MOTORSPORT: Now Citroen topples VW in WRC

Citroen is only competing part-time in this year's World Rally Championship while it concentrates on its car for the new regulations next season, but it has beaten the usually-dominant Volkswagen in the latest round – after Hyundai did it at the previous round.

And triple world champions VW are angry – about the running order of the WRC field that it claims give it "absolutely no chance of winning".

Dr Herbert Diess, chairman of the board of management of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand, has taken up the public bleating usually done by the manufacturer's superstar driver Sebastien Ogier.

Australians Will Power and Matt Brabham have qualified sixth and 27th for the 100th Indianapolis 500 early next Monday, Australian time.

Canadian James Hinchcliffe won the qualifying shootout among the top nine drivers, giving engine supplier Honda its first pole position for the American open-wheeler classic in five years.

Hinchcliffe, who almost lost his life in the lead-up to last year's Indy 500 at the hallowed venue they call The Brickyard, won US$100,000 (A$138,000) for his four-lap, 10-mile (16km) dash this morning, Australian time.

That's 10 per cent of what Joey Logano got for winning NASCAR's non-championship All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the weekend. Brad Keselowski made it a one-two for Team Penske.

VW exec spits dummy after Citroen's 'perfect weekend'
Kris Meeke, the Northern Irishman who Citroen has identified as its lead driver for its future rallying, won Rally Portugal in a DS3 – his second success, after victory in Argentina last year.

As a part-timer this season, Meeke took advantage of his lowly starting position in Portugal, with the championship leaders sweeping the roads, and led from the second stage on Friday, building a gap of almost a minute and then pacing himself over the final day and a half.

VWs won every stage from mid-event and also swept the podium on the Power Stage.

Hitting rocks had brought Meeke undone in the Monte Carlo and Swedish rallies that began this year's championship and he missed Mexico and Argentina, the latter of which was won by New Zealander Hayden Paddon in a Hyundai New Generation i20.

Paddon was a first-leg casualty in Portugal, rolling into trees on the fifth stage – and heat from the i20s's exhaust set the bushes alight, with the car destroyed in the blaze. Paddon and countryman co-driver John Kennard were unhurt and are vowing to atone at the next round on the Italian island of Sardinia, where they scored a podium last year.

"We started well, despite some small technical niggles, but were caught out by a big hole in the road that sent the car into a roll," Paddon said. "The consequences for a small mistake are very cruel."

Paddon, previously second in the driver standings, lost places to a pair of Norwegians – VW's Andreas Mikkelsen, who finished within half a minute of Meeke and almost five seconds ahead of French teammate Ogier, as well as Ford M-Sport's Mads Osberg, who was a distant seventh in Portugal.

Meeke said it had been "a really perfect weekend – a textbook performance", but Ogier – seemingly on course for a fourth straight world title with a 47-point lead despite not winning any of the past three rounds – said it was "one of the toughest and most physically demanding rallies I have driven".

Ogier's Polo R  had two punctures on the final day and, with just one spare and topping up one of his flats with air, he said he had sacrificed some pace to be sure he finished.

He won the Power Stage ahead of Mikkelsen and VW's other driver, Finn Jari-Matti Latvala. "I am very happy with my performance," Ogier said, leaving the griping about the running order to VW senior executive Dr Diess this time.

"As championship leader it is okay to be disadvantaged to a certain degree. However, it is hard to accept that you have absolutely no chance of winning, just because you are leading the championship," Diess said.

"As such, two podiums are a very, very good result – particularly with regard to the title defence in the WRC."

Latvala, this season's victor in Mexico, hit a hole on the same stage as Paddon and lost power steering but recovered to finish sixth – behind the Ford Fiesta RS of Frenchman Eric Camilli, who had his best finish in his fifth WRC start, placing behind Hyundai's Dani Sordo.

World Rally Championship driver standings after five of 13 rounds – 1. Sebastien Ogier (France, Volkswagen) 114 points; 2. Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, VW) 67; 3. Mads Ostberg (Norway, Ford M-Sport) 58; 4. Hayden Paddon (New Zealand, Hyundai) 57; 5. Daniel Sordo (Spain, Hyundai) 56; 6. Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, VW) 37; 7. Kris Meeke (Great Britain, Citroen) 26.

WRC manufacturer standings – 1. Volkswagen 145 points; 2. Hyundai 96; 3. Ford M-Sport 82; 4. Volkswagen II 70; 5. Hyundai N 51.

Pedder 0.2 seconds away from WRC2 podium after spin
A spin on the last stage of Rally Portugal cost 2014 Australian rally champion Scott Pedder and co-driver Dale Moscatt a podium in WRC2.

However, Pedder – driving a Skoda Fabia R5 – had won a stage, his first, in the category on Saturday.

The spin lost the Aussies 18 seconds and they missed out on third place in the category by 0.2 seconds. Their eventual fourth place equalled the pair's best result in the WRC2 rounds they ran last year.

They overcame punctures on Friday and Saturday to be third, 17.6 seconds off the WRC lead, at the start of the final stage – the famous Fafe, on which cars are airborne for long distances.

Swede Pontus Tidemand won WRC2 in Portugal by almost 90 seconds from Peruvian Nicolas Fuchs – both of them also in Skoda Fabia R5s.

