MOTORSPORT: Is V8 Supercar Championship really on?

Australia's premier series needs a lot more oomph
Unless you're in Adelaide you could be forgiven for not knowing the V8 Supercar Championship is starting this weekend.

Take a poll in the centre of any other capital city around the country and you'd be lucky to find one in 50 people, perhaps one in 100, who know that Australia's premier motor racing series is about to get underway.

This championship and this event have quite a bit going for them, with the race debut of Ford's FG Falcon, the switch to more environmentally friendly E85 fuel (85 per cent ethanol, 15 per cent petrol), a raft of rule changes, some driver moves, most notably the popular -- and a 2008 race winner -- Will Davison's debut with Holden Racing Team in place of Mark Skaife, his brother Alex with Stone Brothers, James Courtney now at Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing, and the new Kelly Brothers team.

And the top team in the sport, Triple 8/Team Vodafone, continues with its young defending V8 Supercar champion, Jamie Whincup, and the sport's most popular driver, Craig Lowndes, who together have won the country's biggest race, the Bathurst 1000, the past three years.

And between them that pair have won Adelaide's Clipsal 500 three times too -- Whincup last year and in 2006, and Lowndes in 1999, when driving for Holden.

And V8 Supercars has given all the appearances of riding through the general economic meltdown in good shape.

Now all of the above is pretty well known so not "news", but surely with the size and profile of the V8 Supercar show it ought to be easy enough to generate interest in it around the country as its kicks off for '09. Yet it seems to have largely drawn a blank to date.

We don't doubt that by Saturday it will have picked up, and Sunday should be stronger again. Certainly there will be a mega crowd of predominantly South Australians at the Adelaide street circuit and the TV audience for this round is always well above the series average.

But the vacuum in which we see the championship at the minute, and in which it has been throughout the off-season, ought to be of concern to the V8 Supercar organisers.

Just what have they been doing over the off-season to stoke this series along, apart from announcing the rule changes (which admittedly have been generally welcomed)? They had a season launch in Melbourne's Federation Square a couple of weeks ago which, by all accounts, was pretty lethargic.

Tony Cochrane, a familiar face and voice to V8 Supercar fans after more than a decade heading the series organiser, has been largely invisible through the off-season.

New V8SA chief executive Cameron Levick has not yet been six months in his position and may need at least a year to start making his mark on the sport.

The first major interview with Levick, by our "cousin" Auto Action magazine's editor-at-large Mark Fogarty, has been published this week.

It's readable, but in four pages Levick gives little away. Realistically, it is probably too soon in his tenure to have much to foreshadow. One of his comments in the AA/Fogarty interview caught our attention though.

"We need a lot more fans to become involved for us to deliver growth, not only from a TV perspective but in terms of going to events," Levick said.

Quite correct. Now we've quibbled here in the past about V8 Supercar's TV audience and track crowd figures.

Suffice to say that we'll agree to disagree on those, for today at least, but how on earth is V8 Supercar racing going to get "a lot more fans ... from a TV perspective (and) going to events" based on the standard of marketing and promotional build-up that's been seen ahead of this season?

There's always plenty of buck-passing and finger-pointing in motor racing, but surely the marketing and promotion of the series is precisely what V8SA is meant to bring to the show.

What's done is done for this pre-season, but let's hope that on this score the sport is in a whole lot better shape in a year's time.

Decision time - is TKR Kiwi or turning Aussie?
Any other team so far back in the pack we would not pay much attention to here but Team Kiwi Racing has always been an interesting case study.

Its problems have been well documented -- the latest being the personal bankruptcy of team owner David John.

Now we learn that Australian Dean Fiore is to be TKR's driver in Adelaide this weekend, because the financial support he can bring to the team is the best option it has at the minute.

New Zealand's A1GP driver Jonny Reid had been the front-running Kiwi for the drive but couldn't clinch a deal and is undecided about whether he wants to pursue his open-wheeler ambitions or switch to touring cars.

Another Aussie Steve Owen's hat had also been in the ring for this weekend.

Fiore, who was second in the 2008 Carrera Cup, is reported by Auto Action's New Zealand correspondent Bernard Carpinter to be trying to buy TKR's race licence.

However, an NZ syndicate headed by Mark Petch -- who won an Australian Touring Car Championship with Robbie Francevic -- is also said to be close to making a formal offer for the licence. The sooner the whole sorry saga is sorted the better.

Bayliss has only modest V8 Supercar ambitions
There has been quite a lot of talk about Australia's multiple superbike world champion Troy Bayliss moving into V8 Supercars -- and an attractive idea it sounded. But now that we've heard a little more detail on his hopes we're not so sure.

"I could have stayed with Ducati but I was ready for something different," Bayliss has been quoted saying.

"This is not something I am looking at trying once just to experience it -- my long-term goal is to compete in select Fujitsu (development series) races and shoot for an endurance seat in 2010.

"I know at nearly 40 I am never going to win the championship, but I am still at peak fitness and if I can adapt well enough to the car then I have the potential to be a good endurance driver." More here.

