MOTORSPORT: Fluctuating fortunes for 'The Captain'

This year has had its highs and lows for Roger Penske.

The legendary American known throughout the motor industry and motor racing as "The Captain" won NASCAR's biggest race, the Daytona 500, in February with his young star Joey Logano and a record 16th Indianapolis 500 in May with Colombian veteran Juan Pablo Montoya.

But his entry to V8 Supercars through his takeover of Dick Johnson Racing hasn't gone well. Marcos Ambrose "benched" himself after just a couple of outings and, despite signs of progress, Scott Pye is 20th in the championship standings ahead of this weekend's New Zealand round, which Penske is attending.

Montoya had the IndyCar title snatched from him by New Zealander Scott Dixon because of the double points awarded at that finale in California two months ago.

And now the NASCAR season is coming to its conclusion and Penske pair Logano and 2012 champion Brad Keselowski need to win in their Ford Fusions at Fort Worth in Texas this weekend or at Phoenix in Arizona next weekend to be in the title fight at Florida's Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 22.

That's despite Logano having been the form man of the past month. He won three straight races and led more than anyone (207 laps of a one-mile, or 1.6km, speedway) last weekend at Martinsville, Virginia, before he was wrecked by Toyota driver Matt Kenseth at almost 95 per cent race distance. Logano was classified 37th in the final race results, five places behind his teammate.

Kenseth, the 2003 NASCAR champion, has been suspended from the next two rounds – the first driver in 65 years of the top level of America's stock car racing to be banned for a race incident. He's also on probation when he comes back for the finale, in which only four drivers will vie for this year's title.

The only guaranteed championship contender so far is Jeff Gordon, the four-time champion who is retiring at the end of this season but won at Martinsville in his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

Three other Chevy drivers are still in the fight – Martin Truex Junior, last year's winner Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch – while two Toyota drivers – Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards – also remain "alive" in NASCAR's Chase for its title, as well as the two Penske men in the Fords. But Logano and Keselowski are sixth and eighth (and last) in the Chase points, which is why they need wins to have a chance at the grand final in Florida.

Fort Worth and Phoenix are both 500-mile (800km) races, while the distance at Homestead-Miami will be 400 miles.

"We're going to tap into the Penske ethos of 'effort equals results' and see what happens," said Keselowski, who has finished in the top five in his past two starts at Texas Motor Speedway.

Logano won there 18 months ago and has finished in the top five in four of the past five Sprint Cup races at the 1.5-mile (2.4km) oval.

He became the youngest winner in Cup history, at 19 years and 35 days, with his maiden victory at New Hampshire in 2009. He now has 14 wins, including six this season, and has vowed: "We're not gonna let this [the Kenseth incident] take us down."

NASCAR window open for Ricciardo
Australia's Formula 1 star Daniel Ricciardo loves NASCAR and races with 3 – the number famously sported by seven-time Cup champion Dale "The Intimidator" Earnhardt, who died in a crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 – on his Red Bull car.

Earnhardt's racer son, Dale Junior, and Ricciardo struck up a friendship through social media and now the American has invited the Aussie to drive for him in NASCAR's second-tier Xfinity Series during F1's mid-season break next year.

Two Xfinity road races – at the Mid-Ohio and Watkins Glen circuits – are scheduled in that break.

Ricciardo said on Twitter that "down the track it would be cool" to drive in NASCAR.

"I like America a lot, so to live in America and race post-F1 it could be interesting," he said.

"I'd have to practise. In a tin-top I'd be pretty hopeless."

Red Bull still does not have its F1 engine supplier sorted for next season – the energy drink tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz has extended the deadline on the team until November 22.

In another tweet Ricciardo said: "I want to make sure we sort something here [F1] next year, but if, for whatever reason, I'm not [racing in F1] then it sounds like I might have an option!"

Susie Wolff closes door on F1 dream
In the week that Michelle Payne made history as the first woman jockey to win the Melbourne Cup, Scotswoman Susie Wolff gave up on her dream of racing in F1.

Wolff, 32, has driven in four grand prix practice sessions for the Williams team in the past two seasons and at three test days.

