MOTORSPORT: Aussie Ambrose in Daytona 500

After a week of to-ing and fro-ing in NASCAR on eligibility for the American stock car classic in Florida next Monday morning, February 16, Australian time, Ambrose got the nod that he was among the 35 certain starters in the 43-car field.

Over the past weekend he qualified his Toyota -- having switched from Ford late last year -- in 30th place.

But only the two fastest drivers, Martin Truex Junior, representing the amalgamation of the Dale Earnhardt Inc and Chip Ganassi teams, and Mark Martin, a hugely popular Ford veteran returning to full-time competition this year with Chevrolet team Hendrick Motorsports, will start where they have already qualified.

The rest of the starting order will be decided in two sprint duels on Friday, Australian time, on the 2.5-mile (4km) superspeedway with banking up to 31 degrees.

Ambrose will start 14th in the first of those Gatorade Duels.

Irrespective of how "The Great American Race" two days later goes for Ambrose he is guaranteed a huge payday.

Last year Kenny Wallace earned almost A$400,000 for being classified 43rd and last after completing 143 of the 200 laps.

The 2008 Daytona winner Ryan Newman earned more than A$2.25 million.

Although the Indianapolis 500 open-wheeler classic may pay its winner more, the Daytona 500 is the biggest race in the US in terms of TV audience -- and now rivalled more by another NASCAR event, the World 600 in Charlotte, than the Indy 500 on the same May day.

Dual Australian V8 Supercar champion Ambrose is starting his fourth season in NASCAR but his first full-time in the premier Sprint Cup series.

He is in one of three Toyotas entered by Michael Waltrip Racing, although the commercial affairs around him and his car continue to be handled by JTG Daugherty Racing -- a partnership between husband-and-wife Tad and Jodi Geschickter and former basketball star and ESPN television analyst Brad Daugherty.

Eight of the top qualifiers were in Chevrolets, while part-timer veteran Bill Elliott was best of the Fords driving for the Wood Brothers team with which Ambrose started out in the US.

Two of the best places to keep tabs on what's happening at Daytona throughout the week are websites nascar.com and daytonainternationalspeedway.com, while Friday's two Gatorade Duels and Monday's 500 will be televised on Channel 10's Ten HD and Fox Sports.

Ambrose is the first to admit he still has a lot to learn on the American ovals, especially the superspeedways where the V8 cars run with restrictor plates between the engine manifold and carburettor to slow engine power, but he is acknowledged in NASCAR as a road racing specialist.

He scored his first NASCAR win -- in the second tier Nationwide Series -- at Watkins Glen, a former home of the US Grand Prix in upstate New York, last year.

He had 11 starts in the Sprint Cup last season, with a best finish of third at Watkins Glen, but almost caused a boilover at another road course, California's Sonoma Raceway.

Not only is Ambrose guaranteed a start at Daytona but in the following four Cup races, before this season's top 35 car owners' points become the determining factor.

"At the end of last season we were outside the top 35 by only 13 points, but with the merger of two teams and that organisation not fielding as many cars, it moved us up (to a guaranteed start)," Ambrose said.

Of the controversy about who automatically got a start, he said: "Three days ago or four days ago it looked like it may have been swinging against us. There was a bit of panic, but someone is looking out for me -- I'm not sure who it is, but they're doing a good job.

"There's a lot of turmoil and change in NASCAR and the economy and everything right now and I think we're in a position to really take advantage of all that.

"I think we're a team that's really on the rise and going to take full advantage of the shake-up that's happened in NASCAR over the last three months.

"I wouldn't put any bets on (him winning the Daytona 500). I think just the experience for me this first year is what it's all about. I just want to settle in, do the right thing and show everybody that I can do it."

On Daytona's steep banking: "You are really on the edge through the turns.

"If you get too loose and get out of shape while you're running flat out in the pack you can end up wrecking your car as well as 20 other guys' cars.

"If it looks easy running at Daytona, it definitely is not. It's tough, it takes a lot of concentration and it's very, very fast.

"I haven't driven a COT (Car of Tomorrow) on a superspeedway. I've only had a couple starts at Daytona anyway, so I am going to use the Duel really just to get into the groove and get confident and comfortable behind the wheel and just try to find some good drafting partners and let them know that I'm not an idiot out there.

