Geoffrey Harris•20 June 2014

NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Lowndes turning 40 in race for elusive title

Two major events on Australian soil this weekend, and lots of racing and business activity abroad

Ricciardo low-key on chances at new Red Bull Ring

The V8 Supercar Championship resumes this weekend – in Darwin, after a five-week break – with Craig Lowndes celebrating his 40th birthday on Saturday, and there's an international rally in Queensland – on the Sunshine Coast and in the Mary Valley.

Formula One returns to Austria after an 11-year break at a circuit redeveloped by Red Bull, but the energy drink company's team and Australia's last-start Grand Prix victor Daniel Ricciardo say Mercedes still have a big gap on them. On the business front, an American tycoon is trying to buy half of F1 while McLaren has been KO'd trying to claim the massive fine it paid in the "Spygate" scandal as a tax deduction.

Australia's NASCAR racer Marcos Ambrose has his best chance of a win this season – on the Sonoma road course in California. On his future in America, amid speculation he could return to Australia if Roger Penske enters V8 Supercar racing, Ambrose said: "I just want the best for Richard Petty Motorsports. I want to make sure that RPM are on the right path and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I help them do that."

There's a World Touring Car Championship round at Spa in Belgium too this weekend, and next year the WTCC is to race at Germany's even more legendary Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit – the first race sanctioned by motorsport's world governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) at the 25km, 85-turn track since 1983.

And it's been confirmed this week that the most successful competitor in the history of the Dakar Rally, Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, will be part of Peugeot's new three-car marathon rally team with Spaniard Carlos Sainz and Frenchman Cyril Depres, who is switching from two wheels. Peugeot, which won the Dakar four times in the 1980s in Africa with its 405 T16, is returning to the event – now in South America – with its new 2008 DKR. Peterhansel, 48, has won the Dakar five times on four wheels – including twice in the past five years with the X-Raid MINI team (and was under team orders this year not to beat Spanish teammate Nani Roma) – and six times on motorcycles. He is taking his regular co-driver, Jean-Paul Cottret, with him to Peugeot.

Tyres critical factor at Hidden Valley

Tyre wear looms as the major factor as the V8 Supercar Championship reboots in Darwin.

Extra run-off has been created at the Hidden Valley circuit and some tyre walls replaced by concrete barriers in the wake of the chaos from an eight-car pile-up on the Sunday last year.

Track manager Laurie Feehan has said cars should now slide along the concrete instead of bouncing off earth-filled tyre walls into the path of other cars.

The weekend's format is the same as at the previous round in Perth – two 100km sprints on Saturday and a 200km race on Sunday – with a combination of hard and soft rubber.

Each car has been allocated 12 hard and eight soft Dunlop tyres, but the softs can only be used on Sunday.

While 10 drivers, seven teams and four car brands have taken wins in the first 16 races, Ford Performance Racing has been the form outfit the past three rounds – and has a good record in Darwin.

"We've always performed well in Darwin," said FPR's championship leader Mark Winterbottom.

"It is one of our favourite venues and our strength has been tyre life.

"While the tyre allocation this year [three sets less than in Perth] is not great it should suit us."

Hidden Valley's long straight also favours the Falcons, which have the edge in top speed.

Winterbottom's young teammate Chaz Mostert won the 200km race in Perth, FPR's third man David Reynolds could be a threat in Darwin too, while struggling Jack Perkins (21st in the championship) in the fourth, Charlie Schwerkolt-owned FPR entry will have Paul Ceprnich – who designed the 'Car of the Future' V8 Supercar chassis through his Pace Innovations – engineering his car this weekend.

Triple Eight Race Engineering/Red Bull/Holden's birthday boy Lowndes (pictured at Clipsal 500 last year) is second in the championship, 101 points behind Winterbottom, and has won six times in Darwin.

Lowndes, a triple champion but without a title this century despite having won almost 100 touring car/V8 Supercar races, has had the edge on teammate Jamie Whincup this season but said qualifying and tyre life would be critical this weekend.

"We're looking forward to trying to secure Triple Eight's first pole position at Hidden Valley," Lowndes said.

Five-time champion Whincup is fourth in the series this year but has not won a race since March, although he and Volvo's young gun Scott McLaughlin – who has turned 21 since Perth, where he gave the Swedish manufacturer its breakthrough victory with the S60 – each have four pole positions and three other front row starts this season.

