MOTORSPORT: Did Australia take the wrong turn way back?

We can hardly claim it as a brainwave. Perhaps a mild apparition.

More of that later, but just a couple of clues: is Australia now paying too high a price for its European racing heritage? And was Bob Jane on the right track 20 years ago?

But first a snapshot of the weekend's racing.

Lots of fuss during that round about Mark Skaife's future and possibly replacement by James Courtney, about which we reckon Skaife has reason to feel aggrieved.

Is it more than coincidence that the past three Sundays there have been beat-up stories in the press about V8 Supercar identities?

Certainly these stories are getting some column inches for the sport that it has otherwise lacked, but we have our suspicions about the origins of these stories and wonder whether those we suspect to be responsible for sowing the seeds might not come to find that the subjects of these beat-ups, who in a sense may ultimately be the masters of those lighting the fires, might find that the plot blows up in their faces.

Clearly the pot is being stirred with the aim of finding Courtney a prime slot in 2009.

While Skaife has had more than his share of troubles in the sport, on and off the track, in the past couple of years, his form in Saturday's first race at Barbagallo/Wanneroo (before Sunday's accident that put him out for the rest of the weekend and saw him end up in the Channel 7 commentary booth) was evidence that he is a long way from over the hill.

Although he is not in the top 10 of the championship standings now, his ability to win titles and Bathurst 1000s ought be more than enough for him to keep his seat in a team he still supposedly half-owns, rather than be replaced by a talented youngster who came home from an international career with a quite impressive record but has, despite being in the top 10 in the championship at the minute, come up a bit short in the V8 Supercar ranks.

Courtney may be almost a household name now because of his TV appearances but he is not yet Mark Skaife in touring car racing, and it ought be remembered that the door was open to him -- indeed red carpet was almost rolled out for him -- at Holden Racing Team three or four years ago and he closed that door and went to the Ford side.

And, even if there were to be an opening at HRT in 2009, why would, or should, Courtney be any higher on the list than, say, a Will Davison -- a driver of lesser profile but who has at least won a V8 Supercar round.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after 4 of 14 rounds -- Garth Tander (Holden) 896 points, Rick Kelly (H) 882, Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 872, Jamie Whincup (F) 776, Steve Richards (F) 721, Craig Lowndes (F) 711, Will Davison (F) 640, Lee Holdsworth (H) 626, James Courtney (F) 577, Fabian Coulthard (F) 569.

V8 Supercar round 4 leading pointscorers -- Mark Winterbottom 300, Garth Tander 270, Jamie Whincup 236, Craig Lowndes 234, Rick Kelly 210, Will Davison 202, Steve Richards 200, James Courtney 154, Fabian Coulthard 138, Andrew Jones 132.

Four points hauls in a row for Webber
In F1, Mark Webber has scored world championship points for the fourth straight GP with seventh place at the Turkish GP in Istanbul.

Since his miserable start to the season in Melbourne, Webber's finishing record has been 7, 7, 5 and 7 again.

He's now seventh in the championship with 10 points -- all of Red Bull's tally for the season and as many as he accumulated in all of last season.

Webber qualified an excellent sixth -- ahead of dual world champion Fernando Alonso's Renault, Jarno Trulli's Toyota, Nick Heidfeld's BMW-Sauber and Red Bull teammate David Coulthard -- but was mighty peeved that in the race his Renault-powered RB4 could not match the speed of Alonso's factory Renault.

However, he's making it known that he wants a contract extension with Red Bull.

Felipe Massa's victory for Ferrari was his third straight in Turkey -- and the fourth straight win this year for the Italian team.

Every Turkish GP has been won from pole and the only driver apart from Massa to have won there is Kimi Raikkonen, in 2005 when he was driving for McLaren.

Lewis Hamilton had to adopt a three-stop strategy in Istanbul because of safety concerns based on the tyre wear on his McLaren, but he drove what he reckons was his best race in his 22-GP career to second place -- including a brilliant pass of Massa mid-race.

Although Hamilton had the advantage of a lighter fuel load his manoeuvre was positively intimidating.

Reigning world champion Raikkonen was outshone by his Ferrari teammate Massa throughout the weekend but wound up on the podium again and still leads this year's title battle by seven points from equal second Massa and Hamilton.

