MOTORSPORT: All change on the Gold Coast

V8SA given two years to make 'SuperCarnivale' work
Big changes have been announced to the Gold Coast's October motor racing carnival that for 18 years was known as Indy and last year was the SuperGP fiasco.

The street circuit will be shortened from 4.9km to 2.96km and, for its 20th anniversary meeting on October 21-24, will host a 600km V8 Supercar event, presumably (with details to come next month). The meeting will consist of a 300km leg on Saturday and Sunday with many of the cars having international co-drivers of the ilk of Scotsman Dario Franchitti, American Scott Pruett, Englishman Mark Blundell, Brazilian Christian Fittipaldi and expatriate Australian, David Brabham.

V8 Supercars Australia will run the event, shortened from four to three days. It will be called the SuperCarnivale and tickets will reportedly be priced at least 25 per cent cheaper.

Unlike the Bathurst and Phillip Island endurance events, teams will be allowed to pair their regular drivers -- but each team will have an international visitor.

V8SA has been given two years to make it all work.

International Management Group (IMG), which has been a 50:50 partner with the Queensland government in Gold Coast Motors Event Company and has run the event, has been ousted -- with a $4.3m "commercial settlement".

Terry Mackenroth, once Queensland deputy premier and treasurer, (and later the Gold Coast Major Events Council (GCMEC) chairman until forced to resign as it became official the A1 GP show would not be showing up on the Gold Coast last October), and IMG's Greg Hooton, who has been the Indy/SuperGP chief executive in recent years, emerge worst from the whole sorry saga.

News of the massive shake-up came this week as the two reports on the SuperGP charade (by Queensland's former government director-general, David Williams, and the state's auditor-general, Glenn Poole) were made public. Those reports have painted a picture of gross mismanagement and even possible fraud, which has been referred to the Queensland police.

The bottom line is that there is no longer an international open-wheeler category, or indeed any truly international category, on the Gold Coast program.

The Gold Coast Bulletin (GCB) has said of the shake-up: "The sad thing about the new vision is that there will be no open-wheeler event this year and we mourn their passing because they brought a touch of class to the Gold Coast -- they are a very GC kind of car.

"The bad news is that the government has clearly orchestrated the release of its vision for the Gold Coast event with the release of the Williams review of the SuperGP fiasco -- which the government has sat on for weeks -- and the tabling in Parliament of the parallel auditor-general's report.

"This is nothing but a blatant, although forlorn, attempt to deflect the criticism it so richly deserves for the mess it alone created."

V8SA chairman Tony Cochrane says the changes provide "a chance to prove this event can go up several pegs and not keep sliding down".

"We are going to give this an absolute red-hot crack and all we ask of everybody is to do the great Australian thing and give us a fair dinkum go and then make your judgment."

Geoff Jones, a former Indy boss and now a partner of Cochrane (and others) in Sports & Entertainment Ltd (SEL), the 25 per cent owner of V8SA, will run the SuperCarnivale.

The Queensland government says its traditional input of almost $12m a year will be almost halved to $6.5m. For political reasons, it has pledged to keep sprinkling the rest on other Gold Coast activities.

Queensland premier Anna Bligh says: "What we have done in the past is bring a big international event to the Gold Coast. We are going to turn that around and say we want to turn a Gold Coast event into an international event that can not only do excellently here but people around the world would want to see."

According to the GCB, the Williams report received "resounding feedback that only an event featuring an international component would satisfy many stakeholders".

Gold Coast councillor Susie Douglas, a thorn in the side of V8SA's Cochrane in recent months, says: "I am not happy with this -- I wanted to make sure that we had an international component that made it different to all the other races around Australia and the other V8 Supercar races. At the moment we are one of 14 races and one of three in Queensland and I don't think it's worth shutting down (public roads) for that."

Auditor-general Poole's report has slammed last year's organisers for signing up the A1 GP series after the category's key operating company in Britain, A1 GP Operations Ltd, went into liquidation. Poole criticises GCMEC for not having taken independent advice or done proper due diligence of A1 GP's ability to deliver its end of the agreement to race at the Gold Coast. Indeed, a payment of $1.8m was made to A1 GP the day after news of the liquidation and the impounding of the Ferrari-engined open-wheeler cars. That payment went to A1 GP two weeks earlier than was required under the agreement.

