MOTORSPORT: Colossus teams fight for Indy crown

Will Power's not in the hunt for the major American open-wheeler title this time, but it could go to another Queensland-born driver, while NASCAR boots Marcos Ambrose's former crew chief.

Scott Dixon and rival take 10-place penalties for finale

Australians don’t have a lot of reason to follow IndyCar racing these days.

Not only does the American open-wheeler series not come to the Gold Coast any more, but Will Power, the Australian who runner-up in it the past three years, is only seventh this season and fellow Aussie Ryan Briscoe, another regular in the series for several years, is now a part-timer and is only 25th on this season’s points table.

But Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon is on the cusp of a third IndyCar crown with the final round at California’s Fontana Speedway east of Los Angeles this weekend.

It will be a contest between iconic teams Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske, with Brazilian Helio Castroneves representing Roger “The Captain” Penske, after Ryan Hunter-Reay took a rare title by an American in the series for Andretti Autosports last year.

Castroneves led for 14 of the 18 rounds already run this season but finds himself 25 points behind Dixon going into the 500-mile (800km) Fontana race.

Both will start back in the back, opting already to incur grid penalties, but a fifth-place finish will be enough for Dixon to add a third title to those he won in 2003 and 2008.

There are other reasons apart from the Indy finale to focus on America today, but there are matters of import at home too.

In a follow-up last Monday to the Bathurst 1000 we mentioned the TV audience for the Great Race – an average of 1.263 million viewers in the five major state capitals, up 10,000 on last year and the best for six years – but were awaiting a bigger, broader picture.

Courtesy of the Seven Network, we now see that the average national audience for Australia’s major domestic motor race this year was 2.018 million viewers.

That means there was an average of another 755,000 viewers for the telecast in the regional areas outside the five major capitals.

And Seven said figures from official ratings agency OzTAM indicated the peak audience in the five capitals alone was 1.932 million viewers – or more than 60 per cent of the free-to-air TV audience.

While we pointed out that the audience for the later Top 10 Shootout at Bathurst last Saturday was well down on last year, a Seven Network weekly report highlighted that V8 Supercars still dominated in total viewers across Saturday afternoon.

It said that day’s telecast from Bathurst was “Saturday’s most-watched programme for 16-39s and 18-49s and one of the top two most-watched programmes for 25-54s”.

So, while Bathurst is not what it was as a TV drawcard a decade and more ago, it’s still a major event on the small screen – and certainly still by far the biggest of the year for Australian motorsport.

While Ford Performance Racing has celebrated its overdue but hugely deserved victory by Mark Winterbottom and Steve Richards in the Bathurst 1000 this week, FPR’s other top driver Will Davison continues to weigh whether to remain with the team next year or accept an offer from Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport to race one of its AMG Mercedes-Benz E63s.

Series leader and Bathurst runner-up Jamie Whincup will compete for the second time in the Race of Champions in Bangkok in mid-December – a week after the Sydney 500 – against a field that again will include Michael Schumacher and new world rally champion Sebastien Ogier.

Holden Racing Team is working to straighten and rebuild the Commodore crashed at Mt Panorama last Sunday by Greg Murphy for him and James Courtney to drive again next week at the Gold Coast 600.

Meanwhile, Murphy is home in New Zealand this weekend for the second endurance race in the V8 SuperTourer Championship at Hampton Downs, hoping to stretch his 74-point series lead over Ant Pederson.

Back in America, Scott Dixon Is finding it “kind of hard to believe” that he leads the Indy series ahead of the final round – and as his long-time Ganassi teammate Dario Franchitti continues his recovery from his horror crash at Houston two weeks ago after further ankle surgery in Indianapolis.

Dixon and Castroneves, the only driver who can deny him a third title, will take 10-place grid penalties each at Fontana for opting to change engines although those they used at Houston – where Castroneves lost the series lead after gearbox troubles in both legs of the “double-header” – had done less than 2000 miles (3200km).

The pair, and their teams, figure that starting position is not crucial on the long oval.

Honda, Ganassi’s engine supplier, and Chevrolet, the supplier of Penske’s engines, are tied on points in the manufacturers’ championship. All the chassis are built by Dallara.

IndyCar has been a series with more than its share of problems in recent years, and it has dropped its Brazilian round next season, but there’s a scene-setter on the finale and a nice perspective on the rivalry between the Penske and Ganassi teams penned by Chris Estrada of Associated Press.

NASCAR this weekend is at Talladega. It’s the sixth round of The Chase for the Championship, in which Toyota driver Matt Kenseth narrowly leads five-time Chevrolet-mounted champion Jimmie Johnson.

It will be the 10th Sprint Cup start at the famed Talladega superspeedway for Australian Marcos Ambrose, but he’s never bettered his fourth place on debut there.

Ambrose’s former crew chief at Richard Petty Motorsports, Todd Parrott, this week was banned indefinitely by NASCAR for substance abuse.

Parrot has been associated with 31 Sprint Cup race wins – the third most among active crew chiefs, and including Ambrose’s two road-course Cup victories at Watkins Glen.

He was the crew chief to Dale Jarrett when he won the 1999 Cup with Robert Yates Racing and the 1996 and 2000 Daytona 500s.

Parrot was switched off Ambrose’s Ford to that of his Petty teammate Aric Almirola in September last year.

The team said this week it was “very disappointed that one of our employees did not meet our expectations and we completely support NASCAR, their policies and final decisions when it comes to the substance abuse policy”.

Parrot has been in NASCAR most of his life and also has worked with Ernie Irvan, David Gilliland and Elliott Sadler at Robert Yates Racing, Bobby Labonte at Petty and Matt Kenseth at Roush Fenway Racing.

Parrot’s father Buddy was Richard “The King” Petty’s crew chief and his younger brother Brad is crew chief to Carl Edwards, a top Ford driver in NASCAR.

It’s also the final round of the Rally America Series this weekend – something we would not normally have an interest in, but young Australian star Brendan Reeves and his co-driver sister Rhiannon could clinch the two-wheel-drive title in the Ford Fiesta R2 they are sharing in the Lake Superior Performance Rally in Michigan.

They have won that category in all four rounds they have contested after missing the first two rounds. They often have outpaced turbocharged four-wheel-drive entries.

Reeves trails leader Andrew Comrie-Pickard by three points but a fifth victory would secure the title – but if he were to finish second and his rival third the Aussie driver would miss out on a countback.

“Mr Excitement” Ken Block is a contender for the outright American rally title in a Ford Fiesta but starts the final round five points behind Subaru-driving rival David Higgins.

Although not on the podium at the first two rounds, Block has won the most stages in the championship – 48 of 98 – and has promised a particularly exciting finale – “not just for ourselves, but for the fans as well”.

Picture courtesy of Curt Smith/Wikimedia Commons

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.

MOTORSPORT: Colossus teams fight for Indy crown

Tags