Apart from the podium placegetters, the other three drivers ahead of Webber at the chequered flag in Istanbul were BMW-Sauber pair Robert Kubica and Heidfeld, and Alonso.

Heikki Kovalainen's comeback from that horrific crash in Spain two weeks earlier was rewarded with a front row start but the benefit of that was promptly lost with a premature stop for a tyre change.

After a few weeks of Ferrari dominance, perhaps the upcoming races in Monaco and Montreal will suit McLaren better.

Rubens Barrichello, in his record 257th GP, outqualified Honda teammate Jenson Button but finished 14th, two places behind the Englishman, and we can barely envisage the Brazilian -- or Scotsman Coulthard, who finished ninth and out of the points behind Williams-Toyota youngster Nico Rosberg -- being retained in F1 until the end of the year.

Honda is keen to get Takuma Sato back into F1 following Super Aguri's demise, and longer term there is potentially American Marco Andretti on the horizon.

And Brisbane-born Scott Dixon is on the pole for Chip Ganassi Racing, with British teammate -- and previous Indy 500 winner -- Dan Wheldon sandwiched between him and Briscoe's Team Penske car. All are Dallara-Hondas.

The first 11 spots in the field are now set, while Toowoomba's Will Power has to wait until next weekend for his chance to qualify for one of the remaining 22 places.

Briscoe will start one place ahead of his Brazilian teammate and two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, while Danica Patrick -- Indy racing's first woman winner last month in Japan -- has qualified fifth.

John Andretti, winner of the first Gold Coast Indy in 1991, has had a late call-up to try to claim one of the remaining places in the field.

Indianapolis 500 top 11 qualifiers -- Scott Dixon 226.366mph (364.3kmh) four-lap average speed, Dan Wheldon 226.110mph, Ryan Briscoe 226.080 (363.84kmh), Helio Castroneves 225.733, Danica Patrick 225.197, Tony Kanaan 224.794, Marco Andretti 224.417, Vitor Meira 224.346, Hideki Mutoh 223.887, Ed Carpenter 223.835, Tomas Scheckter 223.496. (Will Power has not qualified yet but has been 16th fastest so far at 222.5mph).

Cody Crocker and Ben Atkinson, brother of world rally championship star Chris, won the Asia-Pacific championship round ahead of fellow Australians Dean Herridge and Chris Murphy.

Subarus filled the first five places.

It was Crocker's fifth win in Canberra, surpassing the four wins of both his mentor, the late Possum Bourne, and Ross Dunkerton.

Crocker had skipped the opening round of the APRC so he is only third in the standings, which are headed by Herridge.

Home-town hero Neal Bates won the Australian championship round in Canberra in a Super 2000 Toyota Corolla with co-driver Coral Taylor and continues to lead the series.

Bates' teammate and national champion of the past two years won Sunday's second heat with his co-driver wife Sue in the other S2000 Corolla after they lost time after hitting a kangaroo in Saturday's first heat.

Darren Windus was third in a Subaru -- his first outright ARC podium -- but will compete at the remaining four rounds in an S2000 Ford Fiesta from the Britek outfit for which he drove last year.

Under rallying baffling rules, the Evans' won what was called the National Rally of Canberra.

Australian Rally Championship standings after two rounds -- Neal Bates 148 points, Simon Evans 112, Darren Windus 94, Spencer Lowndes 86, Eli Evans 86, Justin Dowel  62, Michael Guest 55, Glen Raymond 52, Roman Watkins 38, Steven Shepheard 36, Brenton Kaitler 36.

Asia-Pacific Rally Championship after two rounds -- Dean Herridge 21 points, Katsu Taguchi 18, Cody Crocker 16. (Manufacturers -- Subaru 27, Mitsubishi 22).

That boy Busch again - and better for Ambrose
NASCAR'S new wonderboy, Kyle Busch, has scored his third Sprint Cup race of the year in a Toyota at Darlington, South Carolina.

Busch, also something of a bad boy on the track, has stretched his series lead to 79 points over Jeff Burton.

