MOTORSPORT: Everything's in the melting pot

Approaching is what we might call the weekend of the melting pots.

Among the big things in motorsport's melting pots right now are:
>> The V8 Supercar Championship and leader James Courtney's future.
>> The Australian Grand Prix's place on next year's Formula One calendar.
>> Young Perth racer Daniel Ricciardo's F1 future.
>> NASCAR's Sprint Cup and Marcos Ambrose's place in it.

There are 820km of racing to go in the season -- 120km this Saturday, 200km Sunday, and then two 250km races at Sydney's Homebush street circuit in a fortnight -- with a maximum 600 points for drivers over these last two rounds.

Ford driver James Courtney goes into Sandown leading Holden man Jamie Whincup by 50 points -- 2662 to 2612.

Ford factory driver Mark Winterbottom is 200 points behind Courtney after his victory at Tasmania's Symmons Plains last Sunday.

Winterbottom is making noises that Courtney is catchable but Whincup less so, even though the gap between them is a narrower 150 points.

While Winterbottom has now won as many (four) races as Courtney this season, and the latter's campaign continues to be undermined by the ownership turmoil in the Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing team, Winterbottom is going to need some big points hauls -- probably at least a couple more wins, for starters -- and Courtney some very poor results for their positions in the championship to be swapped.

Courtney's manager, British-based Australian world touring car supremo Alan Gow, is in the country for a week obviously keen to assess the landscape around the driver -- and perhaps determine his future.

Courtney's DJR contract has a year to run but it is known that there is a "get out" clause if the ownership structure changes.

Speculation now seems to favour Courtney driving a Ford Performance Racing Falcon next year with Pepsi sponsorship.

It will be ironic if Winterbottom finds himself with Courtney in the same stable next year, possibly as the reigning series champion.

Whincup has nine wins this year but his quest for a third straight title, and first with Holden after Team Vodafone/Triple Eight Race Engineering's switch from running Fords, has become an uphill battle -- has been made more so after he ran low on fuel in Tasmania last Sunday, necessitating a late splash-and-dash.

Teammate Craig Lowndes having his gear stick come loose with the car stuck in first and the resultant DNF (did not finish) the same day was exactly the opposite of what V8 Supercar fans have come to see and expect from the elite Triple Eight outfit.

Lowndes has dropped to fourth in the championship, 57 points behind third-placed Winterbottom, so he faces an even bigger hurdle.

Courtney has never won at Sandown, although the use of soft tyres on Sunday may help him break that duck.

Whincup has already had plenty of success at the eastern Melbourne circuit and said: "This is really my last chance to have a good crack at the championship. It's definitely going to be a dog fight from now until the last lap in Sydney."

The Sandown round is being promoted as having a heritage element to mark the 50th anniversary of the Australian Touring Car Championship, which morphed into the V8 Supercar Championship in the late 1990s.

The celebration is belated -- the "birthday" was early in the year and was marked at Orange, NSW, where the first ATCC was held as a single race -- but welcome nonetheless.

Whincup and Lowndes this week inspected the 48-215 Holden driven at Orange's Gnoo Blas circuit by Des West in the 1960 ATCC.

The combination finished eighth that year and fifth two years later at Longford, Tasmania.

Whincup said the drivers of those early years were "the true heroes of motor racing".

As part of this weekend's heritage theme, the Touring Car Masters series is on the Sandown program, although the main support category is the Fujitsu V8 Supercar development series.

V8 Supercar regular Jason Richards will be missing from the last two rounds of the major championship after being diagnosed with a tumour in his abdomen.

Richards is expected to have surgery early next week to remove the turmour.

Andrew Jones will drive the Team BOC/Brad Jones Racing Commodore in place of Richards at Sandown and Homebush.

V8 Supercar Championship driver standings after 22 races -- James Courtney (Ford) 2662 points, Jamie Whincup (Holden) 2612, Mark Winterbottom (F) 2462, Craig Lowndes (H)  2405, Garth Tander (H) 2328, Shane van Gisbergen (F) 2178, Rick Kelly (H) 1936, Lee Holdsworth (H) 1919, Paul Dumbrell (F) 1848, Michael Caruso (H) 1835, Russell Ingall (H) 1676, Steven Johnson (F) 1589, Jason Richards (H) 1547, Jonathon Webb (F) 1525, Tim Slade (F) 1442, Jason Bright (H) 1408, Steve Richards (F) 1291, Todd Kelly (H) 1273, Greg Murphy (H) 1249, Alex Davison (F) 1179, Will Davison (H) 1158, Tony D'Alberto (H) 1094.