Perhaps, in light of his age (that snuck up on us), he's being realistic, but with those modest ambitions he's not going to be anywhere near as potentially exciting for the V8 Supercar scene as supercross superstar Chad Reed.

Mosley, Ecclestone world champion muscle-flexers
We've had the feeling for a while now that a big new power struggle is developing in Formula 1 between Federation Internationale de l'Autmobile (FIA) president Max Mosley and the sport's commercial chieftan Bernie Ecclestone -- the old guard on the one side -- and the F1 teams -- represented by a new collective organization, FOTA, on the other. And that feeling is getting stronger.

The switch announced this week that will see the driver winning the most grands prix in a season, rather than the driver scoring the most points, become world champion was a big victory for Ecclestone. He'd been pushing the idea for ages, and indeed wanted the three drivers on the podium to be awarded medals -- gold, silver and bronze, like the Olympics. He hasn't got his way on the medals -- yet.

What's to say that, at a GP in an Arab country where there is an aversion to champagne on the podium, medals won't suddenly appear -- and then become the norm (although with champers!)?

FOTA's proposal to tweak the points system to 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1 for the first eight finishers was rebuffed, just so FOTA knows who is still running the show.

The 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system remains for the constructors' championship.

We applaud the idea of the most winning driver becoming world champion, but can't see any reason why there still cannot be due recognition of the points in the drivers' championship -- except that we would prefer a reversion to points only being awarded down to sixth now that there are only 20 cars in the field.

The only time in the past 20 years that the most-winning-driver system would have changed the world champion was last year -- Ferrari's Felipe Massa, with six wins, would have been champion instead of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, with five wins.

Now, while we generally approve of the change in the system of deciding the world champion, we don't believe Massa would have been a more deserving champion than Hamilton.

But in the other 12 years over six decades in which this system would have produced a different world champion we reckon it would have been generally right.

Australia's Alan Jones and American Mario Andretti would have won two world titles instead of one, Nigel Mansell three instead of just one, Ayrton Senna four straight, Jim Clark four too, including three in a row, and Prost five in all.

Stirling Moss would have been a world champion, something he never got to do in the era of Juan-Manual Fangio. But the irony is that Ecclestone, as owner of the Brabham team in the (1970s and) 1980s, would never have won the world title twice with Nelson Piquet. Indeed, Piquet would not have won any of his three titles.

Overall, we reckon that retrospectively this system would acknowledge the greatest F1 drivers as even greater.

More on all this here, here and, with audio, here.

Brawn speed may be for real; Webber worried
Fernando Alonso, who we reckon to be the best of the very fine crop of modern F1 drivers, topped the final F1 pre-season test at Jerez in Spain ahead of next week's Australian GP.

Alonso's Renault just pipped the Brawn GP car of Rubens Barrichello, who has taken umbrage at queries about whether the surprisingly quick Brawn car -- designed as a Honda and now with a Mercedes-Benz engines -- is legal.

Barrichello and teammate Jenson Button are confident of being very competitive -- and legal -- in Melbourne next week.

Barrichello predicts they will be up among the Ferraris, Toyotas (consistently impressive in testing) and BMWs -- and Alonso's Renault. He noticeably omitted McLaren in that chat, although there were late signs that the primary Mercedes-powered team is getting to grips with its aerodynamic shortcomings.

Worrying for Australian fans is the report that Mark Webber fears that his Red Bull Racing team has been left behind by its rivals after a promising launch.

Although his development of the RB5 appears to have lagged, Webber told German magazine Auto Motor und Sport: "The car did not feel bad, and that is the most alarming thing.

"The others have developed better than we have."

And, even more worrying, Webber reportedly admitted the basic set-up of the RB5 suits his new teammate Sebastian Vettel's driving style better than his.

F1 braces - and a great manager bows out
Just to finish with on F1 today, a bleak report from The Financial Times on the difficulties ahead for the sport this year. It's here although we note that the authors, Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid, seem to think that race fees -- or what they call "hosting fees" -- are in some way related to tickets sales at GPs. There's no such connection.

And Jean Todt, the Frenchman with the rallying background who went to Ferrari as team manager in the early 1990s and -- along with Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher -- turned what had been a hapless outfit into perhaps the most awesome in history, has bowed out of all involvement at Maranello.

Mr Todt hasn't always been everyone's favorite person, but even his strongest critics would have to say: "job well done."

Conspiracy theorists wonder if Schumacher, and perhaps now Todt, are going to reunite with Brawn. That's a bit too far-fetched for us.

Loeb has made it clear he does not like the idea of rally cars without turbos and is likely to pursue circuit racing, probably in sports cars -- but perhaps F1. We reported earlier this week that Loeb had just won his 50th WRC event -- and the third of three this season.

Further evidence of the Frenchman's greatness is a paragraph in this week's Auto Action that mentions he has driven 102 events in World Rally Cars (after two in an old Toyota Corolla in 2000) -- and therefore has a 49 per cent win record unmatched in any other top form of motorsport -- even Fangio's 47 per cent (24 wins from 51 starts) in the early days of F1.

