MOTORSPORT: Magic on the Mountain

Monday motorsport reportOctober 8, 2007

Lowndes/Whincup back-to-back: a Bathurst fairytale
The headline on our motorsport column late last week was 'Bathurst the Greatest Race'. We do not want to say “told you so”, because plenty of others could and would say the same thing, but how apt it turned out to be.

In our memory, the lead-up to the Great Race can be pretty dull and last week was particularly so. Even the top 10 shoot-out on Saturday seemed a bit flat to us. But there's one thing we can be assured of on raceday for the V8 Supercars at Mt Panorama, and that is it will be a bloody good race.

Indeed a great race. And, as we saw again on Sunday, arguably the greatest motor race in the world.

The thing that occurs to us today about Bathurst is that it is always a great race. That's because of a combination of factors: a magnificent circuit, the parity of the Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores, the pairing of drivers, the weather, the atmosphere, and the telecast.

It is truly a wonderful day on the Australian calendar, and not just for avowed petrolheads. It is the one race of the year in which the general public takes an interest, and we repeat our query of last week about why it needs to be part of the season-long championship.

In those thrilling last few laps late Sunday afternoon was anyone thinking about the championship? Not likely. Everyone was fixated on who was going to win the Bathurst 1000 -- and for the next year be lauded as the reigning kings of the mountain.

Bathurst produces heroes -- and truckloads of heartbreak.

Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup clearly are the heroes -- again. They are the first pair to win Sandown and Bathurst in the same year since 1996, when Lowndes did it with Greg Murphy -- in a Holden.

Three of the four endurance races in the past two years Lowndes and Whincup have won, and in the one they didn't win they were on the podium. That's a very high distinction in anyone's book.

They had a little bit of luck Sunday, and isn't it amazing how the very best race drivers seem to have things go their way so often. Think Michael Schumacher.

Whincup made what looked like a potentially costly error in the pit entry, arriving too hot and sliding on to the sandy verge. But the important thing was that he got the car to the pit.

Lowndes survived Rick Kelly's Commodore and Mark Winterbottom's Falcon sailing across the track in front of him at The Chase after runaway excursions at the end of Conrod Straight. And the way Lowndes held it together in those last 10 laps had us wondering whether he ought to now be considered the best touring car driver in the world.

There are some aces in Europe, but perhaps it's not a comparison that even needs to be made, because V8s in road racing, Aussie-style, are unique.

Meantime, 24-year-old Whincup does not suffer in comparison with his 33-year-old teammate. That's not something that is new -- Whincup's ability was clearly evident from the start of last season and his performances, both in the sprint races and the enduros, have shown that Triple 8/Team Vodafone has a line-up of equals.

The pair now not only hold the Peter Brock Trophy for the second time but have leap-frogged HSV's Rick Kelly and Garth Tander in the championship. Who would have thought this all possible three or four months ago?

Much of the kudos for this latest Bathurst victory inevitably goes to the drivers, but Ford and Triple 8 Engineering emerge as big heroes out of all this too. Who would have thought such stunning victories at Sandown and Mt Panorama possible, and a Ford one-two-three at Bathurst (with an outdated model Falcon, and winning car in its first outing) when you reflect on the domination of the Holden/Tom Walkinshaw VE Commodores in the early rounds of this year's championship?

Yet at crunch-time on Sunday afternoon it was not one of those four Walkinshaw cars (from HSV and the Holden Racing Team) that was holding up the General's end in the fight with the Blue Oval, but rather a Tasman Motorsport entry, which finished fourth with Greg Murphy at the wheel.

James Courtney and David Besnard did a sterling job for Stone Brothers Racing to take second place. Third last year, second this time. Perhaps 2008 will be Courtney's turn at the mountain. And Besnard holding up his end so well must go a long way to a resurrection for him in the series, rather than continuing in exile in the New Zealand V8 series.

And, after all the struggles Dick Johnson Racing has had in the past couple of years, it was great to see Steven 'Junior' Johnson up on the podium with co-driver Will Davison.

