MOTORSPORT: Game over for Webber in '09

Not even mathematically does Webber have a chance now
Mark Webber's chances of winning this year's Formula One world championship were finally, totally extinguished with last night's retirement with brake problems from the Singapore Grand Prix -- the fourth straight race from which he's come away without a solitary point.

But the A1 GP series chairman Tony Teixeira claims to have put in place a financial restructuring that not only will see those open-wheelers racing at the Gold Coast in less than four weeks now but to have secured the category's future long-term.

However, there are still doubters on the A1 front and it is intriguing that the press release of the latest announcement does not carry the "Powered by Ferrari" logo that the series has used so proudly the past year or so.

But back to F1 for the moment. Mark Webber is officially out of contention for the F1 world title, now trailing championship leader Jenson Button by 32.5 points after the Singapore GP and just three races -- and thus a maximum 30 points -- remaining.

Lewis Hamilton won in Singapore for McLaren-Mercedes -- the 60th GP victory for that combination.

McLaren is fast closing on Ferrari for third place in the constructors' championship.

While BrawnGP and Red Bull Racing are set to finish first and second in that championship, no team has scored more points than McLaren in the past five races -- despite the continued underperformance of Finn Heikki Kovalainen as Hamilton has won two races and thrown away another.

After the shuffling of the traditional order at the start of this season, McLaren is now right back in business -- it just needs a top-flight second driver.

We wonder whether Kimi Raikkonen might return to McLaren next year if indeed Fernando Alonso is destined for Ferrari.

After his third place for Renault in Singapore last night, his first podium of the year and at the track where he so controversially won the first night GP a year earlier after then teammate Nelson Piquet Junior was ordered to crash to assist the Spaniard's climb through the pack, Alonso is still not saying what he's doing next year.

"This podium doesn't change anything. I have made a decision already. Soon we will know," said Alonso, lamenting the absence from Singapore of Flavio Briatore, his long-time manager and the Renault team boss ousted from the sport for ordering last year's Singapore "fix".

Ferrari long ago stopped development on this year's F60 car to concentrate on next year's machine.

"When we took that decision, we knew we would pay for it more and more as the end of the season approached," Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali said.

Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella, in his second race with Ferrari deputising for the injured Felipe Massa after the disastrous Luca Badoer experiment, qualified only 13th and 18th in Singapore on Saturday and finished 10th and 13th last night.

"I couldn't do any better. The car was sliding everywhere and I had no grip," Raikkonen said.

"I don't expect the situation to be much different next week in Suzuka (Japan) -- it is a very demanding track for the car, from an aerodynamic point of view and we are lacking in this area."

Fisichella said: "I was struggling to keep the car on track because of a lack of grip. Now we go to Suzuka -- a real track."

And coming off Timo Glock's second place in Singapore, its equal best result in almost eight years of F1, Toyota will be eyeing its breakthrough victory at Suzuka, owned by its Japanese rival Honda, which quit F1 10 months ago.

Glock said his Singapore second, within 10 seconds of Hamilton, was "a brilliant result for Toyota before the Japanese GP" while Toyota team principal Tadashi Yamashina said Suzuka "should be more suited to our car than Singapore".

Brawn drivers Button and Rubens Barrichello recovered well from modest qualifying and Button stretched his championship lead over his veteran teammate -- now his only realistic title rival -- by a point.

"I'm happy with fifth position and four more points. It's good to come through from 11th on the grid to score points," Button said.

Barrichello said: "On my second pit stop I couldn't engage neutral and the engine stalled, which lost me the crucial time needed to stay ahead of Jenson. But I only lost a point to Jenson in the championship so I'm staying positive."

In a race that ran just four minutes short of the maximum allowed two hours Webber's teammate Sebastian Vettel finished fourth but remained optimistic about the championship, despite being 25 points behind Button and 10 behind Barrichello.

"I think history has shown many different examples of how it can finish over the years, with it going either way," Vettel said.

"At the next races our approach will be simple: we will try to get pole position and try to win, so it's very straightforward."

An admirable approach, but Vettel will need the biggest miracle in the history of the sport to pull it off.

Webber said of his disappointing retirement: "We had a suspected brake problem, so when I came in for my pit stop, the guys made a visual check.

"It seemed reasonable for me to continue, but then we had the failure and I retired.

"The guys did everything they could -- I think they were seconds away from retiring me when we had the failure.

"The first lap was pretty feisty, as you'd expect on a street circuit, and I had a bit of a fight with Fernando in turn seven and we both ran wide.

"About nine laps later I had to let Fernando back through, but unfortunately Glock was in the middle by then, so I had to let them both through.

"My race was heavily compromised from there.

"I thought the incident was 50-50 -- but the stewards decided I had to let Fernando and Glock through, so I lost the hard work I'd done during my first stint. It was a hard penalty.

"Kimi did something similar in Spa (Belgium) and got away with it."

Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner said it was "a day with too many incidents" for the team.

"It was a shame that Mark had to drop back behind Glock and Alonso after both drivers had run wide at turn seven," Horner said.

"There was a drive-through penalty for Sebastian and damage to his diffuser after running over a kerb and, with all of that, he managed to bring the car home in P4 with a really competitive drive.

"With Mark, we had some concern about his brake wear, so we called his pit stop a couple of laps earlier to do a visual safety check.

"The brake pads and brake discs looked fine and we cleared the cooling duct of any debris.

"After the stop the brake wear continued to rise and we were just in the process of calling him in when a suspected brake disk failure occurred."

