MOTORSPORT: Here comes 'Twenty20' racing

Tony Quinn may be handing over the running of GT racing to Supercars, but now he’s got a new project – the equivalent of Twenty20 cricket in motor racing.

The Scottish-born businessman - who built the VIP Petfoods business and has revitalised the Darrel Lea confectionary brand - will kick off what he’s calling ‘Fast and Furious Racing’ at the Hampton Downs circuit (which he owns) at the end of next month.

Quinn has revealed to the NZ Herald newspaper his intention to introduce ‘Fast and Furious’ during the Hampton Downs 500 meeting (the penultimate round of the Australian GT Championship), with a second instalment at the track in December.

Cars will qualify as normal and start in qualifying order, as normal.

Races will consist of two three-lap sprints, with a lap behind a safety car in between.
After the mid-race lap behind the safety car they will resume from a rolling start.

Quinn said each category would have four races at a meeting, with a reverse grid for the second one, the starting order for the third determined by combined times from races one and two, and then another reverse grid race to conclude.

Quinn told the NZ Herald it would make for “action all the way”.

“It’s like sex – it is over and done with before you know it,” he said.

“We will award 50 per cent of the points [for each race] for the first three laps, and then the remaining 50 per cent for the second three laps.

“It probably appeals more to the beginner level really, but it could go all the way up through the classes.

“If you look at a V8 race, the start is always exciting – the first couple of laps with the guys like Shane Van Gisbergen coming through – but then it settles down. This will be action all the way.

“If it is a success everyone else will be doing it and claiming it as their idea, and if it doesn’t people will say ‘knew it wasn’t going to work’.”

Kiwis cut up rough over WRC snub
New Zealand has been shaken by the decision of the world motorsport’s international governing body and the World Rally Championship [WRC] promoter to deny it a return to the WRC next year, even though it had been clear for weeks that it wasn’t happening.

Rally Australia retained its place, again in mid-November, on the 2018 calendar announced late last week, while NZ – which last hosted a WRC round in 2012 – lost out to Turkey.

Motorsport NZ president Wayne Christie has lamented that “so much effort” had gone into NZ regaining a round and that the country’s government had not committed enough money to secure it, even though former Prime Minister John Key had been verbally supportive.

“It is even more disappointing that the decision seems to have come down to funding, and the apparently insurmountable costs of getting to NZ, rather than the ability to put on a great event,” Mr Christie told Australia’s RallySport magazine.

“Rally NZ has traditionally been one of the best organised rallies on some of the best roads in the world, but that is less of a consideration in a very commercialised promotional arrangement.

“The cold hard reality is that until the NZ Government appreciates the value that these events bring to a small country far away from everywhere, and invests appropriately, we will continue to miss out.

“We’ve always believed that Rally NZ has provided a marvellous showcase for our leading industry, tourism, and yet again we have missed out on a chance to show the millions of people who watch WRC around the world our beautiful country and its fantastic scenery and attractions.”

NZ Herald motorsport correspondent Dale Budge has been much more pointed in his comments, saying the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and WRC promoter “have failed rallying badly” with a “ridiculously selfish and short-sighted 2018 calendar”.

“Everything had been ticked off and for the past year Rally NZ organisers have done absolutely everything asked of them by the promoter, but at the 11th hour a bid from Turkey came in and the decision was made to go there instead,” Budge said.

“To go to a country that is politically unstable defies logic.

“A handbrake has been pulled … with the greedy decision to go to Turkey.

“The more likely scenario is that Turkey offered a better financial package to the promoter.

“The major world motorsport championships are looking to expand more than ever before, but rallying continues to sit on its hands.

“The WRC and the FIA owe rally fans an apology and they owe them to fix this mistake.”

He is the most successful owner in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

And Penske cars have also enjoyed success in NASCAR, with Brad Keselowski winning its Cup in 2014 and teammate Joey Logano runner-up last year.

Most recently Penske has come into Australia’s Supercar racing through its takeover of Dick Johnson Racing, and its drivers Scott McLaughlin and Fabian Coulthard are currently first and third in that championship as we head to the ‘Blue Ribbon’ event, the Supercheap Autos Bathurst 1000.

But Penske’s race operations have just made some unwanted history.

