MOTORSPORT: Audi chief in the doghouse

Dark stain on an outstanding career 
The man who has overseen Audi's massive motor racing success has been banned from the pitlane of the German touring car championship and access to the manufacturer's radios in that series for the rest of the season over an unsporting edict.

Apart from the discipline imposed on Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, Audi has been fined 200,000 euros (almost A$313,000) and one of its two-time DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters) champion drivers, Timo Scheider, has been banned from this weekend's round.

After Ullrich shouted "push him off" over the radio to Scheider during a race at Austria's Red Bull Ring a month ago, the 2008-09 DTM champion's Audi RS5 bumped Canadian Robert Wickens' Mercedes C63 into the similar Mercedes of German Pascal Wehrlein. Both Mercs ended up stuck in a gravel trap, while Scheider finished but was subsequently disqualified and Audi lost all its manufacturer points from the race. The incident cost Wehrlein, the reserve driver for the dominant Mercedes Formula 1 team, the lead in the DTM championship, dropping him behind Audi's Swedish superstar Mattias Ekstrom and its Swiss driver Edoardo Mortara.

Ullrich has headed Audi Motorsport for more than 20 years and has masterminded its 13 Le Mans 24-Hour sports car victories this century – including the first by a diesel car in 2006 and the first hybrid triumph in 2012 – as well as seven DTM titles by Audi drivers and four manufacturer crowns.

DTM officials have found Audi guilty of "unsportsmanlike conduct" in an investigation that concluded this week.

The ban on Ullrich will be meaningless this weekend as the Russian round of the DTM in Moscow clashes with the resumption of the World Endurance Championship for sports cars at the Nurburgring in Germany.

While the Nurburgring is higher priority for Ullrich than Moscow, the ban will exile him from the remaining three DTM rounds in Germany.

Ullrich initially denied making the unsporting radio call in the DTM while driver Timo Scheider denied hearing it and tried to dismiss the incident as "this is racing".

Ullrich claimed he was never on the radio during DTM races but subsequently amended his story and apologised to Mercedes, which has rebounded in the series this season following rehomologation of its C coupe.

"What was done with Timo was not the proper way to go about things," Ullrich said.

"But it was not my intention that Robert [Wickens] and Pascal [Wehrlein] end up in the gravel trap.

"I'm sorry that I shouted, 'Timo, push him out', in my initial emotion at the command post.

"I do not communicate with the drivers by radio during the race and did not know that the radio was open.

"This was not an instruction for Timo by any means.

"I can only apologise to Mercedes for this remark.

"An expression like that does not reflect my idea of motorsport, but was strictly due to the adrenaline at that moment.

"I'm a racer and was fuming about the way Timo was dealt with.

"This situation for sure was not so nice because it was clear what game wanted to be played with Timo [by the Mercedes pair].

"I have to say it was really emotional and I was not happy about what happened.

"It's a shame that, due to this incident, a shadow has been cast on the impeccable performance delivered by Mattias [Ekstrom] and the entire Audi squad [in that race at Spielberg's Red Bull Ring]."

Ullrich has previously stressed the importance of the DTM to Audi.

"It's a very product-related championship and we're in direct battle with our main competitors in the premium class – BMW and Mercedes."

BMW won the manufacturer title in its first two seasons after returning to the DTM in 2012, as well as driver titles in 2012, with French-born Canadian Bruno Spengler, and last year with German Marco Wittmann. But the Bavarian make is lagging this year, with Spengler and Wittmann only eighth and ninth and with less than half the points of Audi's Ekstrom.

Who could forget the joy he screamed after taking the chequered flag there?

Now he's driving a Porsche 919 Hybrid and finished second in it at this year's Le Mans 24-Hour, behind another of the 1000-horsepower 919s.

Porsche confirmed overnight that it would continue in the Le Mans Prototype 1 class of sports car racing until at least the end of 2018.

It said that the project, which involves 230 employees at its Weissach research and development centre, "pushes our engineers to extreme performances".

"Motorsport is an important part of Porsche's brand identity – but not an end in itself," Porsche chairman Matthias Muller said.

"Racing has got to help the technology of future road-going sports cars."

Muller said that its race project, with a downsized turbocharged engine and powerful energy recovery systems and an extremely lightweight design, was a wonderful "research laboratory" for the marque's future road cars.

And Wolfgang Hatz, the Porsche board member responsible for research and development, added: "The 2-litre V4 turbocharged petrol engine with a performance of over 500hp is the most efficient combustion engine we have built so far. We are the only ones able to generate eight megajoules of electrical energy per lap in Le Mans from our two energy recovery systems."

Australia's defending champion, Will Power, won the Sonoma races in 2010, '11 and '13 and has had four pole positions at the track where he also broke his back in a crash in 2009.

Fellow Aussie Ryan Briscoe won in 2012, while Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon was the victor last year.

The death of the popular and respected Justin Wilson after last weekend's race at Pocono in Pennsylvania will cast a pall over Sonoma.

Spaniard Oriol Servia, a friend and sometime teammate of Wilson, will drive an Andretti Autosport entry with Wilson's No.25 and there will be other tributes paid to the Brit, for whom no funeral date has been announced.

Six drivers, including Power, have mathematical chances of winning the title – five of them with Chevrolet engines, and three of those from Team Penske.

Colombian Montoya is in the box seat to take the title 16 years after his success in the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series during the great split in American open-wheeler racing.

Montoya has a 34-point lead over the sole Honda-powered driver in the equation, American Graham Rahal.

Dixon, driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, is 47 points behind Montoya and Power 61 points.

Dixon will need to deliver the 100th IndyCar success for Ganassi – and fourth at Sonoma – to take his fourth title, while Team Penske has won at Sonoma five times.

The other even longer shots are Brazilian Helio Castroneves, like Montoya and Power a Penske driver, and American Josef Newgarden, who drives for Carpenter Fisher Hartman Racing.

It is the 10th consecutive year that the championship will be decided at its last race.

While saddened by Wilson's death, Power said the double points would make the finale "very interesting and execiting".

"I definitely consider it one of my best racetracks. I've had a lot of highs and a few lows here, but it is a great venue for the final race."