MOTORSPORT: GT racing's grandest day

The Bathurst 12-Hour has been in the spotlight again recently, because of the prospect that V8 Supercars will become its promoter and the likelihood of the event becoming part of a series – perhaps a quite international series.

It's almost six months since the 12-Hour, and the next one is a little more than six months away, on February 7, but another race this weekend – the 24 Hours of Spa in Belgium – is the biggest GT race in the world.

A Nissan GT-R entry similar to that which won at Bathurst last February – and with two of the drivers from that triumph, including Japanese hero Katsumasa Chiyo – is a chance for more glory at Spa. Although leading the Blancpain Endurance Series, that "Godzilla" isn't among the 20 cars that have qualified for tonight's Superpole shoot-out, but it is still within 1.2 seconds of the pacesetters at the famed 7km circuit.

Formula 1 resumes this weekend, after a three-week lull and ahead of another three-week gap, in Hungary – where Daniel Ricciardo won a year ago, and where he sees the chance of his best result in what has been a disappointing season.

And in America, NASCAR's Brickyard 400 will be run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That's one race that Roger Penske, the 78-year-old motor industry tycoon and race team owner who last night was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit, hasn't won yet – despite Team Penske's record 16 victories in the open-wheeler Indianapolis 500.

Before we look at these three major international events in some detail, Matt Brabham is to make his debut in NASCAR's bottom rung this weekend and Australia's new Extreme Rallycross Championship, now just six weeks away from its scheduled start at Brisbane's Lakeside Park, has snared a top driver – rally, especially tarmac rally, ace Steve Glenney.

Glenney has entered the series not in one of the imported $250,000 Super Lites intended as the proposed championship's top category (there's still only one of them) but in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII prepared at Jeff Beaumont's Techsport in Melbourne.

Brabham, 21 and with ambitions to race in America's IndyCar series next year (in particular the Indianapolis 500), tomorrow will drive in the South East Limited Late Model Series for David Gilliland Racing at Tri-County Speedway in North Carolina.

Winner of two open-wheeler championships in the Mazda Road to Indy in recent years and the Indy Lights Grand Prix of Indianapolis 14 months ago, Brabham is "looking forward to rubbing some panels".

Four makes are represented among the top five qualifiers for the Spa 24-Hour ahead of tonight's Superpole session for the top 20.

A BMW Z4 is fastest, ahead of a new Audi R8 LMS, with a Ferrari 458 third, another Audi fourth and an Aston Martin Vantage fifth.

Making up the top 20 are another four BMWs, three Mercedes, three Bentleys, two more Audis, another Ferrari and two McLaren 650s that are 11th and 12th – the faster of them with V8 Supercar star Shane Van Gisbergen among its four drivers.

That car has already won the British round of the Blancpain series at Silverstone with Van Gisbergen in it.

The Spa 24-Hour is a highlight of that series, which is being led by Japan's Katsumasa Chiyo, Britain's Alex Buncombe and Belgian Wolfgang Reip in a Nissan GT-R – albeit by only a point from a Bentley trio and two points ahead of an Audi crew.

The 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V6 GT-R triumphed in the previous Blancpain round at France's Paul Ricard circuit.

Chiyo won the Bathurst 12-Hour in February with computer gamer graduates Reip and German Florian Strauss – the latter having been called in late because of Buncombe awaiting the arrival of his first child in Britain.

Buncombe will partner Todd Kelly in a Nissan Altima in the Bathurst 1000 V8 Supercar classic for the second time in October, while Strauss is now in another Nissan GT3 entry in the Blancpain series that was 44th of the 57 cars at Spa after qualifying.

That GT-R was still within 2.4 seconds of the provisional pole-sitting BMW, which lapped the 7km circuit in less than two 20 seconds – 2:19.585 – at the event marking the 50th anniversary of the Bavarian brand's first win at Spa. The next 24 cars were within a second of that time.

They included a BMW in which Alex Zanardi, the ex-F1 and Indy racing star now with prosthetic legs, is a driver. It was 13th fastest, while a Mercedes SLS AMG in which German ace Bernd Schneider is partnered by one-season V8 Supercar driver Maro Engel and two others was ninth.

The fastest of two Lamborghini Huracans in the field was 40th.

The new Lambo that had been entered for an all-Australian driver line-up – of Craig Lowndes, Steve Owen, David Russell and Roger Lago – was withdrawn 10 days after owner Lago's Porsche Carrera Cup crash in Townsville.

Lago, who suffered a broken leg, fractured ribs and a punctured lung and was transferred to a Brisbane hospital, decided that the money he would have spent on Spa needed to go towards repair of the Porsche.

