MOTORSPORT: Bathurst beckons a new hero

The new rule opens the way for the likes of little-known (outside motor racing) Steve Owen, Warren Luff or Luke Youlden to emerge as a Bathurst winner.

Owen is paired with Team Vodafone's Jamie Whincup, the V8 Supercar champion of the past two years and a triple Bathurst winner now trying to repeat his Falcon feats in a Holden Commodore built by the same Triple Eight Race Engineering.

Luff is co-driver to this year's championship leader James Courtney in the No18 Jim Beam/Dick Johnson Racing Falcon, also built by Triple Eight. Youlden meantime is sharing factory team Ford Performance Racing's lead entry with Mark Winterbottom, a frontrunner in the sport for several years now.

Owen, Luff and Youlden all have plenty of experience and form, mainly below the V8 Supercar main game, but not much profile. A Bathurst victory on Sunday could change all that in a hurry.

The likes of Courtney and Winterbottom too are yet to etch their name in the Bathurst history books as victors, although they are well established V8 Supercar stars.

Courtney could be on the way to the series title this year but success on Mt Panorama, despite the ownership turmoil in the team (mining magnate Nathan Tinkler has bought half of it for a reputed $4 million from Charlie Schwerkolt after the forklift entrepreneur's fallout with Dick Johnson), would set him apart from Marcos Ambrose. Ambrose won two national titles but not Bathurst before taking on NASCAR in America.

Winterbottom may yet be right in the contest for the season honours if he wins on Sunday and Courtney and Whincup, the other driver ahead of him, have a bad day.

But while Bathurst is renowned as a place for creating heroes, and a new winner or winners would be welcome.

The most talented combination in this weekend's field is Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife in the second Team Vodafone Holden. They already have nine wins at the Mountain between them – five by Skaife and four by Lowndes. And their victory in the 500km warm-up enduro at Victoria's Phillip Island four weeks ago was proof of the value of experience as the Whincup-Owen car struck trouble.

Lowndes has since shown his versatility by winning the Australasian Safari.

Not to be discounted at Bathurst is the Toll Holden Racing Team, the defending winner and back in the black and white colours in which it first won in 1990, when its drivers were Allan Grice and Win Percy.

HRT's Garth Tander is a staunch critic of the rule forbidding regular teammates to race together now but with Cameron McConville as his co-driver has the best qualified part-timer other than Skaife as his partner. A triumph by that pair on Sunday would be a fairytale for McConville after retiring at the end of last season – and also for Tander after HRT's horror season.

Will Davison won with Tander last year and this weekend is paired with David Reynolds. Victory seems an impossible dream for them, especially as Davison is having the year from hell after finishing runner-up to Whincup in the championship last year – his first with the Holden factory squad.

This weekend could be decisive in Davison's career in terms of whether he remains at HRT or, as looks increasingly likely, returns to a Falcon next season – perhaps with Ford Performance Racing or maybe even at Jim Beam Racing if Courtney suddenly departs.

Expatriate Talent at the Mount
The 2010 Bathurst field, with only 31 cars (20 Holdens and 11 Fords), doesn't have the international drivers that traditionally added some spice to it, but the Great Race has brought home some expatriate Aussie talent.

Ryan Briscoe, a frontrunner in the IndyCar series with the mighty Penske team, is in a Holden Commodore with Andrew Thompson this weekend. He will switch across to HRT for the Gold Coast 600 in a fortnight when there will be an influx of many more stars from overseas.

David Brabham, now a two-time American Le Mans Series champion as well as a Le Mans 24-hour winner and former Formula One driver, pairs up with Alex Davison in a Falcon.

Brabham's form at Phillip Island indicated he is a lot more comfortable with a big heavy V8 Supercar than on earlier visits and, if Davison has a day out, they could be a darkhorse combination.

Danish ace Allan Simonsen, who bases himself in Australia but races around the world, joins four-time Bathurst winner Greg Murphy in a Commodore – perhaps another outside chance, especially if it is an unpredictable race.

