MOTORSPORT: Australia's new international star

WA teenager's European title makes him our best F1 hope
While the Formula 1 world championship will be decided between McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari's Felipe Massa in Brazil in two weeks, Australia may just have a new driver on the way to F1.

Perth teenager Daniel Ricciardo early today clinched the Formula Renault West European Cup at the final round in Barcelona, pipping his Spanish championship rival Roberto Merhi for the title.

And 19-year-old Ricciardo scored a brilliant victory in the final round of the Formula Renault Eurocup to finish a narrow runner-up in that series to Finn Valtteri Bottas.

These were not one-off events, but the conclusion to season-long championships at many of Europe's finest circuits that regularly host grands prix.

Ricciardo has won 15 of 29 races in the two Formula Renault series this year, often competing against up to almost 50 other young racers from around the world.

The cars they race are 2-litre open-wheelers that reach speeds of more than 260km/h. It is super-competitive racing and many of today's F1 drivers have come through the category.

Kimi Raikkonen, world champion with Ferrari last year, was the first to come from Formula Renault -- in Britain -- to F1. He had done so few races he was on a probationary licence in his early GP days.

Felipe Massa was also a Formula Renault racer, in Italy.

Ricciardo is still a long way from F1, but he has things going for him.

The French team SG Formula for which he has driven this year has been sponsored by Red Bull, the energy drink company that owns the F1 team Mark Webber races for as well half of another F1 team, Scuderia Toro Rosso (formerly Minardi).

As one of the stars of Red Bull's junior driver program Ricciardo is in regular contact with Dr Helmut Marko, the Austrian former F1 driver who is the key motorsport adviser to Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz.

Marko can make -- and break -- F1 careers.

Ricciardo was a karting wiz in and around Perth in his early days but it was 2005 before he won a state karting title. He did three Formula Ford races, under the wing of Brett Lupton -- the Perth motor racing identity who steered Garth Tander's early car racing career.

While Perth is often seen as isolated, in a sporting and commercial sense, growing up there perhaps worked in Ricciardo's favor as his eyes were more on Asia and Europe than Australia's east coast and getting caught up in the traditional structure of national racing.

Ricciardo's parents, Joe and Grace, shelled out $3000 for him to attend a Formula BMW training course in the Middle East -- and it may have turned out to be the best money they ever spent.

Ricciardo gained a scholarship to do the 2006 Formula BMW Asia-Pacific Championship, in which he finished third.

That got him a place at the Formula BMW world finals at Valencia in Spain, where he was fifth -- and won a special award for his performance. Someone was noticing that this kid had talent.

Last year he based himself in Italy -- at the Formula Medicine fitness training centre at Viareggio, where Massa, BMW-Sauber F1 race winner Robert Kubica and Australian IndyCar driver Ryan Briscoe did time in their teens.

Ricciardo's progress in Italy brought him to the attention of Red Bull's talent spotters.

They installed him at SG Formula and provided the backing for him to have a shot at winning two increasingly important open-wheeler titles. Midway through the season he led both championships. Ultimately he has come away with one title and narrowly missed out on the other.

The Eurocup outcome may well have been different if not for a wrong call on the set-up for Saturday's wet, penultimate race.

Ricciardo had qualified on pole but finished sixth, giving Bottas a 13-point advantage going into Sunday's finale.

"I virtually had no front tyres left near the end of Saturday's race -- we had unfortunately chosen the wrong set-up for the conditions -- and basically lost any chance," Ricciardo said.

He dominated Sunday's Eurocup race but Bottas took the title with his fourth place.

"That was a race made to measure -- I qualified on pole position, set the fastest lap of the race and took the win," Ricciardo said. "Unfortunately my efforts just weren't quite enough to win the Eurocup despite this victory.

"But, at the end of the season, I'm obviously very pleased with my 15 wins in both series. And I'm very happy about the West European title."

Apart from all his race wins, Ricciardo chalked up three second places, a third, 13 pole positions and 12 fastest laps in the two series.

F1 is no guarantee for him, although he must be the best chance of any of the young Australians with that aspiration at the minute.

The only other genuine prospect appears to be Victorian Tim Blanchard, who was runner-up in this year's British Formula Ford Championship.

A season, or two, of Formula Three in Europe is the most likely next step for Ricciardo. And from there he could perhaps follow in the tracks of Webber, especially as he already has that Red Bull connection.

Let's not yet proclaim him our next Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones -- Australia's two F1 world champions. But Ricciardo has already said that simply making F1 is not his goal. He wants to emulate his hero, Ayrton Senna.

Not sure that anyone can be another Senna, but how wonderful it would be if someone could -- and he was an Australian. For starters, though, it will be terrific to see another Aussie just get to F1.

Barring disaster, it must be Hamilton this time
So Lewis Hamilton is exactly where he was a year ago -- two weeks from becoming F1's youngest world champion, seven points in front with one race to go. And he will be the first black world champion.

Surely this time Hamilton will do it, although the final race will be on the home ground of his only rival, Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa. Last year Massa's teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, stole the crown ahead of Hamilton.

This time though the McLaren looks to be clearly the stronger car and Hamilton's driving has been consistently superior, even if not always to the liking of his rivals -- not just the Ferarri pair, but all of them.

