MOTORSPORT: Hogster ousts Blue Oval

Now championship team gives manufacturer the brush
The V8 Supercar scene is revving up now with the start of the championship only two weeks away in Adelaide, but what has interested us by far the most this week has been the unveiling of titleholder Team Vodafone's FG Falcon.

There's no doubt it's a Falcon, but it doesn't display Ford's Blue Oval logo.

Instead, in the front grill of the cars that reigning champion driver Jamie Whincup and multiple former champion Craig Lowndes will race this season will be Hogster, the mascot of the Hog's Breath Cafe chain.

We saw this coming a while back, especially when we heard of Whincup talking at the recent renaming of the Gold Coast Indy to SuperGP that what he would be driving on the country's racetracks this year would be a V8 Supercar -- that is, a generic V8 Supercar -- rather than a Ford Falcon.

The disappearance of the Ford badge from the Team Vodafone cars is the upshot of the car manufacturer deciding to contribute financially to only two V8 Supercar teams this year -- and Team Vodafone, or the outfit behind it, Triple Eight Race Engineering -- not being one of those teams.

That's despite all the success Team Vodafone/Triple Eight has brought Ford in recent years -- including a Bathurst 1000 threepeat. Yes, victory in the country's biggest race in 2006, '07 and '08.

The breakdown in what ought to be a beautiful relationship is also because of Ford's insistence on blue theming in its V8 Supercar activities, which goes against Team Vodafone's predominant red color scheme.

So the teams running factory-backed FG Falcons will be Ford Performance Racing and Stone Brothers Racing while the top team in the series runs what is a Falcon too but it is simply a V8 Supercar (although we gather a Blue Oval logo will remain on Lowndes' driving suit).

So be it. None of this is a great surprise. It is just that it is now reality.

Roland Dane on the merits of motorsport
Triple Eight launched its new car in Sydney on Tuesday (more here) for its announcements, although we're disappointed there is not a picture gallery to go with it, or if there is that we haven't easily found it) and on Wednesday it was in Melbourne for another function, a sponsor announcement, and the V8 Supercar season public launch.

Now livery launches and sponsor announcements are not normally our cup of tea, but we made an exception on Wednesday because it was an opportunity to catch up with Triple Eight chief Roland Dane for a brief chat in person rather than by email as we have in the past.

As we're sure countless Australian motorsport fans have, irrespective of their allegiances (and despite our laments about foreign ownership of our top V8 Supercar teams), we've come to greatly admire Dane for the professionalism he has brought to the sport within our borders.

He has been around in Oz quite a while now, and we don't want to backtrack or digress too far, but it was when reading Auto Action magazine's V8 Supercar Summit -- a six-page transcript of a forum of some of the sport's "heavy hitters" which appeared in its 2008 year-ending edition 1321 -- that it struck us how much common sense the guy talks.

Perhaps it jumped out at us because usually there's so much bulldust in the air.

Now we don't hear everything that gets said in the V8 Supercar world -- indeed, far, far from it -- but it was in that AA forum that Dane explained one simple thing that we trust is the reason that V8 Supercars has remained so well insulated from the economic meltown.

"We have very substantial appearance money payments which go to the teams if they fulfil their obligations," he said. "And that's the framework which holds us together and that will be enormously important over the next year."

We commented at length in the third item at this link here on what we saw as Dane's wisdom espoused in that forum.

Soon after, when we questioned/doubted whether there was still any nexus between V8 Supercar success on Sundays and Ford/Holden road car sales on Mondays, Dane emailed us with a lucid explanation of just how there was still such nexus, and how it could be better leveraged (more here).

So, while we are often skeptical of much that is said or claimed in the V8 Supercar world, we are happy to hear the views of someone who concisely, courteously and coherently expresses them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, someone to whom fabrication is a workshop activity rather than a misguided marketing spiel.

Dane can, and does, express the sport's, and his team's, strengths without any need to resort to excessive embellishment.

Which brings us to Wednesday's announcement, in a pit garage at Melbourne's Albert Park grand prix track.

The announcement was that the Symantec company's Norton security software brand is a new sponsor of the Triple Eight Race Engineering V8 Supercars this season, with the name adorning the top of the windscreens.

Norton will also sponsor the round of the V8 Supercar championship at Melbourne's Sandown circuit on August 1-2, which will now be run by V8 Supercar Events (it is now promoting six of the 14 rounds).

In the course of Wednesday's announcement, Dane talked of how sponsors and sport, specifically motorsport, can connect -- and generally about the sport of V8 Supercar racing.

Here's what he said:
"Sponsorship can give brands 'soul' and differentiate them from competitors if they are activated properly and the sponsored party reflects similar attributes to those which represent the brand.

"And brands with 'soul' are less price-sensitive than those without.

"The best marketing tool there is remains the 'word of mouth' recommendation of a person you trust.