But if the victors are not from Team Vodafone or FPR the pairing to keep an eye on might just be Lee Holdsworth and David Besnard in one of the two Fujitsu Racing/Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodores.

They too could be new heroes of the Mountain come Sunday night.

Webber looks forward to sensational Suzuka
It's a massive double-header weekend for Australian motorsport fans, with Mark Webber trying to extend his Formula One world championship lead at the Japanese Grand Prix.

That race, at Suzuka, another track in the side of a mountain but which (unlike the Bathurst) television does not depict in all its glory, will start on the Ten Network's OneHD channel about the time the chequered flag is due to be waved at Bathurst.

Here's what Webber has to say ahead of the Japanese race, the fourth last round of the championship:

"Suzuka is a sensational venue for Formula One. Its fast, sweeping bends are a great challenge and I've never met a driver who doesn't enjoy racing there. It's one of the classic racetracks of the world.

"From a championship point of view, there's still everything to play for. I'm 11 points clear at the top of the table – my biggest margin of the year – but it's not much of a buffer with this year's new points system. I'd rather have it than not, but there's still a long way to go.

"You can't discount any of the top three teams in Japan this weekend. I'm optimistic that my Red Bull RB6 will be competitive, but I'm expecting Ferrari and McLaren to be up there as well...

"Consistency is going to win this championship and my aim this weekend is to maximise my opportunities and bring home as many points as possible."

Ricciardo in three-way tussle for Renault title
The young man in line to be Australia's next Formula One driver, Perth's Daniel Ricciardo, is in a three-way fight for the World Series by Renault title in Barcelona this weekend. The 21-year-old, already the F1 reserve driver for Red Bull Racing and sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso, has been the top rookie in the series for 3.5-litre Renault-powered Dallara open-wheelers with seven pole positions from the 15 races so far. He has had seven podium finishes, including three wins – the best of them at the Monaco GP.

Ricciardo has 113 points ahead of this weekend's two races – one Saturday, the other Sunday. He could become the first driver other than Poland's F1 star Robert Kubica to win the title in his first season in the category.

Russian Mikhail Aleshin, who also has won three races this year, leads on 116 points while Argentinian Esteban Guerrieri is third on 100 points but has won five races.

Ricciardo, winner of the British Formula Three Championship last year and the Formula Renault West European Championship in 2008, has vowed his "ready for the showdown" in Barcelona.

"In the past Barcelona has always been a really good circuit for me, so really there couldn't be a better place to decide the title. My team Tech 1 [a French outfit that has won the title twice before] has a great record there as well… I'm really looking forward to getting on track and showing what we can do."

Evans said the shift would take the event, held last year in the Tweed and Kyogle shires, away from "a great catchment area" of fans in southeast Queensland and that it could still encounter public and environmental opposition in its new location.

"I don't think it will be as successful as in the north," Evans said.

He has pledged to try to get up a replacement event in the Northern Rivers area – "something like a Targa Tasmania".

Other motorsport news snippets
The Red Bull energy drink company, already the owner of two F1 teams, may build a GP circuit in Thailand so that the country can host a round of the world championship.

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, reputed to be the world's richest man, is forging an association with the Sauber F1 team, with his Telmex company sponsoring Mexican driver Sergio Perez into a Sauber seat next season. Perez will replace German Nick Heidfeld. Heidfeld gave up his Mercedes reserve driver role to become the tester for next year's tyre supplier Pirelli, only to be recalled by Sauber to replace Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa.

Highcroft Racing, with which David Brabham has won his two American Le Mans Series titles, is considering an entry in some IndyCar races next year and then a full campaign in the open-wheeler series in 2012. Its driver would be Brabham's teammate, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, who raced against Australia's Will Power in the Champ Car days before Power came close to winning the IndyCar title this year.

Volkswagen is to have talks about entering NASCAR, perhaps in association with American billionaire and maestro team owner Roger Penske, according to reports in the US. In other Volkswagen Audi Group motorsport news Porsche is rumoured to be vying with Audi to get the nod as the group's entrant into F1. The Dakar is also rumoured to be back on Porsche's agenda (click here for more).

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