MOTORSPORT: How good is this!

Brock would love what's on this weekend
If there is a heaven, just imagine Peter Brock up there this weekend and the smile he'd have on his face.

To use the title of Wayne Webster's new book about Brocky, he'd be saying: "How good is this!"

It is two years since Australia's greatest motor racing star -- certainly on the national scene -- was killed in Targa West, the tarmac rally in and around Perth.

That event is on again over the next four days and Brocky would have wanted nothing more than for it to continue and prosper after his death.

He'll be up above this weekend looking down on the 87 cars competing in the fourth Targa West.

Among them will be a 2008 Porsche GT2 in which one of Brocky's great rivals, Jim Richards, will be going for back-to-back victories in WA's targa.

And he'll be thrilled that Alister McRae -- brother of the late and great world rally champion Colin -- who is a former British Rally and Asia-Pacific rally champion, done more than 80 WRC rounds and is now based in Perth will be competing too, in a Porsche 911 RS.

Just for anyone not familiar with these types of events, Targa West has four divisions -- there are the Competition and Challenge categories, and each of those has Modern and Classic (pre-1982) classes.

Competition cars are set up as competitive rally cars, each with a roll cage and full safety features.

Challenge cars are standard, run without a roll cage and are speed-restricted, monitored by a GPS tracking system.

Now if Brocky would be thrilled at seeing Targa West go on, just imagine the delight he'd feel at seeing the line-up for the Muscle Car Masters at Sydney's Eastern Creek on Sunday:
>> Allan Moffat's Trans-Am Ford Mustang.
>> Norm Beechey's Holden Monaro GTS 350.
>> Ian "Pete" Geoghegan's 1967 Ford Mustang GTA.
>> Geoghegan's XY GT-HO Super Ford Falcon.
>> Bob Jane's ZL1 Chevrolet Camaro.

If anything could make Brocky rise from the dead, it would be the prospect of a day out like this -- and, of course, he'd make sure that there were a few of his famous Holdens there as well.

Sadly we'll never have the pleasure of his presence again, and Geoghegan is dead as well, but the Muscle Car Masters organisers are promoting that they will have Moffat and Jane, as well as Dick Johnson, Allan Grice, Colin Bond, John Harvey, John Goss, Kevin Bartlett, John French and Garry Rogers.

What a day it promises to be.

No wonder historic meets are pulling such enormous crowds around the country.

Not only Holden's claim that a review is needed right now, but how the whole issue of parity should be handled in future.

As if top teams announcing that their two regular drivers will race together in the upcoming endurance races -- next week's Phillip Island 500 and the Bathurst 1000 in early October -- is not the driest news in Australian motor racing, then the subject of parity is -- unless guys from the respective red and blue corners start punching each other.

To spare ourselves the bother of spending too much time on the issue, here and here is some reading material from the V8supercar.com.au

Even these pieces got a bit too much for us, but we gather that if you read the first you are somewhat obliged to take in the second as well.

For us it's "case closed" unless/until there is any change in either of the competing makes. We're not holding our breath.

Got to say we found the first four pages very dry, but it confirmed one observation we've been hearing since Ford's announcement a few weeks back about its restructured arrangements with Ford teams next year -- that Price is a smarter and more eloquent and strategic operator than he had previously been given credit.

Perhaps he has felt unburdened since the "tough medicine" contained in the 2009 sponsorship/support arrangements was out in the open.

McNamara is considerably younger and perhaps judgment of him ought be reserved a while.

We're not convinced that his "red" side has handled the parity claim at all well -- if it intended to make an issue, knowing that it would inevitably become public, it needed to have its propaganda messages straight beforehand so that it could grab the upper hand once it did become public.

How McNamara handles matters over the rest of the season might tell us more about his capabilities.

And, of course, a Bathurst victory and another championship would make everything look pretty good for him.

Incidentally, while Ford perhaps paid quite a price for the straight-laced way it handled its announcement a few weeks back, Holden has put an inordinate amount of spin on a restructuring it is implementing.

Holden teams other than the big ones won't carry the HOLDEN banner across the top of their windscreens next year.

This is The General's way of cutting back on its support to those lesser teams, but it is being portrayed as giving those teams -- Perkins, Tasman, Garry Rogers, Rod Nash, etc, but not Morris, with a question mark over Brad Jones -- the opportunity to sell that advertising space and that therefore is said to be a benefit to those teams.