"Sports sponsorship remains a method of using high-profile people and teams to whom the broader population can relate to promote a brand in a method as close to 'word of mouth' as possible.

"Even in times of economic hardship, sport has historically remained important to the average person. Maybe more important, as there is a tendency to increase TV viewing as a result of staying at home.

"If we accept that sport sponsorship can be a worthwhile marketing tool, then why not motorsport?

"We (the V8 Supercar Championship) go to every state plus the Northern Territory -- and our support is broadly based across those states. Only cricket can legitimately claim to have a better national footprint.

"We have athletes in our drivers who are easily approached, are mostly able to string a sentence together, (and) hopefully don't get involved in dubious practices on their evenings off.

"Our annual 'stop the nation' event at Bathurst in October again has a broader national appeal than any other annual sporting event with the exception of the Melbourne Cup.

"Increasingly our race meetings are 'events' with their own unique characters and a broad appeal.

"For instance, the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide has a very family-orientated atmosphere and is almost like a state fair for the residents of South Australia.

"Bathurst is a motorsport enthusiasts' mecca with a massive sense of tradition, and Darwin is the event that the whole town turns out to watch.

"Often our events are the biggest annual sporting weekends in terms of attendances in the respective states.

"And whilst   our overall attendance figures of just under two million people may look dwarfed by AFL, the reality is that we have almost no fans who go to more than one event, whereas a very large number of footy fans go to 10 or more games.

"So we've got a great footprint of unique attendees -- and that's only going to increase with the addition of the Townsville and Homebush (Sydney) street races this year.

"Why Triple Eight Team Vodafone (for a sponsor)? I'd hope that success has something to do with it, plus the quality of the other partners involved.

"But I suspect it's also because our drivers and our marketing team go out of their way to assist our sponsors with their activations.

"We also pride ourselves on our engineering DNA -- as reflected in our name, Triple Eight Race Engineering -- and that underpins the success of T8."

We won't always agree with everything Roland Dane has to say -- and indeed could take issue with his aggregate attendance figure, or at least suggest there is an element of what journalists call 'licence' in it -- but we trust readers will agree his remarks above are a wonderfully clear expression of some very good things about the sport we enjoy.

News won't always be good in Australian motorsport (which to many equates to V8 Supercar racing), but it has a lot going for it -- and when it comes to putting its case we don't know of a better man around these days to do it than Roland Dane.

Kellys under-promise - can they over-deliver?
We've been looking forward for weeks to the launch of the new Kelly family V8 Supercar team, because -- as we said late last year -- we  see it as a homegrown outfit that potentially could challenge the might of the foreign-owned Triple Eight/Team Vodafone, Prodrive/Ford Performance Racing and Walkinshaw Performance/Holden Racing Team.

There has indeed been a Team Kelly launch this week, and we must say we are underwhelmed by it.

"We want our actions to speak louder than words," Todd Kelly said.

Perhaps that is the way of the Kellys, and we certainly still hope that they emerge as an enormous force in the sport.

For the record, Todd and Rick Kelly will drive a pair of VE Commodores in Jack Daniel's colors, while Jack Perkins -- son of the legendary Larry -- and rookie Dale Wood will be in other VEs with independent support.

It just seems to us, admittedly at a distance, that there is a lack of cohesion -- genuine, not just claimed, cohesion.

The new Kelly Racing facility is in the Melbourne suburb of Braeside and the cars will be prepared there. But the engineering and building will be at the Perkins Engineering establishment in Moorabbin. That may all work well enough, but what we wonder about is management and co-ordination.

We are great admirers of the Kellys and believe the brothers to be among the most valuable jewels in V8 Supercar racing's crown, but Australian motorsport history -- especially the recent history -- is littered with great drivers thinking they can also run teams.

Sure they can own them, if they have the money -- or access to it. But strong management and discipline is essential to motorsport success. We have reservations about what we see to this point, but perhaps there's much more to it than we yet know.

From the outset we saw the talents of the Kelly boys complementing the engineering expertise of Larry Perkins, provided the latter is totally committed to the arrangement and that he is fully embraced in it.

It's always going to be tough for a new team entering V8 Supercar racing, especially with four cars and in this economic climate. We'd like to think the Kelly boys will be in the hunt from the jump, but we have an uneasy feeling about it at this stage.

In the longer term we reckon if anyone can take on and beat the foreign invaders it will be these guys. Just hope the wait doesn't have to be any longer than it ought be.

Honda still up in air, Renault's feet itchy
It's exactly three weeks today (Thursday, March 5) until the scrutineering of Formula 1 cars in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix -- and alarm bells are ringing loudly in our ears.

Despite continual reports -- the latest in Japan's Yomiuri daily newspaper -- that a sale of Honda's team to a Ross Brawn-led syndicate is imminent time is running out fast.

