Motorsport Monday report
Good Evans! Toyota couple rally champsSeptember 25, 2006
Simon and Sue Evans are the new Australian rally champions -- the first husband-and-wife couple to achieve the feat since David and Kate Officer in 1984. The Evans' clinched the title at the weekend's NGK Rally of Melbourne in a Toyota Corolla Sportivo. The Officers did it 22 years ago in a Mitsbusihi Galant.
Neal Bates and Coral Taylor finished runners-up this year in another Toyota. They won three national titles together in the mid-1990s in Toyota Celica world rally cars. Bates developed the Corolla prototypes he and Evans have driven this year and which earned Toyota the constructors' title as well.
The Evans' won the final heat at the Melbourne event but Mitsubishi Ralliart pair Scott Pedder and Glen Weston took the weekend's honors overall in an Evolution IX Lancer. The Toyotas finished every heat this season and won the first three of the six rounds. The Evans' were the only combination to win more than one round, taking victory in Western Australia and Queensland.
NEC Australian Rally Championship driver points: Simon Evans (Toyota) 224, Neal Bates (Toyota) 193, Dean Herridge (Subaru) 187, Scott Pedder (Mitsubishi) 168.5, Darren Windus (Subaru) 81, Stewart Reid (Toyota) 72, Will Orders (Subaru) 69, Simon Jansen (Mitsubishi) 29.5, Roman Watkins (Subaru) 28, David Hills (Mitsubishi) 27.
Bathurst Regional Council is on the lookout for an artist to create a statue of Brocky to stand at the foot of Mt Panorama, near the National Motor Racing Museum on Murray's Corner. A new wing of the museum will be named after him.
Ryan Briscoe will be Australia's No. 1 driver in Holland, with Karl Reindler the country's rookie driver for the round. Briscoe will be out of Holland quickly to get to Bathurst, where he is partnering Jim Richards in the second Holden Racing Team Commodore. Australia's A1 round, the seventh of 13 in the series, is scheduled for Sydney on February 2-4 -- presumably at Eastern Creek, although that is still not confirmed.
Pictures of Michael Schumacher seemingly filming an advertisement featuring a Renault car have been published in Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. An amateur photographer snapped Schumacher beside a Renault Megane at a Shell petrol station in Italy. A Nissan was also there for the picture shoot. Seven-time world champion Schumacher was wearing his familiar red overalls. Intriguing is that Renault's lubricants partner in F1 is Elf, not Shell.
Juan Pablo Montoya has finally been released from his F1 contract by McLaren and could start NASCAR testing for Chip Ganassi this week, possibly even today. Montoya could do four Busch series races this year before entering NASCAR's premier series, the Nextel Cup, next season.
Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen have not been testing with Renault and McLaren recently. Perhaps those teams don't want them taking intimate knowledge of developments for next year's cars to McLaren and Ferrari respectively.
Australian Mark Preston has been promoted to technical director of F1's youngest team, Super Aguri. He was previously chief technical officer.
An announcement is scheduled in Seoul next Monday that South Korea has reached an agreement with Formula One Management to host an F1 GP from 2010. Bernie Ecclestone previously had a deal with another Korean group for a GP in the country and won millions in damages when it did not proceed. There's fresh talk of a Singapore GP too, but Ecclestone has said: "Until we can get the teams to agree to 20 races, we can't add any more."
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