MOTORSPORT: Murphy in form for enduros

Murphy, 41, and a four-time Bathurst 1000 winner – in 1996, ’99, 2003 and ’04 – has just won New Zealand’s V8 SuperTourer sprint series, his first title for 17 years, despite a drive-through penalty in the final race at Taupo.

Murphy is paired for the three V8 Supercar enduros – the Sandown 500 on September 15, the Bathurst 1000 on October 13 and the Gold Coast 600 on October 26-27 – with the championship’s last-start winner James Courtney in one of the Holden Racing Commodores that are returning HRT to some of its old competitiveness.

The news is not so good for Rally Australia, Australia’s round of a world championship at Coffs Harbour already clashing with the Sandown 500.

The country’s top rally driver, Chris Atkinson, has never been on the entry list and now it is reported at maxrally.com that rising female star Molly Taylor will miss the event.

Maxrally’s Giles Wade has reported that 25-year-old Taylor has opted to compete at European Rally Championship round Rally Poland in a Citroen DS3 R3T with co-driver Seb Marshall, rather than return home to drive the Ford Fiesta R2 in which she had intended to compete for Canberra’s Innate Motorsport at Rally Oz.

“I was really looking forward to my home event because WRC Rally Australia was something I really wanted to do,” Taylor, who excelled at the weekend on the tarmac Rally Zlin the Czech Republic, told Wade.

“But in terms of our focus on the ERC it’s the smart move to do Poland. We really need to push on now and start to increase our pace.

“Poland is a smooth gravel rally and obviously an ideal opportunity to do that and I didn’t want to lose out. It will be our first time there, we’ll have to take that in our stride, but we’re looking to get out there and show our competitiveness.”

It’s not a good day either for IndyCar racer Will Power, who made a mistake in the Grand Prix of Baltimore that has made it much harder for New Zealander Scott Dixon to win the championship while increasing the chances of Power’s Brazilian teammate Helio Castronves winning the title for the first time.

Power admitted he had not looked in his mirror before making contact with Dixon, which put the Kiwi into the wall and out of the race – and he was angry officials did not help get his car back to the pits for suspension repairs that may have enabled him to finish.

“Absolutely nothing intentional. I just didn’t even think to look in my mirror. I didn’t know he was there. Man, it was just a bad thing to have happen ... a very, very bad situation,” Team Penske driver Power said.

“I can’t say anything but I’m so sorry to Scott. He’s not going to want to talk to me.”

It was the second clash between the Antipodean drivers, and mates, in two weeks and Dixon roared at Power “your fault”.

And he told a TV interviewer: “I don’t know what he was thinking. I was clearly alongside and he went straight into me.”

Frenchman Simon Pagenaud won the street race – his second win of the season and the second of his Indy career – after taking the lead from American Marco Andretti with seven laps left and outlasting another American, Josef Newgarden – both of them in Honda-engined Dallara cars.

Pagenaud is third in the series now with 431 points and three races remaining – a double-header at Houston on the first weekend of October, then the finale at Fontana Speedway in California on October 19.

Castroneves, in a Chevrolet-engined Dallara, has virtually a race in hand with a 49-point lead, 501-452, over Dixon, driving a Honda-powered Dallara for Chip Ganassi. Power, with his win at Sonoma in California a week ago his only victory this season, is ninth on 371 points.

Meanwhile, V8 Supercar teams will be testing this week – mainly at Winton and Queensland Raceway – ahead of the Sandown 500, although the small Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport team is leaving its testing until next tomorrow week, September 10, at Sandown.

While Greg Murphy won the NZ V8 SuperTourer sprint title in a Holden, much younger Kiwi Shane Van Gisbergen won the fourth and final round after a fantastic drive from last to second in the final race – at the wheel of a Falcon instead of a Holden, the make he drives in the V8 Supercar Championship for Tekno Autosports.

While the sprint series has concluded across the Tasman there are now three endurance races to complete the second V8 SuperTourer Championship, in which both the Holdens and Fords run a Corvette-based engine.

The enduros will be at Hampton Downs, halfway between Auckland and Hamilton at the end of September and on the third weekend of October, then at Pukekohe on the southern outskirts of Auckland on the last day of November and first of December.

Van Gisbergen won the weekend’s first sprint at Taupo in the centre of the North Island ahead of even younger defending series champion Scott McLaughlin, a two-time race winner this year for Garry Rogers Motorsport in his first season in the V8 Supercar Championship.

McLaughlin lost the second race when his Holden started misfiring near the end and then he copped a big hit at the first corner of the final race – part of a multi-car pile-up triggered by Van Gisbergen, who had to restart at the rear of the field. However, SVG charged through the field to second place behind Andy Booth’s Holden and said that “passing everybody was pretty cool”.

Murphy was given a drive-through penalty for spinning John McIntyre’s Ford early in that race, for which he apologised later.

Murphy ended up seventh, fourth and 10th in the Taupo races – and, while they were only sprint races and he didn’t win any, he returns to Australia for the V8 Supercar enduros as a champion and an ideal partner for Courtney in pursuit of more glory – especially at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama in a little more than a month.

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