Motorsport: Ford clinches Supercar crown

Jason Bright won the weekend's Bahrain round for Ford Performance Racing, giving Ford its seventh victory in the 12 rounds so far this season and ensuring the Blue Oval retains the manufacturers' crown.

The three races at the Desert 400 were won by Bright, HSV Dealer Team's Garth Tander and Holden Racing Team's Todd Kelly. The order on the podium was Bright, Kelly and Tander, with Lowndes fourth for the weekend ahead of Steven Richards and Mark Skaife, with Rick Kelly 10th overall. However, Kelly amazingly retained his series lead despite crashing into James Courtney's Stone Brothers Falcon in the second race on the 3.6km Bahrain track -- an abbreviated version of the country's Formula One Grand Prix circuit. Kelly's three race results for the weekend were fourth, 28th and a brilliant fighting sixth after starting near the back of the field, while Lowndes finished ninth, fifth and third in his Triple Eight Falcon.

The points heading to the Phillip Island finale are Kelly 3068 and Lowndes 3061, with FPR's Mark Winterbottom third on 2792, ahead of Kelly's teammate Tander on 2709, reigning champion Russell Ingall (Stone Bros Falcon) 2612, Bright 2688, Todd Kelly 2508, Steven Richards (Perkins Holden) 2481, Steven Johnson (Dick Johnson Racing Ford) 2234, with Courtney 10th on 2197.

Bright finished second in the races he didn't win in Bahrain to score his first individual round win for FPR to go with his Sandown 500 victory with teammate Winterbottom in September. Ironically, Bright is now just one race away from departing FPR to head his own Britek team next year, with Steven Richards set to join the Ford factory team on January 1.

Tander has been the form driver of late, would be leading the championship if not for the controversial swap to HRT for the endurance races, and should have won the Bahrain round -- which would have been back-to-back victories after his success at Tasmania's Symmons Plains two weeks earlier. Tander stalled during his compulsory pit stop in Friday's first Bahrain race, handing Bright the lead and the win. Then on Sunday he let his Commodore nudge forward out of its box on the starting grid and incurred a penalty that required him to pit.

"It was a very silly error to jump on the red," Tander says. "I got the car stopped but I was well over the box." The fact that he still finished eighth, having won race two by 12 seconds, reiterated the recent strength of the factory cars in the championship -- the Holdens prepared by Tom Walkinshaw's engineers and the Fords by David Richards' Prodrive squad. Ironically, Richards' visit to Bahrain proved third time lucky for FPR this season, as his trips to Adelaide and Bathurst seemed to work as a jinx!

In the teams' championship, HSV Dealer Team now has 6101 points, Triple Eight 5302, FPR 5263, Stone Bros 4869, Perkins Holden 4506 and Dick Johnson Racing 4140, with HRT eighth on 3853.

"Eleven events (championship rounds) are unaffected, three events are (potentially) affected. We knew that going in and we think that is a very small price to pay to get all the benefits Seven are offering. I don't call that major shift or seismic change," says Cochrane, who instead is claiming that Foxtel will fold within two years if it doesn't strike a deal on AFL games. Meanwhile, a report at the weekend quoted a Channel 10 insider claiming Seven has paid far too much for the V8 rights and could lose up to $10 million a year on them.

Switzerland's Neel Jani finished fourth in the Malaysian feature after winning the earlier sprint race and having pole position for both. Australia's Ryan Briscoe was uncharacteristically well down in the classifications of both races -- 12th and 23.628 seconds behind Jani in the sprint, and 17th and 2 minutes 19.799 seconds behind Hülkenberg in the feature. New Zealand's Jonny Reid was respectively third and eighth. The sprint race podium was NZ's first this season and indeed its first since the inaugural A1 round in Britain 14 months ago. Christian Murchison, the West Australian representing Singapore, was 11th in the main race, while Malaysia's Alex Yoong set the fastest lap on the way to seventh. However, Kiwi Reid clocked the best lap in the two races -- on the second lap of the sprint -- to earn NZ a bonus point.

Germany now has 37 points, Britain 31, Mexico, France and Malaysia 24 each, with Australia equal 10th with the Czech Republic on 16 and NZ equal 12th with the US on 15. The next round is at Sentul in Indonesia in two weeks, while NZ will host its first A1 round in January and Australia its second round at Sydney's Eastern Creek on the first weekend of February.

While repeating that A1 is not intended as a challenger to F1, Teixeira wants to see engine horsepower doubled to 750 to 800 within two years. "But we will also have to look at the safety regulations and how to make it safer, especially when you have young and relatively inexperienced drivers on the grid," he says.

