MOTORSPORT: Atkinson at WRC crossroads

Thursday motorsport reportAugust 30, 2007

It's the eve of Rally New Zealand, the 11th round of the WRC -- and the closest the championship will come to Australia this year.

The next Rally Australia is scheduled a little more than a year away, supposedly to be based in south-east Queensland but apparently with plans for much of the competition in northern New South Wales -- although there are serious concerns about progress on the project.

That's another story, but if Rally Oz goes ahead in September next year it will need an Australian among the front-line drivers to have any chance of capturing the Australian public's imagination and attention.

An impeccable source at Rally NZ tells us that the Subaru World Rally Team wants to retain Atkinson and that an announcement may not be far away after this event.

However, whether the parties can agree terms might be another matter.

Our understanding is that Atkinson has paid for his WRC drive to date, but that to stay with Subaru he instead now wants to be paid.

Whether Subaru wants him that badly we'll have to wait and see -- but perhaps not long.

There is also the possibility that Atkinson could be with Suzuki next season.

He's had a previous association with that manufacturer, which will be fielding its SX4 in a couple of WRC rounds at the end of this year with the intention of contesting the full championship next year.

Subaru has now not won a WRC round since 2005.

Its 2007 world rally car was not rolled out until well into the season and - despite some promising signs, including Atkinson winning three stages on asphalt in Germany two weeks ago -- it is not a consistent match for Ford's Focus in the hands of Marcus Gronholm and Citroen's C4 driven by Sebastien Loeb.

Another new Impreza is on the way for next year, but again it is highly unlikely to be ready for competition at the start of the season.

Two events ago this year's Impreza reduced Norway's former world champion Petter Solberg to tears, and -- while he has been happier since -- there has been speculation of him opting out of the Subaru team.

Team boss Richard Taylor, a lieutenant in David Richards' Prodrive outfit that prepares the Subarus, denies that Solberg has a get-out clause in his contract, or that he wants to leave.

"Both parties are completely committed to honoring the contract through to the end of 2009," Taylor says. "Petter is clearly one of the best rally drivers in the world … (and) Chris is progressing up that way rapidly.

"His performances on the last couple of events have really been exceptional.

"Fourth place in Finland was a super result for him and, while Germany could have been better in terms of end result, the pace was excellent and obviously the three fastest stage times on tarmac there was great for the team."

Atkinson loves Rally NZ, has been quick there, but has only finished once in three outings, taking seventh place in 2005.

"This year NZ is the closest to being my home event and I will be pushing for more stage wins," Atkinson says.

"The main focus for me this time though will be ensuring we are consistently fast throughout the three legs.

"Of course, being on gravel, it is very different to driving on asphalt, but we had a good event in Finland and I am happy with the car."

Rally NZ is based at Mystery Creek near Hamilton, about 100km south of Auckland.

It comprises 18 special stages, including three runs at the Mystery Creek super special, and the total competitive distance will be 353.56km.

Jacques Villeneuve won the Indianapolis 500 and what was then called the IndyCar championship in 1995, and the Formula 1 world title in 1997.

Like Ambrose, Canadian Villeneuve wants to race in NASCAR in the United States.

Villeneuve and his long-time manager, Craig Pollock, started making noises about going NASCAR around a year ago, but they found that immediate entry into the premier Nextel Cup was going to need sponsorship -- and a lot of it.

Perhaps US$10 million. Possibly as much as US$20 million.

Clearly Villeneuve and Pollock could not tap into such massive backing to go stock car racing, and have now realised that -- like Ambrose -- the former Williams, BAR and BMW-Sauber F1 driver is going to have start, as Ambrose did, at the bottom of the NASCAR pecking order, in the pick-up truck series.

Now 36, Villeneuve has been testing a "truck" -- a stock car chassis with a pick-up body -- at Chicagoland Speedway this week and Bill Davis Racing plans to field him in seven races in the Craftsman truck series, starting on September 22.

That's the series Ambrose raced in last year, before continuing his NASCAR apprenticeship this year in the Busch Series.

Bill Davis Racing fields Toyotas in NASCAR and says it may give Villeneuve a Nextel Cup start at the end of this season. There's no talk of Villeneuve doing the Busch Series.

