Motorsport: Ford squares WRC ledger

Monday motorsport reportFebruary 12, 2007

Gronholm's high-five in Sweden
Reigning world champion Ford has won the second round of the World Rally Championship in Sweden after Citroen's victory in the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally.

Finn Marcus Gronholm in a Ford Focus RS WRC06 beat Citroen's French world champion of the past three years, Sebastien Loeb, by almost 50 seconds in the Varmland region of central Sweden.

It was the fifth win in the Swedish event for Gronholm and co-driver Timo Rautiainen. They won 11 of the 20 snow and ice-bound stages.

Ford has closed to within a point of Citroen in the manufacturers' championship, while Loeb still leads the drivers' championship by two points with 14 rounds to go.

After the dominance of the Citroen C4s in round one, Loeb conceded on the second of the three days in Sweden that he could not catch Gronholm.

Australia's Chris Atkinson drove brilliantly again in his Subaru Impreza WRC2006, notching his first WRC stage win on a snow rally just a couple of weeks after his first fastest time on an asphalt rally in Monte Carlo.

But Atkinson broke a driveshaft and differential in the rear of his car halfway through the last day and dropped more than 2½ minutes.

After winning the first stage on the final day he had an "off" on a repeat of that stage and finished the event in eighth, more than 6 minutes behind Gronholm rather than in the top sixth -- which was his aim.

Atkinson and fellow Australian co-driver Glenn Macneall had rocketed from ninth to sixth on day two and were fifth early on the final day.

Prophetically, Atkinson had said on day two: "In these conditions you've got to stay absolutely sharp."

Now it's on to the new rally in Norway -- another on snow, again using studded tyres - in just four days, which will be the last for this Impreza -- with the new model for Atkinson and former world champion Petter Solberg due for the fourth round in Mexico.

Loeb insists he was pleased with his Citroen in Sweden, but it was a Ford event -- with Focuses driven by Finn Mikko Hirvonen and Norweigian Henning Solberg, brother of Petter, in third and fourth. It was Hirvonen and co-driver Jarmo Lehtinen's eighth podium in the last 11 rallies, including victory in Western Australia's last Rally Australia late last year.

Although it wasn't Citroen's rally, Loeb says: "I don't think we should be too far out of our depth during the coming rounds."

Swede Daniel Carlsson could not repeat his third place of last year but was a happy fifth in Sweden in a Citroen Xsara. Toni Gardemeister recovered to sixth place in a Mitsubishi Lancer WRC05 after driveshaft problems almost dropped him out of the points on day two, while Austrian Manfred Stohl put in a solid performance to finish seventh in a Citroen Xsara.

Atkinson collected a championship point for eighth to add to the five points he scored for his fourth place in Monte Carlo, where he won the final stage on the asphalt of Monaco's grand prix circuit.

The Australian sits fifth in the championship -- and he's outshining the higher profile and better paid teammate Solberg, whose Swedish outing ended in a ditch on day two.

The stage win in Sweden, Atkinson's first on snow and the 24th of his three-year WRC career, saw Atkinson immediately leap ahead of Carlsson into fifth place, which he maintained with another strong drive on the final day's second stage.

But on the very next stage, a repeat of the morning's first, the 30km Backa stage, he ran wide into a ditch and damaged the left rear corner of his Impreza.

He immediately dropped about a minute and had to complete the last two stages at reduced pace.

In the two hours between the passes over Backa the conditions had changed significantly. The temperature had risen -- to minus 15 Celsius! -- and the passage of cars had made the road surface rougher, with patches of gravel replacing the ice in many of the braking zones and corners.

The tricky conditions got the better of Atkinson and he slid off after 18km of stage 18. Apart from the damage at the rear, the Subaru's radiator was filled with snow.

Now down in seventh, Atkinson lost more time on the next stage -- he was 80 seconds slower than Gronholm -- and fell to eighth, with just the 1.9km final stage in Karlstad to go.

"We had tried to fix the damage (between stages) but there was no chance really," Atkinson says.

He held on to the final points position as he completed the figure-of-eight loop at the end.

"After being so steady, it's annoying that one small mistake cost us three places," Atkinson says.

"We were on course to bring home three more championship points, but I'm glad we managed to salvage one point.

"The mistake was disappointing, but we've been encouraged by our pace this weekend. We chose the right strategy of making a cautious start and what happened was just one those unfortunate things.

"To win another stage was encouraging. That was a new stage for all of us, so we went into it with the same amount of experience as everybody else. Now it is important for us to look ahead to Rally Norway and try to get the best result we can there."

The Norwegian event will be based in the agricultural city of Hamar, about 130km north of the country's capital, Oslo.

