Motorsport: New VE for Skaife at Creek

Midweek motorsport reportJune 6, 2007

A fresh start for embattled Skaife
Mark Skaife will have a brand new VE Holden Commodore for the Queen's Birthday long weekend fifth round of the V8 Supercar Championship at Sydney's Eastern Creek.

While some drivers in lesser Holden teams are still waiting to get into VE racecars, this will be the second VE Skaife has had at Holden Racing Team.

He has had -- and struggled in, comparatively -- the original VE built by Walkinshaw Performance up until now, but with the arrival of the new one for this weekend the first will become a spare for the time being and eventually probably be sold off.

The multiple touring car champion and Bathurst winner, still striving to better the record of championship round victories he shares with the late Peter Brock and weighed down for most of this season by the HRT ownership saga, has an outstanding history at Eastern Creek.

He has won the round there five times, including four straight -- from 1999 to 2002.

Skaife is equal sixth in the championship with Ford's Craig Lowndes on 104 points after four rounds -- 120 points behind HSV Dealer Team's reigning champion Rick Kelly, who is one point ahead of teammate Garth Tander.

Ford's Jamie Whicup (168 points), HRT's Todd Kelly (153), and Ford's James Courtney (112) are sandwiched between the leaders and veterans Skaife and Lowndes, who won when the V8s last raced at Eastern Creek in 2005.

"I'm not at all perturbed about where we are in the championship," Skaife says in today's edition of Auto Action magazine.

"Everyone's going to have a bad weekend (at some point).

"The Toll HSV boys have done a great job this year.

"They've driven well and performed well as a team and had a great run.

"But there's no way -- and I'm not for one minute wishing any ill on them -- but there's no way you can go through a year without some bad luck.

"So who knows what the game will look like come the enduros.

"A lot can change around Bathurst time."

Ford Performance Racing repossesses the Falcon that Team Kiwi Racing has been running, driver Paul Radisich walks out, with a parting "spray" from David John,  and now TKR faces a $150,000 fine if it doesn't front at Eastern Creek.

John has vowed the team will be there "150 per cent", that it could field either a Falcon or a Commodore from a rival team or a development series outfit, that there is a list of drivers only too willing to fill the seat, and that TKR doesn't owe FPR a cent -- contrary to FPR's accusation.

It may be the weekend before the outcome becomes clearer -- especially as the whole event schedule is a day later for this round, with one race Sunday and two on the public holiday Monday.

What is going to be interesting to see in all of this is Ford New Zealand's position, as it helped facilitate -- i.e. fund -- TKR's switch to Ford after Radisich's big crash in a Commodore during last year's Bathurst 1000.

WA politicians like street race idea
It now seems that political forces in Perth are warming to the idea of a V8 Supercar street race after Wanneroo's contract for a round of the national series expires next year.

Latest indications out of Perth, according to reports in the city's Sunday Times newspaper and today's edition of Auto Action, are that the WA government and the state opposition have taken to the idea.

WA tourism minister Sheila McHale says the government will fully investigate the concept.

Opposition tourism spokesperson Katie Hodson-Thomas is supportive too, saying WA "needs a marquee event like this to propel our tourism industry" from 2010.

"Event organisers have capped the cost of staging the event at $12 million, so future cost blowouts would not be a stumbling block to the government," Hodson-Thomas says.

While it's good to see enthusiasm for keeping a round of a long-running national championship alive in Perth, it is on the question of who foots what bills beyond the $12 million that things get tricky.

Luczo Dragon Racing, run by Roger Penske's son, is reportedly keen to field Briscoe at a couple of the road courses in the series.

Briscoe's reputation was enhanced by his third place for the small Dreyer & Reinbold team at Watkins Glen last year.

He is now in Germany for a mid-season fitness camp for Porsche's sportscar racers.

He is a member of Roger Penske's squad racing RS Spyer Porches in the American Le Mans Series, which resumes at Lime Rock in July.

He and co-driver Sascha Maassen won the last round at Utah.

Finishing fourth at the Milwaukee Mile dropped Dixon to third in the series.

Andretti Green Racing's Tony Kanaan won the race from teammate and Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, who now leads the championship – with 221 points, to the Ganassi team's Dan Wheldon on 218, Dixon 216, Kanaan 201 and Helio Castroneves 188.

This Saturday the IRL races under lights at Texas Motor Speedway, where Dixon finished a close second to Castroneves last year.

