MOTORSPORT: Aussie's IndyCar team is no more

The Australian-owned Indy team KV Racing, a seven-time race winner, has folded.

Wealthy Adelaide-born, California-based venture capitalist Kevin Kalkhoven said that he "can no longer give the team the effort and support it and the team members deserve".

KV won the 2013 Indy 500 with Brazilian driver Tony Kanaan and provided the car Matthew Brabham raced in last year's 100th Indianapolis 500.

It has been around for 14 years – initially in CART/Champ Car and later in IndyCar, after Kalkhoven negotiated a reunification of American open-wheeler racing with former Indianapolis Motor Speedway chief Tony George – while four of its seven wins have come in the past four seasons.

Kalkhoven's long-time partner in the team has been 1996 IndyCar champion Jimmy Vasser, while its regular driver the past three years was Sebastien Bourdais, the French four-time Champ Car champion and twice winner of the Gold Coast Indy 300.

Another of Kalkhoven's drivers earlier in the team's existence was Australian Will Power, who has since become an IndyCar champion and remains a force in that series with Team Penske.

The team's demise has been expected for months but was confirmed overnight by Kalkhoven, who gave his age – nearly 73 – as the major reason for his decision.

Two of KV Racing's Chevrolet-powered cars are being sold to Argentinian Ricardo Juncos, who runs a championship winning Indy Lights team. Juncos plans to contest this year's Indy 500 in May and run a part-time IndyCar campaign next year with a view to full-time participation after that.

Kalkhoven, who made hundreds of millions of dollars from fibre optics his company developed in Silicon Valley, had been an owner of the Champ Car World Series until it went bust in 2008 and he did the deal with George that brought the two factions of America's top open-wheeler racing back together.

Although bowing out as a team owner now, Kalkhoven claimed the IndyCar series is "on a major upswing and has a bright future" and said he would "remain committed to help in any way I can".

This year's series starts on the streets of St Petersburg in Florida on the second of March.

Apart from Power – the 2014 champion and winner of 29 races – Penske's full-time Indy drivers will be the reigning champion, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, Brazilian three-time Indy 500 victor Helio Castroneves and American recruit Josef Newgarden, with Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya a fifth driver for the Indy 500.

While American automotive tycoon Roger Penske fields Chevrolet-engined cars in IndyCar against others powered by the category's only other engine supplier, Honda, he is reportedly set to return to American sports car racing next year with Honda-engined prototypes. They will compete against others powered by GM brand Cadillac, which won the recent 24 Hours of Daytona.

The Honda engines are likely to go into French-made ORECA chassis, while the Cadillac motors are in Dallara chassis. The other top-level prototypes in the new era of American sports car racing are Riley/Multimatic cars with Mazda engines and Ligiers with Nissan power.
Major revamp for Honda's F1 power unit
Honda will have a "completely different" hybrid power unit at next month's Australian Grand Prix after two uncompetitive years back in Formula 1.

Honda's F1 project chief Yusuke Hasegawa admits the new concept is "very high risk" for the power units in the McLarens to be raced by Fernando Alonso and Belgium youngster Stoffel Vandoorne (replacing Jenson Button).

The revision has been made possible by the scrapping of the token system that restricted the number of changes that could be made to power units over a season.

Honda's focus is on the internal-combustion engine rather than the turbocharger or energy recovery system.

"We know it [the new concept] will give us a performance advantage, but the biggest risk is whether we can realise that potential this year," Hasegawa said.

"If we improve the engine itself, which means boosting exhaust gas energy, we need to boost the turbine; otherwise we cannot perform at the same level in terms of deployment.

"I hope we have understood the direction and the elements to focus on."

There is a merry-go-round of engineers among teams as the launches of new cars draw near next week, with two four-day tests in Barcelona before the season-opening race in Melbourne on March 26.

James Allison, technical director at Ferrari until the middle of last season, has resurfaced at Mercedes, the world champion team of the past three years. Mercedes has lost Paddy Lowe to Williams.

Williams also has snared Ferrari's chief aerodynamicist Dirk de Beer, while the Renault factory team has enticed Pete Machin away from its power unit customer Red Bull Racing, where he worked under Adrian Newey on cars that included those that won four consecutive world titles from 2010-2013.

Giancarlo Minardi, the 69-year-old Italian who operated the long-running Minardi team later owned by Australian Paul Stoddart for five years before it became Scuderia Toro Rosso, has said this year's wider cars with bigger wings and larger tyres "will certainly not help the spectacle".

Minardi said hybrid power units were better suited to endurance racing and that F1 should free up development of engines and cars.

"F1 is [meant to be] sprint racing, wheel-to-wheel battles between drivers," he said.

