MOTORSPORT: Ambrose defecting to Toyota?

Expect Marcos Ambrose to join Toyota in NASCAR
It seems an announcement is imminent that Marcos Ambrose will be severing his long-time ties with Ford to drive a Toyota in NASCAR next year.

It looks as though it will involve JTG Daugherty Racing with which Ambrose has done most of his racing in American stock cars making an arrangement with Michael Waltrip Racing, one of the teams fielding Toyotas in NASCAR's premier division, the Sprint Cup.

We said here long ago that Ambrose needed to get into a better situation if he is to really go places in NASCAR, and mentioned in early July that he may not be in a Ford next year, although at that time it was sounding as though he may have been going to be in a Chevrolet. That report is here

For the record, Ambrose (pictured, car #59) was 16th for JTG Daugherty Racing in the weekend's second tier Nationwide Cup race on the "Monster Mile" at Dover, Delaware, and 29th for Wood Brothers in the Sprint Cup race.

He's 10th in the Nationwide championship and, having only done six rounds, is 49th in the Sprint Cup standings.

Michael Waltrip Racing is headed by two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip but is far from being one of the super teams of NASCAR.

Indeed, it has struggled in recent years, although Waltrip finished 10th in the Cup race at Dover this morning (Monday), Australian time -- just his second top 10 this year, and he has one top five.

Waltrip is 30th in the Sprint Cup standings, while his team's other two drivers -- David Reutimann and Michael McDowell -- are 24th and 39th and finished 17th and 29th in the Cup race at Dover.

So this is not a top outfit, and it was infamously caught cheating on fuel when it was the flagbearer for Toyota's entry into the Sprint Cup last year.

(Joe Gibbs Racing has since become the No. 1 team representing the Japanese manufacturer, ahough it too was found guilty of tampering illegally with its Nationwide engines recently and had crew suspended and fined).

However, things may be looking up for MWR -- it has recruited Formula 1 team McLaren's head of race operations, Steve Hallam, for next year.

While history says outsiders generally fail at trying to upstage NASCAR's regulars, on and off the track, Hallam is a veteran of more than 400 GPs over 27 years, five world championships and worked for Team Lotus before McLaren.

Here michaelwaltrip.com is MWR's website, and a report that it is confident of having the sponsorship to field four Cup cars next year is here.

Ambrose has been associated with the Blue Oval through Formula Ford, V8 Supercar racing which yielded him two Australian titles, and Ford helped him get into American racing.

If he is indeed now headed for MWR and Toyota it hopefully will be a step in the right direction for him, but -- as we are seeing with The Chase this season -- to achieve genuine and consistent success in NASCAR it is clear a driver needs to be with one of the four super teams -- Roush, Hendrick, Childress or Gibbs.

Ambrose is still a long, long way from getting a shot with one of those teams.

Fords from the Roush Fenway Racing stable made a clean sweep of the podium in the Sprint Cup round at Dover.

Greg Biffle won for the second straight week, becoming the first driver to win consecutive races at the start of The Chase -- introduced in 2004 as a battle between the elite competitors of the season, initially 10 and now 12, over the final quarter of the season.

Biffle passed teammate Matt Kenseth in the last of 15 lead changes seven laps from the finish at Dover.

Kenseth held on for second, with Carl Edwards third -- ahead of six Chevrolets and three Toyotas.

Biffle -- who also won last year at Kansas, the next stop on the tour -- is now tied with Chevrolet driver Jimmie Johnson, champion the past two season, for second this season -- 10 points behind Edwards.

All 12 drivers in The Chase began with 5000 points plus 10 points for each of any wins they had before the first Chase round at New Hampshire.

Kyle Busch, an eight-time Cup winner this year up to that point, was classified only 43rd at Dover due to engine problems.

The 21-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing superstar has virtually conceded his championship hopes have been dashed in two weeks as he now trails Edwards, a five-time winner before The Chase, by 210 points.

It's a cruel business, but few of the Good Ol' Boys of NASCAR and the sport's enormous fan base will have any sympathy for the brash Busch from Las Vegas.

NASCAR standings after two rounds of The Chase -- Carl Edwards (Ford) 5390 points, Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 5380, Greg Biffle (Ford) 5380, Jeff Burton (Chevrolet) 5308, Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 5289, Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 5284, Tony Stewart (Toyota) 5277, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 5272, Dale Earnhardt Junior (Chevrolet) 5261, Matt Kenseth (Ford) 5223, Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 5197, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 5180.

NASCAR Nationwide Series standings after 29 of 35 rounds -- Clint Bowyer 4222 points, Carl Edwards 4036, Brad Keselowski 3974, Mike Bliss 3779, David Ragan 3721, David Reutimann 3676, Kyle Busch 3673, Mike Wallace 3381, Jason Leffler 3348, Marcos Ambrose 3321.

Cochrane is quoted in a BigPond Sport report on the V8 website, V8supercar.com.au, saying the V8SA board "couldn't see much in it (Holden's call for an adjustment) to be honest".

Asked whether it appeared one manufacturer (Ford) had an advantage over the other (Holden), Cochrane replied: "Not when you look at the data, there's not.

"Certainly listening to the conversation of all the technical people around the table, there didn't appear to be any (disparity).

"We were looking at stuff that did not have any depth to it. They've asked (and) we couldn't see their case.

"But rather than saying, 'Sorry, you've got no case', we handed it on to Andy (V8SA technical director Andy Bartley)."

The full BigpondSport report is here.

