MOTORSPORT: ANZAC spirit for 2016 Oz titles

The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) decided in the middle of this year that it would only sanction four national circuit-racing championships next year.

Three of those championships will conclude in New Zealand and the other could be decided across the Tasman too.

The only titles that have the blessing of CAMS are those for the V8 Supercars, Formula 4, Australian GT Sprint and the new Australian GT Endurance championships.

The latter three will end at Tony Quinn’s Highlands Park on NZ’s South Island in mid-November.

The Australian GT Championship, owned by Quinn, has concluded at Highlands the past couple of years.

That championship is separate from and starts after each February’s Bathurst 12-Hour GT race, which from next year becomes the first round of a new Intercontinental GT Challenge (with other rounds in the US, Belgium and Malaysia).

The Australian GT Sprint Championship – with booming entries – will have six rounds, starting in March at Adelaide’s Clipsal 500, with another two weeks later at Melbourne’s Australian Grand Prix.

Two other rounds will coincide with the V8 Supercars Championship – at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway, in early May and Townsville in North Queensland in early July – with another at Victoria’s Phillip Island in late May.

The new GT Endurance Championship has only four rounds scheduled, each with three-hour races. The first is at Phillip Island, the day after the GT Sprint round. Then there is another at Sydney Motorsport Park in late August, on the same weekend as the V8 Supercars are there.

The last two GT Endurance rounds are across the Tasman – at Hampton Downs, midway between Auckland and Hamilton and now owned by Quinn too, at the end of October, and then the finale at Highlands a fortnight later.

Formula 4, the new international junior open-wheeler category, was introduced to Australia this year – with CAMS buying 20 Mygale cars from France to start it – and next year will have another seven-round championship.

This time it will finish at Highlands on the same program as the GT Sprint and Endurance championships.

CAMS’ F4 category manager Cameron McConville has made it known he hopes to see several Kiwi drivers participate in the open-wheelers at Highlands.

This year all seven F4 rounds were on the V8 Supercar program, but next year only five are – the exception other than Highlands being the early-July round at Sydney Motorsport Park which will be part of the Shannons National program that weekend.

The F4 and GT Sprint titles quite likely will be decided in NZ, and the new GT Endurance title most certainly will be.

It’s also possible that the V8 Supercars Championship could be decided across the Tasman, with its penultimate round at Pukekohe on the first weekend of November – a week before the other championships conclude at Highlands.

More likely though is that the V8 Supercar fight will go down to the wire again at the Sydney 500 on the last weekend of November.

The review by CAMS’ Australian Motor Racing Commission (AMRC) which settled on only four national circuit-racing championships has seen the downgrading of the Porsche Carrera Cup to ‘Australian series’ status, Formula 3 to an ‘authorised series’ next year and then only state competition beyond that.

Formula Ford already had lost its national championship status and CAMS now sees it as “a category eligible for state competition”, although the Formula Ford Association still runs a broader series which next year has six rounds scheduled – three in Victoria, two in NSW and one in Queensland.

Another change in the shake-up by CAMS has been the reclassification of the Australian Manufacturers’ Championship as the Production Car Series.

In implementing the AMRC review, CAMS said it was “a new road map [for Australian circuit racing] to 2020 and beyond”.

It said that “confirming the value and prestige of CAMS championships and series was a priority”.

Australian motorsport had too many categories, it said, there was “inconsistency” in which had Australian championship status and entries had been diminishing in some categories.

Critics of CAMS point out that the fields in the new F4 series it has championed have been embarrassingly thin, with at most only two-thirds of the Mygales it bought racing in the debut season.

Another point of contention has been that the Gold Star, awarded by CAMS since 1957 to the country’s leading open-wheeler driver in domestic competition, lapsed this year and won’t be awarded again next year.

2016 V8 Supercars Championship:
Clipsal 500, Adelaide, SA - March 3-6
Tyrepower SuperSprint, Symmons Plains, Tas - April 1-3
WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint, Vic - April 15-17
Perth SuperSprint, Barbagallo Raceway, WA - May 6-8
Winton SuperSprint, Vica - May 20-22
SKYCITY Triple Crown, Darwin, NT - June 17-19
Castrol EDGE Townsville 400, Qld - July 8-10
Coates Hire Ipswich SuperSprint, Qld - July 22-24
KL City Grand Prix, Malaysia - August 12-14
Sydney Motorsport Park SuperSprint, NSW - August 26-28
Wilson Security Sandown 500, Vic - September 16-18
Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000, NSW - October 6-9
Castrol Gold Coast 600, Qld - October 21-23
ITM Auckland SuperSprint, NZ - November 4-6
Coates Hire Sydney 500, NSW - November 25-27

2016 Australian GT Sprint Championship:
Clipsal 500, Adelaide, SA - March 3-6
Australian Grand Prix, Melbourne, Vic - March 16-20
Perth Super Sprint, Barbagallo Raceway, WA - May 6-8
Phillip Island 101, Vic - May 27-28
Castrol Edge Townsville 400, Qld - July 8-10
Highlands Park 101, New Zealand - November, 11-12

2016 Australian GT Endurance Championship:
Phillip Island 101, Vic - May 29
Sydney Motorsport Park, NSW - August 26-28
Hampton Downs, New Zealand - October 28-30
Highlands Park 101, New Zealand    - November 13

2016 Australian Formula 4 Championship:
Tasmania SuperSprint, Symmons Plains, Tas - April 1-3
Phillip Island SuperSprint, Vic - April 15-17
Shannons Nationals, Sydney Motorsport Park, NSW - July 1-3
Ipswich SuperSprint, Qld - July 22–24
Sandown 500, Melbourne, Vic - September 16-18
Gold Coast 600, Qld - October 21-23
Highlands Park 101, New Zealand    - November 11-12

Jarno Trulli’s Formula E team collapses
The international electric open-wheeler category, Formula E, has lost one of its 10 teams a week out from the third round of its second season.

Italian ex-Formula 1 driver and 2004 Monaco Grand Prix winner Jarno Trulli’s team has collapsed.

Its Motomatica JT-01cars did not make scrutineering for the opening round of this season in Beijing because of a customs issue and then they failed scrutineering in Malaysia despite being given extra time.

The third Formula E round is at Punta Del Este in Uruguay tomorrow week (December 19).

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), a subsidiary of India’s Tata Motors, has been tipped as a replacement for Trulli’s team, but it seems that won’t be before next season, leaving Formula E with 18 cars for the rest of this season.

Motorsport.com has reported that JLR has been working with Williams Advanced Engineering (related to the Williams F1 team) and “recently concluded a long-term agreement with Formula E to enter the championship in season three”.

An announcement on that venture is expected next week.
Trulli’s collapse has left Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi out of a drive.

Mexican Salvador Duran already had been dropped from Trulli’s nominated line-up for Malaysia in a contract dispute, but Formula E management is thought to be working with organisers of the Mexican round scheduled for next March to ensure Duran’s participation there.