MOTORSPORT: Mixing it up a bit

The weekend just gone was something quite different in motorsport – at home and abroad.

A Mercedes-Benz E63 won a V8 Supercar race, and FG X Ford Falcons the other two at Perth's Barbagallo Raceway, where Prodrive – formerly Ford Performance Racing – clearly was the fastest squad.

Series leader and six-time champion Jamie Whincup dropped to fifth on the points table, while Craig Lowndes in the other Holden Commodore VF run by Triple Eight Race Engineering took the series lead despite having to wait at least another two weeks for what will be an historic 100th victory.

Prodrive's Mark Winterbottom and Chaz Mostert were the winners on Saturday and set the pace the next day, but the Sunday drive of the day – from 24th on the grid to third at the finish – came from Fabian Coulthard in a Brad Jones Racing Commodore.

Tyre wear and strategies were the big factors, and there are plenty of critics – including drivers – of that situation and the SuperSprint format, but at least the Mercedes success made for a change from the Holden domination of the previous two rounds of the championship.

Betty Klimenko, owner of the Erebus team fielding a pair of Mercs (the other, driven by Ash Walsh, spun in Sunday's 200km race and caused the safety car that upset many other applecarts), has predicted that Davison's victory is "just the start" for her V8 Supercar squad, which now has little connection to the tristar's performance arm AMG and has never had the blessing of M-B Australia.

The Volvo S60 that had been expected to be the challenger to the best of the Holdens this year is still in the wars, with Scott McLaughlin not finishing in the top 10 in any of the three races in Perth.

And the only driver in the top 10 in the championship not in a Holden or Ford is Nissan's Rick Kelly, although James Moffat and Michael Caruso wound up better in Perth – seventh and 10th Sunday – after a long pitstop denied Kelly hope of a podium.

Rallycross is being revived in Australia, with a national championship starting at the end of August, and the dual format might be something to be considered in Australia down the track.

Drivers well known to Australian fans won the Hockenheim double – World RX reigning champion and 2003 world rally champion Petter Solberg in the event combining rallying and circuit racing, and Swede Mattias Ekstrom driving an Audi to victory in Sunday's DTM race.

The rallycross podium again had three manufacturers represented on the podium – Citroen, Ford and Peugeot – while British team JRM fielded MINIs in the World RX Supercar category for the first time, although they didn't make the semi-finals.

Some other things are little changed though – Audi will go to Le Mans in France favourite for a 14th victory in 16 years at the 24-hour sports car classic next month after winning the second six-hour lead-up race.

An Audi R18 e-tron quattro, already running in low-downforce Le Mans specification, beat a pair of Porsche 919s that were faster at Spa in Belgium but not as kind to their tyres.

The Porsche, in which Australia's Mark Webber was one of three drivers, started from pole position but finished third, and a lap down, after an "excursion" by New Zealander Brendon Hartley incurred a penalty and then there was a damper problem in its suspension that required a change.

"Having a mechanical problem is never nice and we lost a lot of time," Webber said.

"In the first part of my double stint I didn't quite find a good rhythm, but in the second half it was better. The result was not what we were aiming for, but at least we were fighting strongly."

There were only 13 seconds between the Audi and the second-placed Porsche at the chequered flag, and Le Mans in mid-June likely will be a tussle between the German marques, while the best of Toyota's TS040s at Spa finished fifth – three laps down, behind another Audi.

In America's NASCAR Dale Earnhardt Junior has had his first win in this year's Sprint Cup at the Talladega superspeedway, while Penske's Joey Logano was caught up in "a big one" and teammate Brad Keselowski finished 22nd.

IndyCar teams have trialled aerodynamic kits on the Chevrolet and Honda-powered Dallara cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the Indy 500 – "The greatest spectacle in racing" – is to be held later this month, after a road race within The Brickyard.

Two of Penske's open-wheeler drivers, Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves, led the timesheet at the aero test in Chevy-powered cars ahead of Marco Andretti with a Honda engine. Montoya lapped the 4km track in less than 40 seconds at an average of almost 365kmh.

Focus reaps dividends for Davison
Some in the V8 Supercar community were keen to keep alive the feud between Will Davison and Holden Racing Team's James Courtney, but the Mercedes driver was not having any of it in Perth.

Instead Davison simply got on with the job and translated the speed in his E63 that was evident but unfulfilled at Tasmania's Symmons Plains five weeks earlier into top 10 finishes on Saturday (seventh and ninth) and then his shock victory on Sunday, chasing down Craig Lowndes who had looked to be on his way to his century.

It was Davison's first win since joining Betty Klimenko's Erebus team at the start of last season, ending his drought of almost two years.

He has jumped from 21st to 12th in the championship, after finishing 14th last year.