Although Bartley has been asked to report back on the matter earlier than parity was otherwise going to next be discussed by the V8SA board, Cochrane's comments suggest the matter is not going anywhere in a hurry.

And it occurred to us after our last commentary: what actually is the problem if Ford has a slight advantage over Holden on high-speed straights?

Hasn't one of the problems in V8 Supercars been processional racing?

If the Falcons have a top speed advantage but Garth Tander and Holden Racing Team can still win a heap of races this season that tells us that Tander's VE Commodore must be getting through corners particularly well -- and a little better than the Fords.

Now if the V8 Supercars are going to Bathurst with the Fords having slightly better top speed and the best Holden with slightly better cornering perhaps the racing won't be entirely processional.

And might not that just be a great thing?

And, if one Holden driver and one Holden Commodore can compete with the Fords, surely it is the job of the Holden camp -- not officialdom -- to see that others do too.

Only a few sleeps until night-time F1
Formula 1's first night race is now just six days away in Singapore.

While there is great anticipation about it, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo is tipping it will be "a letdown". Not because the race is at night, but because it is on a street circuit.

We must say (despite our oft-stated concerns about the costs of street races) we feel quite a deal of sympathy for the Singapore organisers, who have made an enormous commitment to making the island city's first grand prix -- and the historic race -- a great success and have to endure such criticism from the main man at the sport's main team before the F1 cars even turn a wheel there.

Montezemolo's ire is about street circuits generally and is obviously based on the recent, unfortunate Valencia experience, where a new GP in Spain was largely boring because of the lack of overtaking.

He is fearful of a repeat on Singapore's Marina Bay street circuit.

"I have the impression it will be another one of those letdowns where you cannot overtake, like Valencia," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Next year's new Abu Dhabi GP is also set to be on a partial street circuit, and Montezemolo says this is the wrong direction for the sport.

"Going forward with these circuits heralds a bad future for F1," he said.

Nobody would dare knock the Monaco GP street race, but Montezemolo's comments make us wonder what he -- and Ferrari -- genuinely think about Melbourne's Albert Park circuit.

Of course, Michael Schumacher famously sparked a furore with Australian GP chairman Ron Walker in 1997 when he said something to the effect that the Albert Park track was nothing special.

True feelings often take a long time to come out, but perhaps Montezemolo is getting to something here.

Lots of balls in the air in GP world
The F1 teams are working on some weird eating and sleeping schedules for the Singapore race, trying to keep the body clocks of drivers and crews in synch with European time.

One driver not complaining about the prospect of staying up late and sleeping in the next morning is Ferrari's reigning world champion Kimi Raikkonen.

"I enjoy evenings and night time more anyhow," Raikkonen said. "I like to sleep until noon every day, so for me this seems the perfect venue.

"I am more awake in the evenings than in the mornings."

Perhaps that might be a cue that the Finn, pretty much without a chance of retaining his title, is set for a return to form after not winning a GP since April -- and trailing not only McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa but also BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica.

Hamilton will be in Paris tonight (Monday) for the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile hearing of the appeal against the 25-second penalty that dropped him from first to third in the Belgian GP a fortnight ago -- and kept the title fight close.

The Times preview of the Paris hearing and what might transpire in Singapore is here

McLaren chief Ron Dennis, treated so unfairly by the FIA in last year's Spygate scandal, has been at pains to say Hamilton has not been victimised by the FIA -- an acronym often thought to stand for Ferrari International Assistance.

"Although Lewis has had five penalties this season, I wouldn't claim that he hasn't been treated fairly," Dennis told French newspaper Le Parisien.

"No one -- not Michael Schumacher, not Ayrton Senna, not Alain Prost -- has ever gone through an entire season without a single error.

"But Lewis's improvement is ongoing and incremental; just as he's better this year than he was last year, he is also better at the end of this year than he was at the beginning of this year.

"And I expect him to be better still next year. He's still only 23, remember, and no one has ever yet won an F1 world championship at such a young age -- not Emerson Fittipaldi, not Michael Schumacher, not Fernando Alonso.

"I'm not saying Lewis will win the championship this year for sure -- maybe he will, maybe he won't -- but if he does he'll become the youngest man ever to have done so."

Meanwhile, F1 tsar Bernie Ecclestone has made it known he wants to see Sebastian Vettel, the 21-year-old German winner of the Italian GP for Scuderia Toro Rosso (nee Minardi), in a top team as soon as possible.

"We will help him to achieve that," Ecclestone told Germany's Autobild Motorsport.

It would appear that Ecclestone subscribes to the view that Red Bull Racing, where Vettel is due to be Aussie Mark Webber's teammate next season, is not good enough for the new wonderboy.

Perhaps Ecclestone is thinking of BMW-Sauber as a home for Vettel, which makes a lot of sense -- in view of the youngster's earlier connections there, the fact that Nick Heidfeld is not guaranteed of keeping his seat, and that Fernando Alonso is looking increasingly like to stay at Renault at least another year.

Might Ecclestone even be trying to steer Vettel to Ferrari, where speculation persists that Kimi Raikkonen will retire sooner rather than later, despite the recent extension of his contract until the end of 2010?

Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, who owns not only Red Bull Racing but Toro Rosso 50-50 with Gerhard Berger, has said that Vettel is "not for sale".

But, for a man as smart and successful as Mateschitz, we reckon money might just be able to change Mr Red Bull's mind.

And expect Berger to be a big player in whatever happens, as he has had strong connections in the past with both BMW and Ferrari. 

Image: BAM Media

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