MOTORSPORT: Musical chairs on international stage

Indy legend Franchitti heeds medical advice to quit
Lots of drivers are on the move on the chess board of international motor racing.

Most of the moves are in Formula One, but the latest development has been the retirement of IndyCar star Dario Franchitti on medical advice.

The decision by Franchitti – a four-time IndyCar series champion, three-time Indianapolis 500 victor and winner of the 1999 Gold Coast Indy – came six weeks after a crash in Houston, which required him to have two ankle operations, although it was the concussion and spinal injuries that ended the 40-year-old’s career.

His exit will create a vacancy at America’s top open-wheeler team Chip Ganassi Racing – perhaps for Aussie Ryan Briscoe, or maybe Franchitti’s cousin Paul Di Resta if he is squeezed out of his Force India drive in F1’s crowded market place.

McLaren will start the new turbo era of F1 at Melbourne’s mid-March grand prix with a 21-year-old rookie, Kevin Magnussen, as 2009 world champion Jenson Button’s teammate.    

The son of Jan Magnussen – a Dane who drove one GP for McLaren in 1995 and then raced, disappointingly, with Sir Jackie Stewart’s team in 1997 and part of ’98 – he will replace Mexican Sergio Perez, who is being dumped after just one season at the once-mighty team.

McLaren is having its worst year since 1980, with fifth places the best by Button and Perez in this season’s GPs. Williams, another once-great team, is having its worst season with just one point to show for itself and standing ninth among the 11 teams in the constructors’ championship.

It has signed Ferrari discard Felipe Massa hoping to secure Brazilian sponsorship to replace the loss of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA’s sponsorship, which is likely to follow Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado to Lotus - or Force India or Sauber.

Lotus has replaced Kimi Raikkonen, who is having back surgery ahead of his return to Ferrari next year, with another Finn who has not raced since the end of last season, Heikki Kovalainen, for the United States GP in Texas this weekend and at Interlagos in Brazil the following weekend.

Winner of the 2008 Hungarian GP for McLaren, Kovalainen has been the reserve driver for lowly Caterham this year and won the Lotus call-up ahead of its Italian reserve driver Davide Valsecchi, last year’s GP2 champion.

German Nico Hulkenberg, who has proven himself with disappointing Sauber this season to be one of F1’s finest talents, turned down the chance to race for Lotus at the Circuit of the Americas and Interlagos over the next 10 days.

Twice-retired 44-year-old seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher also declined the opportunity to temporarily join the modern incarnation of the Lotus team, which descends from the Benetton team with which he won his first two world titles.

Lotus, fourth in the constructors’ championship this season and still in a fight with Mercedes and Ferrari for second behind Red Bull, would prefer to snare Hulkenberg next season if the investment in a 35 per cent stake by the Quantum syndicate eventuates, rather than take 2012 Spanish GP winner
Maldonado with the PDVSA millions.

Perez may be the driver to miss out on an F1 seat in 2014, although he has the support of the man reputed to be the world’s richest, Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim. McLaren did not receive any Slim benevolence, but F1 may need to retain Perez – a better bet than his countryman Esteban Gutierrez, now with Sauber where Perez started - if a Mexican GP is to return to the championship in the near future.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner this week tipped 24-year-old Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who will become four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel’s teammate after Mark Webber’s exit, to be “a bit of a surprise next year”.

“Daniel is a young guy who has got a lot of raw talent. He has a great amount of natural speed,” Horner said. “I think he has got exactly the right character and approach to get the most out of the experience, to learn from Sebastian and to embrace being his teammate and try to learn from it.”

Vettel has said that, while he and Webber have not had a great relationship, he respects the Aussie veteran who is moving to sports car racing with Porsche and that the combination has produced the right results for Red Bull.

While the weather in Austin, Texas, has been chilly this week, Webber is looking forward to his penultimate GP at the Circuit of the Americas.

“It is an incredible race track … really stimulating to drive, with lots of fast corners and some big undulations,” Webber said. “I can see no reason why F1 can’t gain a true foothold in the US at this venue.”

Meanwhile, another big driver shift is looming in world rallying, with Finn Mikko Hirvonen set to leave the Citroen factory squad to return to the M-Sport Ford team. Hirvonen has had only one win in his two seasons with Citroen compared with his previous 14 – including three Rally Australias – in Fords. At M-Sport he will replace Belgian Thierry Neuville, who is on the move to Hyundai’s new WRC effort.

Volkswagen’s world champion in its first year in the WRC, Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, is leading the early stages of season-concluding Rally Great Britain ahead of Neuville and VW teammate Jari-Matti Latvala.

Young Australian Molly Taylor is driving a Citroen DS3 in the WRC3 section of that event.

The Australian Rally Championship is concluding too, with just 10 forest stages on wet and muddy roads in Victoria’s Baw Baw region east of Melbourne today (Friday) and tomorrow. The event marks the end of Honda’s participation in Australian rallying.

Its lead driver Eli Evans already has clinched the drivers’ title for the second year but the manufacturers’ championship is still a contest, with the possibility that the Renault Clio R3s of Scott Pedder and Tom Wilde could yet overhaul Honda’s 19-point lead established by unbeaten Evans and teammate Mark Pedder.

Jean Todt, the 67-year-old Frenchman who first made his mark in rallying and later in F1 with Ferrari, now is set to be re-elected unopposed as president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the world governing body of motorsport, after the withdrawal of his British rival David Ward.

In conceding defeat ahead of the December 6 meeting of the FIA’s general assembly, Ward said the body’s leadership “finds democracy impractical”.

“The FIA model is government of the leadership, by the leadership, for the leadership,” said Ward, formerly director-general of the FIA Foundation for 12 years.

Almost as certain as Todt’s re-election now is a sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup title by early Monday, Australian time, for Californian Jimmie Johnson. The finale to America’s stock car season at Homestead-Miami Speedway will start with Chevrolet driver Johnson 28 points ahead of his Toyota rival Matt Kenseth, with Kevin Harvick in a Chevrolet the only other possibility to be champion.

But Harvick is 34 points behind Johnson, who only needs to finish 23rd to be guaranteed the sixth crown that will leave him just one short of Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Senior.

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