MOTORSPORT: Grave danger signs on F1

The Honda team wasn't sold by the weekend's deadline.

Indeed it is now seeking British taxpayers' money to stay afloat.

And, with the prospect of only 18 cars on the grid for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in less than two months, the ringmaster of the F1 circus, Bernie Ecclestone, is talking of the top teams running three cars each.

That's always been a possibility, but it will also make something of a mockery of the sport's cost-cutting measures on which so much time and effort has been spent in recent months.

Indeed, if it does happen, it will probably immediately render the cost curbs ineffective -- if they were ever going to take effect.

And it's been reported by German news magazine Focus that Mercedes-Benz's parent board has voted 3-2 in favor of continuing in F1.

So two of the five representatives on that board are opposed to involvement in F1, and the majority is only one!

Apart from its long association with McLaren, in which it is the biggest shareholder, Mercedes this year will supply engines to Force India and, most likely, any buyer of the Honda team.

Just imagine if the three-pointed star logo was to go from F1 in a hurry.

And Focus said Mercedes' rival BMW might rethink its F1 program at the end of this year.

We'll come back to F1 later ...

But he's been quite a colorful character, playing on a bad-boy image.

And he's continued that since his retirement from full-time V8 Supercar racing recently.

We note a story on the V8 Supercar website, v8Supercar.com.au, in which Morris calls the modern generation of drivers in the category "boring".

"We've just got no characters out there anymore," he says.

"You've got guys winning races and their girlfriends get shown on TV more, prancing up and down pit lane...

"They (the drivers) know if they say something they will be fined and if they push someone off (the track) they will get points taken off them."

Now we were empathising with Morris up to this point.

But then he says: "WWF on four wheels, that's how we should be doing it!"

What's that? WWF?

Does he mean the Worldwide Wrestling Federation?

Or WWE? World Wrestling Entertainment.

Leave off.

As if V8 Supercar racing does not have enough credibility issues in comparison with other sports, one of its own wants to turn it into something akin to contrived wrestling.

While we agreed with some of his sentiments, after reading all of what he's had to say we're reminded that often those in the V8 Supercar paddock who have the most to say, and the most outlandish, are those with the poorest stats sheets.

There are a few others in that basket with Mr Morris.

We might revisit the matter of credibility in that area in the near future.

Atkinson was a little unlucky not to be fourth in the tricky tarmac rally in atrocious conditions, dropping a spot to Henning Solberg after going off on the penultimate stage.

But the Aussie still finished ahead of his Citroen junior team colleague, and junior world champion, Sebastien Ogier of France -- as well as the team's third driver, Zimbawean Conrad Rautenbach.

Atkinson lost almost a minute on that second last stage and ended it 85 seconds off the ultimate pace.

"I had a really bad feeling for the whole stage," he said.

"I braked but it didn't slow down and I got stuck on like a little rock ledge and we had to push it back on.

"That's life."

Earlier the bonnet had flown up and smashed his windscreen after he forgot to replace the pins, but otherwise he was "feeling good" with the C4.

"We're not taking stupid risks and we're just keeping up a sensible pace," Atkinson said.

"The car feels very well-balanced and I'm not really playing with the set-up at all.

"I'm just trying to learn the C4. I think you need to be at full confidence with it in order to look for those last few seconds.

"I know the speed's there and my confidence in the car is really coming."

Citroen team principal Olivier Quesnel and junior team manager Benoit Nogier were thrilled with Atkinson's debut performance with the French manufacturer.

"We are quite happy because Chris did not know the car," Quesnel said.

"For Sebastien Ogier it was quite new and for Conrad Rautenbach he is still progressing, so what happened is quite okay, because the three cars finished the rally - so that means they are quite good.

"Chris was going up and up and up with every stage and Sebastien Ogier was disappointed, but he has to learn, so I think it's good for him, and to be at the end is quite well, but he has to learn and this is the world championship, so it's not easy."

Atkinson was only confirmed for this one event, so Quesnel was asked if he would like to have him in the Citroen junior team for more rallies this year.

"Yes, I hope he will stay with us," he said.

"We will have a discussion, but I don't know yet.

"The rally is just finished, but I hope he will stay with us."

Loeb's Spanish teammate Dani Sordo made it a one-two for Citroen, giving the company the maximum 18 points in the manufacturers' championship.

There was 1 minute 27.9 seconds between Loeb and Sordo, then another 39.9 seconds to third-placed Finn Mikko Hirvonen's Ford Focus.

Henning Solberg, whose brother and former world champion Petter is out of a full-time drive since Subaru quit but will have a one-off outing in a Citroen at the next round in Norway, got Stobart Ford off to a good start with fourth, ahead of Atkinson and Ogier, then Britain's Matthew Wilson seventh in another Stobart Ford, with Abu Dhabi's Khalid al Qassimi scoring his first world championship point with eighth place for works Ford team.