Holden Racing Team is trailing not only Triple Eight and FPR but much smaller Holden team Brad Jones Racing and needs better results. History suggests they are more likely to come from James Courtney than Garth Tander at this track.

Mercedes and Nissan are the fourth and fifth brands in the hunt – and Hidden Valley's straight will be particularly tough for the four Altimas.

Nissan's James Moffat lamented the five-week gap in the season since Perth and has been a lone voice in finding little optimism out of the day's testing most teams did during the break.

V8 Supercar Championship driver standings after 16 of 38 races – 1. Mark Winterbottom (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 1199 points; 2. Craig Lowndes (Triple Eight Racing Engineering, Holden Commodore) 1098; 3. Fabian Coulthard (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore) 1059; 4. Jamie Whincup (Triple Eight Race Engineering, Holden Commodore) 986; 5. James Courtney (Holden Racing Team, Holden Commodore) 928; 6. Shane Van Gisbergen (Tekno Autosports, Holden Commodore) 861; 7. Scott McLaughlin (Volvo Polestar, Volvo S60) 840; 8. Chaz Mostert (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 792; 9. David Reynolds (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 757; 10. Jason Bright (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore) 754.

V8 Supercar teams championship – 1. Triple Eight Race Engineering 2109 points; 2. Ford Performance Racing 2016; 3. Brad Jones Racing 1813; 4. Holden Racing Team 1589; 5. Erebus Motorsport 1380; 6. Nissan Motorsport II 1333; 7. Volvo Polestar 1151; 8. Dick Johnson Racing 1125; 9. Nissan Motorsport I 1094; 10. Tekno Autosports 886.

Top Aussie trio take on Asia-Pacific rally stars

The International Rally of Queensland doubles as a round of the Asia-Pacific and Australian championships.

The top three drivers in the Australian championship – Brendan Reeves (Mazda2), Scott Pedder (Renault Clio) and Adrian Copping (Citroen DS3) – have entered in the Asia-Pacific segment against a field headed by a pair of Skoda Fabia Super 2000s and will be eligible for points in both series.

The Skodas are driven by European champion Jan Kopecky from the Czech Republic and reigning Asia-Pacific champion Guarav Gill from India.

Kopecky and Gill compete for India's Team MRF and each have a win from the previous rounds of the Asia-Pacific series in New Zealand and New Caledonia. They are level on points but, while Gill has plenty of experience of Australian conditions, Kopecky is a newcomer to this event – for which there is a ceremonial start at Caloundra's Kings Beach tonight, with about 237km of competition over 16 stages on forestry roads around Imbil in the Mary Valley.

Most of the stages are being used twice and two of them three times. The longest stage is almost 36km.

Youngster Reeves, who leads the Australian championship by 34 points, has said he will take a measured approach this weekend – as the rally is one event, rather than the familiar two heats of local rounds – while his main rival Pedder has committed to his usual full-on attack.

"My plan is to win as many stages as I can and put a heap of pressure on Brendan to make a mistake," Pedder said.

"I don't think you can afford to drive at anything less than ten-tenths."

Coppin trails Pedder by nine points after consistent results at the earlier ARC rounds in Canberra and Western Australia. Tony Sullens drives a second DS3 for Team Citroen Australia but opted to enter only the ARC segment rather than double up in the Asia-Pacific competition.

Michael Boaden, who missed the WA round, returns with his VW Polo but minus the turbocharger on its 1.8-litre engine.

'Home race' for Red Bull but Mercedes still benchmark

The eighth round of the F1 World Championship, the Austrian Grand Prix, is at a short circuit now known as the Red Bull Ring near Spielberg in the Styrian mountains with just nine corners.

In its previous life as the A1 Ring it was famous for the 2002 race in which Brazilian Rubens Barrichello was ordered by Ferrari to hand over the lead to Michael Schumacher, who then tried to ease Barrichello's pain by hoisting him on to the top step of the podium alongside him.

There was only more GP there after that, but now it has been redeveloped at the expense of Red Bull, whose major owner Dietrich Mateschitz is Austrian.

While Renault-powered Red Bull ended Mercedes' perfect winning record at this season's previous race in Canada as young Australian Daniel Ricciardo scored his maiden victory, Ricciardo and his team boss Christian Horner have emphasised in the lead-up to the Austrian round that the German manufacturer's factory team remains the benchmark.

