MOTORSPORT: FG Falcon front and centre

Ford's new V8 Supercar on show at Sandown
Ford's first FG-model V8 Supercar will be unveiled this weekend - and the most striking feature will be how centrally the driver is seated. The car will be on display throughout the new-look Sandown round of the V8 Supercar Championship -- now three sprint races rather than a 500km enduro -- and Craig Lowndes will drive demonstration laps in it Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

While the arrival of the FG racer is eagerly awaited (and there may just be a prospect that this model will be seen in competition before the end of the year), this Sandown round would be almost invisible if not for the interest in the Ford reveal.

Ford Performance Racing did the overall design and building of FG01, the Triple 8 team is responsible for technical compliance and contributed its aerodynamic expertise, designing and supplying components for testing, while Stone Brothers Racing assisted with some technical elements of design and integration.

It's been an 18-month project and the test car, which has been shaken down at Ford's test track south-west of Melbourne, has been dubbed T2.

FPR team boss Tim Edwards has promised that it is "a tough-looking racecar".

Auto Action editor-at-large Mark Fogarty wrote in this week's edition of that magazine that T2 "features the most radical interpretation yet of the inboard driving position incorporated in new cars since Mark Porter's death at Bathurst in 2006".

Fogarty said that when Lowndes laps Sandown in T2 he "will be seated around 150mm closer to the centre of the car than in his Team Vodafone BF Falcon".

"The offset is so radical that FG racer's pedals are noticeably angled to the left," Fogarty said.

"The driver's seat and dashboard are almost centrally positioned, with the seat mounted hard up against the transmission tunnel to improve side impact protection. The distance between the rollcage side bars and the seat shell has been increased to about 200mm -- around 80mm further inboard than in Greg Murphy's new Tasman VE Commodore.

"Ford's track-spec answer to Holden's VE Commodore racer was designed to be safer, cheaper and quicker to construct and easier to repair… Also like the VE, it features a bespoke 'cut-and-shut' shortened floorplan and 'chopped' rear doors to comply with the maximum wheelbase and track dimensions allowed by the Project Blueprint parity rules.

"The footprint of the road-going FG Falcon has increased over the BF, but the section of body removed from behind the B-pillar is smaller than on the V8 Supercar version of the VE.

"The FG racer also incorporates time-and-memory saving detachable front and rear chassis rails and quick-change single piece side body frames."

Fogarty said FPR team boss Tim Edwards had estimated the FG racers will take 50 per cent less time to build and "are going to be a lot easier to repair after slow-to-medium speed accidents".

Let's just hope we get to see an FG or two in action this year. Bathurst will be just fine, thanks guys.

V8SA and Walkinshaw at loggerheads over cost-cutting
We mentioned here a week ago our doubts that attempts at cost-cutting in V8 Supercar racing would work. Our reasoning was that the big three British players that dominate the sport these days (Tom Walkinshaw's Walkinshaw Performance, Roland Dane's Triple 8 Engineering and David Richards' Ford Performance Racing) would not want it, because it would erode their advantages.

Surprise, surprise then that Walkinshaw Performance and V8 Supercars Australia have been in court over precisely this matter.

Under one of the proposed cost-cutting initiatives, engine builders were to be made to reveal all details of their components, drawings and costs to other competitors. In a brief statement Thursday afternoon Walkinshaw Performance said it welcomed a decision by Justice Judd of the Victorian Supreme Court to accept undertakings from V8SA not to implement the proposed rule change ahead of the Sandown round.

"The rule change would have had the effect of allowing any V8 Supercar motorsport team access to confidential material including costings, technical specifications and intellectual property, relating to race engine components supplied by Walkinshaw Performance to four V8 Supercar race teams (Holden Racing Team, HSV Dealer Team, Brad Jones Racing and Tony D'Alberto Racing)," the WP statement said.

"If the issue cannot be resolved satisfactorily in the meantime, the parties are due back in court next Friday, June 13."

Although the case involves only one of the three big British players, this is precisely our point. Cost-cutting sounds good, and we have seen some sensible comments from FPR's Tim Edwards recently endorsing the notion, but when it comes to a choice between cost-cutting and winning we know which way those with the most money to spend -- the British operators -- will want to go.

And, in that instance, surely the FPR call would be made much more by David Richards than respected lieutenant Edwards.

While we regularly lament here that the V8 Supercar Championship has become a de facto British touring car championship because of the dominance of these overseas players, surely there is another issue here too. Why should a winning outfit be made to give up its secrets of success to all its rivals?

If cars are legal and repeatedly pass scrutineering, why should rivals be given free access to its secrets?

If the cars weren't legal that's another matter, and surely it is the responsibility of the scrutineers to detect any illegality. But there has been no suggestion of illegality in this instance -- certainly not publicly.

This whole matter is going to be one to watch.

Mosley wins vote, but that doesn't mean confidence
We made the point ahead of this week's special meeting of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) general assembly that, amid all the outrage about president Max Mosley's behaviour, the only thing that mattered was the votes of those in that room. The indignation of car manufacturers and sponsors involved in Formula 1 counted for nothing.

And so it proved.

Heaven knows, though, what lies ahead now that Mosley has won the vote so overwhelmingly -- 103 to 55, with several abstentions and even four informal votes.

Just contemplate that. Four people considered smart enough to represent a motoring or sporting organisation at the world governing body yet incapable of casting a vote correctly. Incredible -- all they had to do was vote for or against Mosley on a slip of paper, seal it, and pop it in a box.

