MOTORSPORT: Big milestones on world stage

Apart from Craig Lowndes’ 600th race start, there are other milestones being celebrated in the motorsport world this weekend.

Mark Webber turns 40 on Saturday, while it’s the 21st anniversary of Michael Schumacher’s Formula 1 debut – at Spa in Belgium, where Daniel Ricciardo won two years ago and the F1 circus resumes after its four-week break.

There’s a saying that life begins at 40, but perhaps it’s that life begins again at 40. In Webber’s case it began again a couple of years ago, when – after more than a decade in F1, accumulating nine wins from more than 200 Grand Prix starts and three times finishing third in the world championship – he became a Porsche factory driver in Le Mans-style sports car racing.

That switch yielded a World Endurance Championship title for him last year. Perhaps all there is left for him to achieve now is a Le Mans 24-Hour victory. Porsche has won that classic, perhaps the greatest race of all, the past two years. Might it be Webber’s turn next year? A delayed, but perfect, 40th birthday present that would be.

As the F1 circus gathered again this week in Belgium there was much sentimentality about Michael Schumacher, still at home out of public view, his condition not fully known by his fans, after his skiing accident almost 2¾ years ago.

It was at Spa in 1991 that Schumi made his F1 debut, with the Jordan team after Frenchman Bertrand Gachot had got himself into some strife.

He qualified a quite sensational seventh but was out of the race within a few hundred metres as his clutch disintegrated. But the world saw that a new star had arrived, and he reckoned some time later that he could have finished third in that race. Little did that matter, as a year later he notched his first GP win at the same revered track.

Ninety more wins and seven world titles were to follow – the last of them, in 2004, sealed at Spa.

Schumi entered F1 with the backing of Mercedes-Benz, for which he was a sports car racer – and with which he was to end his F1 career, in a winless three-year comeback.

It has been recalled this week that when Eddie Jordan asked Schumi’s then manager, ahead of his debut, whether he had raced at Spa, a circuit quite close to his German home town Kerpen, the manager, Willy Weber, replied: “I think about 100 times.”

In fact, he had never been to the circuit now regarded as F1’s best (since the original Nurburgring is no longer on the world championship calendar).

An article on formula1.com, headlined ‘White lies and bicycle rides – the facts behind Schumacher’s remarkable F1 debut’, also recounts that Schumi and Weber shared a room in a youth hostel that weekend.

And that, after just one GP with Jordan, Schumacher’s services were snatched by Flavio Briatore for his next start at Monza in Italy.

Although not recounted in the formula1.com article, F1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone had engineered that deal. On the eve of practice at Monza the German wonderboy had no idea who he would be driving at his second GP. Ecclestone famously said to him on the eve of practice: “Just go to bed, Michael. When you wake up in the morning you will be a Benetton driver.”

Holiday over, it’s back to work for the F1 boys
Daniel Ricciardo is refreshed after an American holiday and delighted that the resumption of this year’s F1 world championship, in which he is third, is at Spa.

“Spa is cool and the track is amazing,” Ricciardo said.

“I had a win there two years ago (one of his three in 2014), so it is a good track to return to for me.”

“It’s funny how spread out the [7km] circuit is … on one side you can have sun while it rains on the other.”

Ticket sales have been strong, with huge numbers of fans from the nearby Netherlands attending to support Ricciardo’s Red Bull teammate, Max Verstappen.

Ricciardo says that those who attend Spa are “real F1 fans” – and he’s excited that the next race, just a week later, is at Monza, where the fans are equally as fanatical and warm to the Aussie with the Italian name.

The big news ahead of the Belgian GP is that Lewis Hamilton will start at, or at least near, the back of the grid as he has already used the allowed quota of five power units for the season and will have new components this weekend.

Hamilton’s relegation in the starting line-up won’t guarantee victory for his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg, who trails him by 19 points in the championship after having led him by 43 at the start of May.

“I still need to beat the opposition (primarily Red Bull and Ferrari) and Lewis … always need to reckon with him because, with a bit of luck and safety cars at the right moment, there is no reason why he can’t come from far back,” Rosberg said.

“And, if we remember, four weeks ago I finished behind two Red Bulls [in fourth place at the German GP].”

Hamilton said the first half of the season had been “a bit of a roller-coaster”, with him winning six of the past seven GPs, including the past four in a row, after Rosberg won the first four. “I’m sure there will be more up and downs to come,” Hamilton said.

If he pulls of a miraculous victory on Sunday it will be his 50th, leaving him just one short of Alain Prost – but still 40 behind Schumacher’s seemingly unassailable record.

Power right in the hunt for IndyCar title
Will Power’s victory in the rain-delayed IndyCar round at Pocono’s ‘Tricky Triangle’ in Pennsylvania this week narrowed Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud’s series lead over the Toowoomba ace from 58 to 20 points with three races remaining.

The first of these is the resumption this weekend of the Texas Motor Speedway race that was postponed earlier in the season. The others are on road courses – Watkins Glen in upstate New York and Sonoma in California, where double points will be awarded.

Power, the 2014 champion, has won four of the past six races and veteran IndyCar  correspondent Robin Miller said this week that he was now driving like his tutor, Penske’s four-time Indianapolis 500 legend Rick Mears, in producing his best at the end of races.

