MOTORSPORT: A new breed of champions

Australia has a couple of new open-wheeler champions – one from Mark Webber's hometown, the other – in North America – from a town more synonymous with surfing than motor racing.

A third title is in dispute, with a tribunal to decide the outcome at a date yet to be fixed.

In sedans, a driver who had a season in the V8 Supercar Championship more than a decade ago is now a three-time World Time Attack Challenge champion, taking his latest title ahead of one of V8 Supercar's biggest names.

Adelaide came alive again at the weekend with the resurrection of its classic rally after a six-year break and a new motorsport festival that eventually could rival Phillip Island's annual historic event and perhaps become Australia's nearest thing to Britain's Goodwood Festival of Speed.

In international competition, a Penske driver has won two straight NASCAR races as the Sprint Cup heads to its climax and the Mercedes Formula 1 team's test driver has won Germany's touring car championship, the DTM, although BMW and Audi both finished ahead of Mercedes in the manufacturer standings.

Jason Bargwanna is on top in New Zealand's new touring car series while a plan has been revealed for rallycross in NZ after recent struggles to revive the sport in Australia. A sick rallycross world champion is close to back-to-back titles but will have to wait six weeks to do it.

A new star rises from Queanbeyan
Cameron Hill, an 18-year-old from Queanbeyan, the town near Canberra that produced Mark Webber, is Australia's new Formula Ford champion.

That's a title Webber never won, departing for Europe before the final round in 1995. Jason Bright won the championship that year while Webber ended up fourth.

Webber's father Alan was at Goulburn's Wakefield Park at the weekend supporting Hill as he clinched the crown in this year's series, which – rather controversially – is no longer officially an Australian championship.

Hill won all three races there, leading each of them all the way, and finished the season with victory in four of the six rounds.

He drove a Mygale car and it was his second year in the series, having finished sixth last season.

As part of his prize Hill will fly to the US for a two-day Formula 2000 test.

"A whole year of hard work has paid off and I'm over the moon," Hill said.

"Hopefully we can build on this form and look forward to the future."

Great Scott, and Spectrum, in the States
The other confirmed new open-wheeler champion is Scott Andrews, 24, from Torquay on Victoria's Surf Coast.

Andrews completed his triumph in the US F1600 Championship with third place – from last at the start – at the final round on a new high-speed road course at Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

Andrews, who already held a record seven wins in the 21-race series, had qualified on pole position but spun his Australian-made Spectrum 014 car with a Honda engine on the pace lap and had to start at the back of the field.

"I ran out of talent warming up the tyres coming out of pitlane," Andrews said.

"I got close to the [race] win, didn't quite get there, but am absolutely stoked [to take the title]."

Andrews' varied career has included racing in the Commodore Cup before venturing overseas.

He drives for Canadian entrepreneur Michael Duncalfe's Exclusive Autosport.

Duncalfe is the North American importer and distributor of Melbourne company Borland Racing Developments' Spectrum cars.

F3 Championship fight goes on beyond track
The title in dispute is what may be the last Australian Formula 3 Championship – the  Confederation of Australian Motor Sport is downgrading F3 to a 'series' too next year.

Melbourne's Ricky Capo won all four of the weekend's four F3 races at Wakefield Park to finish on top of the scoreboard (280-272) after starting out 19 points behind Sydney rival Jon Collins.

However, the results remain provisional because of a collision between the pair at the end of the first race on Saturday.

A stewards' hearing was held on Sunday night, but the outcome will be decided at another hearing yet to be fixed.

Capo and Collins both race Dallara F311s – Capo with a Mugen Honda engine, Collins with a Mercedes.

Capo had qualified fastest but stalled on the line, causing a concertina accident that eliminated two competitors and brought out the safety car for two laps before a restart, at which he was sixth.

He quickly worked his way up to second in the small field, then caught Collins in lapped traffic and made his move for the lead on the inside of turn 10.

Collins ended up in a sand trap while Capo motored on to victory.

Collins, who drives for Brisbane team Gilmour Racing, scored the most victories for the season (10) and led all four of the weekend's races at stages.

He said it was "a bitter pill to swallow to lose the championship by the amount of points you lost in getting taken out".

The first of Sunday's two 22-lap races was decided by just 0.0183 seconds.

Jack flashest, but three others vie for sports sedan title
Jack Perkins continued his recent domination of the sports sedan series in the Shannons Nationals at Wakefield Park, winning all three races in the Audi A4 he has raced since its regular driver, two-time champion Darren Hossack, was injured in a speedway accident.

However, the title will be a three-way fight at the Sydney Motorsport Park finale in mid-November between eight-time and defending champion Tony Ricciardello (Alfa Romeo GTV), Steven Tamasi (Holden Calibra) and Thomas Randle (SAAB).

Ricciardello has 464 points – 11 points more than Tamasi, with Randle another 12 points back.

Gavin Ross clinched back-to-back Australian Super Six Touring Car titles at Wakefield Park in a Holden Commodore VT, but Ben Grice's four straight round victories in a Ford Falcon AU have elevated him to second in the championship.

Grice, son of the legendary Allan, ended the season with 12 straight race victories.

Rick Bates won both the weekend's Australian Manufacturers' Championship races – the second of them over 200km – in a Mitsubishi Evo.

Walden clocked a best lap of 1 minute 23.777 seconds in his 1000-horsepower Mitsubishi Evolution IX – more than seven seconds faster than V8 Supercars lap the circuit.

