MOTORSPORT: Now for third leg of trifecta

In one paragraph in the middle of his Revved Up column in AA this week West writes: "Australians, in the space of 12 months, have won the Le Mans 24-hour sportscar classic and the blue-riband Monaco Grand Prix. Fingers crossed either Ryan Briscoe or Will Power can bring up the treble at the Indianapolis 500 this weekend."

Yes, indeed. The V8 Supercar Championship is in a five-week break because of the West Australian round scheduled for the first week of June being scrubbed before the season got underway.

This is not its mid-season break -- no, that's another six weeks away, and then for two months. Before that there will be two rounds, in Darwin and Townsville, while the biggest sporting event on the planet is on -- the soccer World Cup in South Africa.

Darwin's Hidden Valley round is on June 18-20, Townsville's street race on July 9-11, coinciding with the climax of the World Cup.

In the meantime the V8 Supercar teams have been talking again about the Car of the Future that was scheduled for 2012. After a meeting in the middle of this week that Car of the Future won't be compulsory until 2013, but teams can run it from 2012 if they want or can afford to.

The technical details are still to be finalised by the end of next month. But the control camshaft will be introduced as scheduled in Darwin next month.

The official word after this week's talks was that everyone was happy. That couldn't be said for the manufacturers, whose representatives were turned away after flying to the Gold Coast.

These were talks for the teams, but it raises the question of why the manufacturer representatives were given to think their input might have been wanted. After all, they only make the Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons on which V8 Supercars (now and under the Car of the Future) are and will continue to be based.

The other manufacturer name most often mentioned as a possible participant in V8 Supercar racing is Toyota, but Auto Action reports in its early news pages this week that "Toyota says it's still not interested in V8 Supercar racing".

AA's Dylan Campbell writes that Toyota "said entering V8 Supercars just didn't fit its current marketing outlook".

And Toyota Australia's motorsport manager Wayne Gabriel said approval for any V8 Supercar activity would have to come from the bigwigs in Japan.

Toyota's priorities are clearly elsewhere AA also reports this week "senior Toyota motorsport personnel will attend (this weekend's) Rally of Portugal on a World Rally Championship fact-finding mission".

Toyota won four manufacturer and four driver championships during its participation in the WRC up to 1999 [Ed: and was famously caught cheating!], before it spent billions of dollars on an F1 project that didn't yield a single victory in eight years before the plug was pulled at the end of last year.

And if rallying doesn't get the Big T's attention it's also courting sportscars. AA reports: "Toyota is poised to return to the world of prototype sportscar racing ... working closely with the Automobile Club d l'Quest (ACO) as it formulates the new rules for hybrids at the Le Mans 24-hour".

That's the annual classic in France -- the 78th edition of which is now only two weeks away. Australia's David Brabham, who won last year in a Peugeot, will be back there this time in the Honda Acura he races in the American Le Mans Series.

Audi will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first of its eight Le Mans wins in the past nine years, and if it can turn the tables on Peugeot the German manufacturer will join Ferrari as the second most successful manufacturer in Le Mans history -- but still a long way behind Porsche, with 16 successes, the first of them 40 years ago.

Among the 165 drivers entered this year are 11 former winners. There are 25 ex-F1 drivers in the field -- eight in Peugeots and just one with Audi.

Nigel Mansell is entered to drive with his sons, Greg and Leo, and will be the 20th F1 world champion to race at Le Mans, although only four won it -- Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Phil Hill and Jochen Rindt.

Other manufacturers represented in the field this year are Aston Martin, BMW, Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Ford and Jaguar.

Eyes on Istanbul, Algarve, Indianapolis - and Charlotte
But of more immediate interest are this weekend's Turkish F1 GP, the Rally of Portugal and the Indianapolis 500.

>>>The GP in Istanbul will be Ferrari's 800th, and Australia's Mark Webber is chasing a hat-trick of victories after his successes in Monaco and Barcelona.

Indications are getting stronger that Webber will remain with Red Bull Racing next year, while Ferrari is indicating that it is likely to retain Brazilian Felipe Massa, who has won three of the previous Turkish GPs. Webber and Massa are the only two drivers to have scored points at every GP this year.

While Red Bull has had pole position at every race this season and won three, Ferrari has not won this year since the opening round in Bahrain -- and it has not had a pole position since 2008. F1's other traditional top team, McLaren, has not had a car on the front row of the grid this year.