The change from 2-litre turbocharged World Rally Cars to the new specification based on the 2-litre non-turbo Super 2000 car was decided at a meeting of the FIA World Motorsport Council in Paris, which said the new regulations "reflect a need to further reduce and control costs".

Super 2000 cars already compete in the Production World Rally Championship but will be subject to changes from 2011.

The World Motorsport Council said: "For the 2011 and 2012 championships, the World Rally Car will be based on Super 2000 with the addition of a specified kit restricted to modifications to the bodywork, being removable aerodynamic devices.

"The car will be subject to specific technical regulations intended to control costs through restrictions on the changing of engines, transmissions and similar components.

"The maximum 8500 rpm for the engine will be maintained for all WRC and S2000 cars."

Next year cars eligible to score points in the Manufacturers' Championship will include the present and future World Rally Cars and Super 2000 cars.

Existing World Rally Cars will not be eligible for the championship from 2011. The council said it was looking at plans to reduce engine sizes and reintroduce turbochargers in the near future.

"From 2013, it is proposed that the World Rally Car will continue to be Super 2000-based with a cost-effective 1.6-litre turbo engine," it said.

"This is subject to review, based on the specification of the car produced by manufacturers for the mass market."

Proton back in rallying, Fiat up in the air
Malaysia's Proton has signed up for the International Rally Challenge, the rival to the WRC. Auto Action reports that Proton's entry brings the number of teams in the IRC to seven, with Fiat, Honda, Mitsubishi, Peugeot, Skoda and Volkswagen.

But it is thought Proton may return to the WRC in light of the 2011 Super 2000 rules. Proton won the Production WRC in 2002, with its Pert model driven by Karamjit Singh. Its IRC car will be the Satria Neo S2000 prepared by British company Mellors Elliott Motorsport.

British driver Guy Wilks, who drove a Honda in Australian rallies twice last year, is negotiating to drive the Satria.

Meanwhile, Fiat's plans to enter with the WRC with an S2000 Punto run by its motorsport arm Abarth have been thrown into doubt, according to another AA report.

It said the base model Punto had been found to be too slow in this year's IRC and Fiat had been frustrated by the procrastination over the new WRC technical rules.

Ambrose cops crewman's penalty sweet
NASCAR's Sprint Cup in the US resumes this week -- at the half-mile (800m) high-banked Bristol "bull-ring" in Tennessee.

The top 10 drivers after four of 36 rounds are Jeff Gordon, on 634 points, Clint Bowyer 591, Kurt Busch 588, Carl Edwards 547, Matt Kenseth 546, Tony Stewart 521, Kyle Busch 514, Kevin Harvick 511, Kasey Kahne 484, and Greg Biffle 480.

Australia's Marcos Ambrose is 28th on 361 points in his first full Sprint Cup season -- after three years learning the ropes in the pick-up truck their tier series and Nationwide secondary championship, with occasional outings in the premier division.

Ambrose has diplomatically accepted NASCAR's four-race penalty of his crew member Jimmy Watts that we highlighted here a week ago.

More here and an opinion piece on the situation here.

Nitro boost for Gold Coast's Super GP
The Gold Coast SuperGP, formerly the Indy, announced a three-year naming rights partnership with locally-based Nitro Energy Drink midweek.

"The slogan we have associated with Nitro Energy Drinks is 'Go hard, or go home' and in a lot of respects that is a perfect fit for one of the world's most exciting and entertainment-packed events which really does test a fan's stamina," said Nitro Energy Drink joint managing director Matt Nielsen.

This year's Gold Coast event, the first involving A1 GP cars, is on October 22-25 and will be the 19th on the streets of Surfers' Paradise.

The Queensland government invests $11.6 million a year into the event.

Ricciardo, 19, winner of last year's Formula Renault West European Cup and narrow runner-up in that category's Eurocup, is driving a Volkswagen-powered Dallara car this year for top British junior team Carlin Motorsport.

He lapped the Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire 1.5 seconds under the F3 lap record. The category has been dominated by Mercedes-powered machines and it was the first time a car with the new Volkswagen engine had topped an F3 test in Britain. Eighteen drivers took part in the Rockingham test.

The British F3 Championship -- through which more drivers, including the legendary Ayrton Senna, have graduated to F1 than any other series -- starts on April 13 at the Oulton Park circuit in Cheshire.

The series takes in many major British circuits and has three rounds on the continent -- in Belgium, at the famed Spa-Francorchamps, at Hockenheim in Germany, and in Romania.

Carlin Motorsport had the top three drivers in the series last year and one of them, 19-year-old New Zealander Brendon Hartley, is now the F1 reserve driver for Red Bull Racing and its sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso.

Ricciardo is one of eight youngsters in Red Bull's junior driver development program, which has already produced a GP winner -- 21-year-old German Sebastian Vettel, for Toro Rosso at Italy's Monza last September, before becoming Mark Webber's Red Bull teammate this year.