Busch has also won five other races this year in NASCAR's other categories -- the Nationwide Series and the Craftsman Truck Series.

Aussie Marcos Ambrose finished 10th in the Nationwide round at Darlington -- for his second top 10 finish (and first on an oval) in 12 races this season.

His best finish has been second on the road course in Mexico City.

Here's Ambrose's scoreline after a dozen rounds this year: 39, 22, 28, 11, 19, 23, 18, 17, 2, 28, 25, 10.

And it became clear at the weekend that the West Australian government is not going to submit itself to funding an annual event on the streets of Perth as a way of the state retaining a round of the V8 Supercar Championship.

"The huge financial impost and physical disruption to the city for just three days of activity is excessive," said WA Sport and Recreation Minister John Kobolke.

There's no doubt street races draw big crowds -- as we've seen in Adelaide, Melbourne, Surfers' Paradise, and recently at Hamilton in New Zealand -- and usually have a party atmosphere.

But they come at massive cost, largely to taxpayers -- and for limited benefits and exposure, certainly in terms of international television.

One of our European snouts tells us that the Hamilton telecast on Motors TV in Britain from 3.35pm GMT on Sunday, April 20, had an audience of 5000.

Not millions or hundreds of thousands. Yes, only 5000 viewers for that UK telecast!

And that that was 2000 less than a screening of some NZ jetsprint boat racing on the same station the same week!

Our snout had previously pointed out to us, and we reported here, that a telecast of Adelaide's Clipsal 500 on Motors TV in Britain on Sunday, February 24, had an audience of 26,000. (The round at Sydney's Eastern Creek, a permanent circuit, on Sunday, March 9, got 8000 viewers on Motors TV in Britain).

We highlighted here last October the comparatively miniscule audience for the Gold Coast Indy in the US and the mammoth cost of generating the pictures for those few viewers (more here).

And it is now becoming clear that, in stark contrast to the wildly exaggerated claims that were made for years about the size of the international F1 audience, Melbourne's GP is watched by far fewer people around the world than was long thought.

Our charitable reading of the situation in recent months has been that the audience was perhaps about 100 million (versus the oft-claimed 350 million and previously even more), but there are now indications it may be less than 50 million.

So why all the expense of running races on temporary street circuits?

The street race option was very much the preference of V8 Supercars Australia for WA going forward, but the reality has now hit V8SA that the alternatives in the west are an upgrade of the long-established Wanneroo/Barbagallo circuit or a completely new track elsewhere.

Both options will come with at least a substantial financial helping hand from the WA government, it would seem.

But at least that is investment in permanent facilities that can be used for more than three or four days a year.

Either of these alternatives in WA are far more sensible than a street race, and it seems that -- in the immediate future -- the most practical is an upgrade at Wanneroo/Barbagallo, although the circuit operator, the WA Sporting Car Club, appears to have been pretty much left out of discussions about the future of the V8 Supercar round in the west.

Not only is the WASCC a stakeholder in the matter, the subject generally might well be of interest to many people in Sydney, where is a major upgrade of Eastern Creek in the melting pot as well as V8SA persistently pushing for a street race at the Homebush Olympic precinct, and in Townsville, where a street race seems certain to be added to the V8 Supercar calendar next year even if there is still quibbling over the financial contributions of the Queensland government and Townsville council.

This whole scenario, against the background of us approaching some of the world's biggest races in the next month or so, got us thinking.

The Monaco GP is the crown jewel of F1 and in a normal year we'd expect it to have the biggest TV audience, although the past two years at least it has been topped by the season-ending Brazilian GP because of the world title being decided there.

Now Monaco is a street race. The definitive street race. Set in a wealthy Mediterranean principality where lots of big celebrities live and other gravitate. And its F1 race attracts even more.

No matter that the circuit may not pass Federation Internationale de l'Automobile safety standards if it were anywhere else.

Monaco is unique. So unique, it seems, that not even Bernie Ecclestone can extract a race sanction fee for it!

Monaco aside, the biggest motor races in the world arguably are NASCAR's Daytona 500 in mid-February, and the Indianapolis 500 open-wheeler classic and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 -- both on the weekend after next (May 26 Australian time).

Now what are the common threads between these three races?