There are two Australian drivers in the Spa field though – 19-year-old Jonathan Venter, joint leader of the GT Asia series for Craft-Bamboo Racing after a recent podium at Japan's Fuji Speedway, is in the Oman Racing Team's Aston Martin Vantage that has qualified 27th and Liam Talbot in one of Swiss team Kessel Racing's Ferrari 458s that will start 52nd.

Kessel also is the entrant of the Ferrari that has qualified third so far.

This will be the 67th running of the Spa 24-Hour and 35 nationalities are represented among the more than 200 drivers, while event organiser Stephane Ratel boasts that seven manufacturers give factory support to one or more teams.

Flash Gordon eyes six and best at Brickyard
Retiring NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon could make history at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend – as the first driver to win six times at The Brickyard.

Gordon has won the Brickyard 400 five times, including the first 21 years ago and last year, while Michael Schumacher won five times during the eight years of the F1 Grand Prix there last decade. The legendary A.J. Foyt was the first four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 – a record equalled but never broken.

The Brickyard 400 is a home race for Gordon, who is from Pittsboro, Indiana, and a sixth victory would complement his brilliant career that includes four NASCAR Cup titles.

Six-time series champion Jimmie Johnson has won four races this season and is a four-time winner at The Brickyard.

However, reigning series champion Kevin Harvick has a big lead in the championship – which will be neutralised once The Chase begins later in the season – and Kyle Busch has won three of the past four races this year in a Toyota against the mighty Chevrolets.

Top Chevrolet team Hendricks Motorsports has won the 400 nine times – three times as often as fellow Chevy outfit Richard Childress Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing (as a GM team before switching to Toyota).

Somehow the NASCAR race at Indianapolis has eluded Roger Penske, and Fords – which "The Captain" now fields in stock car racing – have won it only three times to Chevrolet's 16 victories.

However, Penske's drivers – Joey Logano and 2012 series champion Brad Keselowski – are second and sixth in the championship.

A Team Penske victory this weekend would be sweet just days after the tycoon's induction to the Automotive Hall of Fame and having 15 of his car dealerships named among the best 100 to work for in the United States.

   
Ricciardo hungry for big result in Hungary
Daniel Ricciardo's best F1 finish this year has been fifth – at Monaco, where his Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat was fourth – but the Australian reckons the Hungaroring in Budapest could be the best race of this world championship for him.

"It is the right time to have a good result and I think we will get it this weekend," said Red Bull Racing star Ricciardo, who scored the second of his three GP wins last year at this circuit.

"Since Monaco it is definitely our closest track.

"It is a Monaco without the walls and doesn't place great emphasis on engine power.

'It's a great, great track for qualifying and last year was a great race for me – the one where I was definitely most excited because of the people I passed to finish in the lead [Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton].

"Even if we [RBR] are at Monaco's performance [this time] then I will be happy for now [knowing that RBR's Renault power unit still massively lags the Mercedes and Ferrari]."

There has been rain in Budapest this week and Ricciardo said a continuation of that would improve his chances further.

"We will have a good car in the wet with high downforce," he said.

"We'll start the weekend aiming for a top five and see if we can improve on that."

Ricciardo hinted that there could be news on Red Bull's engine front in the next two weeks.

"A significantly better Renault I would accept," he said.

"But, as we are now, I don't think we could go with this performance again next year.

"We need a significant gain."

Incidentally, Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo this week reported Ricciardo's annual salary at 1.5 million euros (A$2.25 million), ranking him 13th among this year's 20 F1 drivers and earning less than 4.3 per cent of the 35 million euros it listed for McLaren's Spaniard Fernando Alonso.

Meanwhile, Renault is mulling whether to return to being a full team constructor by buying back the Lotus team, in which case it could receive extra revenues from the F1 "pie" as an historic team.

Renault's F1 chief Cyril Abiteboul said the company "have absolutely no intention of participating, like we are doing now, making up the numbers on the grid".

"Any project of Renault in F1 would have to be a top-performing one," Abiteboul said.

"Any financial recognition [from F1] is clearly going to assist."

Honda's motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai is adamant that the Japanese company does not want any power cap on its rival engine manufacturers after its embarrassing return to the sport in the second year of the V6 hybrids.

Arai said Honda wanted to improve through its own efforts, not a change in regulations.

"The target is very clear: to exceed Mercedes," Arai said.

"They will move to another level with more power [as they too improve], so we have to chase them and go beyond them.

"That is competition and that is actually F1.

"It is very exciting and challenging.

"I wish we can catch up and exceed soon."