Minardi's 80-year-old countryman Gian Paolo Dallara, whose company collaborates on the chassis for the Ferrari-engined American team Haas, said the higher downforce on this year's cars "will make it almost impossible to overtake".

"We complain about the lack of show in F1 and then go in the opposite direction," he said.
Formula 1 and FIA under the microscope?
The European parliament's competition commissioner may take a look at F1 over its prize money distribution – which heavily favours the big teams – and the windfall profit of more than A$100 million the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) has made from the sale of its one per cent stake in the takeover by America's Liberty Group.

The FIA has claimed that the spotlight on it – especially from a British member of the Euro parliament, Anneliese Dodds – has been "inaccurately informed" and "malicious".

The Euro parliament voted overwhelmingly – 467 to 156 – on a report that could trigger scrutiny of F1 and the FIA. The competition commissioner is not bound to act on that report, although the size of the vote in favour of it is seen as having increased the chances of an investigation.

"The FIA would naturally be happy to demonstrate the absence of any conflict of interest to any competent authority that may so request," the FIA has said.

"There is no conflict of interest on the part of the FIA with regard to its approval of the change of control of the [F1] commercial rights holder [CRH] which has been approved by the World Motor Sport Council taking into consideration exclusively the terms of the existing agreements between the CRH and the FIA and the best interests of the [F1 world] championship.

"As per the agreements made in 2001 for 100 years, the FIA could only have withheld its consent in the event that the change of control would materially alter the ability of the CRH to fulfil its obligations.

"It is obvious that the taking of control of the Formula One Group by Liberty does not create such a risk, and nobody has ever suggested a different view in this respect.

"The prize money allocated in F1 is done so in accordance with the bilateral agreements that exist between each team and the CRH. The FIA has no knowledge of these agreements."
WRC boss wants cap on speeds
The FIA's rally director, Jarmo Mahonen, wants to curb the speed of the new, more aggressive cars in the World Rally Championship.

A stage of last weekend's Rally Sweden was cancelled after Estonian driver Ott Tanak averaged almost 138km/h over it the first time in his M-Sport Ford Fiesta.

"This was too fast," said Finn Mahonen, who wants average speeds to be kept below 128.75km/h (80mp/h) and has flagged that, rather than relying on event organisers to do that, a regulation may be introduced promptly to ensure it.

WRC drivers query why the FIA had not foreseen the issue earlier with the introduction of the new cars.

Change of class for ARC champ Molly Taylor
The first woman to win the Australian Rally Championship last year, Molly Taylor, will defend her title in a new Subaru WRX STI that will run in Production Rally Car class rather than Group N (showroom cars).

"By going to the PRC class we can give Molly and co-driver Bill Hayes a little more leeway in the new car's performance, while retaining the essential Subaru WRI STI ingredients of turbocharged boxer engine and all-wheel-drive," Subaru Australia's managing director Colin Christie said.

As with the WRX that Taylor and Hayes drove to victory last year, the new car is being prepared by Tasmanian-based Les Walkden Rallying.

This year's ARC begins with the new Victorian round, the Eureka Rally at Ballarat, on March 17-19.

The other rounds are in south-west WA on April 21-23, Queensland's Sunshine Coast and Mary Valley on May 26-28, South Australia's Mt Crawford Forest and Barossa Valley on September 15-17, near Canberra on October 13-15 and as part of Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour, NSW, on November 16-19.

Meanwhile, Australia's former WRC competitor Chris Atkinson will contest the Global Rallycross Championship in the US driving a WRX STI that was revealed at the recent Chicago Autoshow.

Atkinson impressed in his GRC debut in the final three rounds last year.

The specification that the Vermont Sports Car-run Subaru team will field this season – starting in Memphis at the end of April – will be its fifth in four years.

Atkinson's teammates will be multiple US rally champion David Higgins and Swede Patrik Sandell, who has previously raced Fords.

The European-based World Rallycross Championship starts in Barcelona a month earlier than the GRC.
Formula 4 champ heads straight for Supercars
Rising star Will Brown, winner of the second Australian Formula 4 Championship and first Toyota 86 Racing Series last year, has opted to pursue the Supercars route immediately rather than open-wheelers.

The 18-year-old from Toowoomba, who was also runner-up to Leanne Tander in last year's Australian Formula Ford Series, will race in this year's Dunlop Super2 Series (previously known as the development series) for Eggleston Motorsport.

"I'm really focused on building a career for myself in the sport here in Australia and the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship is definitely my eventual goal," Brown said.

Eggleston Motorsport will field Triple Eight-built Holden Commodores for Brown and reigning Australian GT Endurance champion Nathan Morcom, of Sydney.