MOTORSPORT: Adelaide alive with its grand festival

Adelaide does motorsport like no other capital city in Australia.

Drawing on its rich Formula 1 and touring car/Supercar heritages, the South Australian capital has developed an annual end-of-year festival as well in recent times that challenges Victoria’s Phillip Island event each March as Australia’s major historic meet.

In fact, being in a capital city with the advantage of vast parklands on the immediate edge of the central business district, the Adelaide Motorsport Festival includes something Phillip Island can’t match – the ‘Peak Hour of Power’, a high-octane parade of some very special cars in amongst Friday night peak-hour city traffic.

All-up this year the Adelaide festival organisers are claiming there will be 132,856hp across the more than 700 cars that will race, be demonstrated and on display in the parklands this weekend.

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The racing is on a shortened version of the old F1 and more modern Supercar circuits, with its 43.03-second lap record under threat.

Highlights will be seven-time Bathurst 1000 winner and triple national touring car champion Craig Lowndes just a week into his retirement from full-time Supercar racing driving two unique Ferraris -- the first 488 Pista in Australia and a limited-edition LaFerrari which he will drive in tonight’s ‘Peak Hour of Power’.

David Brabham will be in the $2.1 million Adelaide-built BT62 hypercar, while the first of Australia’s new S5000 open-wheelers will be demonstrated by Tim Macrow.

The Adelaide festival has embraced a wide gamut of motorsport categories, including top sports, GT and rally cars.

Among the many Porsches in a tribute to the German marque’s 70th anniversary are a couple of 962s with Le Mans heritage, while Australasian legend Jim Richards will be in a 918 and a GT2 RS ‘winged warrior’.

Another national legend, John Bowe, will be at the wheel of a McLaren P1, while Allan Moffat is to ride in a replica of his 1983 touring car championship-winning Mazda RX-7.

Australian-based Scotsman Alister McRae, brother of 1995 world rally champion Colin and a champion in his own right, will be driving a 2019 Subaru WRX STI as well as a 1993 Prodrive WRC 555 Impreza in which Possum Bourne won the first of his seven Australian Rally Championships and a sister car to one driven by Colin McRae.

Another rally car of great interest is the Holden Commodore VR in which one of Adelaide’s favourite motorsport sons, Ed Ordynski, won the 1995 Round-Australia Trial.

Four days of rallying through the Adelaide Hills, McLaren Vale and Fleurieu and Murray Mallee regions will conclude on Saturday afternoon at Victoria Park, scene of all the ‘sprint’ action.

And, as normal, there will be a banquet of old F1 machinery running, including V10s producing the sound that made GP racing on the Adelaide streets so magical.

Three Australian women in their early 20s are among 55 vying for the 18 places in the new W Series, the female-only open-wheeler category to start in Europe next May.

The list has been narrowed from 100 applicants, with the three Aussies in the running being Chelsea Angelo, Caitlan Wood and Charlotte Poynting.

The field will be narrowed to 18 after a three-day trial at which ex-F1 drivers David Coulthard and Alex Wurz will be judges.

The series is to start at Hockenheim in Germany on May 3 with the women driving identical 1.8-litre turbocharged Formula 3 cars and competing for $US1.5 million in prizemoney – including $US500,000 for the winner.

Series chief executive Catherine Bond Muir says it is “the first step to correct the gender imbalance” in motorsport and that events are envisaged in the Americas, Asia and Australia after the initial European season.

The F1 field for the world championship starting in Melbourne in mid-March is set already, with news this week that British-born Thai national Alexander Albon will replace New Zealander Brendon Hartley at Red Bull’s secondary team, Toro Rosso.

Albon, 22, who won four races in this year’s Formula 2 championship, will be only Thailand’s second F1 driver after Prince Bira in the early 1950s.

Albon will be teammate to resurrected Russian Daniil Kyvat and joins the two British drivers who beat him in the F2 championship, George Russell and Lando Norris, in making their F1 debuts.
Russell has joined the Williams team while Norris will be with McLaren.

Michael Schumacher’s 19-year-old son, Mick, winner of this year’s European F3 Championship, will advance to F2 next year, still with the Italian-based Prema team.

The new Schu also will partner Sebastian Vettel for Team Germany at January’s Race of Champions in Mexico. No Australians have been named for the RoC.

2019 F1 driver line-up:
Mercedes – Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain), Valtteri Bottas (Finland)
Ferrari – Sebastian Vettel (Germany), Charles Leclerc (Monaco)
Red Bull-Honda – Max Verstappen (Netherlands), Pierre Gasly (France)
Renault – Daniel Ricciardo (Australia), Nico Hulkenberg (Germany)
Haas-Ferrari – Kevin Magnussen (Denmark), Romain Grosjean (France)
McLaren-Renault – Carlos Sainz Junior (Spain), Lando Norris (Great Britain)
Force India-Mercedes – Sergio Perez (Mexico), Lance Stroll (Canada)
Sauber-Ferrari – Kimi Raikkonen (Finland), Antonio Giovinazzi (Italy)
Toro Rosso-Honda -- Daniil Kvyat (Russia), Alexander Albon (Thailand)
Williams-Mercedes – Robert Kubica (Poland), George Russell (Great Britain)

After his heartache at Ferrari and McLaren-Honda this decade, Fernando Alonso will be relying on General Motors power in his quest for success in America after quitting F1.

The 37-year-old Spanish dual world champion (with Renault in 2005-06) is to drive a Cadillac prototype for Wayne Taylor Racing in the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race at the end of January.

And when he tries to win the Indianapolis 500 open-wheeler classic in May it will be with Chevrolet power.

Alonso’s contract with Toyota for the World Endurance Championship ‘super season’ ending in the middle of next year at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which he won this year, precludes him from using Honda power which took him close to victory in the 2017 Indy 500.

A Chevrolet spokesperson has told Racer.com that the bowtie brand’s racing activities will not be curtailed by the massive cuts announced by GM this week.

Fellow F1 refugee, Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi, another Toyota driver in the WEC, also has joined Wayne Taylor Racing for the Daytona enduro.

Inspirational Italian Alex Zanardi, who has prosthetic legs after a terrible open-wheeler crash in 2001 and has since won Olympic paralympic cycling gold medals, is expected to race at Daytona in an M8 GTE.