Motorsport: Ford sweeps WRC, Chevy's Daytona

Monday motorsport reportFebruary 19, 2007

Finn Mikko Hirvonen, winner of last year's Rally Australia, led from start to finish, beating his countryman and higher-profile teammate, Marcus Gronholm, by 9.5 seconds.

Norway's Henning Solberg completed the clean sweep for Ford by taking third place, almost 3¾ minutes back, but 16 seconds ahead of his better known brother, Petter, who was fourth in the last WRC outing for Subaru's 2006 Impreza.

Australian Chris Atkinson got stuck in snow on Saturday and finished 19th -- 24 minutes off the pace -- in the other factory Subaru. It is the first time in three rounds of this year's WRC that Atkinson has been out of the driver points, which are awarded down to eighth.

Subaru's 2007 Impreza will be ready for Atkinson and Petter Solberg by the next WRC round in Mexico on March 9-11 -- the first gravel event of the season.

France's world champion of the past three years, Sebastien Loeb, finished out of the points in 14th in Norway after his Citroen went off the course twice on Saturday -- one "off" into a snow bank costing him eight minutes.

It was Ford's second victory of the season, indeed second in a week, and Gronholm -- winner the previous weekend in Sweden -- has taken the drivers' championship lead from Loeb.

Gronholm has 24 points, Loeb 18 and sandwiched between them on 20 is 26-year-old Hirvonen, who says his second WRC victory was "much bigger" than his first in Western Australia'a last Rally Oz.

"Australia was a little bit easy," Hirvonen says. "For me this (Norway) was the perfect weekend."

Hirvonen won four of the 18 stages in what were some of trickiest conditions -- snow, ice and fog -- rally drivers will encounter this season.

Atkinson is seventh in the championship on six points, now two behind teammate Solberg.

Subaru boss Richard Taylor says the tyres his team nominated two weeks before Norway did not give it enough choice of long-studded rubber for the rally.

Atkinson says it was a tough rally for him and Aussie co-driver Glenn Macneall, "although there's no doubt that without the mistake on Saturday morning (when he spun and got stuck in a snowdrift, costing them 16 minutes) we would have been in the points".

"I struggled a bit with my confidence compared with Sweden," Atkinson says.

"I've never driven in that much snow before. I wasn't able to have the same feeling with the car.

"Now this rally is over we can start to look forward to Mexico and the first rally with the new WRC2007. We can make some steps forward now."

World Rally Championship standings -- Drivers: Marcus Groenholm (Finland, Ford) 24 points, Mikko Hirvonen (Finland, Ford) 20, Sebastien Loeb (France, Citroen) 18, Henning Solberg (Norway, Ford) 11, Daniel Sordo (Spain, Citroen) 8, Petter Solberg (Norway, Subaru) 8, Chris Atkinson (Australia, Subaru) 6, Daniel Carlsson (Sweden, Citroen 6), Toni Gardemeister (Finland, Mitsubishi) 5, Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Ford) 4. Constructors: BP-Ford 44, Citroen Total 28, Stobart M-Sport Ford 16, Subaru 15, OMV-Kronos Citroen 14.

Kevin Harvick pipped Mark Martin by 0.02 seconds after more than 800km of racing, with Harvick's teammate Jeff Burton third as other cars crashed across the finish line.

Although Martin has traditionally been a Ford man, the top three drivers were all in Chevrolets today.

It was Martin's 23rd start in the Great American Race but he is still without a win in the world's richest race, which this year had total prizemoney of US$18 million.

Martin was praying for a yellow flag caution in the last-lap mayhem but Harvick got to the line before officials had a chance to call it.

In the huge pile-up, Clint Bowyer's Chevy crossed the line on its roof before flipping back up the right way on the inner grass as the engine caught fire.

Harvick won after starting 34th in the field of 43 -- the furthest back a Daytona 500 winner has started.

On Sunday, Australian time, he won the Orbitz 300, the Busch series race that was the main lead-in to the 500 -- and in which Australia's Marcos Ambrose made a brilliant Busch and Daytona debut.

Harvick became the fourth driver to win the Busch and 500 races on subsequent days at Daytona.

Ex Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya avoided several major crashes to finish 19th in his debut in today's 200-lap classic on the 31-degree banks of the 4km superspeedway.

Japanese giant Toyota, making its entry to NASCAR's Nextel Cup, saw Dale Jarrett its best finisher in 23rd while Michael Waltrip, whose team brought massive embarrassment on the car maker when it was found to be cheating during the week-long lead-up, finished 30th. Apart from a US$100,000 fine, two of two-time Daytona 500 winner Waltrip's crew have been banned indefinitely.