"Everything just came together," Davison said.

"A podium would have been incredible.

"After the disappointment of Tassie I would have been thrilled with a top five.

"Even second was going to be an amazing result.

"I couldn't believe it when I started seeing Lowndesy have some big slides with about five or six laps to go.

"I just drove real smooth [and promptly swept by into the lead]."

Davison said the success tasted "pretty damn special" and the championship now heads to Winton in Victoria, where Erebus scored its only other V8 Supercar win – by Lee Holdsworth last year before his switch to Charlie Schwerkolkt's Holden this season.

"It was a real 'enduro' [Sunday at Barbagallo] with long stints, big strategy and a massive team effort," Davison said.

"You needed all your ducks to line up.

"I made a big call coming to Erebus and I knew it wasn't going to be easy straight away, so this is very rewarding.

"We are working really hard trying to get this package up to speed.

"This is a big deal for us … this level of sport, trying to get sponsorship and trying to really build a team is a big thing.

"It's a great responsibility I've had.

"Now I've won at every single team I've been in – and I'm proud of that.

"This was the most challenging one, but we knew that we had mega tyre life here [at Barbagallo].

"This is going to give our whole team, and our whole operation, a real pep up.

"We've got to keep building.

"Betty is doing this [fielding her team] for love.  It's feels very gratifying to give back to her."

It also was the first V8 Supercar race victory as an engineer for Luke Mason, who hails from Perth and works with Davison – and Klimenko vowed that "there's more to come".

"We're building up momentum," she said. "It's the start."

Even without victory Lowndes a winner
While he's stuck on 99 wins for a little longer, Craig Lowndes now leads the V8 Supercar Championship by 52 points from James Courtney.

Mark Winterbottom sat atop the table on Saturday night but 15th in Sunday's race relegated him to third in the championship, 22 points behind Courtney and only two ahead of Fabian Coulthard, with Jamie Whincup – who led before Perth – another 11 points away in fifth.

"Having a podium finish [on Sunday] was fantastic, a good end to the weekend, given we started in sixth," Lowndes said.

"I was just looking after the tyres, but with five laps to go I 'lost' the rears completely and just had nothing to fight with.

"It was a bit of a shame, but … looking forward to Winton [on May 15-17]."

It was a rare weekend of woe for Whincup, who admitted his problems were partly of his own making – especially locking a wheel and running off the track in Sunday's race, dropping to last and only recovering to 19th.

Prodrive is looking strong, perhaps a bigger challenger to Triple Eight this season than HRT.

Sunday's safety car spoiled things for Winterbottom and Mostert after Saturday's victories and heading the field away again.

"The safety car hurt our strategy," Winterbottom said.

"We ended up doing 10 or so laps extra on our soft tyres than we wanted.

"Mine didn't hold up as nicely as I would have liked."

Mostert salvaged fourth in the longest race of the weekend but said: "We didn't need that safety car to come in that last stint."

"That probably cost us the win or even a podium spot."

Mostert said engineer Adam De Borre had "mastered" his car and "I can't wait to go to Winton".

But there has been no improvement at the other Ford team, DJR Team Penske, with Scott Pye – standing in for "self-exiled" Marcos Ambrose – only 21st and 22nd in Saturday's race before colliding with Andre Heimgartner's Prodrive Falcon in the closing laps Sunday, with both of them ending up in a gravel trap.

And Scott McLaughlin said the set-up of his Volvo S60 was still "not quite where we wanted it to be ... and we had some engine misfire problems".

Eleventh in Saturday's first race was to be his best result for the weekend, retiring in the other one that day with a faulty throttle sensor.

"The car was handling well on Sunday but the misfire was causing me to fight harder than I wanted to and chewed up the tyres more," McLaughlin said.

After another frustrating weekend McLaughlin, expected to be a championship challenger this year, is only 17th in the points – while more experienced New Zealander Shane Van Gisbergen, remains a contender in Tekno Autosport's Holden, standing equal sixth with HRT's Garth Tander despite not being the threat anticipated at Barbagallo.

V8 Supercar Championship top 10 after nine races – 1. Craig Lowndes (Triple Eight Race Engineering, Holden Commodore VF) 717 points; 2. James Courtney (Holden Racing Team) 665; 3. Mark Winterbottom (Prodrive Racing Australia, Ford Falcon FG X) 643; 4. Fabian Coulthard (Brad Jones Racing, Holden) 641; 5. Jamie Whincup (Triple Eight) 630; 6. Shane van Gisbergen (Tekno Autosport, Holden) 595; 7. Garth Tander (HRT) 595; 8. Chaz Mostert (Prodrive) 545; 9. David Reynolds (Prodrive) 486; 10. Rick Kelly (Nissan Motorsport, Altima) 431.