Motorsport: Is Murdoch eyeing F1?

Monday motorsport reportNovember 20, 2006

Murdoch's News Corporation already has F1 broadcast rights in countries including India, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. News Corp's British satellite broadcaster, BSkyB -- 39.1 per cent owned by News and headed by one of Murdoch's sons, James -- grabbed the crucial stake in ITV ahead of a consortium, NTL, headed by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group. NTL had made a A$15 billion bid for all of ITV. Germany's RTL, which is Europe's biggest broadcaster, also has been interested in snaring ITV, which provides the feed for Channel 10's telecasts of overseas F1 races.

BSkyB, better known as Sky, says it is supportive of ITV, will not have any management control or even a seat on the board, but did not want the free-to-air broadcaster to fall into the hands of an unwanted competitor. Sky's move now prevents any predator buying full control of ITV. Sky cannot make a full takeover bid either, as long-standing rules prevent a company with a fifth of the British newspaper market owning more than 20 per cent in any ITV company.

Sky has been a vigorous competitor of ITV, battling with it for sports and US programming rights, and privately has been fiercely critical of it. Sky says it did not have any talks with ITV's board before the share raid at the end of last week.

It makes a lot of sense for F1 to end up being owned or controlled by a media company. It is sport and entertainment -- and content for television. Although Bernie Ecclestone remains firmly in control of F1, he is in his late 70s and most of the business is now owned by private equity investors -- who are unlikely to be long-term shareholders. Even if the Murdochs never end up owning F1, they might have a big say in who does.

Williams, with a grain of salt
Not so long ago Adam Parr was managing director of the world's largest salt exporter -- Dampier Salt in Western Australia, a division of global mining giant Rio Tinto. Now Parr's to become chief executive of the Williams F1 team, replacing recently-departed Chris Chapple.

In between Parr has been commercial director of Rio Tinto Minerals, which included the salt business and another operation in California's Mojave Desert. He's a graduate of Cambridge University with a background in law and started his career at Barclays investment bank. Hopefully he can bring some magic to Williams, which has tumbled from its lofty heights in the 1990s to be only eighth of 11 teams in F1 this season -- and could have wrecked Aussie Mark Webber's career in the process. Fortunately, Webber gets a new life with Red Bull Racing in 2007.

A day earlier Montoya led a lap of the Busch Series race at the same track before finishing 14th. It was the first time he had headed a field since quitting F1 to take on a new career in American stock car racing. Montoya's best finish so far remains his 11th in the recent Busch race at Memphis. This year's Indianapolis 500 winner and triple Indy Racing League champion, Sam Hornish junior, crashed out on only the fourth lap of the Busch race at Homestead.

Johnson sealed the Nextel Cup with a ninth-place finish -- the first time in the past six races he had been lower than second. He ends the season 56 points ahead of Matt Kenseth, who had won the Busch race. Johnson, who was introduced to stock car racing by four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, only needed to finish 12th or better for the Nextel title, but he had a tense day in doing that. Greg Biffle won the Ford 400 for the third straight year, beating rookies Martin Truex junior and Denny Hamlin, with Kasey Kahne fourth, then Kevin Harvick (the Busch Series champion) and Kenseth. Johnson's victory gave Rick Hendrick his sixth championship as a car owner.

If Montoya has found stock car racing tough, his team owner, Chip Ganassi, predicts that, contrary to popular opinion, he will find driving a NASCAR on road circuits next year even harder than the oval tracks. "I think he's going to have to learn you can't lean on these cars road racing like you can formula cars," Ganassi says. The Nextel Cup features road course rounds at Sears Point and Watkins Glen, while the Busch Series will visit road courses in Mexico City and Montreal in 2007.

The NASCAR aspirations of 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve may not be dead yet, with a report his manager, Craig Pollock, is working on establishing a new Nextel Cup team that would be a satellite of Roush Racing, with which the Canadian was linked in previous reports.

"In this sort of racing you are going to cut a tyre from time to time," Ambrose says. "We were running three or four wide there in the top 10 for a lot of that race and it was pretty exciting. It was good to close the year out with a strong run, even if we didn't get the chance to finish it off. I've learned a lot and I'm proud of what I have achieved."

Ambrose earned US$256,368 from his 22 starts in his debut American season, which included two third place finishes, four top 10 finishes, one pole position, and one lap leader award. He is now set to move up to the Busch Series next year as he aims to become the first full-time Australian-born Nextel Cup driver.

Ford veteran Mark Martin won the weekend's truck race while Todd Bodine was the series champion in a Toyota.

Team Kiwi continues its 36-day national fundraising tour of NZ with the Commodore that Radisich crashed at Bathurst, touring the South Island this week. It needs another $125,000 to reach the $400,000 it needs by December 1 to buy a Falcon from Prodrive for next season.

