Geoffrey Harris•1 Apr 2013

NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Clouds over Ford's V8 Supercar future

Ford Performance Racing claims it wants to stay in the Blue Oval camp but the road ahead is uncertain for it – and more immediately for Dick Johnson Racing

FPR co-owner denies Ford ‘notice’ and talks with BMW

Ford’s future in V8 Supercar racing is suddenly in the spotlight.

“FORD SET TO QUIT V8s,” the magazine that most closely covers the sport, Auto Action, screamed last week.

Rod Nash, a co-owner of Ford Performance Racing, vigorously denied the manufacturer had flagged its departure at the end of this year – or that FPR was chasing a tie-up with an alternative manufacturer.

Nash, who bought FPR from Prodrive with fellow businessman and racer Rusty French four months ago, said he was quietly hopeful of striking a new deal to continue representing Ford on Australian circuits beyond this season. He denied that a recent trip to Europe with FPR team principal Tim Edwards involved a visit to BMW in Germany for talks about entering V8 Supercars.

But Edwards, when asked by Auto Action’s editor-at-large Mark Fogarty whether FPR was seeking a replacement for Ford, had “no comment whatsoever”. Ford itself has said it “is in discussions with Ford Performance Racing regarding possible future plans, but we do not disclose details about this or any other sponsorship arrangement”.

History tells us that where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.

And, apart from FPR – the only V8 Supercar team with Ford financial support this year – there is the matter of Dick Johnson Racing. DJR stumbled into this season with last-minute sponsorship that only guaranteed its appearance at Adelaide’s championship-opening Clipsal 500 and the non-championship races at Melbourne’s Formula One grand prix.

The GP was two weeks ago and the second round of the V8 Supercar Championship is now just a week away, yet there has been no announcement of backing to ensure the DJR Falcons of Tim Blanchard and New Zealander Jonny Reid are on the grid the rest of the year.

The Blue Oval has already lost long-time Falcon team Stone Brothers Racing, which is now owned by Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport and fielding AMG Mercedes E63s.

FPR fields four Falcons for Mark Winterbottom, Will Davison, David Reynolds and Alex Davison – the last of them entered by Charlie Schwerkolt, who has returned to the sport this year after his fall-out with Johnson in the 2010 season they won the championship with James Courtney.

Last week’s Auto Action cover story began by stating that “Ford is getting ready to dump V8 Supercars” and that the magazine “understands that Ford Australia has informed FPR that it won’t be continuing its factory backing beyond the end of this season”.

“While FPR maintains that it is still in talks with Broadmeadows (Ford Australia’s Victorian headquarters), there appears to be little prospect that the company will renew its multi-million-dollar support as Falcon sales are at an all-time low and its local manufacturing operations appear doomed,” Fogarty wrote.

He quoted Edwards saying that Ford had made no decision on whether it would continue to support FPR and that talks between those parties were “a work in progress”.

“We’re working very hard to get our Ford contract renewed as soon as possible,” Edwards said.

It was Nash who strenuously denied FPR had been in contact with any other manufacturer.

“It would not be helpful in our negotiations with Ford to enter into discussions with other manufacturers,” Nash told V8Supercars.com.au.

The report there said Nash and Ford Australia’s motorsport and sponsorships manager David Francis had been in “extended discussions” and that Nash had “expressed quiet confidence an agreement would be reached”.

“We are not the ones ringing saying, ‘Hey, we still need to talk about the future’,” Nash said.

“They (Ford) are actively in the frame and coming to us as well.

“There has absolutely been zero comment like that (Ford slashing its support for FPR).”

While not wanting to discuss the dollars involved, Nash said FPR wanted to retain “at least equal status” to its existing arrangement with the factory.

And he added: “Absolutely, definitely, there has not been any conversation in our organisation about BMW or any other manufacturer. You can say: ‘Why wouldn’t you consider the alternatives and leave the business exposed?’

“That’s all great, but the reason why we haven’t is because we have been in discussion with Ford all along and if we thought it was looking iffy then we would have been pursuing things.

“But you have to be conscious, when you are labeled the official factory team, the logo and name FPR, [that] you do have some ethical restrictions on you.”

Any extension by Ford Australia would need the support of marketing and sales vice-president Brad Brownell followed by president Bob Graziano before being tabled for board approval, and even then would require final sign-off from the company’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Shanghai.

And that couldn’t come before the new financial year.

Team orders row ‘settled’ – but for how long?

Red Bull Racing claims the dispute between Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel over the triple world champion defying team orders to let Webber win last Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix is now “settled”.

It seems that Webber has been backed from the very top of the Red Bull tree – in a text message from the energy drink company’s owner, Austrian tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, and even Helmut Marko, Mateschitz’s motorsport adviser who has made no secret at other times of his favouritism towards Vettel.