Sao Paulo's Interlagos circuit may yet provide a surprise, even another disaster for Hamilton like last year, but it would be an injustice if he were not to win this championship at just 23.

If Massa wins at home Hamilton only needs to finish fifth to be sure of it.

Ferrari most likely will walk away with the constructors' title, and even that will be a little flattering for it this year.

Hamilton has carried McLaren on the track while his teammate Heikki Kovalainen has been massively disappointing, although he has won a GP -- a grave injustice when BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld still hasn't.

The consensus on yesterday's Chinese GP was that it was pretty boring, but we enjoyed it -- perhaps simply because the telecast has improved considerably the past couple of years.

Although the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) stated on October 28, 2002, that "team orders which interfere with the race result are prohibited" nobody should be surprised that there is no word from officialdom on Raikkonen gifting Massa second place in the closing laps at Shanghai.

It might have been different had the cars swapping places been a color other than red and with prancing black horses.

Too often F1 delivers too little to even its staunchest fans, but in an otherwise fairly processional race we were delighted to see Heidfeld finish fifth (behind Fernando Alonso's Renault) from ninth on the grid and his teammate Robert Kubica sixth from 11th at the start.

For Aussie Mark Webber it was a weekend that largely mirrors his career -- he qualified sixth but dropped 10 places on the grid because of an engine change and finished 14th. Not much to write home about there.

Timo Glock's seventh place in Shanghai put him ahead of Webber in the drivers' championship.

Webber is now 11th on points -- effectively in the back half of the field. Webber also found himself in China having to clarify remarks he had made about Hamilton, which were interpreted as him saying that the McLaren superstar would kill someone on the track if he didn't change his ways.

Webber's frankness is greatly appreciated by many in and around F1, but again we can't help wondering whether a driver in his position -- with an average of less than one point a race -- would not be better focussing even more on his driving and his team's performance.

Once there is no room for improvement on those scores it might be time to talk about others.

F1 drivers' world championship standings after 17 of 18 races -- Lewis Hamilton 94 points, Felipe Massa 87, Robert Kubica 75, Kimi Raikkonen 69, Nick Heidfeld 60, Fernando Alonso 53, Heikki Kovalainen 51, Sebastian Vettel 30, Jarno Trulli 30, Timo Glock 22, Mark Webber 21, Nelson Piquet 19, Nico Rosberg 17, Rubens Barrichello 11, Kazuki Nakajima 9, David Coulthard 8, Sebastien Bourdais 4, Jenson Button 3.

F1 constructors' world championship standings -- Ferrari 156 points, McLaren-Mercedes 145, BMW Sauber 135, Renault 72, Toyota 52, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 34, Red Bull-Renault 29, Williams-Toyota 26, Honda 14.

Final race -- Brazilian Grand Prix, Interlagos, Sao Paulo, Sunday, November 2 (early Monday, November 3, Australian time).

Labor loss in by-election raises Homebush query
Big swings against the Labor government in NSW at by-elections over the weekend -- including loss to the Liberals of the once safe-Labor seat of Ryde in which Sydney Olympic Park sits.

Anyone is entitled to wonder whether this might have implications for the Sydney 400 -- the new V8 Supercar street race at Homebush in December next year, especially as there is no indication the contract for it is actually signed yet.

New NSW premier Nathan Rees admitted voters had given his government a "lift your game, or else" message.

"This is a shellacking that I need to learn from -- and learn the message that's within it," Rees said.

There have been signs of splintering on the Homebush race within Labor ranks and Greens MP Lee Rhiannnon has said the government needs to take heed of local concerns about the Supercar event.

Maybe, just maybe, the street race is not really over the line yet.

How Ford tried to cut loose from Team Kiwi
A very interesting story out of New Zealand about how Ford tried to undo its sponsorship with Team Kiwi Racing in the lead-up to Bathurst but the case was bungled. Read it here

Allan Simonson, the Dane who has raced a lot in Oz, put an Aston Martin DB9 on pole position for the FIA GT Championship round at Zolder in Belgium -- 0.219 seconds ahead of Karl Wendlinger, the German ex-F1 driver known most for his crash at Monaco two weeks after Ayrton Senna's death at Imola.

Simonson was pinged for failing to slow for a yellow flag and had to start 11th.

He and co-driver Philipp Peter wound up fourth in the two-hour race, behind a Maserati MC12, a Corvette Z06 and Wendlinger's DB9.

Meanwhile, the American Le Mans Series ended its 10th season at Laguna Seca, California, at the weekend -- and the Sebring 12-hour at the start of next season will be its 100th race.

David Brabham notched his third ALMS pole position of the year at Laguna Seca in a Prototype 2 category (Honda) Acura.

It was the 10th pole of Brabham's career in ALMS, which he rates the world's most enjoyable race series -- and which he has competed in since the start.

He led the weekend's race early but he and co-driver Scott Sharp were finally classified 15th. Next season Brabham will be in an LMP1 Acura.

Team Penske's IndyCar drivers, Australian Ryan Briscoe and Brazilian Helio Castroneves, were sixth in the Laguna Seca race in a Porsche RS Spyder on the way to this weekend's Gold Coast Indy.

More on that event during the week.

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