MOTORSPORT: Adelaide teen shoots for big break stateside

An Adelaide teenager has a shot at a $US200,000 ($A255,000) scholarship to break into American open-wheeler racing after winning the Australian Formula Ford Series.

Max Vidau’s success in clinching the title has earned him the right to attend the Mazda Road to Indy (MRTI) Shootout at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 9-10.

The Arizona shootout will see 20 youngsters from various series around the world in contention for the scholarship towards a season in the USF2000 Championship – the first step on the MRTI ladder towards IndyCar racing.

Two Australians have won that championship this decade – Matthew Brabham, a grandson of Australia’s triple Formula 1 world champion, in 2012, and, last year, Anthony Martin, from Kalgoorlie.

American Oliver Askew, the inaugural winner of the rich scholarship last year, has proceeded to win this year’s USF2000 Championship.

Australian Will Brown, racing at Bathurst this weekend, was among the top six contestants at last year’s shootout.

The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport [CAMS] no longer recognises Formula Ford as a national championship, with its preference now for Formula 4.

However, Australian Formula Ford Series category manager Phil Marrinon said the prize of competing for the MRTI scholarship “cements Formula Ford’s reputation as the country’s primary stepping stone for young drivers aiming to forge a professional motorsport career”.

Australia’s Formula Ford champions of the past decade include three drivers who are now stars in Supercars – recent Sandown 500 winner Cameron Waters (2011), Bathurst 1000 victor Chaz Mostert (2010) and Nick Percat (2009).

Another 16-year-old, Cameron Shields from Toowoomba, made a strong charge for the title in the second half of the season, winning eight of the last nine races after switching to the French-made Mygale car driven by Brown last year.

Vidau also drove a Mygale, for the Melbourne-based Sonic team, winning four races – all in the first half of the season.

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Consistent podium positions carried the Adelaide driver to the title, making him Sonic’s ninth Formula Ford champion this century.

He went into the final round at Phillip Island 45 points ahead of Shields, and stretched that to 46 with pole position.

After a third place [behind Shields and another title contender, Jayden Ojeda in an Australian-built Spectrum], the gap to Shields was 40 points.

Then Vidau was caught up in an incident in the second race of the round and limped to the finish in 19th, getting no points as Shields won again. The margin was then 20 points.

Shields gained maximum points with yet another victory in the final race of the series, but Vidau came through the field from the back of the grid to finish third and take the title by 14 points, 245-231.

“Coming into the weekend I was fairly relaxed, but I was starting to feel the pressure before the last race,” Vidau said. “There was a fair bit of damage to my car after the second race, but the Sonic crew put it back together in time for the last race.

“It’s been an amazing season with plenty of highlights and happy memories, and now I’m looking forward to participating in the Mazda Road to Indy Shootout.”

Shields was “stoked” to have come so close to the crown after having been seventh mid-season before swapping cars.

Following the line of racing talent from Toowoomba which includes IndyCar star Will Power, Australia’s inaugural F4 champion Jordan Lloyd and Brown, now in Supercars’ Super2 series after winning the F4 and Toyota Series titles last year, Shields is second in the F4 championship ahead of the final round at the Gold Coast this month.

Formula for farce – every car runs out of fuel
Meanwhile the international Formula 4 category did itself no favours at the weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix when in one race, none of the participants completed the distance.

Two races in the F1 South-east Asian Championship were run back-to-back at Sepang when the program was rescheduled because of repairs needed to a metal drain cover which caused F1 driver Romain Grosjean to crash in practice.

In the second of the eight-lap races, competitors started running out of fuel after six laps.

The safety car came out because of race cars stopped in dangerous places, and there was only one car running as the last lap began – and it too promptly ran out of fuel.

There had only been nine starters anyway – a farce in itself.

The calamity continued after the race, with officials initially declaring the last car to run out of fuel as the winner, before changing their minds and backdating the finish to the end of the fifth lap, producing a different winner.

Asian Autosport Action chairman Peter Thompson apologised “unreservedly” for the miscalculation on fuel.

“With races back-to-back and without the possibility to top up, we filled the cars for both races. However, we miscalculated the requirements. As we are a ‘one-team’ championship (all cars leased by the series) all the drivers were unfortunately affected.”

Eventual winner, Danial Frost from Singapore, said it made for “a very interesting day”.
“After the halfway point (of the second race) I saw the driver behind me slow down, and then, not longer, I did as well,” he said.

“It is a disappointing way to end the race, but I’m happy with the result that was (finally) declared.”

Ekstrom and injured Solberg shine in World RX
Something different at the penultimate round of the World Rallycross Championship in Germany – for the first time in six rounds, Sweden’s new world champion Johan Kristofferson didn’t win.

He didn’t even reach the final at Estering on the outskirts of Hamburg.

Instead, last year’s champion, Kristofferson’s countryman Mattias Ekstrom, won in his Audi to close to within one point of Kristofferson’s Volkswagen teammate and boss, Petter Solberg, in the battle for the championship’s runner-up.

All will be decided at the finale in six weeks – a new round in Cape Town, South Africa.

Solberg, who suffered a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and a punctured lung at the recent round in Latvia, had surgery last month and drove with special upper-body protectors under his overalls.

Despite his discomfort, the charismatic Norwegian, a former world rally champion and winner of the first two World RX titles, was the weekend’s top qualifier, won his semi-final and had pole position for the final.

However, Solberg ran wide at turn one, dropped to sixth, but wound up fourth, which he said was “a shame, but what we have achieved is like a big win”.

“I was a little bit scared, just waiting for the big bang and somebody to hit me from behind,” Solberg added. “I had a couple of nudges, but nothing big.”

Another Swede, Timmy Hansen, was the weekend’s runner-up, driving a Peugeot, while Ekstrom’s Finnish teammate Top Heikkinen was third.

Kristoffersson’s failure to make the final was a first for the season.

Sebastian Loeb, the nine-time world rally champion who is Hansen’s Peugeot teammate, did make the final for the first time since May.

While Ekstrom has lost his rallycross crown, he is poised to take a third German Touring Car Championship (DTM) for Audi in a fortnight at Hockenheim.

The World RX final in Cape Town will be at the Killarney International Raceway on November 10-12.