"Let's not beat about the bush – Mercedes was the quickest car [in Montreal, where Lewis Hamilton retired and Nico Rosberg lost the lead to Ricciardo two laps from the end, both because of energy recovery system problems]," Horner said.

"They were still very, very strong. We still have a lot of work to do. We were 12-15kmh slower compared to a Force India or Williams [also Mercedes engine] on the straight – and that is where we need to improve.

"The gap is still significant."

Ricciardo said last night: "The win gave us more motivation ... that extra little bit ... [but] I think it's still going to take a bit of time [to match Mercedes consistently].

"It's not going to happen overnight.

"The gap is big, but hopefully we can stand on the top step again this year and try to close them down.

"We're chipping away at it."

Ricciardo, in his first season in a top team, has overshadowed his four-time world champion colleague Sebastian Vettel and Mateschitz's motorsport lieutenant Helmut Marko has revealed that he told Vettel in April "to raise his game".

Marko said Vettel may have lost motivation because he was unhappy about this year's rules that introduced hybrid engines.

"Sebastian was complaining about having such a bad car. He wants everything absolutely right," Marko said.

"His main problem was the downshift was always destabilising the rear and he couldn't understand that we couldn't solve it.

"Furthermore, he thinks the way F1 is going is not the right one – the cars should be monsters, not relatively easy to drive.

"With all these problems maybe he wasn't as committed as he should have been, but that has changed."

Marko said Vettel and the rest of the team had not anticipated Ricciardo being as strong as he has been since his promotion from the Toro Rosso team.

Vettel had been "a little surprised, like we all were ... no one could see his [Ricciardo's] potential".

Two top teams commit to staying in GP racing

Marko pledged Red Bull's long-term commitment to F1 in the wake of news that its design genius Adrian Newey will move to an "advisory and mentoring" role next year.

Ferrari also has reaffirmed its intent to remain in F1 after comments by its president Luca di Montezemolo that it might concentrate instead on sports car racing – specifically Le Mans.

A statement from Ferrari said F1 had been "coursing through its veins for over half a century" but that it remained concerned that the sport had taken a "wrong turn" this year.

It dismissed Montezemolo's comments to the Wall Street Journal as "not an ultimatum, nor a threat" but said he wanted to see "a collective brainstorming ... so that the key values of F1 can be re-established".

Montezemolo wants new media giants Google and Apple brought in on those discussions.

There were talks this week on F1's rules, the declining TV audience and improving the show, with the Ferrari chief offering to host a meeting of key stakeholders at Ferrari's Maranello headquarters ahead of the Italian GP in September.

"F1 has to be based on technical innovation, research and development, but this must all be done with sustainable costs and, above all, must be moved forward as part of a product that can put on a show," the Ferrari statement said.

"Because it is the show that draws in the commercial partners, the sponsors and, above all, the fans, who are the real end-users of the F1 product."

Ferrari spokesman Renato Bisignani further clarified Montezemolo's comments to the Wall Street Journal by adding: "Le Mans is an attractive platform which we continue to monitor, but F1 has been Ferrari's life for over half a century and our present focus is on returning to a consistent winning form [it has not won a world title since 2007 and has only one podium finish this season]."

American wants half of F1, McLaren loses big tax claim

A couple of other big items on the F1 business front this week too.

It was reported by the Bloomberg financial news service that American media tycoon John Malone was negotiating to buy 49 per cent of F1 from private equity company CVC and the collapsed Lehman Brothers Holdings – but that the parties were half a billion dollars apart.

CVC owns about 35.5 per cent of the business and Lehman 15.3 per cent.

Bloomberg said two Malone companies, Liberty Global and Discovery Communications, wanted to pay US$4 billion but that CVC and Lehman wanted another US$500 million.

Malone's reported offer values the entire F1 business at about US$8 billion – at least 20 per cent less than the figure mooted in the last, aborted attempt to float it on Singapore's stock market.

The McLaren F1 team has lost a case in which it tried to have the massive fine imposed on it for having received Ferrari secrets in 2007 – known as the "Spygate" scandal – allowed as a tax deduction.

McLaren paid £32 million – which amounted to the FIA's US$100 million less the money it lost from F1 for being excluded from that year's constructors' world championship.

An initial ruling had been that McLaren's profit-making activity "could include cheating" but a higher tribunal has decided, after tax authorities told it that the "illicit gathering" of information was not part of McLaren's trading activities, that the penalty could not be tax-deductible.

MOTORSPORT: Lowndes turning 40 in race for elusive title

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