MOTORSPORT: Bang, bang as seasons climax

Off the track, an American investment firm is suing F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and the sport’s major owner, CVC Capital Partners, seeking $650 million damages over the sale of the business seven years.

 The V8 Supercar season also is ending with a bang, even if it is a formality that Jamie Whincup will be the champion. New Zealander Shane Van Gisbergen’s exit from the sport for personal reasons at just 23 has been confirmed, a new contract with Stone Brothers Racing for the next three years, signed just months ago, torn up.

That leaves a prize vacancy in the team that, in association with Erebus Motorsport, will introduce AMG Mercedes-Benz E63s to V8 Supercar racing next year.

When NZ’s V8 Supercar round returns to Pukekohe next April it not only will be without Van Gisbergen -  a winner on the Hamilton street circuit last year, fourth in the 2011 championship and fifth this year – but, as things stand, perhaps without Greg Murphy, who has had so much success there and is so popular in his homeland.

It’s official now that Murphy is departing Kelly Brothers after next week’s Sydney 500. It seems the only way he might be on the V8 Supercar grid at Pukekohe in April is if he and Garry Rogers Motorsport can strike a deal.

Car of the Future testing has stepped up, with Holden Racing Team running at Phillip Island this week, but the team has lost senior members of its crew Mike Henry and Eric Pender, seemingly to the Kellys - who will be introducing Nissan Altimas to the sport next season.

 There was some good news on the V8 Supercar TV front this week, with healthier OzTam viewing figures for last weekend’s Winton round – an average of 365,000 in the five major state capitals for Saturday’s race, but with less than 100,000 in both Sydney and Melbourne, and 467,000 on Sunday, with more than 100,000 in the three biggest capitals. Brisbane had the best audience both days.

While the AFL, NRL and now soccer have struck new TV deals there is still no word on a V8 Supercar contract, although perhaps it will come in the lead-up to the Sydney 500 – along with the announcement of a non-executive chairman, expected to be James Strong, in place of departed executive chairman Tony Cochrane.

In America the NASCAR TV audience was reported this week to have been the smallest in five years with a 25 per cent drop in the 18-34 demographic.

A joint report by Sports Business Journal and Sporting News said viewing figures showed NASCAR “giving up all of the gains the sport made last year, which was its first annual ratings increase since 2005”.

Audiences for The Chase – the final 10 races to decide the championship, won by the departing Dodge, team owner Roger Penske and driver Brad Keselowski – were said to be down or flat for every race, with double-digit percentage drops for some.

Conversely, if Alonso wins he cannot afford Vettel to finish higher than fifth. If Alonso is second then Vettel must be no higher than eighth. If the Spaniard is third the German must be 10th or lower.

Red Bull will use Renault’s latest-spec alternators after the failure on Mark Webber’s car at last weekend’s new United States GP in Texas. Vettel has had two similar failures this season but Red Bull Racing had been resisting the switch to the latest alternators even though other Renault-engined teams have been using them.

Vettel’s aim for Interlagos is straightforward. “We want to win the race. Failing that, we want to be second or third.”

A podium will make him the youngest triple world champion at just 25 – and the youngest to have done it in consecutive years.

Alonso, six years older, has done a remarkable job in a Ferrari that is far from being the best car in the field.

While Alonso says that, coming into the finale second, he has “nothing to lose” and that it is a “very difficult” assignment, his consistency and the prospect of rain for the race make him a formidable contender.

A forgotten man of F1, Brazilian Nelson Piquet Junior, who was once Alonso’s teammate at Renault and blew the whistle on Flavio Briatore’s scandalous instruction for him to crash to enable the Spaniard to win the first Singapore GP, reckons Alonso could have won this championship driving a Lotus or a Sauber.

“The Ferrari is worse than those two cars, but sometimes a miracle is done because of Alonso,” Piquet said. “I think if he was in a Sauber or a Lotus he would be world champion easily.”

Alonso has been on the podium 12 times this season, including three times as the race winner. Vettel has had 10 podiums but five wins – four of them in the past six races.

Webber has won twice at Interlagos for Red Bull, including last year, and will be fighting this time to hold fifth place in the championship. He could end up as high as fourth if he wins at Interlagos and last-start winner Lewis Hamilton finishes lower than eighth in his final outing for McLaren before his move to Mercedes.

It will be the final farewell from F1 for Michael Schumacher, six years after he bowed out the first time.

The man who has seven titles, 91 GP wins, 155 podiums and 68 pole positions is going out with a whimper – he hasn’t scored a point in his past six races – but may yet deliver something special as his goodbye at 43, especially if it is wet.

Young Australian Daniel Ricciardo will be aiming for a big finish to his first full season in F1 and eighth or better could put him ahead of Toro Rosso teammate Jean-Eric Vergne. Ricciardo has scored points in twice as many races (six) as the Frenchman, who has had three eighth-place finishes.

Mexican Esteban Gutierrez is set to be confirmed as a Sauber driver for next year as his countryman Sergio Perez switches to McLaren in place of Hamilton. Gutierrez’s arrival and the signing of Nico Hulkenberg from Force India is likely to leave Japan’s Kamui Kobayashi out of a drive next season despite having finished on the podium in his home race recently.

