MOTORSPORT: Green light for Queensland events

The Queensland government has agreed to continue financial support for the events, but it is demanding greater tourism benefits from them.

The government has declined to say how much it will tip into the street races, and the state’s other V8 Supercar Championship round at Ipswich’s Queensland Raceway, but it is believed to have cut its contribution by $2 million a year – most of it from the Gold Coast 600.

The next challenge for new V8 Supercar chief executive James Warburton is to clinch a renewal of NSW government support for the controversial Sydney 500 street event at the 2000 Olympics site at Homebush.

The Queensland news today gives some stability to the championship calendar for the next three years.

There also is some positive news on the driver front, with young New Zealander Scott McLaughlin – a race winner in his debut season in the championship – agreeing to stay with Garry Rogers Motorsport when it starts fielding Volvos next season. McLaughlin’s contract with GRM has been extended until the end of the 2016 season.

However, fresh concerns about the viability of iconic team Dick Johnson Racing have been raised by an admission in the extract of a new autobiography published at the weekend that five-time national champion and three-time Bathurst 1000 winner Johnson has lost $9.1 million and that he is virtually broke.

Johnson says in the book Dick Johnson: The Autobiography of a True-blue Aussie Sporting Legend, to be released soon, that financial wrong turns – particularly the arrangement he entered eight years ago with finance company Westpoint, which collapsed within a year – have wiped out his life savings.

He claims to be living on little more than $300 a week but determined to fight on as DJR tries to keep two Ford Falcons in the championship for Chaz Mostert and Tim Blanchard this season.

A younger Queenslander with a famous name, Matthew Brabham, has had his winning streak in North America’s Pro Mazda Championship ended at Mosport, where his triple Formula One world champion grandfather Sir Jack Brabham won the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix.

Third in the first Pro Mazda race of the weekend at Mosport but eliminated from the second in a crash, teenager Brabham still has a big lead in the series.

James Davison, a cousin of V8 Supercar drivers Will and Alex Davison and another grandson of the late four-time Australian GP winner Lex Davison, is believed to have landed a drive with Dale Coyne Racing for the next round of the IndyCar series at Mid-Ohio on the first weekend of August.

And Tasmanian Owen Kelly will race the following weekend in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup road race at Watkins Glen that has been won the past two years by fellow Tasmanian Marcos Ambrose. Kelly will become the eighth Australian to drive at the top level of American stock car racing -- at the wheel of a Chevrolet for Phoenix Racing, a team in the process of being sold and with which Jacques Villeneuve, A.J. Allmendinger and Robby Gordon have been associated.

On the F1 front world champion team Red Bull’s race engineering co-ordinator Andy Damerum has said that 24-year-old West Australian Daniel Ricciardo gave “exemplary feedback” during last week’s “audition” at Britain’s Silverstone circuit to replace Mark Webber next year. An article on Red Bull’s motorsport website stated that Jean-Eric Vergne, Ricciardo’s French teammate at smaller Red Bull-owned outfit Scuderia Toro Rosso, “is now out of the running for Webber’s seat”.

However, Vergne – with 13 world championship points to Ricciardo’s 11 this season, and 16 to 10 last year – has told Britain’s Autosport he still feels he is in contention for it.

“I’ve been massively unlucky this year ... I can beat him (Ricciardo),’ Vergne said.

Red Bull’s world champion of the past three seasons and this year’s championship leader Sebastian Vettel says he’s not fussed about who his teammate is next year.

“I don’t mind ... it’s the team’s decision. Obviously I can give my opinion ... that’s it,” Vettel said.

Estimates of the amount of money the Russian rescue of Sauber will inject into the Swiss-based F1 team have jumped from US$170 million to US$500 million. Sauber reportedly has debts of US$110 million and Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung has predicted F1’s only woman team principal, Monisha Kaltenborn, will be a casualty in the rescue.

While the Russians providing the money are likely to want management input in the team Sonntagszeitung said team founder Peter Sauber, still the majority owner, “is pushing for a Swiss solution”.

Meanwhile, as the V8 Supercar community prepares for this weekend’s Ipswich round of its championship the Queensland government announcement today assuring the future of the state’s three championship events until 2016 is thought to involve about $7.3 million a year rather than the $9.3 million under the arrangements expiring this year.

Yet the government is not telling its taxpayers how much of their money it is tipping into these events.

“The funding amount for these combined events in our new negotiations can’t be disclosed because of our contractual arrangements,” Queensland tourism minister Jann Stuckey said.

“I can say though we can expect a lot more excitement around this [Gold Coast] event, with a refreshed look and other events planned that involve our community.

“The events of the future, I understand, are going to have a lot more variety to them and these three races as a package offer something around the state and allow us to showcase all of our fantastic destinations in Queensland.”

Stuckey said the government “will work strategically with the event organisers to leverage these events and boost visitation in Queensland”.

The Gold Coast 600, which has lost its international co-driver element this year, is likely to have to survive on a government handout of about $4 million in future rather than the $6 million since it became a pure V8 Supercar round after the loss of America’s IndyCar open-wheelers and the failure of the A1 GP show that was to have replaced them.

A revamp of the Gold Coast event, still the biggest each year in Queensland, is proposed to turn it into a week-long festival.

Campbell Newman, the state’s cost-conscious Liberal premier, claimed the arrangements for the next three years were “great news for tourism in Queensland and for motorsport fans across the state”.

“In addition to securing the events for Queensland, our investment in V8 Supercars will be focused on event outcomes, driving more visitors to the state, providing a boost to the economy and community as well as showcasing Queensland’s destinations.”

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