MOTORSPORT: Beyond the Homebush hot air

It is a watershed weekend for V8 Supercars in terms of getting some serious traction in Australia's biggest city.

It's important for the sport that it makes its mark in the Harbour City, especially with the demise of Oran Park almost complete and Eastern Creek seemingly unwanted by its owner, the state government that instead is tipping millions of dollars into the Homebush street event.

The hype this week about this event, more formally the Sydney Telstra 500, has been -- not unexpectedly -- over the top.

NSW premier, for the minute at least, Nathan Rees has swallowed the spiel and become the cheer leader amid a "Superweek" of sport that supposedly, suddenly is going to make Sydney the country's sporting and events capital.

Rees has trotted out the line that the V8 Supercar event "will be broadcast to more than 130 countries internationally".

Like those who prepared his script, Rees provided no list of what these countries are, or when they will be screening the two 250km races. And don't expect him to come forward after the event with authoritative reports on the audiences in each of the however many countries show anything of them.

And V8 Supercar executive chairman Tony Cochrane, after failing -- perhaps even forgetting -- to give the Homebush event anything like a "pump" in his lengthy chat on ABC Radio in NSW and Queensland last week, told the Will Swanton of the Sydney Morning Herald "the international interest (in V8 Supercar racing) is tremendous. I've just come back from the Middle East -- we're a big sport there". Yeah, and another two men and a dog would double the Middle East crowds.

Attendances shouldn't be a problem this weekend -- at least not in appearance. The location is handy and lots of tickets have apparently been sold. This is not only a largely taxpayer-funded motor race but also, on Friday and Saturday nights, a (largely state-sponsored) rock concert.

Another comment from Cochrane that tickled us this week was that "we (V8 Supercars Australia) have built from scratch to become a major success".

Cocho fails the subject of history. Some would question his mathematics, or at least accounting, too after Swanton quoted him saying, "It's not like someone gave us a $20 million head start." Someone like various state governments?

But back to history. Without former Channel 7 sports -- and particularly motor sports -- director Mike Raymond and former Shell motorsport boss Tom Smith there would not have been the revival of V8 touring car racing in the early 1990s that was the platform from which V8 Supercar racing was built.

And there will have been others further back who played a part in getting the wheels turning on what made V8 racing such a feature of the Australian motor sport landscape.

Anyway here we are in the last month of 2009 and V8 Supercars are about to turn their first laps of the Homebush precinct where the 2000 Olympics were staged. Inevitably there is considerable, dare we say great, interest in how it all goes.

It's in the interest of the sport that it goes well and that, when it's over and the fact is sorted from the fiction (if ever), it's a success. But already, in a purely sporting sense, it's almost a non-event.

What all the hype so far disguises -- and may well have been cranked up to fever pitch to disguise -- is that the real contest on the track is as good as over.

Jamie Whincup leads Will Davison by 281 points and needs only another 20 points this weekend to secure a well-deserved second straight championship -- and another for Team Vodafone/Triple Eight Race Engineering before it switches from Ford Falcons (bodyshells and engines at least) to Holden Commodores next year.

When Olympic athletes went to the start line at Homebush nine years ago they were pretty well on a level playing field, barring a few drug cheats.

When teams in the NRL, AFL, A-League and Super 14 start a big match, indeed any match, they are equal, zero scores apiece, they have a contest, there is a winner and a loser. But -- while V8 Supercar racing has a big chance to show its wares this weekend -- the sporting contest is almost inconsequential.

Davison went to Perth two weeks ago knowing his title chances in what has been a fine debut season with Toll Holden Racing Team were pretty much shot. He came away from the West with those chances even slimmer. Well nigh impossible.

Although Whincup has done his best this week to sing from the Cochrane hymn book in the interests of talking up the Sydney Telstra 500, trying to insist this is "our grand final ... the highlight of our year", the reality is that it would take a wipeout like he had at Hamilton, New Zealand, last year to deny him the second title.

A 28th place finish in Sydney's opening 250km race will give him the points he needs to secure it. And if not Saturday then Sunday.

If it was a game of football we'd be saying that Whincup was starting with a 25-goal advantage. It's not Whincup's fault that it's come to that. Rather it is evidence of his sustained brilliance, and that of his Roland Dane-led team that he/they are in this position.

The rest of the V8 Supercar field have the chance to make big impressions, even some history, over the course of the 500km on Saturday and Sunday, but in the purest sporting sense it inevitably will be anti-climatic.

In any case, though, once the (starting) "flag" drops at least the bulldust might stop ... at least for a little while.

>> Australia's new open-wheeler star Daniel Ricciardo begins a three-day Formula One test at Jerez in Spain tonight (Tuesday) with Red Bull Racing, which won the last three grands prix of the F1 world championship -- and six for the year (two by Australian Mark Webber). The full-time F1 drivers are now precluded from testing until February, so these three days are for rookies. Ricciardo says he's feeling relaxed, not under any pressure, but it could be a good benchmark with almost another 20 youngsters running there, although he is the only one who looks guaranteed of track time on all three days.

>> Volkswagen has finally conceded it is interested in F1, but only in supplying engines -- and not until 2012, when the existing "freeze" on modifications is lifted. Autosport has the story from VW's key motor sport representative, German ex-F1 driver Hans-Joachim Stuck. Elsewhere we've noted that Stuck says VW is not interested in NASCAR, despite his recent look at American stock car racing.

>> F1 will return to North America next year, with the revival of the Canadian Grand Prix on June 13. All levels of government there are contributing to get the race on the streets of Montreal back up, after North America was left -- following the demise of the US GP at Indianapolis -- without an F1 round for the first time in the history of the world championship this year.

>> BMW has sold its F1 team back to its Swiss founder Peter Sauber after the failure of a buyout by the mysterious Qadbak Investments, which supposedly represented Middle East and European family investors. Sauber is not guaranteed an entry next season, but in any case is working on a Ferrari-engined car -- although it will cut its workforce from 388 people to about 250.

>> Ferrari's Felipe Massa is back racing, in karts at least, after the head injuries he suffered at the Hungarian GP more than four months ago.

>> 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, out of F1 for three years now, has been spotted around the headquarters of the new Malaysian-owned Lotus team in Britain.

>> Simon Evans, winner of three of the past four Australian rally championships, is to test a Super 2000 Peugeot in France tomorrow (Wednesday) with a view to a limited campaign next year in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, although he and co-driver wife Sue "are still quite a way off in regard to the money we need to get there". The IRC is a series of 11 events across three continents, including the Monte Carlo and San Remo rallies and the Safari -- which were previously part of the World Rally Championship.

>> Kimi Raikkonen has been linked to a Red Bull-sponsored WRC drive with Peugeot, supposedly as a teammate to six-time world champion Sebastien Loeb, but the manufacturer has denied it.

>> The inspirational Alex Zanardi, on prosthetic legs since his horrendous Champ Car crash in Germany in 2001, has retired from the World Touring Car Championship, in which he raced a BMW in recent years, scoring four race wins. The 43-year-old Italian wants to compete in wheelchair sports at the 2012 London Paralympic Games.

>> USA Today reports that American TV network ABC's ratings for the NASCAR races in the second half of the just-completed season were down 5 per cent on last year and 8 per cent on two years ago, and that Fox's numbers -- for early season races -- were down 10 per cent on last year and 9 per cent on 2007.

>> Awaiting word on investigator David Williams' report on the future of the Gold Coast's SuperGP. Here's what the Gold Coast Bulletin has had to say about it
   

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