"I've been in NASCAR for three years and here I am a (full-time) Sprint Cup driver. I made a career back in Australia and won a championship or two and still wonder how that happened. Here I am in NASCAR four years later and feel privileged to be here with just a great opportunity.

"There's no way to hide at this level. When you get to Sprint Cup and you're up against Junior (Dale Earnhardt, the sport's most popular driver and son of the late seven-time Cup champion of the same name) and Jeff Gordon (four-time Cup champion) and Jimmie Johnson (Cup winner the past three seasons) and everyone, the whole field is just supremely talented and high-quality teams.

"This is by far my biggest achievement. Forget winning races and winning championships, I think just getting this far in a sport like NASCAR is massive.

"I'm looking forward to the chance to really prove who I am as a NASCAR driver."

Carrera Cup gone; kids on Oz circuits at 14
There's some important news on the national motorsport scene that may be adjudged bad and good.

One thing, the collapse of the Porsche Carrera Cup due to a lack of competitors this year, certainly is sad news.

And we're not convinced that the other thing, the lowering by CAMS of the minimum age for a circuit racing licence from 16 to 14, is necessarily good news.

CAMS is using Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton and New Zealand's IndyCar and Indianapolis 500 champion -- and NZ Sportsman of the Year -- Scott Dixon as examples of success stories from having been licensed to race on circuits very young.

But do we really need Australian kids racing on the country's circuits three or four years before they are eligible to drive on public roads?

Certainly the CAMS announcement ironic, this writer having been harangued by a senior CAMS official in his early days of motorsport reporting for writing a story about a 15-year-old boy racing at Melbourne's old Calder Park Thunderdome! Not endorsing it or taking any position on it, merely mentioning that it was happening.

F1 driver licence fee stoush hotting up
Tensions are building between F1 drivers and Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Max Mosley over licence fees for the season starting at the Australian Grand Prix on March 27-29. We touched on this a couple of weeks ago.

The FIA charges drivers a basic fee for the super-licence required for F1, plus an amount for each point they scored in the previous year's world championship.

Under the proposed scale this year world champion Lewis Hamilton will pay about A$400,000.

Mosley, ever the politician, has told drivers their complaints are nonsense but he's prepared to review the charges if they reveal their earnings to him.

A rather ironic attempt to intrude into the privacy of driver contracts that, by a man who last year took great offence -- and indeed won a major legal action -- over his privacy being invaded by the filming of his Friday arvo sex orgy in London.

The Grand Prix Drivers' Association is painting the licence picture as the drivers being taxed to make up the apparent shortfall of 1.7 million euros at the FIA's head office last year and a further 3 million euro shortfall expected this year.

The GPDA said the FIA should raise enough money "from the exploitation of its commercial rights" -- suggesting it should be getting enough, or more, from F1 commercial tsar Bernie Ecclestone.

But the brilliant Mosley has plenty of arguments to counter them, of course.

"The drivers are the principal beneficiaries of all the money invested (by the FIA) in safety measures," Mosley said. "To live in a tax haven, pay no tax, then to complain about having to pay 2 per cent of your income (for the super-licence), is not going to get a lot of sympathy."

And, in a mischievous warning, Mosley said it may be a "quiet Friday" in Melbourne on March 27 if the drivers do not pay up in time.

Mosley pushes relevant motorsport barrow
Mosley can be so persuasive, make such good sense. One of his hobby horses at the minute is that, amid all the cost-cutting measures being introduced in F1, teams should focus heavily this year on development of kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS).

These systems will be like those used in hybrid road cars, harnessing energy that would be lost during braking and reapply it when a car is accelerating.

"F1 should be solving difficult problems that are relevant to the real world," Mosley said.

Yes, but as always with Mosley, we just have to wonder what his motives are.

He thinks we can't do without him
Bernie Ecclestone told the world at the height of Mosley's sex scandal that if he won the FIA confidence vote we should expect him to seek another term as FIA president.

There have been signs of that for months, and now Mosley -- who has been in the post since 1991 -- has given an even stronger indication that's precisely what he's going to do as this term draws to an end in October.

"If a lot of people are saying, 'You should stay', then perhaps it would be churlish not to," he said. "I'm still undecided, but I realise that a decision is needed by the (northern) summer.

"One has to say it's interesting at the moment and to walk away would be to leave it in a state of uncertainty, which wouldn't be satisfactory.

