MOTORSPORT: Aussies go for glory in the classics

History books beckon our boys on biggest stages
For Australian motorsport fans with an interest way beyond V8 Supercars this weekend is heaven and hell. Make that long weekend, because the racing will go well into Monday, Australian time. Three mega races, at unsociable hours, with five Australians participating in them.

Forget trying to get a decent sleep, let alone any work done, if contemplating watching the telecasts of all three live. These events are not like anything in Australia. And they emphasise the great difference between the European and American styles of racing.

The Monaco Grand Prix is run on a short (2.075-mile, 3.34km), narrow street circuit beside the Mediterranean Ocean that would not be sanctioned if a promoter was trying to have it added to the Formula One World Championship calendar today.

The Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 6000 are on oval tracks in inland America -- the 2.5-mile (4km) slightly banked Brickyard and the high-banked 1.5km (2.4km) circular track at Charlotte, North Carolina.

The proof that Monaco is F1's crown jewel is that the principality is the only GP venue that does not pay Bernie Ecclestone a fee for the "privilege" of staging its race. In other words, Bernie and F1 need Monaco more than it needs them, although it wouldn't be what it is without its glitzy GP. Australia's Mark Webber won it two years ago. Of his seven GP victories, it is his most prized.

It is a race almost always won by a driver on the front row of the grid. Forty eight of the 58 Monaco GPs have been won by drivers starting in the top three. In six of the past seven years it has been won from pole position, while in 2008 Lewis Hamilton won from third on the grid.

Perth youngster Daniel Ricciardo is the other Aussie in the field this year. The 22-year-old has great form on these streets, having won the World Series by Renault races on them the past two years. However, he is a rank outsider for Sunday night's race in a Toro Rosso car, albeit one much improved on the days when that team was Minardi.

Webber remains with dual world championship team Red Bull Racing but, while he had a consistent start to the season without notching a podium, he slipped from third to fifth in the championship when he failed to add to his points tally at the Spanish GP two weeks ago. Still, he is only 13 points behind the leaders, his teammate Sebastian Vettel and Ferarri's Fernando Alonso.

The five GPs so far this year have been won by five different drivers in five different makes of car.

"I definitely think there can be a sixth different winner this weekend -- and it would be nice if that winner was me," Webber said. "We're using the super-soft tyres this weekend for the first time, and that will make it interesting.

"I won here in Formula 3000 [for Australian team Paul Stoddart], I scored my first F1 podium here in 2005 (with Williams), and I won the grand prix in 2010... It's a fabulous place to drive an F1 car."

There has already been a day's practice ahead of the traditional Ascension Day public holiday today. Rain made the lap times meaningless, with Webber down the order and Ricciardo headed by his even less experienced teammate, Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne.Forecast changeable conditions for the principality over the weekend could add even more spice to a stellar F1 season.

A couple of hours after the chequered flag in Monaco the order will be given at The Brickyard to 30 men and three women to "start your engines". It will be the 96th running of the Indianapolis 500 and for the first time an Australian, Ryan Briscoe, will start from the pole position in "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing".

Fellow Aussie Will Power will start fifth, from the middle of the second row. It will be a rolling start and, as prestigious as the pole has been for Briscoe, the qualifying order will count for little, even nothing, once the race is underway.

The Indy 500 is one race that can be won from the last row of the grid, although the driver starting 33rd this time -- 47-year-old former F1 racer Jean Alesi, a rookie at The Brickyard with a horribly underpowered Lotus  engine -- has next to no chance.

Alesi could even become a hazard to the rest of the field as it circulates at average speeds of more than 200mph (320kmh). Closing speeds in the turns are likely to be much greater with the new, wide-bodied cars with three different engine types than in recent years and more overtaking and jockeying for position is predicted.

The best that Briscoe and Power have finished in the Indy 500 previously has been fifth, but they are driving for the team with the best record at this home of American openwheeler racing, Penske Racing. Already the mighty outfit of Roger "The Captain" Penske has won this race 15 times.Penske's third driver in the field, Brazilian Helio Castronves, delivered three of those victories.

Starting sixth, alongside Power and on the outside of the second row, Castroneves will be striving again on Monday morning, our time, to join A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Senior and Rick Mears as four-time winners of this classic.

The best an Australian has finished in the Indianapolis 500 was Vern Schuppan's third place in 1981.

Power has overshadowed Briscoe the past couple of years in the IndyCar championship, but Sydneysider Briscoe remains a little more accomplished on ovals than his Toowoomba teammate. Power leads the championship this year, having won three of the four races so far (on street and road courses) after being runner-up the past two seasons, but it was him that pointed out this week that winning the Indianapolis 500 is far more important than the championship. And it was Power who said this week that he felt "so comfortable" there.

Briscoe's best series finish has been third and it is 30 races since he had a win.

Overnight, Australian time, teams, cars and drivers will have a final tune-up in the traditional 'Carburetion Day' ahead of the Memorial Day race. Nine of the top 10 qualifiers have Chevrolet power. The exception, with a Honda twi-turbocharged motor, is 21-year-old American rookie Josef Newgarden.

Scotsman Dario Franchitti and New Zealander Scott Dixon, past winners for Chip Ganassi's team, are starting midfield with Honda power, while NZ has a rookie in the race -- Wade Cunningham, who has had three wins in the annual Indy Lights race at the Brickyard. Prizemoney for the victor of the 500 could be about $3 million this year.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway is so different to anywhere else in racing that no official attendance is announced, although it is known to be between 300,000 and 400,000, and the prizemoney is not announced until the day after the race -- and the winner has drunk the traditional bottle of milk.

Tragically, last year's victor, Englishman Dan Wheldon, was killed in the finale of the previous-generation IndyCars at Las Vegas and emotions will be strong this weekend as his widow participates in tributes of remembrance to him.

Soon after the chequered flag at The Brickyard 43 NASCARs will embark, in daylight and then into the night, on the longest race in the Sprint Cup at Charlotte, the Coca-Cola 600.

Australia's Marcos Ambrose has qualified second, alongside his Richard Petty Motorsports teammate Aric Amirola. That makes a Tasmanian and a driver of Cuban origin on the front row of what has now long been America's major form of racing.

At Indianapolis only nine of the 33 starters will be American-born, and it has been six years since an American (Sam Hornish Junior) won the 500, while in NASCAR foreigners are still a rarity.

Ambrose has won a Sprint Cup race on a road course, at Watkins Glen last year, but victory on the predominant ovals remains elusive. His best in three previous Coca-Cola 600s has been fifth. Last weekend he was seventh in the All-Star race at Charlotte and had a top 10 finish the weekend before that.

"The Coca-Cola 600 is such a prestigious event ... it ranks up there with a Daytona 500 [NASCAR's season opener in Florida] or Indy win," Ambrose said. "It's one I'd like to check off my list."

The driver with momentum in NASCAR at the minute is five-time champion Jimmie Johnson, while last year Dale Earnhardt Junior led almost to within sight of the chequered flag, only to run out of fuel  in the last turn and see Kevin Harvick charge past him to win. Earnhardt remains NASCAR's most popular driver, despite not having won a Cup race for four years.

This season the female darling of American racing, Danica Patrick, has switched from Indy to NASCAR, but she is a long way from winning a stock car race.

Australia's international racing stars are unlikely ever to equal the fortunes, or even the fame, of "Junior" and Patrick, but by our Monday lunchtime one -- or more - of them might just have a massive win to their credit that will count for more than any of that. It will require skill, concentration, minimal -- even no -- mistakes, and perhaps a little luck. Fingers crossed.

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