WRC driver standings after round 1 - Sebastien Loeb (France, Citroen) 10 points, Daniel Sordo (Spain, Citroen) 8, Mikko Hirvonen (Finland, Ford) 6, Henning Solberg (Norway, Ford) 5, Chris Atkinson (Australia, Citroen) 4, Sebastien Ogier (France, Citroen) 3, Matthew Wilson (Britain, Ford) 2, Khalid Al Qassimi (United Arab Emirates, Ford) 1.

WRC constructor standings - Citroen Total WRT 18 points, BP-Ford Abu-Dhabi WRT 8, Stobart VK M-Sport Ford WRT 8, Citroen 5.

The first tarmac rally of the year, the new Targa Wrest Point, was held in southern Tasmania at the weekend, and this weekend the first ARC round, also on tarmac, will be held in the island state's north-west.

Launceston driver Greg Garwood, driving a 2004 Porsche 911 GT3 RS with Queensland co-driver John Allen, fought a thrilling battle with the 2008 Nissan GTR of Tony Quinn and Naomi Tillett in Targa Wrest Point, winning by just 3 seconds.

Another Tasmanian, Jason White, finished just 12 seconds from victory in his 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera.

Victorian Matt Close was fourth in his 2000 Porsche 911 Turbo, just 2 seconds in front of West Australian Dean Herridge, who was debuting a new Subaru Impreza WRX STi and snatched fifth place from Jim Richards on the final stage.

Richards and co-driver Barry Oliver lost around 40 seconds on the first day when a turbo hose blew off on their 2008 Porsche 911 GT2 and on Sunday that ultimately lost out to the 4WD of Herridge's Subaru.

Only 4 seconds separated positions four to seven, with Andrew Miedecke and co-driver Daniel Wilson seventh in a 2007 Daytona Coupe.

South Australian Steve Glenney and co-driver Bernie Webb, the 2008 Targa Tasmania winners, were easily quickest in the Late Classic class in a borrowed 1981 Holden Commodore, winning by 3 minutes from Peter Eames and Will Logan in a 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera RS.

One of the most popular cars in the event, the 1971 Holden Monaro GTS of Steve and Kaila Coad, took a big win in the Early Classic class.

They were nearly 4 minutes clear of Scott and Wayne Kent in a 1965 Ford Mustang.

Targa Wrest Point was introduced as a warm-up for the longer, established Targa Tasmania which starts in Launceston on April 28.

Team chiefs had already dismissed the January 31 deadline as being of little consequence, but unless a deal has been secretly done and the team is already adapting its 2009 design to accept a Mercedes-Benz engine it's hard to be optimistic about the outfit's future.

There have been reports that the team has applied for a slice of the British government's financial package for the car industry there.

And it seems it meets the four key criteria to qualify for a handout -- a turnover of more than 25 million pounds, being at the cutting edge of innovation, reducing carbon emissions and creating jobs.

What is the world coming to?

Might we have the F1 team of the Japanese-owned sixth largest car manufacturer in the world virtually nationalised by the British government?

After finishing ninth out of 10 teams in F1 last year on a budget reported to have been 180 million quid!

One British commentator has called the Honda F1 operation "breathtakingly wasteful" and called it "crazy" that the government could consider using taxpayer money to keep Jenson Button on the GP grid.

"The team can indeed boast a high turnover and the ability to create two jobs a year for millionaire racing drivers," David Broder wrote.

"The fact that F1 is high-tech hardly implies that any of the innovation is useful for the rest of society.

"Although some technology has carried over to road cars in past decades, the current ban on electronic driver aids such as ABS or traction control, the engine standardisation in the sport and focus on aerodynamic development to improve performance means that there is now very little cross-pollination."

It seemed that Scuderia Toro Rosso may have been delaying announcement of its second driver, alongside Swiss newcomer Sebastien Buemi, until the Honda picture cleared.

Toro Rosso principal Franz Tost worked closely with Button during his debut season with Williams in 2000 and is said to hold him in high regard, but other reports suggest 2008 driver Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais has the sponsorship Toro Rosso needs to keep the seat.

The line from within the Honda F1 team remains: "We're optimistic, but it may not be possible to comment further for some time."

But the clock is ticking fast now to the start of the season and, unless a deal has secretly been done, it is going to be tough to complete a new car, let alone test it before the F1 circus is transported to Melbourne in seven weeks.

Demise of what has been one of the best-funded teams in the sport would be a huge embarrassment, especially after all the supposed interest in buying it.

Rather than a grid of nine teams and 18 cars, Bernie Ecclestone's option has always been to entice the top teams to field three cars each.

"That is basically what will happen," Ecclestone told Deutsche Press-Agentur.

"If the manufacturers supply engines to other people, they can run three cars themselves. (So that applies to Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and Toyota, but not BMW).

"It is better to have 20 cars on the grid -- whether they are in the hands of manufacturers or in private hands, that doesn't make a difference."

Ecclestone denies any contractual obligation on him to supply GP promoters with 20 cars, let alone the 26 he did years ago.

But the "difference" will be that the cost of F1 will suddenly increase again at precisely the time expenses are meant to be being contained.