Webber's teammate Sebastian Vettel will have a new RB6 chassis this weekend after damage was reportedly found on the car he drove in the earlier GPs this year.

That may explain why Vettel could not match Webber's performance at the past two races, although there has been no word on what the damage was. The young German still scored second and third place finishes in the past two races, leaving him equal on points with Webber in the championship lead, although Webber is technically the leader because he was won two GPs this season to Vettel's one. (Vettel always gives his cars a woman's name -- and his new one has been christened Randy Mandy. The one discarded was Luscious Liz, while his previous cars were Julie, Kate and -- believe it or nor -- Kate's Dirty Sister).

Red Bull will introduce F-ducts -- cockpit-operated devices to maximise the effectiveness of the rear wings, pioneered by McLaren -- this weekend.

Istanbul is one of only three anti-clockwise circuits in the championship -- the others being Interlagos in Brazil and Singapore's street track.

>>>The Rally of Portugal is the first of the classic WRC events in Europe this season, with France's six-time world champion and Citroen superstar Sebastian Loeb leading the championship by 36 points from one of Ford's Finnish aces, Jari-Matti Latvala, who rolled 17 times down a hill at this rally last year.

Despite the closeness of the drivers' championship, Citroen only leads Ford by five points in the manufacturer standings.

Loeb is chasing a third straight Portuguese victory in the country's southern Algarve region, while Ford's other Finnish factory star Mikko Hirvonen is simply out to "rediscover my speed" after only one podium finish in the four rallies since winning the season-opener in Sweden.

Meanwhile, Australia's top rally driver Chris Atkinson's Intercontinental Rally Challenge campaign won't start now until late June in Belgium, with Malaysian manufacturer Proton abandoning earlier plans to start in Sardinia next week. Atkinson and teammate Alister McRae had a troubled Hokkaido Rally in Japan last week.

>>>Will Power and Ryan Briscoe are in with a big shot at winning the Indianapolis 500 on Monday morning, Australian time -- something no Australian has done.

They are starting second and fourth in the field of 33, both driving for Team Penske -- which has not only won this classic a record 15 times but five times in the past nine years.

The men to beat are most likely to be Penske's Indianapolis specialist, Brazilian Helio Castroneves, and Team Ganassi's Scotsman Dario Franchitti and New Zealander Scott Dixon. Castroneves is on the pole for the fourth time and aiming for his fourth victory there -- which would make him the first foreigner to equal the feats of Americans A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Senior and Rick Mears. Franchitti and Dixon will start third and sixth.

Power is the Aussie attracting the most attention at The Brickyard this year but Briscoe's focus this season has been on the Indy 500 and may have snuck under the radar.

Just hours after the chequered flag is waved at Indy the longest race in NASCAR's Sprint Cup, the Coca-Cola 600, will be run at Charlotte. As patriotic as it would be to hope Aussie Marcos Ambrose could do well in it, he's had only one top 10 finish this year.

Down a very strange path in the US
Some other excitement in the US this week, with an announcement of F1 returning there -- to a new purpose-built circuit in Austin, the capital of Texas.

It is a very strange announcement indeed, especially after F1 zsar Bernie Ecclestone's stated preference just a few weeks earlier for any new American race to be in New York.

Although a street race idea in New Jersey was quickly scotched, Ecclestone had been in talks with the owners of a new $35 million circuit in upstate New York.

Austin is only the 35th largest city in the US and with far less hotel rooms than usually available in F1 venues.

While there has been a pledge of about US$25 million of state funding, a site has not even been decided on, let alone approvals granted and track design completed. There's no way this race can happen in 2012, as the announcement said.

While F1 teams, sponsors and particularly manufacturers are keen for a US GP, an astute American observer has told us of the Austin proposal: "All that's for certain is that Bernie Ecclestone and his private equity partner CVC have pocketed $1 million they don't have to split with the teams in exchange for Bernie doing nothing more than issuing a press release. In effect, that's a non-refundable deposit."

NASCAR losing viewers - particularly young men
And a very interesting article on NASCAR telecasts, especially the diminishing number of young male viewers, here. The David Hill quoted in the story is an Australian who was instrumental in V8 Supercar telecasts getting back on to SpeedTV in the US.

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