Aussies wrap up Asia-Pacific
Triple Australian rally champion Cody Crocker is sealing this year's Asia-Pacific championship in style, leading Rally China by 2 minutes 16.9 seconds after two of  the three days. Crocker and co-driver Ben Atkinson (brother of Australia's world rally star Chris Atkinson) only needed to start this event to clinch the title but have shown no signs of caution in the treacherous wet and muddy conditions. Fellow Australian Eli Evans is fifth, 3 minutes 42 seconds off the lead. Crocker and Evans are both driving Subaru Impreza WRX STIs for Tasmanian-based Les Walkden Rallying. Six stages are to be run in today's final leg. The rally is being held in Zhejiang Province on China's east coast, about 400km south of Shanghai.

"F1 would be within my reach, but I have had my chance and made another choice. Rallies could be a good solution. Not for the entire season, but maybe a program of eight races," Rossi says.

This year's Rally of Great Britain starts this Thursday and will complete the world championship in which Ford has already won the manufacturers' title and Frenchman Sebastien Loeb the drivers' crown, despite missing the past three rounds. We'll have more on the rally season finale here midweek.

'Pure pleasure' for Zanardi
Alex Zanardi describes driving an F1 car again, this time with artificial legs, as "pure pleasure". The cheerful Italian, who lost both his legs in a Champ Car crash five years ago, drove 14 laps in a specially-modified BMW-Sauber at Valencia in Spain. The car's pedals were reversed so Zanardi could use his stronger right limb to exert enough pressure on the brake. He dropped from a 9 to a 4½ shoe size and cut an inch off his right prosthetic limb to fit into the car. He was given Jacques Villeneuve's old steering wheel, with the gears to the left side so Zanardi could use his right hand for turning.

The 40-year-old Zanardi is the first double amputee to have driven an F1 car -- a deserved honor for a man whose F1 career was unfortunately unfulfilled in stints with Minardi, Jordan, Lotus and Williams but who holds several Champ Car records (285 points in the 1998 season; six consecutive pole positions; 11 front-row starts and 15 top-three finishes in a season).

DC doubts Hamilton wisdom
McLaren has confirmed Lewis Hamilton as Fernando Alonso's 2007 teammate, with David Coulthard -- who drove more races for McLaren than anyone -- saying it could ruin the black youngster's career, while team boss Ron Dennis says the 21-year-old may win a grand prix in his debut season.

Coulthard, who will have Aussie Mark Webber as his Red Bull Racing teammate in '07, says Hamilton could lose his confidence by being continually compared with Alonso. "His career could be destroyed before it has a chance to develop," Coulthard says. "There is no doubting his potential, but the first person you are compared to is your teammate -- and if Lewis struggles alongside Alonso it could destroy his confidence."

However, Dennis -- while generally trying to keep a lid on the hype about Hamilton -- says it is not "unrealistic" that he could win in '07. "Obviously we exist to win and the expectation for Lewis to win next season is not unrealistic if we have a strong car, but certainly not in the early part of the season," says Dennis, whose cars won 10 GPs in 2005 but none in '06. "In the early races it's not about where he finishes -- it's about how he conducts himself in the race. We will be patient."

The most optimistic supporters of Hamilton, who is British but of West Indian ancestry, have branded him F1's version of golf superstar Tiger Woods. Hamilton won this year's GP2 series, F1's support category in Europe, clinching the title with his fifth victory of the season at the Italian GP on the weekend that Michael Schumacher announced he was going to retire. Hamilton has known for two months that he had the McLaren drive but the announcement was delayed so that it wasn't swamped by the saturation coverage of Schumacher's retirement.

Hamilton says he is thrilled to be Alonso's teammate. "I look at it as a positive and I think I can benefit a lot," he says. "I'm looking forward to working with him. I'm not worried about it. I think he's going to do what he always does, which is drive extremely well, and I'm just going to try to do the best job I can and learn from him as quick as possible and try to eventually compete against him."

The Times reports that Hamilton will be on a base salary of about US$675,000 in his first year, with bonuses of up to US$250,000 a race, with the base rising to US$1.3 million in 2008, then US$3.8 million in '09 -- but it could then jump at least US$10 million if he  succeeds.

"There were several conversations and meetings with McLaren-Mercedes, for example 1995 in Monte Carlo," Schumacher tells Suddeutsche Zeitung. "But I noticed that we didn't really fit together. I didn't fit to McLaren, or to be honest to McLaren boss Ron Dennis. It seemed to work out with Mercedes; I am sure we would have found a way. (But) Ron Dennis and I had different ideas how an F1 team should work."

Alonso wins - a wife
Fernando Alonso got married at the weekend in the Maldives to Raquel del Rosario, lead singer of the Spanish pop band El Sueño de Morfeo, in front of a priest and about 50 guests. The dual world champion and his new wife will settle in Switzerland, having bought a house in Mont-Sur Rolle, overlooking Lake Geneva and near Michael and Corinna Schumacher.

Broken ribs sideline Button
Honda's Hungarian Grand Prix winner Jenson Button will skip the first of the three pre-Christmas F1 tests in Spain this week after cracking two ribs in a kart crash.