Brazilian Bruno Senna’s days also look numbered at Williams, with young Finn Valterri Bottas in line for his seat as teammate to Venezualan Pastor Maldonado.

There are reports of financial difficulties at Lotus-Renault, with the staff of up to 500 said to be awaiting overdue pay cheques, although Coca-Cola’s energy drink brand Burn has been announced as a new sponsor since Kimi Raikkonen’s victory in Abu Dhabi three weeks ago.

Spanish team HRT is expected to fold without having scored a point in three years in F1.
Force India supposedly is to get an $80 million capital injection despite the recent predicaments of its co-owners, liquor and aviation tycoon Vijay Mallya and the Sahara group.

Ownership of the Mercedes team has been tidied up, with parent company Daimler acquiring the 40 per cent that was in the hands of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Aabar Investments.

South Korea’s GP at Yeongam has lost $36 million in its third year, although that was not as much as the first two years.

He has stuck by the contracts he has signed. Others have come to be unhappy simply because they found he had outsmarted them in the negotiation of those contracts.

However, now Ecclestone has been accused of dishonesty and “bald-faced lies” in a lawsuit by American investment firm Bluewaters Communications Holdings LLC.

Bluewaters also says in the suit filed in New York’s Supreme Court that Ecclestone has been “unjustly enriched by receiving an improper ‘finder’s fee’ ” of $65 million in the transfer of ownership of F1 from a syndicate of banks to private equity giant CVC seven years ago.

A German banker, Gerhard Gribkowsky, is serving an 8½-year jail sentence after his conviction for having accepted what was deemed a $44 million bribe from Ecclestone as part of that sale.

Ecclestone gave evidence as a witness at Gribkowsky’s trial but the 82-year-old F1 chief has not been charged with any offence.

He admitted the payment to Gribkowsky but said it was to avoid the German creating trouble for him with Britain’s tax authorities rather than a bribe.

Since the Bluewaters suit a week ago Ecclestone has said: “I couldn’t have been involved because I had nothing to sell.”

He had disposed of most of the shares in F1 to German TV tycoon Leo Kirch in 2001 and it was when Kirch went bust that a syndicate of banks - including BayernLB, majority owned by the German state of Bavaria and represented by Gribkowsky – assumed ownership of them.

Ecclestone said this week he had never even heard of Bluewaters, although the company’s lawsuit said its representative John Gregg had been told by Ecclestone that “the Germans” had liked CVC better than it as the buyer.

The Bluewaters suit came after news last month that BayernLB was seeking $400 million from Ecclestone over the sale to CVC.

Bluewaters’ argument is that it was prepared to pay 10 per cent more for the controlling stake in F1 than any other potential buyer but that Ecclestone, Gribkowsky and CVC conspired against it and that BayernLB received far less for its shares than it should have.

It claims to have been shut out of the deal because Ecclestone favoured CVC as the buyer because it would allow him to continue running F1, while he suspected the American would not.

“Ecclestone was bound by a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of his shareholders and to do everything possible to maximise the price that all shareholders received for their shares,” Bluewaters said.

“Instead Ecclestone manipulated the sale by using cash given to him by BayernLB and CVC to bribe Gribkowsky.

“In exchange Gribkowsky made sure that BayernLB sold the company for a lesser amount to CVC.

“Ecclestone did this because CVC would allow him to continue to run F1.”

Under the heading of ‘Bluewaters’ unbeatable offer’, the American company said: “Bluewaters was prepared to pay 10 per cent more … above any genuine bona-fide offer.”

And later it said: “Ecclestone bribed Gribkowsky so that he could maintain his position at F1. Gribkowsky, acting out of greed, accepted the bribe. …CVC was a knowing participant in the conspiracy.

“Gribkowsky and Ecclestone also purposefully took extensive steps to hide the bribe, creating sham corporations and a fake charitable foundation with which to channel the money.

“Even after Gribkowsky went on trial – and to this day – Ecclestone has prevaricated to the press and the courts about the reasons for the bribe and has repeatedly and dishonestly said that CVC was the high bidder and indeed the only bidder. Those statements have been bald-faced lies.

“The lies of Ecclestone and CVC’s Donald MacKenzie – coupled with the secret machinations of Ecclestone and Gribkowsky – made it impossible for Bluewaters to learn any facts which would have led it to discover the truth until after Gribkowsky’s arrest in January 2011.

“Buying F1 has turned out fabulously well for CVC. According to recent press reports, F1 generated CVC’s biggest return from a single investment in the past year.

“CVC has marked up the value of its remaining F1 stake to 4.7 times its initial investment. Those returns rightfully belong to Bluewaters and its financial backers (Apollo Global Management and King Street Capital Management, which Bluewaters said had agreed to provide $1 billion in finance).”

The 2005 sale of BayernLB’s 45.65 per cent of F1 for a reported $831 million valued the business at about $2 billion.

Recently, in the aborted float of the business in Singapore, F1 was valued at $10 billion.

Bluewaters concluded in its suit that “Ecclestone was motivated by a thirst for power. He wanted desperately to remain ‘F1 Supremo’. It was all he cared about. Gribkowsky and CVC were motivated by pure, simple greed. They placed money above integrity and honesty.

“Bluewaters has suffered substantial damages … exceeding $650 million.”