whether he ought remain president in the wake of the revelations of his sado-masochistic sex orgy with five prostitutes.

Our gut feeling throughout this two-month saga has been that Mosley most likely would get a narrow majority of the 222 votes -- one of which is to be cast by Australia's representative, Garry Connelly, with still no indication of which way it will be cast.

The Times of London is now reporting, though, that "the tide is turning" and that Mosley is "in serious danger of losing a no-confidence vote by motorsport's governing body".

While Jean Todt, the team boss at Ferrari during its most successful era in F1 and still a consultant to the Italian company, has appeared the frontrunner if Mosley is to be replaced before the expiry of his term in October 2009, Gerhard Berger's name has now come up as a potential successor.

To take the FIA reins in a hurry Berger presumably would have to extricate himself from Scuderia Toro Rosso, Red Bull's second F1 team and the former Minardi, earlier than the anticipated sale of that squad by the end of next year.

Alain Prost, four-time F1 world champion but sadly failed team owner, has mentioned that he is interested in putting his hand up to run the sporting side of the FIA but not the motoring side.

One of the greatest drivers of all time, the Professor, but not, we suspect, the man for that role.

Successors aside, the matters that need to be addressed in coming days are:
> Is Max Mosley fit to continue heading the FIA? (We say no).
> If Mosley is voted out next Tuesday, is there still a role for him to play in world motorsport? (We say yes, especially on safety and environmental issues, but in the background).
> Will Mosley still be prepared to contribute if he loses the presidency? (This may be the big one, and hopefully the answer will be yes -- and hopefully even his opponents will endeavour to find a way to ensure it).

Schumi to splash millions - but not his own
Michael Schumacher is to head the FIA body that will disperse US$60 million of the US$100 million fine imposed on McLaren-Mercedes last year for having Ferrari technical data.

Schumacher has been made chairman of the Motor Sport Safety Development fund, which can make three types of grants -- safety scholarships for young drivers, also for officials, and for improving and developing facilities in emerging markets.

World rallying in rapid reverse gear
The latest financial results of International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC), the commercial rights holder to the World Rally Championship and until recently headed by David Richards, are not a pretty sight.

ISC's turnover fell 40 per cent in 2006 to 8.8 million British pounds, leaving the business with a £4 million pre-tax loss after a £250,000 profit the previous year.

ISC's revenue is mainly from television rights and, if it's not bad enough that it's fallen 40 per cent, compare it with F1's 2006 turnover -- £650 million!

That's quite an enlightening picture on the gap between the two biggest four-wheel motorsport world championships.

ISC's creditors increased by a third to £13.7 million in 2006, while it had to spend £1 million of its cash reserves to make ends meet.

Total costs were down 8 per cent at £12.9 million, with staff costs down 7 per cent -- but fees paid to directors rose 30 per cent to £320,000.

The highest-paid director, believed to be Richards, received £173,000.

All these figures were trotted out in London's Telegraph newspaper by business journalists Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, who say that ISC also paid £200,000 for management services from Richards' private company, Hundred Percent Group -- although they add "it is unlikely to be doing this any more".

ISC was sold last October to London-based TV production company North One, which has produced WRC programs since 2000 (and F1 broadcasts for ITV for a decade, although the BBC will be doing them again from next year).

"The (ISC) accounts say operational synergies following the acquisition should improve performance and the directors expect ‘a period of sustained profitability from 2008'," Sylt and Reid say.

The previous record winner's cheque was US$1,761,740 to Buddy Rice in 2004, while the earlier record race purse was US$10,668,815 last year.

The record winner's share this year restored the Indy 500 as the richest race in the world -- NASCAR driver Ryan Newman collected $1,506,045 for winning the Daytona 500 in February.

Brazilian Vitor Meira's second place at Indy was worth US$1,273,215 and Marco Andretti collected US$782,065 for third.

From what we read, the drivers' share of these payments is likely to be around 60 per cent with the rest shared among the rest of their teams.

Initial TV information from last Sunday in the US is that the first Indy 500 since the unification of the Indy Racing League and Champ Car World Series rated better -- 5.1 per cent of TV households in the 56 urban markets surveyed by Nielsen were tuned in to the race on the American Broadcasting Corporation, up from 4.8 last year.

The Fox network's telecast of NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte drew a 4.5 national rating -- similar to last year.

The rating for the NASCAR race's delayed telecast on WRTV-6 was 12.6, down from 15.1 last year -- attributed to better weather last Sunday and therefore fewer people watching TV.

While the Indy bosses were pleased with their audience after the 12-year open-wheeler split in the US, and say that all IndyCar rounds have had better audiences this year, experts say the final TV figures for the whole of the US may yet show the Charlotte race in a better light against Indy.

Live racing too much for TV viewer Amon
The strangest anecdote from the great weekend of televised motorsport was the great NZ F1 driver Chris Amon saying that he watched countryman Dixon's Indy victory on tape because he gets too tense watching big races live.

Seemed incredible for a man who raced at the very front of F1 in the late 1960s and early '70s and remains the unluckiest driver never to have won a grand prix.

Amon ranked Dixon's Indy win the greatest of all the moments in NZ's proud motor racing history -- ahead of Denny Hulme's 1967 F1 world title and Amon and Bruce McLaren's Le Mans 24-hour sports car triumph in 1966.

That is esteemed company indeed for Dixon to join.

Incidentally, he was the eighth foreign-born winner at Indianapolis in the past 10 years.

Something big missing on Ganassi, Penske files
One big question lingers in the wake of Dixon's success at The Brickyard for the Chip Ganassi team: why, in light of all their open-wheeler success, have neither Ganassi nor Roger Penske been able to win a NASCAR major league championship?

Penske, 14-time winner of the Indy 500 (to Ganassi's two), won NASCAR's Daytona 500 this year, but has not enjoyed consistent stock car success.

For Ganassi -- with four Champ Car championships and a 2003 IRL championship as well more than 50 open-wheeler wins, including with Juan Pablo Montoya at Indianapolis before the Colombian went to F1 -- the NASCAR scorecard is even worse.

Montoya is still only mid-field in a Ganassi Dodge in NASCAR's Sprint Cup in his second full season, has had three changes of crew chief, and is said to be eyeing a move (in place of Tony Stewart) to the Toyota team of three-time championship winning owner and former Washington Redkins coach Joe Gibbs, which already has new young superstar Kyle Busch.

Ganassi's other Sprint Cup drivers, Reed Sorensen and Dario Franchitti, are 31st and 49th respectively, although Franchitti broke an ankle early in the season.

In the Nationwide Series, in which Aussie Marcos Ambrose is 14th, Ganassi's young Bryan Clauson is barely inside the top 35, his best finish was sixth at Daytona in February, and his average finish is 23rd.

He's improved on his starting position only once this year -- when started 18th and finished 17th.

Franchitti has done little better than Clauson in the Nationwide series and the third Ganassi driver in that championship, Kyle Krisiloff, even worse.

Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas are leading the GrandAm sports car series for Ganassi, but again that only adds to the intrigue of why he cannot get it together in NASCAR.

It all confirms our theory that NASCAR is the most competitive four-wheel motorsport in the world.

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