Pedder and Moscatt are skipping the Italian round of the championship, but will compete in Poland, Finland, China and Rally Australia – now the season finale in November.

Power Penske's top Indy qualifier, rookie Brabham 'clean'
Will Power lost three places from the first day of Indianapolis 500 qualifying to the finalisation of the 33-car field – but he was still quickest of Roger Penske's four Indy drivers.

Power had been outright third fastest at the end of Saturday's activity at The Brickyard, but 24 hours later he was sixth on the grid for the 100th running of "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing".

Four Honda-powered Dallara DW12s beat Power's time in the shootout among the top nine drivers from Saturday's runs, as well as a Chevrolet-powered Dallara – like that of Power and his Penske teammates – driven by American Josef Newgarden, the second fastest qualifier for Ed Carpenter Racing.

Pole man James Hinchcliffe's four-lap average in the shootout was 230.76mph (371.37kmh), pipping Newgarden by 0.0344 of a second in the 10-mile (16km) runs.

All the drivers faster than Power – the others were American Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2014 race winner, and Townsend Bell and Colombian Carlos Munoz – averaged more than 230mph.

Power's average was 229.669mph and his sixth place puts him on the outside of the second row of the grid.

The Toowoomba ace came within metres of victory in last year's Indy 500, losing out to fellow Penske driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

Montoya will start 17th next weekend after making two runs in final qualifying – officials allowed him the second after he ran over a plastic bag that had blown on to the track.

"I just hit it [the bag] and lost all of the front air from under the car. It just went straight. I got on the brakes, trying not to hit the wall," Montoya said.

"Luckily we got another run, but they didn't let us check the car. I think the wing or something bent with the force of the bag."

Penske's other drivers, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud and Brazilian Helio Castroneves, who is chasing a fourth win in the classic, have qualified eighth and ninth.

Roger Penske is celebrating his 50th year in motorsport and has won the Indy 500 a record 16 times. While he runs Chevrolet engines in Indy racing, Penske fields Fords in NASCAR and Australia's Supercars Championship.

Hinchcliffe was badly injured in one of several serious crashes at The Brickyard in the lead-up to last year's 500 and was replaced for many of the later Indy series races by Australian Ryan Briscoe – a veteran of the event now concentrating on Ford's new GT sport car campaign, including Le Mans.

"It was an absolute smoke show out there today. It was right on the edge," Hinchcliffe said.

He drives for Schmidt Peterson Motorsport, run by American quadriplegic former racer Sam Schmidt and Canadian businessman Ric Peterson, head of a transport company servicing the oil industry.

It is Hinchcliffe's first pole in 79 IndyCar races – and the first at The Brickyard for a Honda-powered car in five years, and the first in the Indy series in almost two years.

Honda's previous Indianapolis 500 pole was in 2011 by another Canadian, Alex Tagliani, also for the Schmidt team.

Tagliani will start last in this year's race after crashing his car – entered by the greatest legend of Indianapolis, Texan A.J. Foyt – on his Saturday qualifying run.

Two other Schmidt Peterson cars will start seventh and 10th, driven by Russian Mikhail Aleshin and Spaniard Oriol Servia. Aleshin, who also came back from a horror IndyCar crash, is a former World Series by Renault rival of Daniel Ricciardo.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, the reigning Indy series champion and the 500 victor in 2008, qualified his Team Ganassi entry 13th after a 64-minute change of a Chevy engine – usually it would have taken up to three hours – that made the technical inspection deadline by seconds.

Matt Brabham had been 26th on Saturday and slipped to 27th but is thrilled to be in the event at which his grandfather, late triple Formula 1 world champion Sir Jack, began the rear-engined revolution in 1961 and in which his father Geoff competed 10 times.

One of five rookies in the 500, the third-generation Brabham said he had driven four "clean laps" to average 225.727mph to put him on the outside of the ninth row, with six cars behind him.

"It was really well controlled, no big moments," Brabham said.

"Now we've got a lot of things to sort out to get the car good for dicing with everyone else in traffic."

All-Star all chaos, and Stewart's smokin'
NASCAR's All-Star Race – a non-championship event the weekend before American stock car racing's longest, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, North Carolina – has only half the normal field, is run in two parts and by rights should only run 150 miles (240km).

But, in what triple Sprint Cup champion Tony "Smoke" Stewart called "the most screwed-up All-Star Race I've ever been part of", this year's went 13 laps longer than the scheduled two 50-lap legs of the 1.5-mile (2.4km) Charlotte oval track.

The race rules had been changed and a pitstop was compulsory for all drivers in the first leg – but Toyota driver Matt Kenseth didn't make one.

That led to a lot of drivers mistakenly being recorded as a lap down.

In the second leg young gun Kyle Larson got loose and his Chevrolet hit the wall while vying with Penske driver Joey Logano's Ford for victory.

Logano ultimately won and collected a US$1 million prize, with Penske teammate Brad Keselowski – the 2012 Sprint Cup champion – second, 1.142 seconds behind, with Dale Earnhardt Junior third in a Chevrolet.

There were 13 lead changes among seven drivers.

Tony Stewart wasn't one of them. He was classified 20th of the 20 drivers and was "madder than hell" about everything.

"I'm just glad this is my last one," said Stewart, who is retiring at the end of this season.

NASCAR accepted responsibility, admitting the format change had created "a lot of confusion".