Motorsport: Loeb flies in Monte, Atkinson sixth

Friday motorsportJanuary 19, 2007

After just 46.4km of competition over two stages, the French triple world champion is almost 24 seconds ahead of his Spanish teammate Dani Sordo in another C4, while Finn Marcus Gronholm is almost half a minute behind Loeb in a Ford Focus.

Australia's Chris Atkinson is sixth in his Subaru Impreza, more than a minute behind Loeb but just 2.5 seconds adrift of his Norweigan teammate, Petter Solberg. It is the Subaru team's first event on BF Goodrich tyres after years on Pirelli rubber. The Imprezas seem to be where the drivers expected as they await a new model at the fourth round of the world championship in Mexico.

The opening stages of this first round were dry, after expectations of snow and ice on a course revised for the 75th anniversary of the event.

After four months sidelined with a broken arm from a bicycle accident, and claiming he's still not 100 per cent fit, Loeb and the C4 have been brilliant. "We are on a harder tyre than everyone else, but the balance of the car was very good," Loeb says.

Earlier, the shakedown for the rally was cancelled because of concerns about the safety of spectators. Officials are demanding complete co-operation from fans for the rest of the event to ensure that the rally is not disrupted as it has been in recent years.

VW's Dakar day but Mitsubishi on target
Volkswagens dominated the latest stage of the Dakar Rally, but with the finish in sight this weekend the outright honors are a battle between Mitsubishi's French stars -- defending champion Luc Alphand and multiple winner Stephane Peterhansel.

Although out of the running for overall victory, Spain's dual world rally champion Carlos Sainz won the 257km 12th stage in his VW Touareg as the event crossed the southern Mauritanian desert into Mali. Portugal's Carlos Sousa was second in another VW, 3 minutes 53 seconds behind Sainz, whose stage win was his third in this year's Dakar. Alphand was third and is now with 6½ minutes of Peterhansel after trailing by about 10 minutes earlier in the week.

Jean-Louis Schlesser, driving a Ford-engined buggy, made it a French 1-2-3 on the 12th stage.

In the motorcycle category, Spain's Marc Coma still leads by 52 minutes from Frenchman Cyril Despres, both of them on KTMs. Belgium's Charly Gotlib, Hans Stacey and Bernard Der Kinderen of Holland lead the truck category in a MAN.

The rally ends in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, on Sunday.

Brisbane's Courier-Mail newspaper reports that Lowndes, trading his 650-horsepower Falcon for a monster truck with a 1600 horsepower supercharged V8 Chevy engine, crushed six Commodores as well as a Holden Camira, a couple of Toyota Camrys and a Volvo in a practice run. "I wish I had that much horsepower in my race car," Lowndes says.

Bulldust from Bahrain on the V8s
Have Australia's V8 Supercars become a bigger international motorsport attraction than Formula One? Some Supercar proponents would have us believe so, although the reality is far different.

The method of measuring F1 audiences was revised a couple of years ago and the figures are now much more credible and believable, and F1 is still clearly a much bigger and better-known global product than V8 Supercars.

However, we note this week that Bahrain International Circuit general manager Martin Whitaker says: "Our first event for the Australian V8 Supercars (last November) generated more coverage than the inaugural Grand Prix! (in 2004)"

That's the first nomination for the Bulldust Quote of the Year.

In attendance this weekend will be the greatest living icon of NZ motorsport, Chris Amon, Australia's 80-year-old triple F1 world champion Sir Jack Brabham, and -- as principal of the Brazilian A1 team -- another two-time F1 world champion, Emerson Fittipaldi.

Lots of changes in the A1 driver line-up, with Ryan Briscoe opting out of the Team Australia car, with the seat to filled by Karl Reindler, while Narain Karthikeyan -- a Jordan F1 racer in 2005 and now a Williams tester -- will be in the Indian car, former Gold Coast Indy winner Ryan Hunter-Reay in for Team USA, and Loic Duval replaces Nicolas Lapierre at Team France, while British youngster Oliver Jarvis will be missing because of Japanese Formula Three commitments, leaving Robbie Kerr as the sole British driver in the team run by John Surtees.

The NZ round has been very actively promoted. Pity similar enthusiasm and effort has not been evident for the Australian round at Sydney's Eastern Creek in two weeks.

Montoya slams 'nobody' Schumacher
Bad blood still exists between Michael Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, who has effectively confirmed that Red Bull's second F1 team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, tried to lure him back from NASCAR to the open-wheeler world championship.

Schumacher told the New York Times recently that he did not understand what was exciting about NASCAR's oval-track racing, that it was ridiculously boring and needed little skill, to which Montoya replied: "Schumacher is a nobody in America. If you took him to Homestead in Florida and told him to stay half a second off the pace he'd have a heart attack."

While not naming the team that approached him about a return to F1, Montoya told Autosport magazine, whose website revealed the approach in December, that he got a message on his mobile "that if I found NASCAR boring they had the doors open for me to return to F1; I laughed so much at it".

Montoya, who walked out on McLaren in the middle of last year to pursue a NASCAR career, says he would have even turned down an approach from world champion F1 team Renault. "What's going to happen this season? Everybody is on Bridgestones and which team is going to win? Ferrari will. They'll probably dominate. Honestly, I was going to be in F1 for three or four years more. Here in NASCAR I can race until I'm 45 and I'm still young."

>> Despite the absence of the V8 Supercars from this year's GP program, the Melbourne event's chief executive, Tim Bamford, says tickets are selling at a "very, very satisfactory rate", with sales ahead in NSW, Queensland and South Australia. Bamford is in the best position to know, but his comments are at odds with the general feeling in national motorsport circles. The proof will be in the pudding.

>> Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi says his country wants to retain its F1 GP, only a week or so after Sepang circuit chairman Datuk Mokhzani Tun Mahathir indicated it may not want to renew the contract for the event beyond 2010 because of the decline in the Malaysian currency. "I reiterate that we will take all efforts to ensure F1 continues to be a permanent feature for Malaysia," PM Abdullah says.

>> BMW-Sauber driver Nick Heidfeld says it's time for F1 to stop mourning the retirement of Michael Schumacher. "People should be happy with Michael's achievements, instead of being sad about him leaving and things changing," Heidfeld says.

>> Peter Sauber, the man who gave Schumacher's replacement at Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen, his start in F1 in 2001, says the Finn may not be strong enough technically and could struggle with the red team this year. "Jean Todt (Ferrari team chief) knows the weak side of Kimi, especially on the technical side," says Sauber, who is only attending about half the F1 races since selling his team to BMW. "Kimi is not so interested in technical things and today in F1 that is very important, to develop the car."