World Rally Championship after two of 16 rounds -- Manufacturers: Citroen 27 points, Ford 26, Subaru 10, Kronos Citroen 9, Stobart M-Sport Ford 6; Drivers: S. Loeb 18 points, M. Gronholm 16, M. Hirvonen 10, D. Sordo 8, C. Atkinson 6, H. Solberg 5.

Toyota's Super 2000 plans for Oz
Toyota will run the new Super 2000 mechanicals on a rally car from the start of this year's Australian championship, but they will be under the body of one of its existing Group N prototype Corollas for the first two rounds.

"We have a new shape shell that is just about finished, but for the first two events we will run the old shape car with the S2000 mechanicals," says Darryl Bush, team manager of Toyota Racing Developments' sub-contracted constructor, Neal Bates Motorsport, whose Group N prototypes delivered Toyota's first manufacturers' championship last year and filled first and second places in the series.

Neal Bates, a triple national champion for Toyota in the 1990s, will drive the hybrid at the start of this year's championship -- in Rally Queensland on the Sunshine Coast on  March 31 and April 1and Western Australia's Forest Rally in the state's south-west on April 27-29 - while reigning champion Simon Evans will start with the Group N(P) Corolla.

Two full Super 2000 Toyotas will debut at the third round of the championship in Canberra on the first weekend of June.

Toyota Australia will be the giant Japanese manufacturer's first arm to homologate the next-generation Corolla to the international S2000 rally regulations.

The Bates outfit tested the S2000 hybrid late last year and will resume testing next month. Evans says the S2000 will have "the same power as our previous car, but be a lot lighter and have less torque".

Ford will campaign S2000 Fiestas this year, entered by V8 Supercar star Jason Bright's Britek and driven by Michael Guest and Darren Windus.

The fourth round of this year's ARC, Rally South Australia, has been pushed back a week to August 10-12.

In a move to benefit privateers, points this year will be awarded down to 20th place in each heat on the basis 40, 34, 30, 26, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Previously only the top 10 placings scored points.

The Falcon hit a concrete barrier at the last bend entering the straight about 3pm Sunday and both men had to be cut from the wreckage before being airlifted to hospital.

The 25-year-old driver is reported to have received massive head and chest injuries and was flown to Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital.

The 20-year-old passenger is suspected to have suffered head injuries and was flown to Royal Brisbane Hospital in a serious condition.

The crash reportedly has been captured on video -- from outside and inside the car.

Ipswich's Queensland Times newspaper reports today that the driver had paid $199 to drive the Supercar for eight laps as part of a Queensland Racing Experience and was on his fifth lap.

Montoya up front for Daytona 500
Juan Pablo Montoya, the Formula 1 exile now entering his first full season in NASCAR's Nextel Cup, has qualified fourth fastest for next Sunday's Daytona 500 -- the richest race in the world, with a purse of more than US$18 million.

David Gilliland has pole position for the 800km (500-mile) race, lapping the 4km high-banked SuperSpeedway at 299.853km/h in a Ford Fusion for Robert Yates Racing.

The Yates team filled the front row with Ricky Rudd second fastest at 298.709km/h. David Stremme, driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, was third fastest at 298.512 and Colombian Montoya fourth in another Ganassi Dodge at 298.273 -- with NASCAR giants Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Junior among those in the pack behind him.

"Here, by yourself, is not that hard. The car moves around a little bit, but it's not so bad," says Montoya. Racing with the biggest boys in American stock car racing will be a whole lot tougher though.

Ambrose's schedule starts at Daytona on Saturday, the eve of the Nextel Cup's Daytona 500.

The next few Busch races are in California on February 24, Mexico City on March 4, Las Vegas on March 10, Atlanta on March 17and Bristol on March 24.

Foxtel is scheduled to telecast all of Ambrose's races this season.

Apart from the full Busch series he will try to qualify for two Nextel Cup rounds on road courses at Infineon Raceway in California and Watkins Glen in New York.

Ambrose was 12th of 40 drivers in Busch testing at Daytona, seventh on the new high banks at Las Vegas, and says the sole day at Virginia was "really strong". He's looking to be in the top 10 in the Busch championship to propel himself into a full-time Nextel Cup drive next year.

A court heard that Coulthard, who won two Monaco grands prix during his long career with the McLaren team and is now Mark Webber's teammate at Red Bull Racing, lost control of the Mercedes after it hit a wet patch as he sped around the principality.

The Scotsman was said to have sped at up to 150km/h through Monaco's famous tunnel on the night of the crash.

The woman was only slightly hurt and withdrew a complaint in 2002 after Coulthard compensated her.

The court still fined him 500 euros after finding him guilty of accidental injury.