 "To be frank, an awful lot of people are saying, 'You need to stay because of the situation'.

"But 18 years -- and it would be four more -- is a long time. Do I want to?

"If you stay in something too long, you get a bit stale. If we get a lot of the problems solved between now and then it would be tempting to go."

We don't think Max will be tempted ... to go, that is.

Mystery solved, but answer may be years away
Incidentally, Mosley now claims that an investigation he implemented has unearthed the person who set him up in last year's sex scandal.

"We pretty much know who it was now," Mosley told London's The Telegraph.

"It wasn't done for fun. It was to get rid of me.

"But I am not going to do anything or say anything until I am absolutely certain. That is going to take a little bit more time.

"It might take two or three years for various reasons."

All is forgiven in the great Spygate scandal
And, 18 months on, the mighty Mosley has "pardoned" the two central players in F1's Spygate row, in which Ferrari secrets were passed to McLaren.

Nigel Stepney, who had been working for Ferrari, and McLaren designer Mike Coughlan were banned from working in F1 until July this year and McLaren was effectively fined US$100 million and lost all its constructors' championship points in 2007.

Stepney is now working for on-board camera company Gigawave, while Coughlan is with transmission specialist Ricardo.

McLaren and Ferrari are being very friendly to each other at the minute, with a senior Ferrari official given a tour of McLaren's headquarters recently.

"It does seem a little bit mad to make them (Stepney and Coughlan) serve out even longer when the two teams concerned are all making love to each other," Mosley said.

Might this be the end of the recent beautiful F1 friendship? We note that McLaren is talking of producing 1000 cars a year in 2011, eventually increasing to 4000 -- which would indeed mirror Ferrari. We also note that McLaren's major shareholder, Mercedes-Benz with 40 per cent, is not exactly over the moon about the idea!

Webber bullish, Toro Rosso keeps Bourdais
Back to the racetrack ... Australian F1 driver Mark Webber's new car, Red Bull's RB5, is to be unveiled in the next 24 hours.

Webber has declared it will be the most beautiful of this year's F1 cars. Far more important will be how it goes.

Webber's new teammate, German wonderboy Sebastian Vettel, will give the RB5 its first outing at Jerez in Spain, with Webber -- well on the way to recovery from his broken leg -- slotted for the cockpit on Wednesday.

Red Bull's smaller sister team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, has retained Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, the four-time Champ Car champion, for his second F1 season.

That retains some experience in the team, which will introduce Swiss rookie Sebastien Buemi to GP racing in Melbourne.

The return of slick tyres to F1 is expected to suit Bourdais' style.

Born at Le Mans, Bourdais also will drive in the 24-hour sports car classic there this year with Peugeot. He has done the classic six times, most recently with Peugeot in 2007 when he finished second.

Toro Rosso's decision to stick with Bourdais leaves three notable drivers on the sidelines for now -- Japan's Takuma Sato, who was thought for a while to have the sponsorship dollars to oust Bourdais; Brazilian Bruno Senna, nephew of the incomparable Ayrton; and Jenson Button, in no man's land until the fate of Honda's team is known -- it is now 10 days beyond the deadline for a sale, and against time to get to Melbourne in shape.

We suspect that if there is a sale of the Honda team in time for the start of the season that, provided Nick Fry and Ross Brawn remain in charge, Button will be kept and the young Senna installed.

If that doesn't eventuate, Senna is faced with a third season in the GP2 series as there is little role as an F1 test driver these days.

Sato's best hope may now be with the other Japanese team, Toyota, if it loses patience with either of its incumbent drivers -- Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock.

Glock was something of a surprise packet last season, his snail-like pace on the last lap in the Brazilian GP aside, while Trulli has always been incredibly quick but massively disappointing in competitive racing.

There already have been rumblings about the Italian's future with Toyota.

Born in the USA, divorce, meltdown and rallying
We remain doubtful about the prospects of getting a new F1 team off the ground from the US, but a little more than what we mentioned of the project last week is here and here.

From the "social pages", an exclusive from the newspaper that exposed Max Mosley's sex scandal on Bernie Ecclestone's hopes of saving his marriage, and averting a record payout to wife Slavica, is here.

More seriously, an American perspective on the effects of the economic meltdown on motorsport is here.

And the latest on the revival of Rally Australia, with 500 people attending community meetings in northern NSW at the weekend, is here.

Image: BAM Media for