IMG is criticised for not having kept proper records of its checks on A1 GP and the negotiations between the parties.

Premier Bligh admits the Queensland government could have done things better but says no single person was to blame for the '09 fiasco. Instead, she says: "Queenslanders, and particularly the people of the Gold Coast, were let down by A1 GP, a company that did not in my view act in good faith."

Before deciding on the V8 Supercar endurance event for this year without any international category, someone in south-east Queensland supposedly looked at the GP2 series (a feeder category to Formula One and unlikely to have ever been a serious possibility for the Gold Coast) and the new GT1 sports car series, but those investigations quickly came to nought.

Queensland opposition leader John-Paul Langbroek says the government has been too hasty in agreeing to a purely V8 Supercar event on the Gold Coast.

"Once again the government have rushed into another plan, clearly as a distraction -- given that these two reports were coming out," Langbroek says.

Nonetheless, with these decisions made, V8SA has some entitlement to be given the chance to make a success of this new format. But that's not to say it should be without scrutiny and transparency.

Indeed, in light of history, there is an argument for even greater scrutiny of the event and way it is run. For example, much was made by the Queensland government after last year's Not So SuperGP, in squirming away from misguided claims the event was televised to 100 or more countries, of the importance of the New Zealand live television audience. They contended NZ is the key market for Gold Coast tourism.

Now, just as the Gold Coast event is restructured, NZ's TV3 is revising its plans for televising this year's V8 Supercar Championship. The smoke signals we saw from across the Tasman Sea, and alluded to here a few days ago, that TV3 will delay screening many Saturday V8 Supercar races and instead show them delayed in its Sunday telecasts have been confirmed. The exact detail is not yet known, although there appears to be a cloud over the Gold Coast Saturday.

TV3's head of sport production John McDonald told the Carsales Network this week: "We'll still have Saturday timeslots for at least three of the 'big' events on the calendar -- Clipsal (Adelaide), Hamilton (NZ) and Bathurst, but the timing of the races in Australia often puts them in conflict with our 6pm news bulletin and makes scheduling very difficult.

"In a way we're simply returning to the format TVNZ had for many years, and we had in 2008 -- making Sunday afternoons the appointment slot for motorsport and rolling some of the Saturday races into the Sunday telecast."

We can see TV3's difficulties, although Kiwi V8 Supercar fans -- judging by internet forums -- won't be so understanding. Nor might V8 Supercar sponsors who heard V8SA's boasts a couple of years back about the massive live television coverage they were going to be getting in NZ.

Fernando Alonso was the quickest driver on the Valencia permanent track in Spain on his debut with Ferrari. Reports say 35,000-40,000 Spaniards turned out to see their dual world champion at the wheel of the red F10. Added pleasure for them was fellow Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa going second fastest in a Sauber-Ferrari, with Michael Schumacher third in a Mercedes.

The F1 world championship points system has been tweaked again. Following the mid-December revision, a seven-point gap has now been introduced between the winner and runner-up in GPs. The points, down to tenth place, will be 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1.

Doubts persist about two new F1 teams, Campos Meta and USF1. but Serbia's Stefan GP says it is ready to step in if either fails to make the grid.

Stefan, owned by industrialist Zoran Stefanovic, has made a deal with the Toyota F1 team that was closed at the end of last season. The mysterious outfit seemingly has the support of F1 ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone, who has been quoted saying he wants to see Ralf Schumacher make a comeback with it. The other driver's name associated with it is Japan's Kazuki Nakajima, formerly with Williams.

Stefan will test in Portugal later this month and says it will send cars, equipment and crew to Bahrain for the season-opening GP in case it is granted an entry.

America's Indy darling, Danica Patrick, is to make her stock car racing debut this weekend as Daytona's Speedweek gets underway. She will be driving in an ARCA event -- the fourth tier of American stock car racing, below Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series and the pick-up truck championship.

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