Motorsport: F1 qualifying live; races too?

Friday motorsport reportDecember 1, 2006

This week's Auto Action magazine reports Ten's general manager of sport, David White, confirming that qualifying from F1 races in Europe will be shown live at 11pm on Saturdays. "F1 will also become a focus of the new-look RPM, which will be shown from 1-2pm on Saturdays, before its AFL telecasts," Auto Action reports. "But the network's expanded F1 viewing won't be presented by Neil Crompton, who insiders maintain will join Seven's V8 commentary team."

Auto Action says White would not comment on the timing of F1 race telecasts, although editor-at-large Mark Fogarty reports that other sources reveal Ten is considering showing races from Europe live at 10pm on Sundays. F1 fans will recall that Ten made a lot of noise about friendlier timing when it took over F1 from Nine, but the reality has been much the same. And, like it or not, the realities of commercial TV are that it will always be thus.

White says RPM will be more "newsy" in future and feature more F1 and MotoGP. Ten says it will not ignore V8 racing, but it is clearly only going to have limited access in future as well as time restrictions because of its greater emphasis on the two forms of GP racing. Ten won't be showing Champ Cars any longer and has not decided whether to continue with the World Rally Championship. Auto Action doesn't mention it, but we hear that Australian Rally Championship telecasts will be early Saturday afternoons next year.

Great Finn back -- but not flying
Most attention at the end of the first F1 pre-season test in Barcelona was on the slowest driver rather than the fastest. Mika Hakkinen was back driving an F1 car for the first time in five years -- and he was 3 seconds off the pace of Ferrari's regular Italian tester Luca Badoer. The Finn -- world champion in 1998 and '99 and, at 38 years of age, four months older than recently-retired Michael Schumacher -- drove almost 80 laps in a McLaren-Mercedes. The reason is still not clear, as McLaren has its two drivers locked in for next year -- Fernando Alonso, world champion the past two years is coming across from Renault, with British rookie Lewis Hamilton in the other seat. McLaren may be wanting to use Hakkinen as a mentor for its all-new line-up, especially Hamilton -- even though he was 2 seconds quicker than the 20-time GP winner last night.

Hakkinen is a favourite son of McLaren, especially chief Ron Dennis. The Finn almost lost his life in a McLaren when he crashed during practice for Adelaide's last Australian GP in 1995. His place in history is perhaps understated because of his seemingly bland personality, but he outqualified the great Ayrton Senna the first time they were teammates and his overtaking manouevre on Schumacher in the 2000 Belgian GP remains arguably the greatest moment in modern F1 history. Only Alonso could claim to have been as great a rival to Schumacher since Senna's death.

Hakkinen has spent the past two seasons in the German DTM touring car series but has apparently been curious to try a modern F1 car, more so since attending this year's final GP in Brazil for Schumacher's farewell. He had not driven an F1 car with a V8 engine until last night. Former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan dismissed Hakkinen's outing as a publicity stunt, but Australian Paul Stoddart, who owned the Minardi team for five years, doubts McLaren would waste valuable time like that.

"I don't think that Ron Dennis and Norbert Haug (Mercedes motorsport boss) are the types to play games," Stoddart says. "I think he (Hakkinen) is doing it for a reason. Don't discount him, just because he's a bit older. Imagine if Michael (Schumacher) has a couple of years out and then said he wanted to get back in the car. Nobody would laugh at that!"

Mark Webber only drove on the first two days in Barcelona but was quicker than his Red Bull Racing teammate David Coulthard both times. More F1 and other open-wheeler news below.

Only seven points separate the pair going into the final showdown, with Ford ace Lowndes having won four rounds this season and 23-year-old Holden star Kelly none. Under the new points system to be adopted next year, that will give race winners greater reward, Lowndes -- despite finishing out of the points three times this season -- would be heading Kelly by 19 points going to the Island. But that's academic.

Eighth in last year's championship and now in his fifth full season of V8 Supercar racing, Kelly says: "We worked out pre-season that we needed to finish in the top five, on average, across the season. If we did that, we would have a good chance of winning the championship. To do that, we needed a new approach as well, one that was a little bit more thoughtful and conservative than what we had done before. We felt we needed to take it one session at a time, even one corner at a time, with greater focus on each step in the process. If we did that and stayed out of trouble as much as possible, the points would come and so would the success. At times, it would mean being patient, rather than putting it all on the line. It meant controlling that rush of blood that can undo your whole season. Basically, we needed to qualify well, run near the front and finish races."

Kelly has not failed to finish a race all season, has only once finished outside the top 15 in a race (the second race in Bahrain last weekend), has not finished outside the top 10 in any round, has only been outside the top five twice, and has notched podiums at seven of the 12 rounds so far.

The final round is going to require a more aggressive approach while ensuring he maintains his consistency. A good starting point is that Kelly has made the Top 10 Shootout at every round where he has qualified the car. "We are going to have to work hard to win it. I want the championship more than anything. Hopefully we will have a good car and sail away into the sunset, but I don't think it's going to be that easy."

It promises to be an enthralling climax.

The Brabham BT7 in which American Dan Gurney won the 1964 French and Mexican GPs will be there too, as well as the Brabham-Climax BT4 in which Sir Jack Brabham won the 1963 Australian GP at Warwick Farm and that was driven in the 1964 Tasman by New Zealander Denny Hulme. From the Dawson-Damer family's famed collection will be Graham Hill's 1969 Tasman Lotus 49, Mario Andretti's 1978 F1 world title-winning Lotus-Ford, Jim Clark's 1964 world championship Lotus 25 as well as his Tasman Lotus 39.

Speculation is increasing that the Murdoch empire may end up with global television rights to F1, although perhaps not while ever Bernie Ecclestone is in charge of the sport.

Schumi on track -- in kart
Michael Schumacher is making a comeback to racing this weekend. Not in F1, but a big kart race at his own track in his hometown, Kerpen in Germany. The seven-time F1 world champion will lead one of 18 teams in a 24-hour race in which 280 drivers will take part. One of them is Schumi's long-time Ferrari testing comrade, Luca Badoer, who headed this week's F1 testing in Barcelona -- and the man who has the distinction of driving the most F1 races without scoring a world championship point!

Now a Ferrari theme park
Abu Dhabi in the Middle East is to get a multi-billion-dollar Ferrari theme park. The emirate owns 5 per cent  of Ferrari and developer Aldar Properties is to start the project on Yas Island soon.

Rocky road for A1
The A1 Grand Prix series is having its share of second-year blues, both on and off the track. However, Indonesia has now finalised financial support from several big companies for next week's fifth round at the Sentul circuit south of Jakarta. The main sponsors include cigarette maker PT Gudang Garam, telecommunications company PT Telkom and state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina.

"It's a bit of a gamble for us to hold the event as it has been moved forward from April 2007, but we took the risk to keep the good image of Indonesia overseas," Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Adhyaksa Dault told the Jakarta Post newspaper.

In South Africa, where the A1 concept has had its greatest support apart from the initial injection of Arab money, there is great debate about the value of Durban's round, scheduled for late February.