Marko said Vettel had been “distressed’ over what he did – overtaking the leading Webber after the Australian had turned down his engine to complete the last fifth of the race in formation ahead of the German.

“I don’t think he (Vettel) will do that again,” Marko said. “They don’t have to be completely on the same page, but it must be a solid working partnership.”

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said Vettel had apologised to all the team’s staff for disobeying orders.

“He’s accepted what he did was wrong,” Horner said. “It was the intent of the team that Mark should win the race.

“He (Webber) is big enough to know that there was no malice, no intent from the team to create any situation like that. He is in a car that is capable of winning GPs and hopefully going for a championship, so I’ve got no doubt that Mark will see out the season with us.”

Horner admitted that fans may want to see drivers racing each other but said his responsibility was to 600 people employed by the team and whose end-of-season bonuses were based on its position in the constructors’ world championship.

“The responsibility is to make sure that the team achieves its maximum,” he said.

It still is hard to envisage that Vettel, as a triple world champion, will settle for second place behind Webber unless he is clearly slower.

Although he has a longer contract with Red Bull than Webber, might this be the start of the end of a super-successful relationship between the German and the dominant F1 team of recent years?

He has often been linked to Ferrari but Fernando Alonso is locked in there until 2016.

The likelihood of a new marriage of McLaren with Honda engines from 2015 might prove particularly appealing to Vettel – and to McLaren if Mexican Sergio Perez does not come up to its expectations.

As reported here last week, the fall-out from the team orders in the Malaysian GP is likely to be greater, at least in the short term, at the Mercedes team than Red Bull Racing.

The German manufacturer’s new representatives at MercedesGP – Niki Lauda and Toto Wolff, who between them own 40 per cent of the team – took issue with team principal Ross Brawn keeping Nico Rosberg behind Lewis Hamilton.

Brawn’s days at Mercedes increasingly appear numbered. Perhaps the solution is for Brawn to take up the 16 per cent of the Williams team that Wolff still holds. That way Brawn could take charge technically of a British team and provide a genuine succession path for the ageing Sir Frank Williams. Brawn is eminently more qualified for that role than Williams’ daughter Claire, who this week was named his deputy.

Meanwhile, midfield team Force India has extended its Mercedes engine deal rather than switch to Ferrari, but it will cease its technical alliance with McLaren. And backmarker team Marussia has revealed that the cost of it staying in F1 is almost $1.9 million a week – or almost $100 million a year.

It is confident though that, with its star French rookie driver Jules Bianchi, it can outperform the other tail-end team Caterham.

The difference between finishing 10th and 11th in the constructors’ championship could be worth as much as $30 million in the carve-up of the F1 financial “pie”.

A whole new world for DTM

Germany’s DTM is much more likely than V8 Supercars to emerge as a dominant global touring car category.

As foreshadowed a couple of weeks ago, the DTM organizer Internationale Tourenwagen-Rennen this week announced a deal with GrandAm in the US with the aim of creating an American DTM series in 2015.

It already had struck an arrangement with Japan’s GT Series that could see a DTM-style championship there next year.

“The new technical regulations and the formed partnerships represent a global platform for the manufacturers involved,” said ITR chairman Hans Werner Aufrecht, founder of the HWA business in Germany that has built the Mercedes engines in the Erebus Motorsport V8 Supercars now being raced by Tim Slade, Lee Holdsworth and Maro Engel.

“It [the DTM template] is a platform offering them [manufacturers] the opportunity to race – on the same technical basis and with the best global promoters as guarantee for a competitive and attractive platform – in the core markets of North America, Europe and Asia.

“In addition to the six German and Japanese manufacturers – Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan and Toyota – which are already involved, the new cooperation quite obviously also offers a new and extraordinary field of activity for the American premium manufacturers such as Cadillac, Lincoln or Dodge SRT within the framework of future motorsport programs.

“Now we have to inform and thrill them together with our new partner GRAND-AM/IMSA and encourage them to get involved.”

Loeb finds a new mountain to climb

Rallying’s most successful driver, Frenchman Sebastien Loeb, is to tackle America’s renowned Pikes Peak hillclimb in the middle of the year.

The nine-time world champion synonymous with Citroen will drive a specially-prepared car from sister brand Peugeot – a 208 T16 – up the famous 156-turn, 20km course at the end of June.

Loeb has cut his WRC schedule to just four events this year – and already has two of them out of the way – while he develops a World Touring Car Championship entry for Citroen.

He recently cancelled a planned Le Mans 24-Hour sports car campaign.

America is relatively new territory for Loeb, although he won the X-Games in Los Angeles last year.

His visit to Pikes Peak is sure to create enormous interest after the famous drive there of another rallying legend, Ari Vatanen, in 1988.

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MOTORSPORT: Clouds over Ford's V8 Supercar future

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