MOTORSPORT: Mostert conquers The Mountain again

Five months after the big crash that ruled him out of a Bathurst 1000 title defence with a broken leg and wrist and knee injuries, Chaz Mostert has re-conquered Mt Panorama.

Mostert and mate Nathan Morcom, both turning 24 in the next few days, have won the new Bathurst Six-Hour.

Two BMWs and three Mitsubishis filled the top five spots in the new production car enduro over Easter.

The BMW E92 335i that 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner Mostert and Morcom drove completed 125 laps or 776km in the six hours.

“Great to be back at this place and even better to be on the top step of the podium with my good mate @nathanmorcom,” Mostert tweeted.

The only other car to finish on the same lap was the BMW E82 135i of Iain and Michael Sherrin and David Ayres.

That gave the BMWs a quinella in Class B1 for high-performance forced induction cars.

The best lap of the 6.213km circuit by the 335i was 2:28.829 seconds – about 20 seconds slower than a top V8 Supercar in the 1000.

However, the fastest lap of the Six-Hour was 2:28.533 by Garth Walden in the Mercedes-Benz A 45 AMG that led a lot of the early running but was out after 3½ hours.

One lap behind, amid some controversy, were the Evo IX of David Wall and John Bowe and the Evo X of Michael Caine and Gerry Murphy which headed Class A1 for extreme performance cars with forced induction.

Wall and Caine collided at Murray’s Corner inside the last few minutes of the race and, after getting themselves out of the gravel, limped to the chequered flag with heavy damage, blaming each other for the contact.

“Our car is 30kmh slower in a straight line than the top 10 or 12 cars, so I was just holding my defensive line,” Wall said.

“When we got down to Murray’s I moved once to the left and he (Caine) went to the right and I think he basically misjudged and hit my right rear.

“Luckily she’s four-wheel-drive, we used the speed limiter to get out of the gravel, but the damage was pretty bad.”

Caine’s version was: “I went around the outside coming into the last turn. I think he knew that I was a bit quicker.”

Fifth outright, another lap back and third in Class A1, was another Evo X driven by Jim Policina and John O’Dowd.

Thirty three of the 50-car field were classified as finishers and event organisers announced a three-day attendance of 16,151 for what is now Mt Panorama’s third enduro after the long-established V8 Supercar ‘Great Race’ each October and the newer 12-Hour primarily for GT cars in February.

The Mostert-Morcom BMW copped a 10-place grid penalty for a technical infringement after taking pole position but Mostert soon had it among the leaders, where it remained throughout the afternoon and was able to cruise in the final hour without safety car interruptions.

“In the last stint we were conserving and looking after the car,” Mostert said.

“It had done five hours and it would’ve been a shame for something to go wrong in the last hour. We were just nursing it around.

“It’s been a great weekend and great to be part of the event. This place bit me last year and I was just looking to have a nice fun time around here.

“It’s always good to be racing something different (to his usual Ford Falcon V8 Supercar).”

Morcom already had Formula Ford and Formula 3 victories at Mt Panorama to his credit but this was the biggest success of his career.

“We couldn’t ask for anything better,” Morcom said. “The car has been sitting around since the last time me and Chaz raced it in 2012.

“Chaz did an awesome job, the car’s still straight, nice and clean and no scratches.

“It’s good to get the first six-hour win under our belt.”

Mark Eddy and Francious Jouy took the Class C honours for performance cars in a Renault Megane RS265, finishing eighth outright – six laps behind the victorious BMW.

Chris Reeves and Mark Caine won Class D for production cars in a Toyota 86 by a full lap.

Dimitrios Agathos and Mark Duckworth drove a Nissan Pulsar to victory in Class E for compacts.

Lindsay Kearns and Colby Cowham won the invitational class in a Falcon saloon, having run as high as eighth before nine laps behind the BMWs in 15th outright.

Webber happy as Porsches dominate WEC warm-up
Porsche’s 919 Hybrids topped all five sessions at the World Endurance Championship’s prologue at the Paul Ricard circuit in France over Easter.