The wife of Mercedes F1 team principal (and former Williams shareholder and executive) Toto Wolff, she previously spent seven years racing in Germany's touring car championship, the DTM.

She became the first woman in two decades to take part in a GP weekend when she drove in first practice at Britain's Silverstone circuit last year.

She said Williams had allowed her "to achieve my dream of driving an F1 car" but that she was "now closing this chapter".

Her competition finale will be at London's Olympic Stadium on November 20-21 in the Race of Champions (ROC), in which drivers from various forms of motorsport take the wheel of a wide variety of machinery.

Daniel Ricciardo and Mick Doohan will represent Australia in this year's ROC.

Two highs, one low for young guns
It was good and bad news on the international careers of young Australian open-wheeler drivers this week.

Luis Leeds, a 15-year-old Victorian, won the opening race in Mexico's new Formula 4 series in a field of 17 during the revived Mexican Grand Prix. Leeds qualified on pole position and had a 10-second lead before a safety car intervention.

He is third in Australia's inaugural F4 championship after five rounds.

Scott Andrews, another Victorian from Torquay, was third out of more than 100 Formula Ford drivers in the Walter Hayes Trophy in Britain. Andrews, 24, recently won the US Formula F Series driving an Australian-built Spectrum and had finished fourth in another Spectrum in the final of the Hayes event at Silverstone but was elevated to the podium after the exclusion of another competitor.

"The F1600 racing in the US is a little more NASCAR-style where you ride around utilising the draft until the last few laps, then make your move," Andrews said.

"Here [at Silverstone] is a lot like karts and there's basically a 'pass or be passed' mentality.

"It's a lot more cut-throat here, but I love it."

Anton De Pasquale, yet another Victorian from Werribee, was the 2013 Australian Formula Ford champion and won last year's Formula Renault 1.6 North European Championship but has returned home after the first of what was planned to be a two-season campaign in the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup.

De Pasquale, 20, who was 18th in that Eurocup in an aborted campaign with the Korainen team, found the expense of racing overseas too much and now has his sights set on Australia's Porsche Carrera Cup or the V8 Supercar Development Series for next year.

"The cost of racing in Europe is extremely high, almost doubling every time you step up to a new category," De Pasquale said.

"My parents and sponsors have given up a lot, but I'm happy we gave it a really good go.

"I have competed on all the famous European tracks against the world's best junior drivers – and I'm a better driver for that, so no regrets.

"Now I'm focused on getting momentum here in Australia and in time getting myself to V8 Supercars."

Speed the champion in American rallycross
Scott Speed, who twice raced in the Australian Grand Prix, has won the American-based Global Rallycross Championship (GRC) in a 560-horsepower, four-wheel-drive Volkswagen Beetle.

The 32-year-old Californian finished third in the final at Las Vegas midweek behind the Ford Fiesta STs of Finn Joni Wiman and Swede Sebastian Erikssen.

Heavy rain made the combined tarmac and gravel circuit in the middle of Vegas like an ice rink.

Speed raced for Red Bull's junior F1 team Toro Rosso in the 2006 and '07 Australian GPs in Melbourne, finishing ninth the first time and retiring the next year. He also has NASCAR experience and won two of the GRC races this year in Los Angeles in September.

His teammate, Tanner Foust, host of the TV program Top Gear in the US, won three races, including both those in Barbados before the Vegas finale and was runner-up for the season.

The pair accumulated 13 podiums in the 12 rounds , but Ford beat Volkswagen to the manufacturers' title (50-48) courtesy of Olsbergs MSE, with Subaru third (31 points).

Nelson Piquet, another ex-F1 driver and the reigning champion in Formula E electric open-wheeler racing, finished equal third in the GRC with Erikssen, driving another Ford, while Ken Block, also in a Ford, was fifth.

Tony Cochrane, the long-time V8 Supercar chief until 2012, recently became a "special adviser" to the GRC.

The second World Rallycross Championship concludes in Argentina on November 27, with Norwegian Petter Solberg favourite to retain his title.