MOTORSPORT: Lots of strange noises

Ingall has won 27 races, 12 rounds and the 2005 V8 Supercar title, competed 21 times in the Bathurst 1000 and won it twice, in 1995 and '97.

He's 49 years old and it's almost four years since he stood on a podium, although he came close in the second race at this year's Clipsal 500 in Adelaide -- the debut weekend of the Car of the Future.

However, he is only 18th in the championship standings after 19 races, with two 200km races coming up at this weekend's Townsville 400 -- the last event in a five contract now in negotiation for renewal.

Ingall says he would settle for a decent result at Bathurst this October but won't discount continuing next year "if an opportunity came up -- and it was a good opportunity", although that is unlikely to be with Walkinshaw Performance and his long-time sponsor Supercheap Auto.

Ingall's Holden Commodore will carry the number 226 in Townsville, where series leader and four-time champion Jamie Whincup has been the dominant driver in the previous four years of the event on what is predominantly a street circuit.

Leader this season by 159 points from Triple Eight/Red Bull teammate Craig Lowndes, Whincup has finished in the top two in seven of the eight races in the North Queensland city -- and won five of them. One of those wins was from eighth on the grid and two others from ninth. It's no surprise Whincup rates Townsville's Reid Park one of his favourite racing destinations.

This weekend will also be the first since Adelaide that refueling will occur in the races and both hard and soft tyre compounds must be used by all competitors (in both races).

There also is a development series round in Townville, but it's high-profile rookie, dual MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner, has made it known that "it's been a lot busier than what I wanted it to be", and that "I really just need a year off".

Only 23rd in the standings after the first two rounds, and just back from a trip to America and Europe, Stoner has said that "next year will definitely be a lot more about me and my family, rather than tripping around and travelling everywhere".

"I'd definitely like to slow down and get to grips with life a little bit," Stoner said this week in an interview with speedcafe.com.au.

He had intended having this year off when he quit MotoGP last year but was lured into the development series in a Triple Eight Commodore backed by Red Bull.

The delay in him taking a break, if he does next year, will come as a disappointment to V8 Supercar management that had hoped he would make a quick and smooth transition to four wheels, ideally stepping up into the "main game" next year, to give the category a boost in public appeal.

A couple of high-profile Aussies still competing overseas, Marcos Ambrose and Ryan Briscoe, have also been in the news in recent days.

Ambrose's Ford Fusion NASCAR was one of 16 Sprint Cup cars from which the roof flaps were confiscated by inspectors ahead of this weekend's round at Daytona in Florida. The inspectors said the flaps had been illegally machined down to reduce weight. Those on 15 cars in the second-tier Nationwide Series also were confiscated.

New flaps had to be fitted to all 31 cars before they were allowed to practice at the Daytona superspeedway, where Ambrose said it was "so difficult to stay out of trouble" in races.

"If you avoid a wreck, your chances of a great finish dramatically improve in a matter of seconds, then it's a matter of getting in the right position at the end for any chance to win," he said.

Briscoe, whose co-drive with Holden Racing Team in the V8 Supercar enduros is now said to be in doubt because of clashing commitments in the US, is doing "double duty" this weekend, competing in the IndyCar round at Pocono in Pennsylvania and the American Le Mans Series race at Lime Rock in New England.

The ALMS race clashes with Pocono qualifying, meaning he will start his fourth Indy race of the year -- and third for Panther Racing -- on Pocono's "Tricky Triangle" tri-oval from the rear of the grid.

The Formula One tyre controversy has rumbled on all week since the rash of exploding rubber in last Sunday's British Grand Prix.

After initial talk of a boycott of this weekend's German GP at Nurburgring that sounded rather hollow, the Grand Prix Drivers Association now has issued a statement expressing its "deepest concern about the events that took place at Silverstone", and firming up the threat.

"The drivers have decided that, if similar problems should manifest themselves during the German GP, we shall immediately withdraw from the event, as this avoidable problem with the tyres endangers again the lives of driver, marshals and fans," it said.

At Silverstone there were several blowiouts in left-rear tyres at 200km/h or more. Fernando Alonso narrowly avoided a flying chunk.

"There are pieces of steel (belt from inside the tyre) coming at 300km/h, so it would be like a bullet or a knife, so probably it will enter in the helmet -- so it is not nice," Alonso said.

While safety understandably is the major concern, a repeat of Silverstone is highly unlikely at Nurburgring.

The cars will use tyres there that F1's monopoly supplier Pirelli had wanted to introduce at last month's Canadian GP -- and which were tried there in practice, although damp conditions meant little assessment could be made of them.

These tyres have an inner belt of the synthetic fibre Kevlar rather the steel used this season up to Silverstone, and from the Hungarian GP at the end of this month a new batch of tyres will be supplied using last year's structure with this year's compounds.

"It's good we have a new tyre here (Nurburgring)," triple world champion and this season's leader Sebastian Vettel said. "It has to be safe. Silverstone was not what we want."

Vettel's teammate, Mark Webber, has been one of the leading critics of Pirelli, saying it "has to do something from a safety perspective".

"Performance is one thing, but when you have safety involved you have to find the right way for all of us," Webber said. "Silverstone (where Webber finished second) was a very dramatic and extremely unsafe scenario for all of us."

However, there has been little acknowledgement (certainly publicly) from F1 teams -- and drivers -- of Pirelli's claims midweek that the teams may have been mounting rear tyres the wrong way round (using rubber intended for the right side on the left), at low pressures and with extreme cambers.

Pirelli motorsport chief Paul Hembery said what happened at Silverstone "upsets us" (as much as any stakeholder).

Hembery's official statement and press release can be read here at the Pirelli website

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