And imagine teams trying to ask sponsors to increase budgets just weeks out from the season start because they might find themselves wanting -- even being forced, virtually -- to field third cars.

It's creating plenty of off-season interest in F1, but it all only masks the crisis behind the scenes.

But MotoGP superstar Valentino Rossi is three times more popular than Hamilton!

And NASCAR drivers have nowhere near the number of Facebook fans as those in F1, according to the Wheels blog on the New York Times website.

NASCAR's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Junior, would rank fifth on the F1 list.

That NYT Wheels link is here.

This issue has been kicking around for several months now, and what's emerged in that time is that:

<<<Last year is the only season in the past 20 years in which there would have been a different world champion -- Felipe Massa instead of Lewis Hamilton.

<<<Australia's Alan Jones, and American great Mario Andretti, would have won two world titles instead of one, Nigel Mansell three instead of just one, Ayrton Senna four straight, Jim Clark four too, including three in a row, and Alain Prost five in all.

<<<Stirling Moss would have been a world champion, instead of carrying the tag of the greatest driver never to win the title (unless, like us, you believe Gilles Villeneuve to be that driver).

<<<And Ecclestone would never have won the world title twice with Nelson Piquet when he owned the Brabham team in the early 1980s, and indeed Piquet would not have won any of his three titles.

Even more changes to how the history books would read here.

"Being a Roman, I feel Rome can give a lot to and get a lot from F1," Flammini said.

"The Flammini Group can give absolute guarantees quality-wise, but we are yet to find approval from the mayor and from the presidents of the region and of the province."

Ferrari chief Luca De Montezemolo -- an avowed critic of street circuits who has often said "Monaco has history, but to have three or four Monacos is too much" -- has called the idea "unthinkable"

"We already have so many circuits under-used," Montezemolo said.

"Italy is among the countries that has the greatest number of circuits -- an extraordinary one in Mugello, a historical one in Monza, and then Imola, Misano, Vallelunga."

Yet Montezemolo conceded: "If there is a spot, a one-time offering for Rome, but not a permanent circuit, then we can talk about it."

Even more so, there are mixed messages in France about plans for an F1 street race at Flins-sur-Seine, about 64km from Paris, to replace the defunct GP held for so long at Magny-Cours until dropped from the world championship this year.

That man was American Teddy Mayer, older brother of Timmy Mayer, who was killed at Longford in Tasmania during the Tasman Series in the early 1960s.

The older Mayer headed McLaren when Emerson Fittipaldi and James Hunt won world titles for it and when it entered Indy racing.

He was seen to have failed to keep McLaren up with ground-effects technology and to have not secured Gilles Villeneuve full-time.

However, he brought Alain Prost into F1 and coined the saying that "drivers are just interchangeable light bulbs -- you plug them in and they do the job", since modified by Tom Walkinshaw to something like: "Drivers are light bulbs; when they no longer shine you toss them out and plug in another."

Mayer later ran the ill-fated Beatrice team for Carl Haas and the British end of Roger Penske's racing operations.

Ron Dennis, now moving aside from the top job at McLaren, said Mayer, who was 73, was "one of motor racing's truly great men" who left an "immortal legacy".

"The origins of our (McLaren's) many and ongoing successes are with Bruce and Teddy," Dennis said.

RLR ran one car for American driver Ryan Hunter-Reay last season and won on the famed Watkins Glen road course in July.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, the team won the Indianapolis 500 with Buddy Rice in 2004 and brought Danica Patrick into the IndyCar Series.

RLR will now concentrate on its sports car alliance with BMW in the American Le Mans Series.

Meanwhile, Danica Patrick, starting her third year with Andretti Green Racing, will have her team boss Michael Andretti, winner of 42 races and leader of more laps at Indianapolis than anyone else not to win the 500 at The Brickyard, as her strategist this season.

After becoming the first woman to win a major motor race at the IndyCar round in Japan last April, 26-year-old Patrick did not finish better than fifth the rest of the year and was woefully off the pace in the last Gold Coast Indy.

Patrick was the first woman to lead the Indy 500 in 2005 before finishing fourth.

AGR has been one of IndyCar's top teams, winning three titles and two Indy 500s in the past six seasons.

Johnson needed minor surgery to repair a tendon and nerve after cutting the middle finger on his left hand with a kitchen knife while attempting to cut a hole in his fire suit for a cooling tube during the Daytona 24-hour sports car race a week ago.

NASCAR's Sprint Cup begins with the Daytona 500 on February 15.

Nice to see that John Andretti, winner of that original Gold Coast Indy in 1991 and a nephew of Mario, has scored another Daytona 500 start with Front Row Motorsports in a Earnhardt Ganassi Racing car.

It will be Andretti's 359th Cup start.

His crew chief will be Steve Lane, who held the same slot with Dario Franchitti until Chip Ganassi shelved that campaign in the middle of last year because of lack of sponsorship.

We were reminded at the weekend that Mario Andretti, voted the greatest American driver of the last quarter of the 20th century, only drove something like 14 NASCAR races, but that brief stock car career included a Daytona 500 victory.