Dean Calvert's home was sold at a mortgagee auction earlier this year for less than half what he paid for it four years ago.

Caleta Street Management, which Calvert co-owned with Steve Vuleta, owed Hamilton City Council $1.78m for leased infrastructure, but the council "forgave" that debt.

V8 Supercars Australia has taken over as promoter of the NZ event in what the Hamilton newspaper, the Waikato Times, has called "the hope of repaying the burgeoning $11.03 million debt associated with holding the V8s".

The row is over the fee CAMS charges the AGPC for its services at the annual GP.

AGPC chairman claimed a week ago that the fee was about $800,000, while CAMS said it was less than $500,000.

Discussions have continued out of the public spotlight and it is understood that the parties are less than $50,000 apart.

An "organisation agreement" needs to made between the parties for the FIA to have the AGP on the F1 calendar.

The problem for Ricciardo remains that Red Bull, to which he is tied, has new world champion Sebastian Vettel and Aussie Mark Webber contracted again for next season, and Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi and Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari retained at its smaller sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso, the former Minardi -- where Webber began his career.

It appears the only way Ricciardo could race in F1 next season is if one of those four contracted drivers is released or Red Bull decides to place the West Australian in another GP team, which would probably be one of the three new outfits that failed to score a world championship point this year.

Despite some of the "smoke signals" from Webber and Red Bull Racing in the last couple of weeks of the most recent F1 season, it is unlikely that the experienced Aussie won't be with that team again next year.

Even if he weren't, Ricciardo would be unlikely to be installed as a rookie in the team that has just won the drivers' and constructors' world championships.

Toro Rosso, which uses Ferrari engines rather than the Renault motors at Red Bull Racing, is the most likely first home for Ricciardo in GP racing -- but only when Buemi and Alguersuari's time is up, perhaps at least another year away.

In the meantime, Red Bull motorsport chief Dr Helmut Marko could decide within weeks, even days, whether Ricciardo races in the GP2 series next year or does another season in the World Series by Renault, in which he was a close second to Russian Mikhail Aleshin this year.

The finale will play host to the tightest finish in the series since the introduction of The Chase -- the contest between the top dozen drivers over the final 10 rounds of the 36-race championship.

Toyota driver Denny Hamlin goes into the final round 17 points ahead of Jimmie Johnson, the Chevrolet star who has won the past four titles, with another Chevrolet driver, Kevin Harvick, another 30 points behind Johnson.

The race will be Australian Marcos Ambrose's last start in his five years with JTG Daugherty Racing before his move to Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) -- and return to the Ford fold.

Ambrose has had six top five and 12 top 10 finishes in the Sprint Cup. His best finish was second at the Watkins Glen road course in upstate New York last year. He has won three times in the second-tier Nationwide Series at Watkins Glen.

"It's been a great journey for me in NASCAR ... I'm grateful for everything JTG Daugherty Racing has done for me," Ambrose said this week. "We've won a few Nationwide races and came close to winning a couple Cup races.

"That's the one thing I wanted to accomplish before parting ways. We're down to the final race of the season and we were leading at Homestead last season when we had a flat tyre.

"Hopefully, we can have a great showing in our final race together."

While RPM's financial woes still cloud its future, Ambrose has maintained his line that "as long as the boat is floating, I'm standing on it with them - I'm fully committed to them".

However, the Atlanta NASCAR Examiner's Jeremy Dunn wrote this week: "Conventional wisdom would have you believe that Ambrose would have some serious second thoughts about his decision. After all, we know that JTG Daugherty Racing will be back next year. We cannot echo those sentiments for RPM at this moment."

And SpeedTV.com's Tom Jensen commented: "With RPM in dire financial straits and barely making it through the season, it's anyone's guess what might happen to the team in 2011. RPM team defaulted on a $90 million bank loan and reportedly owes nearly $10 million to Roush Fenway Racing, which along with its affiliate companies builds RPM's cars and engines."

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver standings after 35 of 36 rounds - Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 6459 points, Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 6442, Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 6412, Carl Edwards (Ford) 6198, Matt Kenseth (Ford) 6147, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 6124, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 6112, Greg Biffle (Ford) 6108, Tony Stewart (Chevrolet) 6074, Kurt Busch (Dodge) 6029, Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 6028, Jeff Burton (Chevrolet) 5958. Australia's Marcos Ambrose (Toyota) is 26th on 3337 points.

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