The pace of the top prototypes in sports car racing was similar to that of last year despite them being allowed 8 per cent less fuel this year.

Porsche did 2197km during the 17 hours of testing over two days at the 5.791km circuit in southern France.

The first day it ran one of its 919s with Swiss driver Neel Jani, Frenchman Romain Dumas and German Marc Lieb, while on the second day its reigning WEC champion drivers – Australian Mark Webber, New Zealander Brendon Hartley and German veteran Timo Bernhard – ran the No 1 car.

Hartley was the quickest of all with a best lap of 1.37.44 seconds.

“Overall it was a very positive test for us,” Webber said.

“We got a lot of laps in.

“We don’t know much about the opposition, but we prepared as best as we can for Silverstone (the six-hour race on April 17 that opens the expanded nine-round season that includes the Le Mans 24-Hour in June and a new race in Mexico).

“Before coming here we hadn’t done much high-downforce work, so this was good.

“And the now-mandatory bigger headrest to me is not an issue for the driver change.”

Toyota was second fastest of the three LMP1 manufacturers with its all-new TS050, while Audi – which has dominated sports car racing most of this century, although Toyota won the 2014 series titles and Porsche took the ascendancy after its Le Mans victory last June – damaged the chassis of one of its latest R18 e-trons with a suspension component failure.

Toyota set a succession of fastest sector times over the two days but then intriguingly chose not to complete the laps.

Among the 29 cars at the prologue, Ford tested its new GT that has had two races in the US and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Blue Oval’s first outright victory and podium clean sweep at Le Mans in 1966.

While competitive against arch-rival Ferrari’s new 488 in the LMGTE Pro class, Ford’s WEC team principal George Howard-Chappell is upset about the balance of performance regulations that make the GT 10kg heavier yet with less turbo boost than it races with in the US.

Ford planned to stay on at Paul Ricard for a 30-hour endurance test using a single car but its six full-time WEC drivers.

Four of the Ford GTs are entered for Le Mans, with Australian Ryan Briscoe and New Zealand’s IndyCar champion Scott Dixon in one of the entries from American team owner Chip Ganassi.

German Rene Rast, who deputised for the then-injured Craig Lowndes in an Audi at the Bathurst 12-Hour in February, shared the ORECA 05-Nissan that set the LMP2 pace during the WEC prologue.

Penske no fan of IndyCars coming back to Oz
Roger Penske bought into Dick Johnson’s V8 Supercar team based near the Gold Coast, but ‘The Captain’ doesn’t want IndyCars racing at Surfers’ Paradise again.

Penske is the most successful team owner in the history of IndyCar racing and particularly its biggest race, the Indianapolis 500.

Perhaps the most powerful figure in the sport outside the Hulman family who own the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Penske believes the open-wheelers should stay within North America, although he’d be agreeable to them returning to Mexico.

He also would support more races in Canada than the one in Toronto.
IndyCars have not raced in Australia since 2008 and now have a 16-race annual schedule in North America, while the Gold Coast carnival has become a pure V8 Supercar event.

Japan has dropped off the IndyCar calendar since 2011 and an attempt to return to Brazil last year failed.

“I’m not interested in going overseas (outside North America with IndyCars,” Penske has said.

“If we run our series over here we’ll be a lot better off.

“Our sponsors – 95 per cent of them – are US domestic companies.

“If we are going to give them the benefit, notoriety and the business-to-business relations we have to have to maintain these sponsors as we do, it’s hard to it in Abu Dhabi and places like that.”

F1’s controversial qualifying format stays -- for now
The Formula 1 qualifying format so ridiculed at the Australian Grand Prix barely a week ago has been retained for this weekend’s Bahrain GP after all.

While team principals initially wanted it scrapped, the governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) proposed that the eliminations at 90-second intervals be retained in the first two parts of qualifying but be abandoned for the last part.

When Red Bull Racing and McLaren refused to accept that, the FIA ordered that – without unanimous backing for its proposal -- the format used in Melbourne be retained for at least one more event.