MOTORSPORT: Australian rallying can’t keep its kings

The Australian Rally Championship (ARC) begins this weekend and, as it was last year, it’s without its reigning champion driver.

The cost of competing has taken its toll on Victorian Eli Evans, who claimed his fourth national title last year in a leased Skoda Fabia R5 after starting the season in a Mini Cooper AP4.

Nathan Quinn from Coffs Harbour was the 2017 champion in a Mitsubishi Evo but didn’t defend his title last year for the same reason. Nor is Quinn among the 48 entries for this weekend’s Forest Rally at Busselton and around timber town Nannup (WA) Western Australia.

On the other side of the coin, Toyota has raised its support for Canberra’s young Bates brothers – Harry, 24, and Lewis, 22 (sons of another four-time champion, Neal) – in a pair of all-wheel-drive Yaris AP4s. Harry’s is brand new, while Lewis graduates from the old Corolla S2000 to the Yaris the elder sibling drove the past two years.

Subaru re-committed too, with its 2016 champion Molly Taylor in a new Production Rally Car-class WRX STI, again prepared in Tasmania – this one prepared by Craig Brooks’ Devonport-based Orange Motorsport Engineering rather than Launceston’s Les Walkden Rallying.

Taylor, who won the Forest Rally in 2017 and was third last year, said she was “really excited by the gains we’re achieving in the new car”.

“There are lots of detail changes that combine to give us a really competitive package against the AP4 and R5 cars,” she said.

“There’s a lot of anticipation. We’re chomping at the bit to get out there.”

WA champion John O’Dowd has taken what he calls “a massive step” from the production-based Subaru WRXs he’s driven previously to the Skoda that Evans previously drove and has the accomplished Toni Feaver as his co-driver.

“Below World Rally Championship level, the Skoda R5 is clearly the car to have. Skoda haa been developing the Fabia R5 for years, and it has been successful all over the world,” O’Dowd said.

“The car I’ve purchased has a great history, it’s really well sorted and is going to be competitive straight out of the box.

“(Perth-based) Race Torque Engineering are looking after the preparation and servicing for me and they have won multiple Aisa-Pacific titles running these cars.

Tom Wilde is another top WA contender, from Busselton, and driving a WRX prepared in Perth by Rob Herridge’s Maximum Motorsport.

Second-year NSW competitor Luke Anear has last year’s championship runner-up Steve Glenney alongside him as co-driver in another Subaru.

The Activ RallySport of 2011 national champion Justin Dowel is fielding three G4 cars – Hyundai i20s for Dowel’s 18-year-old son Troy (who is on a break from chemotherapy for a rare form of leukaemia) and Irishman JJ Hatton, and a Ford Fiesta for another Irishman, Richie Dalton – as well as a Subaru for the returning Darren Windus.

The Forest Rally starts tonight (Friday) with competitors having two sprints at Barnard Park on Busselton’s foreshore before eight stages around Nannup, the last of them at the local oval. The second heat begins with another sprint at Barnard Park followed by another eight stages in the bush.

Michael Schumacher’s 20-year-old son, Mick, was quick and quite at ease during his first Formula 1 test this week – and some Italian media already have him replacing Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari next year.

The new Schu initially drove the Ferrari SF90 that was the pacesetter at last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, being second fastest to Max Verstappen in the Red Bull-Honda on Bahrain’s Sakhir track, and was sixth fastest the next day driving a Ferrari-powered Alfa Romeo Sauber C38.

“It seems like it worked well, so I’m happy,” said Schumacher, the reigning European F3 champion now racing in F2.

“I was able to improve and to find the limit.

“I’m taking it one step at a time. I want to arrive into F1 being a complete racing driver, being as prepared as possible.

“Time will tell if that’s next year, if that’s the years to follow.”

However, Italian newspapers this week wrote off Vettel after he was outperformed by new teammate Charles Leclerc last weekend.

Corriere della Sera said the four-time world champion had been “humiliated” by the 21-year-old, second-year F1 driver.

“Ferrari looks to a future in which there is no room for Vettel. Mick Schumacher could soon be at the side of the talented Charles Leclerc.”

La Repubblica said “Leclerc is the true rival of Lewis Hamilton” while La Gazzetta dello Sport said Ferrari had “one certainty and two problems – the certainty is Charles Leclerc and the two problems are reliability and Sebastian Vettel”.

La Stampa said Vettel needed to “get a mental coach and shave the moustache”.

Schumacher wasn’t the only famous new name at the Bahrain test – Pietro Fittipaldi, the 22-year-old grandson of Emerson, drove for American team Haas.

Daniel Ricciardo was midfield in Renault’s RS19, while Fernando Alonso tested McLaren’s MCL34.

Mercedes-Benz has given the Silver Arrows 01 Formula E electric open-wheeler its first track test.

Mercedes’ head of motorsport and its F1 team principal, Toto Wolff, said the run at Italy’s Varano track, with Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne and Swiss-Italian Edoardo Mortara driving, had “laid a solid foundation for further development”.

“We brought together our experts from our [four] different sites [in Germany and Britain] and had a successful three days,” Wolff said.

Mercedes already is dabbling in Formula E via the HWA Racelab and Venturi teams.

Bathurst City Council is “looking for options for a fifth event” at Mt Panorama as soon as next year.

“Council is keen to hear from experienced motorsport promoters about their ideas,” mayor Graeme Hanger said.

Expressions of interest close at 4pm on Tuesday, April 23.

An endurance race for the new 2-litre TCR Australia series is being mentioned as one possibility to add to the 1000, 12-Hour, Six-Hour and Challenge Bathurst.

The Dakar Rally looks to on the move to the Middle East.

There have been reports this week of an imminent announcement of a five-year deal in which the organiser, France’s Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), will take the marathon event to Saudi Arabia next year and then look to expand into countries like Oman, Jordan and Egypt.

ASO also is said to have been in negotiations with South Africa.

The Dakar traditionally started in Paris and ventured into Africa but moved to South America a decade ago because of terrorism fears. Sinc then Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador have gone cold on the event and this year it was run entirely within Peru.