MOTORSPORT: Lewis Hamilton, F1 prodigy

Monday motorsport report

May 14, 2007

The McLaren rookie is now leading the world championship after having been on the podium at all four races, and ahead of his dual world championship teammate Fernando Alonso in the past two.

Hamilton replaces his team's late founder, New Zealander Bruce McLaren, in the record books as F1's youngest championship leader.
The Englishman, of Caribbean descent was just 22 years four months and six days old when he flashed across the finish line in Barcelona last night, 6.79sec behind Massa.

McLaren was a month and two days older when he won the season-opening 1960 Argentine Grand Prix in Buenos Aires in a Cooper-Climax.

The mega-hype about Hamilton was given what the AFP news service called "a turbo boost" when F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone compared him with recently-retired seven-time world champion, Michael Schumacher.

Hamilton leads the world championship with 30 points to Alonso's 28, while -- despite Ferrari winning more races -- Massa is on 27 and his teammate Kimi Raikkonen 22 after retiring with a mechanical failure on the tenth lap in Barcelona.

McLaren leads the constructors' championship with 58 points to Ferrari's 49, BMW-Sauber has 23, Renault (world champion the past two years) a mere 11, and the rest are trailed off.

Massa was on pole position in Barcelona for the second straight race, with Alonso alongside him on the front row -- and the Spaniard made a bold challenge at the first turn but Massa defended stoutly, determined not to be outdone as he was in Malaysia at the second race of the season.

The pair banged wheels and Alonso came off worst, tripping across the gravel and picking up damage that hampered him the rest of the day. This was compounded by an odd tyre choice for the middle stint of the race.

Hamilton zoomed from fourth off the grid to second on the opening lap after passing Raikkonen at the first corner and capitalising on Alonso's misfortune. Thereafter the race was fairly processional, one of the highlights being flames from Massa's Ferrari after fuel spilled and ignited as he pulled away from his first pitstop.

Ferrari has had the legs on McLaren everywhere except Malaysia, but the British team has the better reliability.

In front of 140,000 of his countrymen at the Montmelo circuit, Alonso had to settle for third behind Hamilton, while Robert Kubica finished fourth for BMW-Sauber, David Coulthard gave Red Bull its first points of the year with fifth, Nico Rosberg was sixth in a Williams-Toyota, Heikki Kovalainen seventh for Renault and Takuma Sato claimed the final point for Super Aguri in one of last year's Hondas.

Webber had a problem with his RB3's hydraulics in qualifying and started the race 19th – ten places behind Coulthard. The Aussie's race lasted only seven laps because of a recurrence of the problem.

Coulthard's finish was his first of the year. It was also the Scot's first finish in the top eight since last August's Hungarian GP.

"We've made more progress than any other team since the beginning of the year," Coulthard says. "Towards the end of the race I lost third gear and thought I was going to have to retire the car. I managed to drive using only fourth gear and above, but I was able to get the car home."

Webber, bitterly disappointed that the unreliability that plagued him at Williams has continued at Red Bull, found some consolation in Coulthard's result as an indicator of the RB3's true performance. He says he understands that it is going to take time for the team to become truly competitive.

One of the ironies of Webber's situation is that, without a point yet this season, the championship tables show Williams and Nico Rosberg with five.

Neighboring Malaysia says that a switch to night racing is part of the extension of its GP contract, but Bernie Ecclestone confirmed over the weekend what we reported on here a couple of weeks ago -- that Melbourne won't be a night race next year.

In anticipation of inflated hotel room prices in Singapore, the island's government has already flagged that hotels in the vicinity of the track will be slugged a 30% tax for a week at the time of the race.

Barcelona's GP contract has been extended to 2016 and, with an apparent agreement for Malaysia to continue until at least 2015, the focus may soon turn to Australia's long-term place on the calendar. Melbourne's existing contract runs until 2010.

Meanwhile, the annual bunfight between Ecclestone and the British Racing Drivers' Club which owns Silverstone, home of the British GP, has begun in earnest.

Ecclestone says he wants to deal with a promoter rather than the club.

As we have said before, perhaps the way is open for Middle Eastern money to buy Silverstone, develop a facility of the standard Ecclestone wants, perhaps including a theme park, and everyone -- or at least most -- will be happy.

Ford's Australian president, Tom Gorman, says the company's greater emphasis on more compact, fuel-efficient imported cars could threaten its investment in Falcon V8 Supercars.

"We used to be the ‘Falcon Car Company' and now we're not -- we're expanding the franchise," Gorman told journalists at his regular monthly face-to-face last week.

Gorman says he is constantly querying Ford's spending on its race teams and believes there may not be as much passion for V8 racing in the future and that he's now pushing alternative nameplates such as the new Mondeo and the smaller Focus and Fiesta models.

"V8's has a very direct correlation -- because you really do buy the car… I think there's a role for racing to create passion in the automotive industry but there won't be as direct a correlation as there is today

"We'll always be in racing, but we have to be more strategic about how we use it," Gorman says.

He also warned that V8 Supercar needs to continue its focus on cost containment and says it should limit its offshore races to New Zealand. Amazingly Gorman also told the media that the V8 Supercar promoter did not see Ford Australia as "a key constituent."

V8 supercar should be careful of biting the hand that feeds it and concentrate on generating excitement for what Gorman termed a uniquely Australian sport, he said.

When the head of one of the two participating car companies in V8 Supercar racing speaks, you have to listen. And, when he speaks in this vein twice in two months, you have to listen twice as clearly. Gorman is trying to tell someone something.