Nick Heidfeld failed to finish a GP for the first time in more than two years when his German countryman Adrian Sutil in a Force India-Mercedes hit his BMW-Sauber while recovering from a spin.

Heidfeld's teammate Robert Kubica picked up the final point in Singapore, finishing eighth and behind McLaren's Kovalainen, and said it was "the most difficult point I have scored in my whole life".

While McLaren is showing all the indications of becoming a mighty force again, BMW, pulling out at the end of this year after finishing third in last year's championship, is languishing eighth in a championship in which 10 teams are participating.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has raised doubts about "one or two" of the four new teams granted entries next season.

"I think one or two might not turn up," Ecclestone told the BBC in Singapore.

"That's what I'm being told -- possibly US F1 is a doubt."

The other new entrants are Manor (supposedly with support from Virgin airline tycoon Richard Branson), a reborn, Malaysian-owned Lotus and Spain's Campos.

Formula One world drivers' championship standings after 14 of 17 rounds -- Jenson Button (Great Britain, Brawn-Mercedes) 84 points, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Brawn-Mercedes) 69, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull Racing-Renault) 59, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull Racing-Renault) 51.5, Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 40, Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 37, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Williams-Toyota) 30.5, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Renault) 26, Timo Glock (Germany, Toyota) 24, Jarno Trulli (Italy, Toyota) 22.5, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 22, Heikki Kovalainen (Finland, McLaren-Mercedes) 22, Nick Heidfeld (Germany, BMW-Sauber) 12, Robert Kubica (Poland, BMW-Sauber) 9, Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy, Ferrari) 8, Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 5, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 3, Sebastien Bourdais (France, Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 2.

F1 constructors' championship standings -- Brawn-Mercedes 153 points, Red Bull Racing-Renault 110.5, Ferrari 62, McLaren-Mercedes 59, Toyota 46.5, Williams-Toyota 30.5, Renault 26, BMW-Sauber 21, Force India-Mercedes 13, Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari 5.

"I wanted to announce this refinancing a long time ago, but the reason it has taken longer than I planned was the size of the package," Teixeira said.

"I could see no reason to look for a one-year deal -- it had to be for at least three to four years until such a time as the series is independent.

"This way we can make sure everyone involved in the series has the necessary security and the series is totally creditable."

The announcement said Teixeira was "also working closely with his major partners and suppliers to ensure their continued support".

"I shall be meeting all of them personally in the next couple of days," he said. "I want them to understand this is a series that is here to stay on the motorsport scene, and they need to know their involvement is with a series that is going from strength to strength.

"We have always put on a fantastic show and this is only going to get better. I have seen all the stories written over the past few weeks doubting the future of the series, and these are not new to me as I have seen them at the start of every one of our four seasons.

"These are not things I like to read and I feel frustrated that I cannot always come out and explain exactly what we are doing, but we have always delivered every season and race we have committed to."

A1 has recently announced a deal with IMG Sports Media to market its worldwide media rights for the next three years and, belatedly, its fifth season calendar.

"Teixeira is now working on further deals, and in the coming weeks the grid for the race in Surfers Paradise will be announced after final deals have been put in place," the latest announcement said.

It said the one outstanding issue to be dealt with soon was the liquidation of A1 Grand Prix Operations Ltd, a subsidiary of A1 Holdings Ltd Administration.

A court hearing for A1 GP Operations has been set for October 6 in Europe.

Teixeira said it was A1's "intention is to settle all our outstanding creditors prior to the administration hearing, and we would like to thank them for their patience and support".

The Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper has been tracking the A1 story for a couple of weeks now and its take today on this latest announcement is here.

Curiously a very negative story appeared last Friday on BigPond Sport, in which a supposedly well-placed but anonymous source was quoted saying that A1 was "not coming to Australia."

That report, made all the more curious by having an "Exclusive" tag but no author's name, is here.

A more recent and balanced report -- making the point that the latest press release from A1 GP did not include the words 'Powered by Ferrari', although A1's website still has that term -- is here.

V8 Supercar assets sold for a 'song'
Still on Gold Coast-related matters, the Bulletin newspaper has reported that the assets of the V8 Supercar team fallen tycoon Daniel Tzvetkoff was behind for Marcus Marshall has been bought for a bargain price before going to auction, see here.

The former Ferrari F1 and Peugeot rally boss, Frenchman Jean Todt, spoke about his aspirations during the weekend in Singapore -- and he has the backing of Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone as well as influential but non-voting voices like Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost, Felipe Massa, Mario Andretti, Gerhard Berger and Roger Penske.

Todt's views

His opponent is Finnish rally legend Ari Vatanen, who has pledged to clean-up the "tainted" F1 and govern more in the interests of all forms of motorsport.

"I want to propose a new start, to develop F1 in the next five or 10 years," Vatanen said. "We must rebuild F1 together with common sense, democracy, honesty and openness.

"F1 is the richest sport in the capital investment world, but not much money is going back to other forms of motor sport. That's wrong."

One way F1 captured American attention
The "Crashgate" scandal hopefully is now behind F1 and motorsport, but for anyone still interested the New York Times has run a "special report" titled "Behind the 'accident' that doomed Renault", see here.

It's a worthwhile read, but misses the point we made here last week that the FIA's World Motor Sport Council got it exactly right by banning Flavio Briatore indefinitely, the team's director of engineering Pat Symonds for five years and giving Renault a suspended two-year ban.

It got rid of the baddest apples, while comprehending that Renault the team in total, and the car manufacturer, were unwitting and unfortunate victims of those rotten apples.

In this author's view it wasn't just a pragmatic decision to avert the loss of another manufacturer from F1, but a decision about correctness and fairness.

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