MOTORSPORT: Aussie in key world safety role

Leading Australian official and ex-Formula 1 driver Tim Schenken is to head one of world motorsport’s key panels responsible for safety.

Schenken has been named president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile Circuits Commission at the FIA’s annual general assembly in Paris.

He is the first Australian in recent times to head a commission of the FIA, the world governing body of motorsport and also a global voice on everyday motoring, especially safety.

Schenken has been the race director of Australia’s Supercars Championship for 20 years and the clerk of course for the F1 Grand Prix for most of its more than three decades in Australia, initially in Adelaide before Melbourne.

He raced in F1 in the early 1970s and is the only Australian apart from world champions Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones and more recent GP winners Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo to have scored points in the F1 World Championship.

His best result was third place in the 1971 Austrian GP, driving a Brabham car the year after Sir Jack’s retirement from F1.

Now 74, Schenken was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in last year’s Queen’s Birthday honours.

Since returning to live in Australia after being a partner (with New Zealander Howden Ganley, another ex-F1 driver) in racing car constructor TIGA from 1976 until 1982, Schenken has been an administrator with the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), with the title director of racing operations in recent years.

His new role with the FIA will involve a lot of inspections of circuits around the world to see that they are as safe as possible.

At the FIA assembly Frenchman Jean Todt was elected unopposed for a third four-year term as the organisation’s president, which will take him through to 2021 – when he will be 75.

Originally a top rally co-driver, Todt later ran successful rally and sports car teams for Peugeot before heading Ferrari’s F1 team during the era that Michael Schumacher won the last five of his record seven world titles.

Controversy has erupted over the appointment of Spanish woman Carmen Jorda to the FIA’s Women in Motorsport Commission.

Jorda, who has been a ‘development driver’ for the Lotus and subsequently Renault GP teams in recent years despite negligible racing form, has advocated a separate F1 world championship for females on the grounds that she does not believe they can compete on equal terms with men.

Her appointment by the FIA has enraged IndyCar driver Pippa Mann, who tweeted that to see someone with that opinion in a position representing women in the sport was “incredibly disappointing”.

“The most worrying thing is whether this is a reflection of the beliefs of the FIA towards female athletes in motorsport in general,” she said.

While Mann became the first woman to lap the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at an average of more than 238mph (368kmh) and described Jorda as “a racer with no notable results”, she said the fuss over the FIA appointment was “not personal with Carmen”.

“It’s that someone who holds those beliefs should not be put in a position of power where the mission statement is the opposite of those beliefs”.

Leena Gade, an engineer who oversaw three of Audi’s victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and serves on the FIA commission to which Jorda has been appointed, tweeted: “I chose to compete in a man’s world, like so many other women in countless motorsport roles. We want to be the best against males and females. Can’t do that? Play another game.”

Porsche ace for Nurburgring 24 Hours

Matt Campbell, the 2016 Porsche Carrera Cup Australia champion who won four races in the Porsche Supercup this year in his first season abroad, will compete in Germany’s Nurburgring 24 Hours next May.

Campbell, 22, from Warwick in Queensland, recently was named one of four Porsche Young Professionals for 2018 and the manufacturer said he would compete for it in GT racing, but did announce a schedule.

While it still did not elaborate fully on his schedule at its ‘Night of Champions’ gala in Germany at the weekend, it revealed the Nurburgring classic on May 12-13 as one definite start for him in a Porsche 911 GT3 R.

It will enter nine of those cars in the event, five of them with fully-professional driver line-ups.

The manufacturer is expanding its commitments to the Blancpain GT Series in Europe and the four-round Intercontinental GT Challenge that includes the Bathurst 12-Hour in February.

Grander plans for Adelaide festival

The organiser of the weekend’s Adelaide Motorsport Festival is planning to make it more international in future, with stars and more cars from overseas.

“The event is going from strength to strength… It really has momentum now,” event director Tim Possingham said today.

“It’s gone into overdrive. The future is bright and we are already working on plans to make the whole event, from the rally (a Thursday to Saturday event] to the sprint [in Victoria Park on the weekend] and our community-based free events bigger and better next year.”

Possingham is hoping to extend the 1.4km abbreviated version of the Supercars and former F1 circuits to almost 2km, which he believes will entice international racing car collectors to bring machinery out and top drivers to come compete.

Several Supercar stars drove historic F1 cars in the weekend’s sprints, with Tim Slade fastest at 43.03 seconds in a V10-powered 1994 Footwork Arrows car.

Multiple national rally champion Neal Bates and long-time co-driver Coral Taylor won the Adelaide Rally in their famous Toyota Celica while Adam Kaplan and Aleshia Penney won the classic section in a Mazda RX-7 in Allan Moffat tribute livery.

Petty teams goes from Ford to Chevy

The last NASCAR team that Marcos Ambrose raced for during his decade in America, Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM), is switching from Ford to Chevrolet next season.

The team that bears the name of 200-time NASCAR Cup race winner and seven-time champion Richard ‘The King’ Petty (although its majority owner now is New York businessman Andrew Murstein), has forged a new alliance with Chevy team, Richard Childress Racing.

RPM, which had been aligned with Ford since 2009, is without a primary sponsor for next year.

It has lost driver Aric Almirola, Ambrose’s last US teammate, to Ford team Stewart Haas Racing. He has been replaced by 24-year-old Darrell Wallace Junior.