Motorsport: Aussie survives big A1 crash

Monday motorsport reportApril 30, 2007

The 21-year-old Sydney driver was taken out at the opening corner of the feature race by Czech driver Jan Charouz, who was later penalised.

Dyk says the 160km/h crash was by far the biggest of his career.

He credited the strength of the A1GP car and his HANS (head and neck safety) device for saving him from injury.

"I got a fantastic start from the outside going down the hill and got to the inside of the track," Dyk says.

"I made up two spots on the Czech Republic and was on the outside but he started to squeeze me.

"The gap between the pitwall and him closed and there was contact between us.

"From then on I was just a passenger. It just slid straight ahead and I had no brakes.

"It was certainly the biggest accident I've ever had and it is just a shame after such a good start to be squeezed off the road.

"I was a bit dazed as I hopped out of the car, but I was just taking it all in.

"I felt the HANS device take up and I felt my forehead hit the front of the helmet.

"But these cars are very safe.

"That accident is certainly testament to the fact that we are driving safe race cars, because that was very fast."

Charouz was given a drive-through penalty for causing an avoidable collision, while South Africa's Adrian Zaugg went off the track in avoiding the accident.

Hulkenberg, a forklift driver when not racing, passed Britain's Robbie Kerr at the first corner of the last race.

Kerr had started in pole position after winning the earlier sprint race at Brands and the Englishman briefly regained the lead on the 16th lap but Hulkenberg ended up winning by two seconds after 50 laps.

Italy's Enrico Toccacelo held off India's Narain Karthikeyan for third.

Aussie Dyk qualified 18th for the weekend and had finished 16th in the 15-lap sprint, ahead of New Zealander Matt Halliday, who got tangled up with Irish driver Richard Lyons on the opening lap.

Halliday substituted in that early race after Jonny Reid had a big crash in practice.

In the feature Halliday's eighth place was enough to secure NZ's second place in the series ahead of Britain by one point.

A1 GP series after all 11 rounds -- Germany 128 points, New Zealand 93, Great Britain 92, France 67, Netherlands 57, Malaysia 55, Italy 52. Australia was 13th with 25 points.

"It's a lot of money but we have been setting up a new global motor racing series," Teixeira says.

"It is what McLaren spend to go racing for a season in Formula 1. We've set up a global racing series."

A1GP's battle could be even tougher in future as there are plans to package a new GP2 series in Asia in the European off-season, along with a 24-car NASCAR-style Speedcar championship and possibly a Formula BMW international series.

But Teixeira exudes confidence.

"I can tell you that we will be around for a long time," he says.

"We made mistakes in our first year -- wrong places, some poor teams, bad promotion -- but this season has seen some great crowds to see outstanding racing.

"Sure, some circuits are too big for us like Shanghai and Sepang in Malaysia, but we now have about 20 countries queueing for us to come to them.

"Five want streets races. Three are willing to build circuits.

"Japan, Russia and Portugal want to have teams and next year we will have 25 for sure and possibly 28.

"We're not struggling. We have great TV contracts and we have yet to tap into revenue streams like betting and merchandising.

"I'm not worried about spending money. I'm in oil and diamond mining. You sink a well, explore, prove the reserves and it will be four to seven years before you start getting something back.

"That's how it is. This is no different."

Total Toyota domination in ARC
Toyota is dominating the Australian Rally Championship. After two rounds of the series, Toyota's reigning champion Simon Evans has won all four heats in the same supercharged Corolla Sportivo that he took the title in last year.

In Western Australia at the weekend Evans and his co-driver wife Sue won 15 of the 20 stages around the south-west timber town of Nannup in the Forest Rally.

Neal Bates, who builds Toyota's Australian rally cars, won the four short sprints on tarmac at the Busselton foreshore, while West Australian privateer Dean Herridge won the other stage in a three-year-old Subaru Impreza WRX.

Evans, of Melbourne, has the maximum 82 points for the season from his four heat wins plus a bonus point from both Queensland and WA for the most stage wins in the events.

On Saturday he finished almost half a minute ahead of Herridge, while on Sunday he was more than 50 seconds ahead of teammate Bates with Herridge a few more seconds back.

While it is looking easy for Evans, he says wet weather on Sunday made the course "the ultimate challenge".

"The last few stages were really scary," says Evans, who has now won twice in a row in WA and three times in four years -- although the first of those victories came after Chris Atkinson's Subaru was excluded in 2004.

Bates made history at the weekend by becoming the first driver to score an ARC podium in a Super 2000 car -- the new normally-aspirated machines, while Evans is still driving a turbocharged car.

Veteran Bates, a triple national champion who was third overall in WA (with Herridge second), has been driving a development S2000 vehicle to date under an old body but is aiming to have an all-new S2000 car for his home event, the Rally of Canberra June 2-3.

Ford's S2000 Fiestas, prepared by V8 Supercar star Jason Bright's Pirtek outfit, showed improved speed and reliability to finish fourth and fifth in the Forest Rally, driven by Michael Guest, of Newcastle, and West Australian Darren Windus.