First would have been so much better for them than third, but hopefully this result helps in securing the survival of the longest-established team in Australia's premier motor racing championship.

Among the vanquished, it was again Ford drivers who stood out to us. Ford Performance Racing did a brilliant job to produce the Falcon that took pole position, and Steven Richards and Mark Winterbottom drove superbly in the race, but it wasn't to be their day.

And Jason Bright, that quiet achiever, was looking good to cause a boilover in his first season of team ownership with 10 laps to go. We are left wondering what might have been had Bright gone one more lap before his late tyre change and then gone to wets.

As it turned out, there was not enough rain to justify wets for all of those 10 laps.

Certainly it would have been even more interesting had there been just a sprinkle more for a little longer to see whether Greg Ritter, on wets, might have caused what would have been just as big a boilover in the remaining Garry Rogers Commodore.

It wasn't to be, and the Holden-Ford scoreline on the mountain is now 25-16.

We're not fussed about which manufacturer wins, but what we saw Sunday was the greatest of races. Bring it on 1000 times more.

V8 Supercar championship points after 10 of 14 rounds: Jamie Whincup (Ford) 461 points, Craig Lowndes (F) 445, Rick Kelly (Holden) 443, Garth Tander (H) 434, Todd Kelly (H) 324, Mark Skaife (H) 273, Steven Richards (F) 262, Mark Winterbottom (F) 258, Will Davison (F)  245, James Courtney (F) 228 points, Russell Ingall (F) 214, Steven Johnson (F) 207, Greg Murphy (H) 176, Lee Holdsworth (H) 167, Jason Richards (H) 153.

Key members of the Townsville push met prime minister John Howard late last week. And a report we saw over the weekend says that sitting Liberal MP Peter Lindsay -- who is fighting to save the seat of Herbert in Townsville but had seemed less than 100 per cent supportive of the race proposal recently -- has indicated that a federal grant will be announced before the election.

Lindsay is under threat from the Labor candidate, Townsville businessman George Colbran.

The political cards seem to be falling well for the promoters and supporters of a Townsville street race. We applaud the idea of a V8 Supercar round in such a sizeable regional centre up the Queensland coast but continue to wonder about the wisdom of it being on a street circuit, rather than the $40 million that is being put together being pumped into a permanent facility.

Reshuffle in 2008 championship all official
The 2008 V8 Supercar calendar finally trickled out during Bathurst, with no real surprises. It confirms that the warm-up enduro for Bathurst next year will be at Phillip Island rather than Sandown.

The V8 Supercar honchos publicly raised a question mark over Sandown's future unless the Melbourne Racing Club (horse racing club that is) spends at least $3 million on an upgrade.

Now that's all very well, but an interesting game of poker is developing here. As we have pointed out a couple of times in recent weeks, there is a grave danger of Australia's two biggest cities -- Sydney and Melbourne -- being left with little motorsport within a couple of years.

In those two cities, only Eastern Creek has any kind of certainty to its future. V8 Supercar chairman Tony Cochrane again raised at the weekend the prospect of a street race at Sydney's Homebush Olympic precinct, but our information is that remains a very long shot.

The return of the Supercars to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne next March for some non-championship races is supposedly going to come with a yet-to-be-revealed race format “nobody has seen before”.

As has been expected, Oran Park will host the grand finale to the 2008 season before that great circuit -- part of the scene since 1971 --makes way for housing development in south-west Sydney.

There is allowance for a round at Queensland Raceway in mid-July, but it is not locked in. If that event doesn't get confirmed another circuit will end up with two rounds.

Sandown, instead of its 500, is slotted for a sprint round in early June.

The calendar has been framed to avoid the 7 Network's commitments to the Beijing Olympics in August and the AFL roster.

Two weeks and counting to F1 decider
So the Formula 1 world championship goes down to the wire at Interlagos in Brazil in two weeks – and not through any handiwork by Bernie Ecclestone or the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile.