He would be the second F1 refugee, after Juan Pablo Montoya, to make the move to the big league of American stock car racing.

Montoya, driving for Chip Ganassi, is the leading rookie in the Nextel Cup this season, is 18th in the championship, and won a road course round in California.

Bill Davis Racing has a Nextel Cup vacancy next year, as it is not retaining Jeremy Mayfield.

But even a driver of Villeneuve's talent and experience may find he cannot break into the top echelon so quickly and easily.

Montoya did a batch of Busch races last year and continues to do "double duty" -- Nextel Cup and Busch -- this year.

NASCAR is back in California this weekend and Ambrose will be trying to cement his place in Busch's top 10 as well as firming up his Nextel Cup prospects.

He's already had plans for his Cup debut fall through three times -- twice with his regular Wood Brothers/JTG Racing team, and once with Robby Gordon, who punted him out of a chance at winning a Busch race in Montreal but may yet prove to be his greatest ally in graduating to the major league, still possibly this year.

We reported earlier this week on John Sazymanski, director of sponsor development for Ford Racing Technology, saying the Australian is ready for a partial, if not full-time, Nextel Cup campaign in 2008 and sense that Ford is doing what it can behind the scenes to steer Ambrose in that direction.

Auto Action magazine reports this week that it will be a six-man delegation, headed by V8 Supercars Australia chairman Tony Cochrane and Townsville mayor Tony Mooney.

Another member will be prominent Townsville car dealer Tony Ireland.

The delegation will be seeking up to $7 million -- and may be helped by there being a federal election due to be called any time now.

The Townsville council and Queensland government have promised funding -- Auto Action puts the amount at $30 million over five years -- but it's conditional on a federal top-up that apparently would go towards a pit garage complex that could be used for other activities at other times.

If federal money is unlocked Townsville could be on the V8 Supercar calendar in 2009.

Alonso's nose was out of joint because he felt it was his experience as a dual world champion that helped McLaren improve 0.6 seconds a lap as soon as he arrived from Renault, yet Hamilton was benefiting from that experience.

Now there is talk that, at the first race under some kind of peace deal, Alonso did not have to share details of his set-up at last weekend's Turkish Grand Prix -- and that it may have been the denial of some of that sensitive information that led to Hamilton's puncture.

It was the puncture of his right front tyre that cost the youngster yet another podium, which Alonso ultimately collected -- and narrowed Hamilton's championship lead to just two points.

Renault remains poised to grab Alonso back if he can get out of his McLaren contract.

Meanwhile, Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner says a lot has been learned from the differential problem that caused Australian Mark Webber's early retirement in Turkey -- and that there should be no repeat at next week's Italian GP. Let's hope so.

Ralf Schumacher's time looks to be up in the Toyota team, with German Timo Glock now favorite to replace him next season.

Good luck to Glock, but it will be a bit sad to see him and BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica racing in GPs when Australia's Ryan Briscoe, who outgunned them in F3 in Europe and was an F1 test driver for Toyota, never got that opportunity.

Briscoe has had a good season in the American Le Mans Series with Roger Penske's Porsche team and is line to drive for the iconic team owner in the Indy Racing League next year if Sam Hornish Junior switches to NASCAR.

The Spyker and Super Aguri F1 teams still have financial headaches, and we note a couple interesting new names linked to possible buyouts.

One is Vijay Mallya, an Indian billionaire whose Kingfisher airline is already a sponsor of Toyota and who is central to plans for a GP in India, and the other is Tony Teixeira, the South African oil and diamond magnate involved in the establishment of the A1 Grand Prix series.

There have already been moves afoot within Dutch financial circles to rescue Spyker, while a Spanish entrepreneur Alejandro Agag has been linked to Japanese-controlled, Honda-associated Super Aguri.

Nicolas Prost, son of four-time F1 world champion Alain, will be France's rookie driver in the third A1 GP season.

The 26 year-old is third in the Spanish Formula 3 Championship, although he hasn't won a race in the series.

Prost junior will drive in A1's rookie test sessions and may race in some of the later rounds.

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