Among the mountains of material we have read in the past couple of days, and indeed months, on the Mosley case, Italian-based Australian journalist, Michael Taylor, made one of the most pertinent points after the vote.

"Max won on the strength of the unrepresentative FIA voting structure." Taylor wrote in AutoWeek.

"Every national motoring club has just one vote, leaving the United States, Germany and Japan with the same voting power at the hearing as lightweights such as Macau, Macedonia, San Marino, Yemen or the Vatican."

Mosley knew better than anyone what, or who, he was dealing with in that assembly and he obviously played his cards with them almost to perfection. Perhaps the ace in his pack was being able to dangle distributions from the outrageous US$100 million fine the FIA collected from McLaren last year under the noses of the representatives of the smaller bodies, while the larger ones -- certainly from the US, Germany and Japan -- had been outspoken against him and probably not needing money anyway.

Let us just clarify one thing in Taylor's comment, though, about each national motoring club having just one vote.

Because of the nature of the FIA, as both a motoring and sporting organisation, there are two types of members -- national motoring and sporting bodies. Australia's members are the Australian Automobile Association -- representing the NRMA, RACV, RACQ, RAASA, RACWA, RACT and AANT and RACA -- and the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS).

The AAA made clear late last week its intention to vote against Mosley, while CAMS and its FIA delegate, Garry Connelly, are still not divulging how the other Australian vote was cast. Although we can presume it was in favor of Mosley.

We have noticed reports from global news agencies in the past 48 hours in which Connelly has pontificated, including this on Reuters: "There's people talking about breakaways, but frankly the FIA has achieved amazing things in its 100-year history and it would be crazy to think that it's not going to achieve even more and better things in future."

Yet, quite outrageously, Connelly and CAMS have not revealed the stance taken in that meeting with their vote.

The many thousands of Australians who pay fees to CAMS are entitled to know the position their representative has taken in this matter. For that matter, so are the Australian motorsport and general public.

Mosley, we gather, has volunteered to let his deputies be more the public face of the FIA in the wake of the revelations of his sado-masochistic sex orgy with five prostitutes and to retire at the end of his term in October 2009.

Formula 1 commercial tsar Bernie Ecclestone, whose long friendship with Mosley genuinely appears to have been strained by the events of the recent past, said on the eve of the vote that he was convinced ("one million per cent") that Mosley would run for the presidency again if he won the vote of confidence. Although, as we have consistently pointed out, this matter had implications far wider than F1, Ecclestone somewhat ominously has said since the vote: "I hope it hasn't destabilised sponsors or manufacturers."

Remember that the German manufacturers participating in F1, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, and the Japanese, Toyota and Honda, were quick (after the revelations in the News of the World in late March) to suggest that Mosley stand down.

Some comments since the vote from BMW's F1 boss Mario Theissen were rather conciliatory, but the German motoring federation was quick to flag its withdrawal from the FIA and we expect the Japanese reaction, both in motoring and sporting circles, to be uncompromising.

Sir Jackie Stewart, triple F1 world champion, former F1 team owner and an esteemed world figure (even if Mosley branded him "a certified half-wit"), got it exactly right: he won a bet that Mosley would win the vote, while saying that there was no way he should remain as FIA president because so many people he was bound to come into contact with were no longer prepared to meet him.

As if things haven't been hard enough in the sport the past two months, in all likelihood they will now get worse in the next 16 months. And, if Ecclestone is right, perhaps for even longer.

Rain prospect for Montreal - set the alarm
It's the 40th Canadian Grand Prix early Monday, Australian time, and the 30th in Montreal.

The first on this street circuit was won by Canada's favorite motorsport son, Gilles Villeneuve, and the track has carried his name since his untimely death in 1982.

Lewis Hamilton, winner in Monaco two weeks ago and now leading the world championship, is looking for a repeat at the place where he scored his first F1 victory a year ago.

BMW-Sauber meanwhile is looking to end the Ferrari-McLaren stranglehold that has now lasted 24 races, and its Polish driver Robert Kubica is hoping for much better fortune than the horrific crash he had in Montreal last year. Despite that, Kubica reckons it is one of his favorite circuits.

Kubica, Renault's Fernando Alonso and Toyota's Jarno Trulli are the only drivers to have outqualified their teammates at every GP this season. Ferrari's Felipe Massa has outqualified his world champion teammate Kimi Raikkonen 5-1, but is still behind his teammate on points.

While Raikkonen has lost this year's championship lead to Hamilton, he says he is still in a better position than he was at this stage last year.

There is speculation that Raikkonen will retire at the end of this year. Sports Illustrated has estimated he made US$46 million last year in salary and endorsements, and Alonso (world champion in 2005 and '06) US$40m. Compare this to the US$128m for golfer Tiger Woods and US$48.2m for another golfer, Phil Mickelson. Footballer Ronaldinho's pay was around US$37.5m, tennis star Roger Federer's US$35.1m and MotoGP racer Valentino Rossi's US$34m. Expect Hamilton to enter that league this year.

McLaren has won in Montreal twice in the past three years (the first was by Raikkonen in 2005), but Ferrari has had 11 wins there over the years. Alonso needs one more point to become only the sixth driver to score 500 points in F1, while Raikkonen, on 491, must win this weekend to reach that milestone.

No driver has scored points in every race this season.

Aussie Mark Webber has had five straight finishes in the points.

The forecast is for some rain in Montreal over the weekend. If it keeps up for race day that might work in Webber's favor. Might this be his day? We'd like to think so, but it will take a miracle.

To comment on this article click here