There was talk that an F1 car designed as this year's Honda and fitted with a Mercedes-Benz engine was going to run early this week, but there is no evidence it has happened.

It will be little more than a week before the cars of all teams have to be packed for transport to Australia.

"Honda has been making all possible efforts to avoid the worst option of having to disband the team," a source told Yomiuri this week.

Everyone wants the outfit to survive, in whatever form, but we hate to think how it's going to perform this season on this horribly muddled preparation.

And now the murmurings that Renault has cold feet about F1 have become real and public.

Renault chief operating officer Patrick Pelata has made it known overnight that the company wants a better return -- from F1's broadcast rights, race fees and trackside sponsorship.

Pelata's comments came ahead of a meeting of the Formula One Teams Association in Geneva, where his views are likely to have wider support.

But F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has said his Formula One Management, 75 per cent owned by private equity group CVC, has "an agreement with the teams until 2013 -- and we'll stick with that".

A time bomb is ticking here.

A few other snags in F1 too
>> The German Grand Prix needs immediate financial help to avoid dropping off the calendar for the first time in almost half a century.

The Hockenheim circuit, owned by the City of Hockenheim, lost about A$10 million on last year's race. Hockenheim's ticket sales have slumped 37 per cent -- to 60,000 -- since 2002.

This year's German GP is at Nurburgring, while Hockenheim boss Karl-Josef Schmidt said his track will not be able to host it next year without quick assistance.

Bernie Ecclestone has promised to help. But at what price?

>> Bruno Senna concedes that his hopes of making his F1 debut in Melbourne are shot, even if the Honda team is sold to the Brawn syndicate, with his veteran Brazilian countryman Rubens Barrichello now odds-on to be retained.

Senna, nephew of the late Ayrton, is talking to Mercedes about racing in the German Touring Car Championship (DTM).

Senna, 24, told the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper this week he was "kind of resigned to trying something else" (other than F1) this year.

>> The proposed American F1 team has had to change its name already. One explanation of why is more here.

Grandprix.com reports that the team could not use the straight name USGP because that is owned by Indianapolis Motor Speedway chief Tony George, even though the F1 race at The Brickyard is now history.

A third Davo with a grand Vision
Speaking of Tony George, James Davison -- younger cousin of V8 Supercar drivers Will and Alex Davison -- has snared a drive with George's Vision Racing for his second season in the Indy Lights championship.

Racing for Sam Schmidt Motorsports in the series last year the 22-year-old Davison notched a shock win at the famed Mid-Ohio road course, had pole position at Nashville Superspeedway, was second at Kentucky Speedway, finished in the top five three times, the top 10 five times and led 34 laps.

Actor Patrick Dempsey is a part-owner of the team, along with George's wife, Laura.

It fields Ed Carpenter in the IndyCar series.

Davison is hopeful the Vision arrangement will ultimately help him advance to the main series, which includes the Indianapolis 500.

Blast from the past ... Mansell whine
It had to happen sooner or later ... Nigel Mansell, now 55, has surfaced, saying that Lewis Hamilton's 2008 F1 world championship was not as worthy as his (Mansell's) 1992 title.

Indeed, old Nige says: "Lewis' title is 20 per cent less credible than mine."

His courage on the world's grand prix circuits was unquestioned, but off the track -- apart from 1993, his first year in Indy racing -- he was almost insufferable.

As Williams technical director Patrick Head was fond of saying, Mansell would have been fine if he could have just been dropped down a rope into the cockpit two minutes  before the start of a race.

We find Hamilton hard to warm to as a personality, but Mansell's sledge is out of order. The poor old bloke's misguided rationale is here.

Rallying in Canberra, more Rally Oz fuss
Round two of the Australian Rally Championship this weekend -- the Rally of Canberra.

Four-time national champion Neal Bates is on home ground in his Super 2000 Toyota Corolla, although no longer with Toyota's support.

His two main challengers will be the Evans brothers -- young gun Eli in a Subaru Impreza WRX STi and Simon in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX -- one built by Racetorque in Perth and driven in last year's Asia-Pacific Rally Championship by Indian Guarev Gil (and similar to that driven by Australian Scott Pedder in the same team in the same series). The car won the Indonesian round of the '08 APRC and Racetorque staff will assist with it in Canberra.

An Evo X Lancer is to compete in its first ARC gravel rally in the hands of Steven Shepheard.

The Canberra rally is no longer Australia's Asia-Pacific round -- that honor is now Queensland's in May.

Rallying is perhaps doing it harder than any form of motorsport in the economic meltdown, but despite all the odds the ARC survives and still has potential -- although it is harder than ever to see it being realised.

Meanwhile, problems and controversy continue in the revival of Rally Australian in northern NSW.

Now frogs have forced a change, admittedly minor, to the planned route. News of that is here.

And the Tweed Shire Council general manager Mike Rayner has had to defend taking up a position on the Rally Oz board. That's more here.