MOTORSPORT: Indy champ Dixon eyes Bathurst

Newly-crowned IndyCar champion Scott Dixon has Bathurst on his bucket list.

And his initial preference is for the 12-Hour GT race rather than the V8 Supercar Bathurst 1000.

Dixon, 35, a New Zealander born in Brisbane and who won the CAMS Gold Star in 1998 as the Australian Drivers’ Champion in the now-defunct Formula Holden open-wheeler series, has named Le Mans in France and Bathurst’s Mt Panorama as two circuits where he wants to race.

“It’s obviously a dream of mine to race at Le Mans [in the 24-Hour sports car classic),” Dixon said in the wake of his IndyCar triumph last weekend.

“It’s a dream of mine to race at Bathurst at some point too.

“Maybe start there with the 12-Hour at some point early in the year.”

Both of Bathurst’s big races will now be promoted by V8 Supercars, following that organisation’s recent takeover of the 12-Hour from its founder, James O’Brien’s Yeehah Events, which is now concentrating on establishing a six-hour production car race at The Mountain next year.

Apart from his four IndyCar open-wheeler titles, Dixon is a two-time winner of the Daytona 24-Hour sports car race in Florida.

All that success has come with Chip Ganassi Racing, which is leading Ford’s return to GT racing next year in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and America’s IMSA sports car championship.

However, Dixon’s Le Mans sights are on the top-level prototypes like the Porsche 919 that Australian Mark Webber races for Porsche in the WEC.

However, he admitted that an LMP1 drive at Le Mans was probably some years off for him.

“The Le Mans cars look amazing to drive … [but] in my near future I don’t see that happening,” Dixon said.

The Le Mans 24-Hour is in June, in the middle of the IndyCar season, while the Bathurst 12-Hour is in February, before the American open-wheeler series starts – traditionally in mid-March.

The Indy series now ends much earlier, in late August or early September, perhaps also making the Bathurst 1000 – or even the entire V8 Supercar endurance series at Melbourne’s Sandown, Mt Panorama and the Gold Coast – possible for him.

Dixon this week collected a US$1 million cheque as a bonus for his fourth IndyCar title, which he won on a countback from Team Penske’s Colombian driver Juan Pablo Montoya after victory in the double-points finale at Sonoma in California.

Although Dixon won three of the season’s 16 races to Montoya’s two, a bitter Montoya – who had led the points table from the first round – has been his usual outspoken self, claiming the New Zealander had “a shit season” and “one good race”.

“It sucks, but when you make the last race double points on a road course, and you change the tyre, and you do everything you did … and you put so many variables, it doesn’t even matter what you do all year,” Montoya said.

“Dixon had a shit season all year and had one good race – and we paid the penalty.”

Montoya won the other double-points race in the series, the Indianapolis 500.

Meanwhile, former V8 Supercar team principal Ross Stone is to field an Aston Martin in the final two rounds of this year’s Australian GT Championship.

It is the Vantage GT3 previously raced by championship owner Tony Quinn, and will be driven at Sandown in mid-September and Quinn’s Highlands circuit in NZ by Andrew Miedecke, with whom Stone was associated in racing Ford Sierras in the Australian Touring Car Championship more than a quarter of a century ago.

Stone and his brother Jim sold the Stone Brothers Racing V8 Supercar team three years ago to Betty Klimenko, who switched it from running Ford Falcons to Mercedes E63s under her Erebus banner.

Stone has expressed interest in running the Vantage at the Bathurst 12-Hour on the first weekend of February next year.

V8 Supercar-leading Prodrive Racing Australia is in talks with David Richards’ Prodrive in Britain about fielding Aston Martins in the 12-Hour too.

A record 46 advance entries, representing 12 manufacturers, have been announced today for next year’s 12-Hour.

The list includes 21 cars in the GT3 outright class and 13 in classes B (GT3 Cup Cars) and C (GT4), with another 12 in the expanded Invitational class.

Seven international entries have been accepted. Entries remain open until December 11. The advance entry list is here.