What it will do is further dilute the manufacturer presence in V8 Supercar Racing -- and we don't reckon that's a good thing.

It will mirror one thing we don't like about NASCAR, where -- as much as the spectacle is great -- the manufacturers have become increasingly invisible, even almost irrelevant.

We like the idea of car companies, as much as drivers and teams (and sponsors), racing against each other.

What we did like the sound of in this week's AA interview, was Ford man Price saying: "What we won't do is be told, 'This is the formula going forward', and we have to comply with it."

NSW premier Morris Iemma was quoted in Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper this week saying "stay tuned -- it's a case of dotting the i's and crossing the t's".

We have pointed out before that the News (Murdoch) group Telegraph will be very pro such an event and that the Fairfax group's Sydney Morning Herald will be critical and even antagonistic about it.

A day after the Telegraph article we read a piece by SMH urban affairs editor Wendy Frew headlined "Anger at $90m street race circuit".

Frew reported that "three large Sydney councils (Parramatta, Auburn and Ryde) have passed resolutions objecting to the conversion of Olympic Park into a street car race circuit, which could cost NSW taxpayers as much as $90 million".

The opposition was said to be "because hundreds of trees would have to be cut down to make way for the track, the cars would generate unacceptable levels of noise, and the races would shut down normal activities in the area for at least three days and curtail activities for up to six weeks a year".

"The local opposition to the proposal comes as the environment movement steps up a campaign criticising the street race plan," Frew wrote.

She said a public meeting is to be held at Newington before the upcoming local government elections.

The Total Environment Centre's director, Jeff Angel, was appalled that the state government "would consider transforming Sydney Olympic Park, once lauded as the site of the 'Green Games', into a giant racetrack".

"This V8 proposal is so bad, and the fact it has reached so far in government processes without being knocked on the head, (that it) is pushing us to go back to our grassroots and we'll be working with the local community on a more activist front," Mr Angel said.

Sydney Olympic Park Authority reportedly remains strongly opposed to the concept.

However, history tells us that governments will do as they like -- and so we expect a formal green light for the race soon, leaving the mooted $93 million upgrade of the permanent Eastern Creek venue, for which government funding is also wanted, up in the air.

The idea now apparently is that the Rally Oz scheduled for next September would be run wholly in northern NSW, with accommodation at resorts along the coast at Kingscliff -- rather than north of the border in Queensland's Gold Coast hinterland.

Another source tells us though that hopes of reviving Rally Oz are as good as dead. Here is our previous commentary on the matter, with links through to other articles over the past 15 months or so.

Still on rallying … we note a report (here) that Volkswagen may abandon its rally raid program after next year's "Dakar" in South America, perhaps to enter the World Rally Championship with the all-new Scirocco.

High time for some F1 magic from Spa
Think it was 2000, very late at night, Australian time, that Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen came, side-by-side, up behind Riccardo Zonta in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, presumably to lap the Brazilian.

Rather than take the same line, Schumacher went one side of Zonta and Hakkinen the other -- at more than 300km/h.

In what for us was the single most magic moment in the history of F1 racing, the Finn's McLaren emerged ahead of Schumacher's Ferrari as Zonta's BAR-Honda was left looking like it was standing still.

Hakkinen won that race, after two world titles the previous two seasons, compared with Schumacher's seven titles, but at his best, on days like that, Mika was more than a match for the mighty German.

If that really was eight years ago then we've got an eight-year itch for some of that kind of magic.

It's the Belgian GP again this weekend, again at Spa, before the greatest circuit on earth is butchered -- to make it shorter, presumably so the cars do more laps for the spectators and TV.

This year's championship leader, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, has bemoaned the lack of overtaking in F1 nowadays after the processional European GP on the streets of Valencia two weeks ago, in which he was second to Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

Hamilton is worried that F1 can be "boring".

"We do need to be able to follow closely and do more overtaking," he said. "Look at the last race in Valencia -- there was no overtaking at all -- so it can be a bit dull.

"I definitely support the move to try and make F1 more exciting."

Touche, Mr Hamilton.

We remembered a few days ago what a gentleman America's first -- and only American-born -- world champion Phil Hill was.

The memories are similar of Bruce McLaren, who not only created what became an F1 powerhouse second only to Ferrari but the most magnificent sports cars that raced in the CanAm series of the late 1960s and very early '70s.