V8 Supercar has been very successful in taking Australian touring car racing to new levels in the past decade, but (despite some desperate attempts at hype in the past five years) there is little prospect of Toyota entering the fray, and even less of Mitsubishi doing so.

If Gorman's words aren't heeded, there may come a time (as some smart alec suggested elsewhere in the past day or so) that V8 Supercar racing becomes Formula Holden. And that can't be what anyone wants. Even Holden…

Jones will not even drive at his home round this weekend at Winton Raceway, just an hour from his Albury headquarters.

New Zealander Simon Wills has been drafted in -- presumably with financial backing -- to the Ford team jointly owned by Jones and brother, Kim.

"I have thought for a while that this would be my last year driving a V8 Supercar full-time -- I just made the decision to move the date forward," Jones says.

Jones won nine national titles in AUSCAR, NASCAR, Super Touring and Production Car racing but his 105 V8 Supercar Championship starts did not yield a victory. Perhaps his most memorable drive was to second place with Craig Lowndes at Bathurst in the mid-1990s.

Jones says he will now focus on the running of the team with his brother.

German Timo Glock, a former Jordan F1 driver and still highly-regarded in some circles as an F1 test driver, won the other GP2 race in Barcelona.

Lewis Hamilton won the GP2 title last year on the way to his elevation to F1.

The 248 model the seven-time world champion drove at his unforgettable Brazilian finale will be sold by Sotheby's as part of Ferrari's 60-year birthday celebrations.

In the unique way of The Brickyard, Brazilian two-time winner of the race Helio Castroneves secured the pole position at the weekend with four laps at an average 225.817mph. That performance late on Saturday afternoon gave team owner Roger Penske his 14th pole for the Indy 500, which he has already won 14 times.

Among other Indianapolis records Penske holds are 1814 laps led, six wins from the pole, and 10 winning drivers.

Another Brazilian, Tony Kanaan, was on course to knock off Castroneves on Saturday but faltered slightly on his fourth lap and had to settle for second. That pushed Scotsman Dario Franchitti to the outside of the front row after he had held the quickest time for five hours.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, last year's winner Sam Hornish Junior and the 2005 winner, Dan Wheldon, fill the second row.

Sharing the third row with Briscoe (who averaged 224.41mph) are Danica Patrick and Marco Andretti.

Andretti Green Racing, which is co-owned by Australian Kim Green and Michael Andretti, had a record five drivers qualify in the first 11 for the 91st Indy 500. They are Kanaan, Patrick, Marco Andretti, Tomas Scheckter and Michael Andretti.

Briscoe also practiced Sunday as next weekend he will be off driving a Porsche RS Spyder for Penske at the Salt Lake City round of the American Le Mans Series.

Briscoe's Indy entry is by a new team co-owned by Penske's son, Jay.

Two years ago Briscoe qualified 24th and finished 10th in his debut at The Brickyard with the Ganassi team, with which he split after that memorable crash at the end of that season.

The rest of this year's Indy 500 field will be determined next weekend.

This time it was 20-year-old Hayden Padden, whose Evolution VIII Mitsubishi Lancer finished 24.4sec clear of Crocker's Subaru Impreza in the Rally of Whangarei. Last year it at Rotorua it was Richard Mason, in a Subaru, who beat Crocker outright.

Crocker, a triple Australian champion, won the Asia-Pacific title last season and, despite missing the opener in New Caledonia this year, he's now leading again.

Crocker and co-driver Ben Atkinson got three bonus points for each Asia-Pacific heat win at the weekend, plus 10 for the overall Asia-Pacific round victory. Thus Crocker is one point clear of Finland's Jussi Valimaki, with Japan's Katsu Taguchi third on 13.

Crocker won the weekend's Asia-Pacific round by 2m:43sec from Hiroshi Yanagisawa, with Rifat Sungkar third (over nine minutes back) in a clean sweep for Subaru.

"It was a good result for us," Crocker says. "It was very difficult being first on the road, there was a lot of loose, coarse gravel first time over them."

While Paddon had the advantage of driving back in the field (he was seeded 19th) on roads that had been swept clean, he had to overcome a broken windscreen early on the first leg in beating 79 drivers from eight countries.

"I am really surprised that I was able to beat Cody as he is a world-class rally driver," Paddon said.

Paddon's experienced co-driver, John Kennard, says: "The thing I was most impressed with was that he did his own notes for the first time. Then he went out and drove absolutely flat out and did not get one thing wrong."

Another Kiwi, Sam Murray, was third overall, 54.9sec behind Paddon.

Rotorua driver Dean Sumner was mighty fast too, leading the rally outright in his Mitsubishi after five stages, only to be forced out with suspension damage after hitting a bridge on the next stage.

Reigning NZ champion Mason had all four tyres on his Subaru fail on the same stage. Mason also lost time on leg two when he stopped to assist Emma Gilmour, who crashed the Subaru in which boyfriend Aussie Glenn Macneall was co-driving after having recently split from Aussie world championship driver Chris Atkinson. Gilmour had won the stage before she crashed.

Ambrose is now testing at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the 13th race in the series there on May 26.

"If it wasn't for dropping back a bit we would have been around the 10th to 15th mark," Ambrose says. "Our team is on the upswing. We've had some tough weeks."

Ambrose has already shaken down a Nextel Cup Car of Tomorrow at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina, in preparation for road races in NASCAR's premier series at Sonoma on June 24 and Watkins Glen on August 12.

Tatnell was an icon in the days of speedcars at the Sydney Showground, where his contemporaries included John Harvey, who went on to success in open-wheeler circuit racing cars and touring cars.

Tatnell's son Brooke is now a star in the US World of Outlaws sprintcar series.

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