Australian Rally Championship after two rounds - 1. Simon Evans (Toyota Corolla Group N(P)) 162 points, 2. Neal Bates (Toyota Corolla S2000) 108, 3. Dean Herridge (Subaru Impreza WRX Group N) 98, 4. Michael Guest (Ford Fiesta S2000) 74, =5. Brendan Reeves (Subaru Impreza WRX Group N) 70, =5. Darren Windus (Ford Fiesta S2000) 70.

Although it has had success in the World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies, winning the drivers' and teams' titles in 2005, VW has not won the flagship Dakar Rally despite a huge outlay.

A disastrous Dakar campaign in January this year has reportedly triggered the idea to switch to the WRC.

VW revealed an Iroc concept car at the Berlin motor show last year as a possible replacement for the Scirocco, which ceased production in the early 1990s.

The car is the same width (180cm) as Citroen's standard-setting C4 WRC and slightly shorter (424cm v 427.4cm).

VW's only WRC win was scored by Swede Kenneth Eriksson on the Ivory Coast Rally in 1987.

It's round six, with 22 stages, and is based close to Cordoba, about 700km north-west of Buenos Aires.

However, the event starts with a super special stage inside the River Plate Stadium in BA.

The outlying stages feature dramatic changes in altitude and include narrow, loose-gravel tests high in the mountains as well as flat-out sprints on harder-packed roads in valleys.

Competitors could face rain, wind and fog on the mountain passes and the thin air can starve engines of power.

After the BA start the cars will head out into the countryside for seven gravel stages before a super special in Cordoba football stadium.

There are nine more tests on Saturday, and then three on Sunday before another super special in Cordoba Stadium.

The total distance is 1383.14km, including 346.55km of competition.

Atkinson has driven in Argentina twice before and was sixth last season.

"That was a mixed event for me, with some promising moments, but I didn't have a clean run so could have potentially taken more points," Atkinson says.

"There's a real mixture of roads and there are some tests where you get a bit of everything thrown at you.

"I'm looking forward to working with Stephane and we're aiming to bring the car home in the top five."

Argentina will mark Atkinson's teammate, Norwegian Petter Solberg, and his co-driver Phil Mills' 100th WRC with Subaru's factory team.

Crocker back in Asia-Pacific series
Australia's defending Asia-Pacific Rally Champion Cody Crocker returns to that series at the Rally of Whangarei in New Zealand on May 11-13.

Crocker skipped the opening round in New Caledonia because of the Bathurst 12-hour production car race, in which he finished second with Chris Atkinson and Dean Herridge.

Atkinson's former WRC co-driver and fellow Aussie, Glenn Macneall, will be competing at Whangarei alongside his driver girlfriend Emma Gilmour, in a Subaru like Crocker.

Thirty three drivers from seven countries are entered for the event, which is also a round of the NZ national championship.

There's only one New Zealander in the Asia-Pacific field, Brian Green, but Crocker's main opposition is again likely to come from reigning NZ champion Richard Mason.

Only nine seconds separated the pair last year.

F1 returns to the real Ring
The old Nurburgring was rated the best F1 circuit in the world.

It was on that track, more than 20km long and called the Nordschleife layout or the "Green Hell", that Nikki Lauda almost lost his life in a fiery crash in 1976.

So bad were Lauda's injuries that he was given the last rights, but amazingly he recovered to win another two world titles to add to the one he already had.

And he may well have been the '76 champion had he not famously pulled out of the Japanese Grand Prix because of the torrential rain at Suzuka as James Hunt drove to the crown.

Thirty one years later a Formula 1 car has been let loose on the "real" Ring (forget that sanitised neighboring version), with Nick Heidfeld driving a BMW Sauber around it yesterday -- watched by 45,000 people.

Heidfeld did three laps, with the car on special demonstration tyres and an artificially high ride height.

But the famed Karrussell section of the track was excluded, with BMW team boss Mario Theissen saying its steep and bumpy concrete banking was totally unsuited to a modern F1 car.

Usually the scene of photo finishes, this Talladega race ended disappointingly under caution.

The fans weren't happy either at Gordon overtaking Earnhardt, who won there a record 10 times, on what would have been the icon's birthday.

They reacted by showering the track with rubbish from the grandstands.

Ambrose lost the chance of a top 10 finish when his Ford Fusion was spun around in a multi-car accident in the final laps.

Ambrose was classified only 25th, dropping him to ninth in the championship after 10 races in the long season.

He had been aiming to beat his previous best Busch finish of eighth in Mexico until the seven-car incident that removed much of the leading pack.

"I had the confidence to get up there and mix it with the big boys," Ambrose says.

"It (the race) was coming to us, but it just wasn't our day.

"I was running on the low line and something just happened above us and I was sideswiped.

"It spun us into the fence in front of the whole field in the middle of the back straight.

"Cars were going absolutely everywhere destroying themselves.

"The day could have been very good for us but it wasn't to be.

"You've got to enjoy the highs and the lows I guess."

And the dual Australian V8 Supercar champion can console himself that he's still earned US$293,926 (A$354,170) in prizemoney so far this year.

Bobby Labonte won the Talladega race from teammate Tony Stewart in a thrilling finish.

Next weekend's race is at Richmond International Speedway in Virginia.

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