They are all in the US, they are all on superspeedways, and they all draw huge crowds.

Mega in almost every sense, although we admit that in that American way they are pretty much for domestic rather than international (television) consumption -- although in comparison with what are now emerging as the real figures for types of racing with which we are more familiar the global audiences for American racing may actually be quite stout.

That is something for further research. But our point is that these three American events are iconic -- and they are on permanent tracks. And all three are oval tracks.

No talk of taking these races out on to the streets in Daytona, Indianapolis, Charlotte or anywhere else.

No talk of taxpayers having to fund these events. (Indeed, it was probably the philosophical aversion to even raising such an idea with government as a way of meeting Bernie Ecclestone's exorbitant fee demands that led to the demise of the US F1 GP on the Brickyard road course this year).

Daytona International Speedway, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, otherwise known as The Brickyard, and Lowes Motor Speedway can be, and are, used for many other days of the year.

And the real beauty of speedways is that fans can see all the track.

Unlike, for example, Wanneroo/Barbagallo, where for 20 seconds a lap a V8 Supercar is out of view to almost all the spectators (fortunately TV viewers don't have to endure that disadvantage).

And there have been and remain other road racing courses in Australia and overseas where fans see a lot less than 100 per cent of the track.

We have a couple of brilliant road courses in Australia. Bathurst is the best example. Phillip Island another.

Oran Park too, although it is now in its death throes due to Sydney's urban spread. Lakeside was another with great character, although it had some shortcomings.

Our road racing heritage is because the bulk of our population originated from Europe. And certainly we have had our share of enjoyment, especially from the great Bathursts and other touring car racing, the Tasman Series in the 1960s and 1970s, an F1 GP for a quarter of a century, and having seen (or read about) Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones conquering the world.

But, it must be said, road racing is often processional. Too many GPs are. So too V8 Supercars a lot of the time. Last weekend wasn't too bad, but -- as much as we enjoyed the Hamilton telecast -- we can recall the Australian Associated Press correspondent calling the racing on the new NZ street race "mind-numbing".

Now, as we have stated perhaps a couple of times over the past few months, we have really warmed to American racing in recent times -- particularly NASCAR and IndyCar.

Because of our European heritage in Australia we have tended to dismiss American oval-track racing as "boring, just round and round".

But, rather than our -- and Europe's -- road courses, it is those American ovals that are producing, consistently, the close and thrilling racing.

Despite the parity in NASCAR and IndyCar, the drafting produces plenty of overtaking.

Although we are only seeing it on TV, we don't doubt that the fans at those US tracks -- many hundreds of thousands in some cases -- are seeing the whole show right before their very eyes.

Which reminds us of Melbourne's Calder Park Thunderdome, built by Bob Jane in the 1980s, home to Australian stock car racing for a decade or so, but now sitting largely idle.

We saw some great racing there in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s, including a ripper night when the Musco lights first went in.

The demise of Australian stock car racing is another story -- perhaps we only ever needed an enhanced AUSCAR instead of the full-blown American NASCARs with a largely Holden Commodore support category that we got, and certainly it was crippled by not having oval tracks around the country.

There was a time, in the early 1990s -- when CAMS contemplated European-style touring car racing as Australia's pre-eminent category, before telecaster Channel 7 and sponsor Shell put their foot down and insisted on what became V8 Supercars -- that Jane missed the chance to make stock cars Australia's premier form of motor sport.

He had the Thunderdome and the short oval at Adelaide International Raceway. What he needed was an asphalt speedway, perhaps a superspeedway, in Sydney. Ovals in Brisbane, Perth and perhaps elsewhere might have helped too.

Despite occasional mutterings from Calder Park these days about a rebirth of the Thunderdome, the opportunity is probably long lost. But just think how things might have been with Commodores and Falcons racing on ovals around the country, while still retaining Bathurst and a few other road course rounds.

Every spectator would have been able to see everything at the ovals. The racing would have been close and exciting. Taxpayers would not have had to bear the staging costs.

Perhaps by now we might have had something comparable with the events at Daytona, Indianapolis and Charlotte.

How different it might all have been had our fathers taken their cue more from America than Europe.

Even so, is it too late?

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