Ford snares rally title
While MotoGP superstar Valentino Rossi was the celebrity attraction at the weekend's Rally New Zealand, and did a creditable job in getting his Subaru Impreza to the finish of the three-day event, Ford clinched the world rally manufacturers' championship for the first time since 1979 as its Finnish drivers, Marcus Gronholm and Mikko Hirvonen, finished first and second in its Focus RS cars. It was 38-year-old Gronholm's fourth Rally NZ win, equaling the record of Spanish great Carlos Sainz. It was also Gronholm's sixth win this season. He led from start to finish and was fastest on 12 of the 17 stages, finishing 56 seconds ahead of Hirvonen, who won the previous round in Australia.

Ford goes to the final round of the season, the Rally of Great Britain in Wales at the start of December, with an unassailable 25-point lead over Citroen, although Frenchman Sebastien Loeb is already the world champion driver for the French marque despite missing the past three rounds with a broken arm. NZ marked Ford's 75th consecutive points scoring finish in the WRC, a record it proudly points out is unrivalled in the sport's history and dates back to the opening round of the 2002 championship.

Ford of Europe entered a partnership with Briton Malcolm Wilson and his M-Sport in 1997 and the manufacturers' title is the culmination of the relationship. Ford of Europe's president and chief executive John Fleming says: "To secure the manufacturers' title in our first year of running with an all-new WRC car is more than we had dared hope for."

Hirvonen is now guaranteed third place in the drivers' championship behind Loeb and Gronholm, while Austrian Manfred Stohl was third at the wet and windy Rally NZ in a Peugeot 307 -- 2 minutes 39.3 seconds behind the winning Ford but ahead of the Citroen Xsaras driven by Spaniards Xavier Pons and Daniel Sordo. Sixth place was not a great 32nd birthday present for Subaru's Swedish ace Petter Solberg. Nor was a 60-second penalty when his Impreza would not start before the first stage of the final day.

Good and bad for Atko
Australian Chris Atkinson was the star of the second morning of Rally NZ, setting two fastest stage times -- the first driver other than Gronholm to do so. But on the first of Saturday afternoon's stages Atkinson's Subaru hit a rock, buckling his suspension and the base of the car's roll cage, and he was forced to retire.

"We were trying to push on after some good fastest stage times when an open wheel just caught a rock over a blind crest and took the tyre off," Atkinson says. "It was just one of those rallying incidents. I think everyone else would have hit it if they had been in my position -- they were all swerving to avoid it when we were warning them. It wasn't our rally anyway, so I'm not going to get too disheartened. In fact, up to that point Saturday things had been pretty encouraging; the car was working a lot better, we could push more and I was really enjoying myself."

"I am at the end without big problems and also with the car not damaged -- that is very important," Rossi says. "It was a real experience in a real world championship rally. We tried to understand the road and the car, and just tried to improve. It was a hard job, but I enjoyed it a lot. My performance was becoming better. For sure I have work to do to be very fast, but anyway we had great fun in the car, so I'm happy."

Driver, manufacturer championships
FIA World Rally Drivers' Championship after round 15 of 16 rounds -- S. Loeb 112 points, M. Grönholm 101, M. Hirvonen 65, D. Sordo 47, M. Stohl 46, P. Solberg 34. (Chris Atkinson is 10th on 17 points). Manufacturers Championship -- BP-Ford 185 points, Kronos Citroen 160, Subaru 97, OMV -- Peugeot Norway 80, Stobart VK M-Sport Ford 39, Red-Bull Skoda 23.

Ferrari chief promises titles
Ferrari and Fiat president Luca di Montezemolo has vowed that Ferrari will win the 2007 driver and constructor titles, even without Michael Schumacher. "I promise that we will win the next championships," Montezemolo says. "I commit myself to this goal at any price and am ready to work for it day and night."

Macau remains the world's most important F3 race, with past winners including Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, David Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher and Takuma Sato.

Conway and Antinucci both drove Dallara-Mercedes cars in a race that saw 11 accidents. Japan's Kamui Kobayashi, Estonia's Marko Asmer and F3 Euroseries champion, Scotsman Paul di Resta, all tangled at the first corner and slid down the escape road as Conway took the lead. He had his own heart-stopping moment, scraping a wall, while Antinucci twice hits walls. German Adrian Sutil, the Japanese F3 champion, finished third. BMW-Sauber's F1 test driver, German teenager Sebastian Vettel, was only 23rd.

Brit Andy Priaulx clinched a third straight world touring car championship in Macau by a solitary point ahead of German Jorg Muller, both of them driving BMWs. Priaulx won the first of the weekend's two races and Muller the second, in which Priaulx was fifth. Half the field failed to finish the torrid affair, including Rickard Rydell, Jan Magnussen, Gabriele Tarquini and Nicola Larini.