Spa is a very special place, and most especially because of its Eau Rouge kink.

Kimi Raikkonen has won the past three Belgian GPs -- two for McLaren and last year for Ferrari -- but has been sadly out of form most of the past four months.

Perhaps Spa can entice the very best out of Raikkonen this weekend, but whether it is enough for him to equal the four-in-a-row feat of Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna at this track we can only wait to see.

Even if Raikkonen is back on form, Ferrari tactics may dictate that he work to assist teammate Felipe Massa, who has the better chance of overhauling Hamilton in the six races remaining.

Incidentally, Massa now has won nine GP wins -- the same number as his countryman Rubens Barrichello -- although, of course, the latter had to pull the handbrake quite often when he was at Ferrari with Schumacher.

Meanwhile, Mark Webber's Red Bull team has blamed tyre problems for the slide that has seen it miss out on championship points for the past four GPs.

Renault is seven points ahead of sixth-placed Red Bull while fourth-placed Toyota is 17 ahead after collecting 32 in its past six races to Red Bull's nine.

"Over the past couple of months, Toyota has looked very strong tyre-wise in the higher temperatures," Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horder has said. "It's not a case of our rivals suddenly 'bolting on' more performance. It's down to tyre usage and they have handled that better than us.

"We have understood why this happened and I feel we can get on top of this situation and return to our earlier form for the final third of the season."

Horner claims Spa and Monza, home of the following Italian GP, will suit Red Bull much better.

"We are convinced we can bounce back," he said.

Despite the paucity of points recently, Webber has outqualified veteran teammate David Coulthard 11-1 this season, while at BMW-Sauber Robert Kubica has done the same to Nick Heidfeld.

Now there is a man under pressure.

Bruno Senna, Ayrton's nephew, insists he does not yet have an F1 deal for next year.

He has been touted as a contender, along with Swiss youngster Sebastien Buemi, for a seat with Toro Rosso, the second Red Bull team.

However, Takuma Sato -- the Japanese driver who has been out of work since the collapse of Super Aguri early this season -- is to be trialled soon by Toro Rosso at Jerez in Spain, along with Buemi -- but not Senna.

Might the Brazilian be earmarked for BMW-Sauber if Heidfeld can't produce something special by the end of the season?

We mentioned after the Valencia race that the six cars in the F1 field with Ferrari engines were enjoying a power advantage.

For fanatics, here is an excellent Autosport piece on the subject.

We're pleased to record now that Alex Davison was one of three drivers in the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR that won the 12-hour Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race at Sepang in Malaysia.

Davison, who had earlier taken pole position, was partnered in the Team Porsche Club Singapore Racing entry by Darryl O'Young and Weng Sun Mok

Davison will race at Bathurst this year with Fabian Coulthard in Paul Cruickshank's Glenfords Racing Falcon and there is some talk he may replace younger brother Will at Dick Johnson Racing next season if Will goes to Stone Brothers.

Alex will miss next week's Phillip Island 500 as he has to do the final round of the European Le Mans Series at Silverstone as part of his Porsche deal on that weekend -- September 12-14.

Meanwhile, a report that James Courtney would replace Steven Richards at Ford Performance Racing next year have been vigorously ruled out by FPR team boss Tim Edwards, with the signs that Courtney instead will be in an FPR Falcon run by Jim Morton -- with Courtney a beneficiary of Ford support.

Indeed, word is that Franchitti may even replace Wheldon for the non-championship Gold Coast Indy at the end of next month.

Ganassi will have the winner of the past two Indianapolis 500s in his IndyCars next season.

Dixon lost the championship to Franchitti when he ran out of fuel on the last lap of the last race last year, but is in the box seat to clinch this year's title at the finale at Chicagoland Speedway this weekend.

Team Penske's two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves is his only challenger.

Meanwhile, Wheldon -- another Indy 500 victor -- is headed back to Panther Racing next season, in place of Brazilian Vitor Meira, who was second in this year's Indy 500.

Franchitti's best finish in NASCAR's Sprint Cup was 22nd at Martinsville and Ganassi withdrew him two months ago because of a lack of sponsorship, although Franchitti has continued to do some Nationwide Series rounds.

Indeed, it would have made a terrific Father's Day present. We suspect it's not available in Australia yet, so maybe next year.

For this Sunday we'll have to do with Peter Brock: How Good is This!

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