MOTORSPORT: Festivities for Formula 5000's half century

The Festival of Motor Sport at Victoria's Phillip Island this weekend kicks off Australia's celebration of 50 years of Formula 5000.

The International Challenge at the magical seaside circuit will bring together more than 30 of the 5.0-litre open-wheelers, igniting in particular the always-intense rivalry between Australians and New Zealanders.

The beauty of F5000 is the variety of the machinery, with internationally-renowned makes Lola, Chevron, Eagle and McLaren as well as those like the Australian-made Matich A50 and Elfin MR8.

It is this diversity that will make it hard for the efforts to create a modern F5000 with a generic chassis and engine to replicate the popularity of the older cars and be anything more than a support category to Supercars.

Often complementing the F5000 cars is the odd historic Formula 1 machine, and this time John Bowe - a long-time champion in open-wheelers and touring cars - will pilot a 1974 F1 March.

On the program at the annual pre-Grand Prix festival this time too are some classic sports racing cars not seen in Australia before and with history at Le Mans and in North America's much-loved but short-lived CanAm series.

Among that line-up are a Porsche 962, a Lola T296 and a McLaren M8F, while also new to the event is a De Tomaso Mangusta.

Another car of great interest will be Carroll Shelby's Allard JX2, also to be driven by Bowe.

The festival organisers, the Victorian Historic Racing Register, are chuffed to have two Pro-sport 3000 Group C cars running - one Ferrari-powered, the other with a Cosworth double four-valve engine - recently imported from Britain.

David Reynolds is a star in Supercars these days driving a Holden Commodore, including winning last year's Bathurst 1000, but this weekend he will be at the wheel of a historic TransAm Ford Mustang.

The festival also will host the Australian launch of the latest RS3 Roush Mustang by Mustang Motorsport.

While historic racing is incredibly strong all around the country, the Phillip Island festival is the largest and is recognised internationally as being among the world's top 10 historic motor race events.

Merc lets Red Bull and Ferrari steal headlines

Just one day of Formula 1 testing left now before the new cars are packed for the flight to the season-opening grand prix in Melbourne.

Daniel Ricciardo in Red Bull's Renault-powered RB14 set the pace - and a track record, albeit unofficial - on the second day of the second four-day test in Barcelona, but Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel went almost a full second quicker last night.

carsales.com.au global ambassador Ricciardo and Vettel did their best times on Pirelli's 'hypersoft' compound tyres, which Mercedes is not even using in pre-season testing.

Mercedes concentrated last night on long-run race simulations and Red Bull and Ferrari both fear the dominant team of the previous four years of the V6 hybrid era will remain just that, even if they are a little closer this season.

McLaren is still struggling as it switches to Renault power, with a bad batch of batteries causing hiccups for it and fellow Renault customer team Red Bull this week, while Toro Rosso, which has picked up the Honda power unit abandoned by McLaren, has accumulated massive mileage in testing.

Power looking for 'clean' year in IndyCar

America's IndyCar series starts this weekend at St Petersburg in Florida, with the 2.2-litre twin-turbocharged V6 cars - with Chevrolet and Honda motors - having a lot less downforce this year.

Roger Penske has trimmed his driver line-up from four to three this year, but the trio have all won the title previously - Australian Will Power in 2014, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud in 2015 and American Josef Newgarden last year, in his first season with Team Penske.

Power, now 36, had the most pole positions in the series last year and won more races than the other Penske drivers except Newgarden, but he wound up last of the four who included Brazilian Helio Castroneves, now 'pensioned off' to The Captain's latest sports car racing venture (with Honda power, while Penske uses Chevrolet engines in IndyCar).

"A clean year is what I'm after," Power has said. "You can't have four DNFs as I did last year, with one of them being a double-points race, and expect to be in the championship hunt."

'Old' Ford on top in NASCAR

Of the three makes in NASCAR's Monster Cup, Ford has the oldest body style - it's Fusion is two years old - yet the Blue Oval has led almost 84 per cent of the laps in the three races so far this season (669 laps of 799) - at Daytona, Atlanta and Las Vegas.

While the new Chevrolet Camaro won the Daytona 500, a Stewart-Haas Ford driven by Kevin Harvick was victorious at the next two races.

Toyota won 16 of the 36 Cup rounds last year - to the 10 each of Chevrolet and Ford - with what was then its new Camry bodywork under rules that almost halved the downforce on the thundering stock cars.

However, the Japanese brand is winless this season and many are thinking that NASCAR's new high-tech inspection system may have contributed to curbing Toyota's edge.

That system this week also has found two violations on Harvick's victorious Las Vegas Ford - a failed support brace that caused the rear windscreen to cave in and a rocker panel not made of aluminium as required.

The penalties (subject to appeal) are a $US50,000 fine for crew chief Rodney Childers and a two-week suspension for car chief Robert Smith, with 20 driver and owner points lost as well as points towards the end-of-season 'playoffs'.

Loeb back on his old patch

A highlight of the third round of the World Rally Championship in Mexico this weekend is the return of nine-time champion Sebastien Loeb after a three-year absence.

The French great, 44 and now concentrating on rallycross with Peugeot after a couple of bold but unsuccessful attempts to win the Dakar marathon rally, says he's "quite curious to know where I will be" in the WRC field.

Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena are slotted for two more WRC rounds in Citroen's C3 - on French island Corsica's asphalt roads next month and Spain's mixed-surface rally at the end of October.