Logano’s Ford Fusion failed NASCAR technical inspection four times in one day before last weekend’s Cup round at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway and, embarrassingly, he had to sit in the car while it was parked in a penalty box on pit road, in sweltering weather, for an entire 50-minute practice session.

Logano, who is not in the season-ending ‘playoffs’ for the NASCAR title this year was labelled “encumbered” because of a rear suspension violation and was most unhappy about the latest penalty.

“It’s a total joke. I don’t know why it had to be on pit road. It’s dumb. It makes our sport look dumb. We can accomplish the same thing in a more professional manner,” Logano said.

NASCAR’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Junior, tweeted Logano’s penalty was “silly” and that “him sitting on pit road with what amounts to wearing a dunce hat is highly unnecessary”.

Mr Kurt Culbert, NASCAR’s marketing and communications executive, responded: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay the fine. Simple logic here. EVERYONE knows the rules on this one.”

Toyota drivers have won the first two rounds of the ‘playoffs’ – Kyle Busch at New Hampshire after Martin Truex Junior the previous weekend at Chicagoland.

The number of title contenders will be cut from 16 to 12 after next weekend’s round at Dover, Delaware.

Keselowski tweeted recently that NASCAR had let Toyota get further ahead of its rivals than any manufacturer since the 1970s, but Penske distanced himself from that comment, saying the driver was speaking only for himself, not his team.
While there has been controversy in American sport in recent days, with some sportsman refusing to stand for the national anthem over president Donald Trump’s divisive politics, none of the NASCAR drivers protested at New Hampshire.

Team owners made it clear they wouldn’t tolerate drivers not participating fully in the playing of the national anthem.

Most vocal among the team bosses was Richard ‘The King’ Petty, who said: “Anybody that don’t stand up for the anthem oughta be out of the country.”

Asked if anyone who protested at Richard Petty Motorsports would be fired, he said: “You’re right.”

Meanwhile the career of Danica Patrick, currently NASCAR’s only female driver, could be at an end. Patrick is out of a drive at Stewart-Haas Racing next year following the departure of Nature’s Bakery, her car’s major sponsor, and she does not have the financial backing to secure any of the few quality seats still available for next season.

She had pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500, but in 181 Cup starts has had only seven top 10 finishes and has never finished higher than 24th in the championship.

Now 35, Patrick said her goal has been to be one of the few drivers to have won in IndyCar and NASCAR, but that “if I don’t do Cup [next year], I don’t think I will do anything”.

Mr Versatility eyes another title in Audi romp
Mattias Ekstrom, the Swede who starred at the 2013 Bathurst 1000 and arguably the most versatile race driver in the world, is in the box seat for a third German Touring Car Championship (DTM) title.

Ekstrom won the DTM in 2004 and 2007 and, with just two races remaining at Hockenheim in three weeks, he has a 21-point lead this season – aided by some Audi team orders at the Red Bull Ring in Austria at the weekend.

Apart from his touring car successes, Ekstrom is a three-time Race of Champions winner – against drivers from many forms of motorsport in a variety of equal machinery – and was last year’s World Rallycross Champion. Early in his career he won the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship.

Audi swept the podium at both the weekend’s DTM races at Red Bull Ring.

Ekstrom’s victory in the first of those races was his first in this year’s championship, and came after fellow Audi drivers, German Nico Muller and Briton Jamie Green, offered no resistance to him overtaking them early and late in the race respectively.

In the later race, three Germans filled the podium – Rene Rast, Mike Rockenfeller and Muller – with Ekstrom fifth, behind the Mercedes of Briton Gary Paffett.

It was the first DTM round since controversial performance-ballast rules were scrapped.

Mercedes driver Lucas Auer – a nephew of 10-time Formula 1 grand prix winner and now DTM chief, Gerhard Berger – went into the Austrian round second in the championship to Ekstrom, but came away only sixth after he was spun by BMW’s Canadian driver Bruno Spengler.

Ekstrom has 172 points to Rast’s 151, Green’s 137, the 134 of Rockenfeller and BMW’s defending champion Marco Wittmann, with Auer on 131.

Audi has 697 points in the manufacturers championship to the 531 of Mercedes and BMW’s 484, while Keke Rosberg’s Audi team, fielding Rast and Green, leads the Abt team of Ekstrom and Muller 288-253.