A pitlane incident at Pocono, in which this year’s Indy 500 victor Alex Rossi’s car straddled Helio Castroneves’ cockpit, renewed safety concerns.

It was at Pocono last year that British driver Justin Wilson was killed by flying debris.

Moves by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) to introduce the ‘halo’ cockpit protector in F1 have been stalled until at least 2018. IndyCar and other open-wheeler series will only adopt such protection once it’s in F1.

Atkinson goes rallycross at last – with Subaru!
Chris Atkinson’s long-awaited debut in rallycross comes this weekend – at Atlantic City in New Jersey, near New York – and will reunite the Queenslander with Subaru, for which he drove in the World Rally Championship for four years.

Atkinson has been drafted into Subaru Rally Team USA for the ninth round of the Global Rallycross Championship, the primarily US series (as opposed to the World Rallycross Championship) and which is being led by American ex-F1 driver Scott Speed in a Volkswagen.

Atkinson will be at the wheel of a newly-built Subaru WRX STI with a lot more power than he was accustomed to in his 77 World Rally Championship starts, which included 41 stage wins and six podiums.

Subaru’s WRC team was folded in the global financial crisis and Atkinson later was briefly a development driver for Hyundai and did two WRC events with it in 2014.

“I’m used to a 254kW rally car and not a 447kW [rallycross] Supercar,” Atkinson said.

“It definitely goes well compared to what I’m used to.

“That was my biggest impression on [test driving] the car.

“The rest is quite similar to a rally car in terms of handling and dynamics, so I got used to it pretty quickly.

“I had a big smile on my face every time I got on the gas!”

The Bader Field in Atlantic City is the longest course in the GRC with 10 turns and 80 per cent tarmac and 20 per cent gravel.

Rally Oz’s place in the melting pot
Australia’s position on future WRC calendars has come back into the spotlight since the cancellation of the new Rally China that had been scheduled for the middle of next month.

Rally Australia on NSW’s Coffs Coast moved to the season finale this year, on November 17-20, happily surrendering its traditional September slot to make way for China.

However, China was cancelled recently, primarily (at least publicly) because of storm damage to the proposed course but with growing signs of financial problems as well.

The WRC factory teams, which have lost as much as $700,000 each through that cancellation, want China to have only ‘candidate’ or trial-event status next year.

That, and renewed lobbying by New Zealand to regain a WRC round, perhaps on three-year rotation with Australia, has brought fresh attention to Rally Oz’s place on future calendars.

Unlike Australia, NZ now has a regular, front-line driver in the WRC – Hayden Paddon, with Hyundai’s factory team, who has said that the series promotional chief Olvier Ciesla will  visit NZ at the end of the year for talks.

“We’re waiting for 2018 – 2017 is too early for NZ [to return to the calendar] because Australia is on a two-year contract,” Paddon told long-time WRC correspondent Martin Holmes.

“The [NZ] idea is that it should be three years NZ and then three years Australia.”

At least three stages of this year’s Rally Australia are to be shown on the Nine Network rather than Ten, with other preview and highlights coverage, while the fuller telecasts will be on pay service Fox.

The running of the new bull …
The second round of the Australian GT Endurance Championship at Sydney Motorsport Park on Saturday will see the Australian racing debut of the Lamborghini Huracan.

The entry from Lamborghini importer Trofeo will be driven by Jim Manolis and Ryan Millier.

Three other Lambos are in the 25-car field – two R-EXs and a Gallardo – along with seven Audi R8s, three Mercedes AMGs, three Ferraris, two McLaren 650Ss – including that driven to victory in the earlier round at Phillip Island by Nathan Morcom and Grant Denyer - two Aston Martin Vantages, a couple of Porsches, and a BMW M6.

A second Lamborghini Huracan is to be raced in next year’s Australian GT competition.

The final two rounds of this year’s GT endurance series will be in New Zealand – at Tony Quinn-owned Highlands and Hampton Downs.

Australian Jonathan Venter won one of the two races at last weekend’s GT Asia series round in Shanghai, driving an Absolute Racing Bentley Continental with Japan’s Keita Sawa.

Race of Champions for US, King Kinser quits, Junior still out
Finally, news from America.

The next Race of Champions – the usually-annual event that pits drivers and countries against each other in several forms of identical machinery – will be at Marlins Park baseball stadium in Florida next January 21-22.

It will be the first time the event has been held in the US.
Individual competition, in which Sebastian Vettel is the defending champion, will be on the Saturday with the ‘Nations Cup’ on the Sunday.

The Australian representatives have not been named yet. In London late last year they were Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Doohan, while Jamie Whincup also has participated in recent years.

The undoubted king of sprintcar racing, Steve Kinser, has retired – at 62.

Kinser, who made many trips to Australia to race in our summer, won the World of Outlaws series 20 times, the Knoxville Nationals 12 times and the King’s Royal seven times.

Once labelled the ‘Michael Jordan of sprintcar racing’, Kinser was rated by ESPN.com among the greatest 25 greatest race drivers of all time.

Dale Earnhardt Junior is unlikely to make NASCAR’s Chase this year, having already missed the past five rounds of the Sprint Cup and set to be absent from the next year.

That will leave Earnhardt, who has been suffering what have repeatedly been called ‘concussion-like symptoms’, only one race – at Richmond, Virginia – to qualify for The Chase, the ‘playoffs’ that decide the season’s champion.