Daytona 500 Top Ten
1 Kevin Harvick - Chevrolet
2 Mark Martin - Chevrolet
3 Jeff Burton - Chevrolet 
4 Mike Wallace - Chevrolet  
5 David Ragan - Ford   
6 Elliott Sadler - Dodge   
7 Kasey Kahne - Dodge   
8 David Gilliland - Ford
9 Joe Nemechek - Chevrolet   
10 Jeff Gordon - Chevrolet

Ambrose top rookie in Busch debut
Australia's Marcos Ambrose was the top rookie finisher in the main support race to the Daytona 500.

The dual V8 Supercar champion finished 16th in the 300-mile (482.80km) Busch series race, after starting 37th in his Ford Fusion, and earned US$47,950 (A$60,935) prizemoney.

The top 12 drivers were Nextel Cup regulars who also started in today's 500.

Harvick won in a Chevrolet from Dave Blaney in a Toyota and Carl Edwards in a Ford.

In all, there were 25 Cup drivers in the race and 15 of them filled the  top 20 finishing spots.

Ambrose was on the same lap as the leaders after 120 circuits of the superspeedway.

"First race of the season and first race at Daytona was always going to be big, so it was important to feel comfortable out there and it feels great that everything went so well," Ambrose says.

"Sixteenth at our first race at Daytona is almost like a win for us. It feels really great.

"This is definitely the most nerve-wracking race I've had. These restrictor-plate races are incredible. I've never experienced anything like that.

"This was a real bogey track for us. It was more about getting to the finish and not feeling intimidated out there.

"We were relatively close to the second crash in the race. It was just a matter of slowing it down and getting through. I knew exactly what was happening, I just had to get around it.

"It was always going to happen because that's just a part of superspeedway racing."

The nearest finishing rookie to Ambrose was Kyle Krisiloff in 27th, while high-profile rookies Sam Hornish Junior, the reigning Indianapolis 500 winner, and Juan Pablo Montoya were classified 31st and 40th respectively.

Montoya had driven his Dodge from 16th to fourth in the early stages before his engine blew, while Hornish battled on after bouncing his Dodge off the wall.

Ambrose's next race in the Busch series is at California Speedway next Saturday, followed by a road course event in Mexico City on March 4.

Serious number-crunching on Townsville
Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a very important day in Townsville's quest for a V8 Supercar street race, particularly over the costing of the necessary redevelopment of the city's Boundary St.

As things stand, the Queensland government has rejected the idea of a Townsville street race as too costly, saying it was told the event would require a one-off capital injection of about $11 million but that it found the initial capital works would be $24.7 million -- and that the government and the city council would then have to contribute $3 million a year each.

Townsville's V8 Supercar steering committee chairman, prominent car dealer Tony Ireland, is hoping to find out in a meeting in Brisbane tomorrow with the state's sports minister, Andrew Fraser, how there can be such a disparity in the projected costs.

The state government has basically flagged that either a business consortium or the federal government need to tip in $10 million for the event to be a goer. That amount is more than any private group would contribute.

Apart from Ireland, Townsville major Tony Mooney, local MP Craig Wallace and V8 Supercar boss Tony Cochrane will be in tomorrow's meeting with Fraser.

Ireland, in particular, is determined to get a V8 race in the Far North. "We're not going away -- we want to keep working to get them (V8 Supercars)," Ireland has told the Townsville Bulletin newspaper.

"We want absolute clarity on who has to provide what money to make this thing work. Until we get real numbers on the table we can't do anything... we don't know how much to ask (the federal government) for.

"I've never been 50 per cent wrong on numbers in my life. (The development) has enduring benefits to the city to get this facility; it's just whether or not it's deemed appropriate for the federal government to help build it."

The state government has previously declined to make all the calculations public, saying some of the Supercar figures are commercially sensitive and that it would not distribute them outside the Cabinet room.

Supercars blast off, with Shell
V8 Supercar testing got underway today -- at Winton in Victoria and Queensland Rceway, or Willowbank, near Ipswich.

The season is now less than two weeks away at Adelaide's Clipsal 500 on March 1-4.

Shell's high-density, high-octane V-Power Racing will be the official fuel of this year's series.

The super premium 100 octane fuel is formulated with 5 per cent ethanol.

Renault has a sticky problem
F1's world champion constructor of the past two years, Renault, says it hasn't properly adjusted to Bridgestone tyres yet.