Walden, 33, of Sydney but originally from Port Macquarie, raced a Ford Falcon in the 2004 V8 Supercar Championship and has also driven in the development series in a varied career since.

Shane Van Gisbergen, the V8 Supercar star switching from the Webb family's Tekno Autosports to Roland Dane's Triple Eight Race Engineering next year as teammate to Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes, was the second fastest driver at the Time Attack.

Van Gisbergen's best lap in his Nissan Silvia S13 was 1:25.371 – the fastest of the event by a rear-wheel-drive car after early troubles with a revamped aero package.

Rob Nguyen had the fastest front-wheel-drive – his 'Mighty Mouse' Honda CRX – at 1:29.517, which placed him third in the ProAm class behind Mick Sigsworth's Mitsubishi Evo and Chris Alexander's Nissan GT-R.

Nguyen has improved the Honda's time more than 10 seconds in five years of contesting the Time Attack.

Rain disrupted the conclusion of this year's event, denying some finalists a chance of bettering their times, after Friday's extreme heat.

Even in the wet Walden clocked a lap in the 1:32s.

Competitors included Steven Johnson (Nissan GT-R), David Wall (Porsche 968), rally star Steve Glenney (Mitsubishi Evo and Honda S2000) and GT and Porsche racer Jack LeBrocq (Mitsubishi Evo), while New Zealander Rod Millen demonstrated a Toyota Celica in which he set a record at America's Pikes Peak hillclimb.

Adelaide sets sights on a classic benchmark
Adelaide's enthusiasm for motorsport is boundless.

Many thousands turned out at the weekend in the parklands at the eastern end of the city that houses the old F1 circuit, since shortened for the annual V8 Supercar Championship season opener.

Among the activity they saw were demonstrations of old F1 and touring cars on an even shorter loop.

Although an F1 parade through the city had to be cancelled on Friday night because of rain, and the Lotus in which Ayrton Senna took pole position at its first grand prix in 1985 failed to complete a lap in the parklands throughout the weekend, the Adelaide Motorsport Festival got a huge thumbs up from the public.

Combined with it, the Classic Adelaide Rally was revived after a six-year hiatus.

It was won by Adam Kaplan and Mary Hughes in a 1985 Mazda RX7 Savanna by almost a minute from Craig Haysman and Dennis Sims in a 1977 Triumph TR7 V8, with Tim and Claudia Knappstein third in a 1969 Datsun 240Z.

As Adelaide now prepares for the 30th anniversary of its first GP on November 3, many in the city see its new motorsport festival quickly challenging Victoria's annual historic meeting at Phillip Island each March as the country's premier classic event.

While nothing will come close to Britain's Festival of Speed at Goodwood, Adelaide always prides itself on staging the benchmark motorsport events in Australia.

In the latest race, at Kansas Motor Speedway, Logano's Ford KO'd the Joe Gibbs Toyota of Matt Kenseth from the lead five laps from the finish, dropping him to 12th in the Chase – and facing elimination from the title fight, along with Chevrolet star Dale Earnhardt Junior, at next weekend's Talladega round.

Penske's other contender, Brad Keselowski, is sixth in the points, while Denny Hamlin (Toyota) and Kurt Busch (Chevrolet) are closest to Logano.

Carl Edwards (Toyota) and defending champion Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) also head Keselowski, while the retiring Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) is directly behind him.

Merc man No.1 but BMW tops in DTM
Pascal Wehrlein, a 21-year-old who has dual German and Mauritian nationality and is the test driver for the Mercedes F1 team, is the new champion in the DTM – the German touring car championship.

However, Wehrlein's battered Merc finished only 20th in the final race of the season at Hockenheim, in which Britain's Jamie Green claimed victory in an Audi to secure second place for Wehrlein in the drivers' championship ahead of Swede Mattias Ekstrom, also in an Audi.

BMW took the manufacturers' championship with 602 points while Audi finished on 595 after a clean sweep of the finale, with Mercedes a distant third on 534.

Bargs off to flying start in NZ
Australian Jason Bargwanna is the leader of the new, unified New Zealand Touring Car Championship in his Toyota Camry after the first round.

Victory in the first race at Taupo and fourth in the other two has given Bargwanna 183 points, while Kiwis Simon Evans (Holden Commodore) and Mitch Cunnigham (Ford Falcon) are equal second on 169.

Darwin teenager Bryce Fullwood (Holden) was on the podium twice with two third places.

Craig Baird (Holden) won the final race of the round after Evans had taken the honours in the second.

The new series has consolidated the long-feuding V8 SuperTourers and the NZ V8s.

Rallycross on the menu across Tasman
New Zealand's IndyCar champion Scott Dixon's father is to stage an international rallycross meeting at the Baypark Stadium at Mt Maunganui near Tauranga on the east coast of NZ's North Island at the end of next February.

Ron Dixon, a long-time promoter in NZ and the US, said he was "working to have a couple of high-profile international drivers" compete on a 1.5km course as well as NZ's top rally drivers.

Meanwhile, Norwegian Andreas Bukkerud won the penultimate round of the World Rallycross Championship at Italy's Franciacorta circuit in an Olsbergs MSE Ford ahead of Volkswagen Team Sweden's Johan Kristoffersson.

Reigning champion Petter Solberg could have sealed a repeat title with victory but was unwell and finished third in his Citroen.

Solberg, another Norwegian and a former world rally champion, needs only a few points at the final round in Argentina at the end of November to retain his crown.

Another former rally ace, Austrian Manfred Stohl, made the final in Italy after a huge end-over-end roll in practice.