Lewis Hamilton is still in the box seat, despite going off the road into a gravel trap as he made his way to the pits mid-race in Shanghai yesterday. And, yes, that was Sunday afternoon, Australian and Chinese time, despite the telecast not being seen in Oz until early Monday.

Seen by how many might be the pertinent question. When Network 10 took over the F1 deal in Australian from Nine it made lots of noise about showing races live or near-live; certainly about improving on Nine's punctuality.

Obviously 10 was intimidated by the prospect of screening the Shanghai race up against Bathurst on 7, but putting on a chin-wag show about the rugby world cup was low -- especially after the Wallabies got booted out of the tournament. Hopefully it has been rewarded with appropriately low ratings.

Perhaps the pressure-cooker of the climax to the F1 season got to McLaren and Hamilton in China. It heated up late last week with an extraordinary FIA inquiry on Friday after a spectator's video surfaced showing Hamilton slowing up behind the safety car in the wet at Fuji in Japan the previous Sunday -- behaviour that was then blamed for German youngster Sebastien Vettel ramming his Toro Rosso car into the back of Aussie Mark Webber's Red Bull.

The kerfuffle came to nothing, other than Webber feeling he had to put out a statement to clarify that he did not instigate the complaint against Hamilton, even though he was strongly critical of his driving.The complaint was made by Toro Rosso joint principal Franz Tost.

Interestingly, and pleasingly (certainly for Germans), Vettel was the star of the Shanghai race, finishing fourth from 17th on the grid (he qualified 12th but was relegated five places for blocking).

Despite the ignominy of his exit from the race in Japan a week earlier, it ought be remembered that he led there for three laps and was third when he took Webber out, accidentally but most unfortunately. Vettel is only 20 and may yet turn out to be something very special.

BMW certainly thinks so and would love to squeeze him into its line-up, but with Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica on its books has been prepared to loan him to Toro Rosso to get GP racing experience.

Back to McLaren… How it allowed Hamilton to run so long on tyres that had worn so badly, to the extent that he could not keep the car on the road as he made his way to the pits just after mid-race, is unfathomable. Hamilton got stuck in a gravel trip and not only missed out on any championship points but on wrapping up the world title.

Kimi Raikkonen delivered Ferrari its 200th GP victory, ahead of Fernando Alonso in the other McLaren, and Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari.

Raikkonen, with five wins now this season, remains an outside chance to become world champion, but he probably needs Hamilton and Alonso to take each other out at Interlagos.

As strained as relations between that pair are, it's hard to see that happening. Hamilton doesn't need to resort to any such unsporting tactics, and while Alonso may feel inclined if he sees the title he has held for two years slipping away to a 22-year-old rookie he would be condemned forever more if did so -- and enabled Raikkonen to steal the crown.

For tenth placed Mark Webber, Shanghai was another disappointing race result but there are signs that the Red Bull outfit is starting to go in the right direction pretty quickly.

Webber's teammate, David Coulthard, outqualified the Aussie for just the second time in 16 GPs this year, but they were fifth and seventh on the grid -- ahead of both BMWs, both Renaults and both Williams cars.

Coulthard finished eight and goes a little further ahead of Webber in the championships: 13 points to 10.

Now we come to a three-way contest in Sao Paulo to decide the world title. Unless something untoward, even unimaginable, happens at Interlagos, it is really between two men. Two men who drive for the same team but loathe each other.

Although he won in Japan, much of the second half of the season has been rocky for Hamilton. Still, he has accumulated four more points than Alonso, and for the black youngster to win the championship in his first season would complete a fairytale.

It's an uphill battle for Alonso, but he's the one driver in modern F1 who can never be counted out, unless he is out.

F1 drivers' world championship points after 16 of 17 rounds: Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes) 107, Fernando Alonso (McLaren-Mercedes) 103, Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) 100, Felipe Massa (Ferrari) 86, Nick Heidfeld (BMW-Sauber) 58

Normal service will be resumed
Our wrap today has been abbreviated by some technical difficulties (at a remote location, rather than headquarters, we must say) but a couple of final points:

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