After that it's on to Iowa Speedway on June 24 for the first Iowa Corn Indy 250, the eighth of 17 races in the series.

Sky's the limit for Hamilton
McLaren F1 rookie Lewis Hamilton could become a bigger -- and richer -- British sports star than David Beckham, according to leading publicist Max Clifford.

Clifford says Hamilton could earn £100 million -- more than A$250 million -- a year, easily topping Beckham's five-year £125 million deal with LA Galaxy.

He says the key to Hamilton's monetary success will be becoming well known in the US -- something that could start with the two upcoming North American F1 rounds, in Montreal this weekend and at Indianapolis a week later.

Hamilton has been on the podium at all five rounds of the world championship so far this year and the world is waiting for that maiden victory by the black youngster.

"Nico is very, very fast," Sir Frank says, admitting that the team's Toyota-powered cars are much better than those with Cosworth engines that Rosberg and Australian Mark Webber drove for him last year.

"Lewis is now considered as the brightest star of all, but things would not be so simple if he did not have a great car.

"If we ever give Nico a top car, he will be out the front as well."

Gerhard Berger -- the 10-time GP winner, one-time BMW motorsport manager and now co-owner of the Toro Rosso F1 team -- says every team boss is keeping a keen eye on Rosberg, "Ferrari included".

A flood of memories in Montreal
Canada will mark a couple of motorsport milestones this weekend -- the 40th anniversary of F1 in the country, and 25 years since the death of its favorite racing son, Gilles Villeneuve.

In the first F1 race in Canada, at Mosport Park, Ontario, in 1967, Australia's Jack Brabham led a one-two finish by his Brabham-Repco team, completing the race in heavy rain more than a minute ahead of his New Zealand teammate Denny Hulme.

Writer Russell Jaslow has described it as a "three-part" race, because rain fell at the start, stopped mid-race and then resumed in the final stages, with Brabham "the only driver smart enough to apply anti-fog to his goggles".

In its early years the Canadian GP alternated between Mosport and Mont Tremblant, north of Montreal, but the race -- one of the most picturesque and popular in the world championship -- has been at Circuit lle Notre Dame in Montreal since 1978.

Villeneuve made his debut with McLaren at the 1977 British GP in mid-July but at his next F1 start, six races later in Canada, he was driving for Ferrari, with which he was to become an icon for his relentless, sideways style and unaffected manner.

His 1978 victory in Montreal was one of six in a brilliant but tragically abbreviated career.

Despite his son Jacques having been a world champion in the intervening 25 years, Gilles remains among F1's most worshipped heroes.

This year's Canadian GP will be missing the younger Villeneneuve, replaced by Robert Kubica in the BMW-Sauber team, Juan Pablo Montoya, now in NASCAR, and, of course, seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher.

Schumacher scored seven of his record 91 GP victories in Montreal.

His younger brother Ralf's six career GP victories include the 2001 race in Canada.

Ralf's last victory was the 2003 French GP and, with only one point so far this season and a woeful performance at the back of the field in Monaco two weeks ago, is fighting for his F1 survival with the Toyota team.

Willi Weber, Michael's long-time manager who negotiated Ralf's $20 million-a-year contract before they parted ways, has told Germany's Bild newspaper: "He finds himself in a downward spiral that continues to get worse."

Briatore's concept, apparently backed by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, would also ban refuelling and have a reverse grid for the Sunday race.

"If people like Flavio or Bernie want to change the regulations ... it's all fine for us (the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile), as long as they are fair rules equal for all," FIA president Mosley told the Italian magazine Autosprint.

He suggested that a better way to improve racing would be to design cars and circuits more conducive to overtaking -- and that one step would be to standardise chassis.

"Nothing else will work," Mosley is reported to have said.

NASCAR mourns Bill France Junior
Bernie Ecclestone is often seen by us Australians, who tend to look more to Europe than America, as the ultimate promoter in motorsport, but the Americans point to NASCAR's France family.

And this week NASCAR is mourning the death of Bill France Junior, who took over the running of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, and its sister International Speedway Corporation, from his father, "Big" Bill.

While F1 has been focused on technology, and making money for Ecclestone, NASCAR's hallmark has always been its fan-friendliness.

When Bill Junior succeeded his father NASCAR didn't have a national television contract.

Today it's the No. 2 televised sport in North America, behind the NFL.

That's progress.

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