Following the withdrawal of French tyre maker Michelin, on whose rubber Renault won the 2005 and '06 titles, Bridgestone is the sole tyre supplier for the season now less than a month away, starting at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 18.

"From what we have seen so far (in pre-season testing), we seem to be several tenths (of a second a lap) away from the fastest runners in most conditions -- on the first laps and long runs," Renault's Pat Symonds says.

"Back in November we said our objective was to learn our lessons by the time we reached Melbourne. We aren't in Australia yet -- and we haven't learned all our lessons either.

"We haven't unlocked the secret of getting performance out of the tyres."

McLaren and Ferrari have looked strongest in testing, with the final trials for most teams over the next few days in Bahrain, although Williams and Spyker will continue in Spain.

Williams' Australian technical director Sam Michael, a man with a lot of the responsibility to improve performance squarely on his shoulders, has told crash.net: "We are confident we will have a better year than last year.

"We had a car (in 2006) that was good enough for fifth in the constructors' championship and we put it back to eighth through our own unreliability.

"But in terms of pace we were always either just inside or outside the top 10.

"We were always around the fifth-fastest team, and there's no doubt we can improve significantly on our reliability.

"Our target this year is to be 100 per cent reliable. Last year we had 11 car failures.

"Even Ferrari and Renault fighting for the title had a couple each, and realistically that's what we want to get it down to as well, but the target needs to be zero.

Michael says Williams' relationship with new engine supplier Toyota is excellent. "We started talking to Toyota (about this year's car, the FW29) a long time ago. We had our 2007 gearbox on the dyno very early, and started designing it back last February. It's already done over 15,000km -- some on the track and some on the dyno -- and its reliability is a significant step over last year's ‘box."

Michael speaks highly of Webber's replacement, 33-year-old Austrian Alex Wurz -- who has not raced full-time in F1 since 2000, instead being a test driver for McLaren and last year Williams.

"On the development side Alex has had a good input on suspension geometry, car set-up, electronics, tyre development, even a couple of aerodynamic things -- everything to be honest, because he has a very logical mind," Michael says.

Wurz's teammate is the youngster entering his second season, Nico Rosberg -- son of 1982 world champion and 1985 Australian GP winner Keke Rosberg.

Dane tops on tarmac again
Allan Simonsen is the new star of Australian tarmac rallying.

Driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX, Simonsen won Rally Tasmania at the weekend, just three weeks after winning Victoria's new tarmac event, the Lake Mountain Tango.

In the three-day event in north-west Tasmania, Simonsen -- a Dane who is an accomplished intenational circuit racer -- and the Evo IX originally built by Les Walkden beat Cody Crocker in a Subaru WRX STi Spec C by 15 seconds with Jason White third in a Lamborghini Gallardo.

The strong field also included Jim Richards, Tony Longhurst and Eli Evans.

Musical chairs in A1
Nico Hulkenberg, the young German who has given his country a dominant lead in the A1 Grand Prix World Cup of Motorsport this season, will miss one of the remaining four rounds -- but it's a long shot that New Zealand or France can overhaul Germany anyway.

Teenager Hulkenberg will skip the Mexico's A1 round on March 23-25 because it clashes with the opening round of the Formula 3 Euroseries in which he will compete.

His place in Mexico will be taken by Formula BMW world champion Christian Vietoris.

However, team boss Willi Weber, Michael Schumacher's lifelong manager, says Hulkenberg will return for the last two rounds -- in Shanghai, China, and Brands Hatch in Britain.

His six victories this season have given Germany a 25-point lead over New Zealand in the 550-horsepower open-wheeler series.

Germany has 82 points, NZ 57 and France 52 with daylight to the other countries.

NZ has put Matt Halliday back in its "Black Beauty" car for next weekend's eighth round on a street circuit in Durban, South Africa, in place of Jonny Reid, who has scored seven podiums in 10 races this season -- six of them in the last six races.

Halliday has not driven in A1 since the last street race, round three in Beijing, China, but he drove at Durban last season and claimed sixth in the sprint race and fourth in the longer feature.

Team NZ claims his experience on trickier street circuits is the most appropriate for the South African event.

Karl Reindler has kept the drive with Team Australia for Durban, again perhaps because of his street circuit form too -- he was on the podium in Beijing.

Australia is languishing 14th in the series with just 18 points and was particularly disappointing at its home race at Sydney's Eastern Creek this month.

The first Detroit GP run by Downtown Detroit Partnership headed by Penske will be this year and comprise an ALMS sports car race on September 1 and an IRL round on September 2.

It will be the first race on the Belle Isle street course since the Champ Car World Series left Detroit after its 2001 race.

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