MOTORSPORT: Now Mitsubishi pulls the plug

Mitsubishi is withdrawing from cross-country rallying, which means, most importantly, that it won't participate in the next Dakar Rally.

This, to us, is the global equivalent of Holden withdrawing from touring car racing in Australia.

The Dakar has been Mitsubishi's domain.

In the 26 years it has contested the world's most grueling motorsport event it has won it 12 times, including a record seven consecutive victories from 2001 to 2007.

It was walloped by Volkswagen in last month's Dakar, held this time in Argentina and Chile because of the terrorism fears in north Africa.

The best, indeed only remaining, of Mitsubishi's new Racing Lancers was classified 10th -- just one place ahead of the Isuzu D-max ute prepared in Sydney by Bruce Garland.

But at the end of that event, barely three weeks ago, Mitsubishi factory team director Dominique Serieys vowed: "We will work as hard as possible and invest everything to be ready for 2010 and make sure that we can win back the title."

Now Mitsubishi is out of the game.

"The sudden deterioration of the global economy made it necessary for the company to focus its resources more tightly," it said.

Mitsubishi, Japan's fourth largest carmaker, says its upcoming annual result, for the year ending in March, will plunge into the red for the first time in three years.

It says its group net loss will amount to 60 billion yen - about A$1 billion -- after its earlier projection of a net profit of 20 billion yen.

In light of that scenario, a withdrawal from motorsport is not surprising.

So now we've got Subaru and Suzuki out of the World Rally Championship, Honda quitting Formula 1 -- although still no sale of its team announced -- and Mitsubishi pulling its plug.

Things are bleak, and getting bleaker, although they're not as bad on one front as we mentioned earlier this week.

The five-member parent board of Daimler was reported, by German magazine Focus and repeated by us here, to have voted only 3-2 in favor of continuing Mercedes-Benz's participation in F1.

A Mercedes spokesperson has since said: "There was no voting by the Daimler board of management concerning F1".

While we are great believers in the adage of "where there's smoke there's fire", we'll accept the Mercedes denial for now.

Although, if things keep going the way they are, we won't be surprised if it, and other manufacturers, have a change of heart during the year.

BMW, expected to be the big winner from this year's rule changes in GP racing, is already speculated to be contemplating a pullout at the end of this season.

For the record, Mercedes is the main shareholder in the McLaren F1 team, with 40 per cent, and apart from supplying the engines there, will also supply the Force India team this season, and most probably any new incarnation of the Honda team.

The dominos will tumble if Mercedes does indeed get cold feet about F1.

Toyota dealt national rallying -- and its representative, Neal Bates Motorsport -- a brutal blow a few days ago by suddenly scratching from the Australian Rally Championship.

And there may yet be more fallout from Toyota, which is also involved in Aussie Racing Cars, drifting, sprintcars, drag racing, off-road racing and tarmac rallies.

Toyota spokesman Mike Breen has said all the company's motorsport activities are officially "under review".

"Everything's been under review since pretty much late last year, and it's an ongoing review of all our marketing activities -- it's not just motorsport," Breen said.

"No decision has been made about our other forms of motorsport involvement.

"We've had to make some pretty hard decisions and the rally team was one of the casualties of that review."

So we were interested to see that Auto Action magazine's Revved Up column touched on the subject this week.

Not that it agreed with us; indeed Revved Up columnist Luke West wrote: "I've long argued factory involvement is over-rated, or, at best, a mixed blessing."

Nonetheless, we found West's commentary interesting.

Here's a slice of it.

"Toyota's departure has left the ARC a complete basket case, stripping the series of its sole remaining manufacturer and professional team. Subaru pulled up stumps after 2005, Ford a little over 12 months ago. [Our comment: and Mitsubishi Ralliart in between that pair].

"Just how the Australian Rally Commission will fund a 2009 television package remains to be seen. In previous years, the key players, particularly competing manufacturers, kicked the tin for TV.

"Toyota team members will lose their jobs.

"Events will lack a star attraction, making promotion an even more difficult task.

"The ARC has hit its lowest ebb. Hopefully it can pull itself out of the trough -- before someone pulls the flush."

Yes, indeed. The ARC is a basket case, and the meltdown in the economies, car industries and some areas of motorsport is now taking on tsunami-like proportions, but it's an ill wind that blows no good, so yes, hopefully, some good will come out of all this.

And, if nothing else, the rally community is resilient.

It has had enough kicks in the teeth over the decades and always survived.

This time it might need some ingenuity as well as resilience.

Incidentally, on the delicate subject of the ARC's TV coverage, rallysportmag.com's Peter Whitten reports that coverage of this year's championship, which starts with Rally Tasmania on February 13-15, will be shown on Channel 10's new all-sports free digital channel One HD and simultaneously on its analogue equivalent, Channel 12, with broadcast schedules to be announced soon.

Whitten quotes RallyCorp chairman Ben Rainsford saying that privateers were "for the first time being invited to invest in the coverage" -- i.e. being asked to fill the financial void left by the manufacturers.

Nonetheless, these privateers were said to have "jumped at the opportunity".

"It is now open for any competitor to secure a piece of the television program and in these times nothing could be more valuable in obtaining sponsorship," Rainsford said.

The "contributions" from teams are being coordinated by Mitsubishi Lancer Evo driver Justin Dowell, who is said to have had responses from seven leading crews.

It's a fact of life that TV coverage of something like the ARC has to be paid for, but we find all of this a very sad state of affairs.

"The good news for local motorsport is that there's very little scope for further manufacturer programs to be cut," West writes.

"Of the 40-odd marques represented in the Australian market place, just two remain actively involved in motorsport domestically. Ford and Holden.

"Others occasionally dip their big toe in, like Mazda and Porsche in tarmac rallies. And Honda had an occasional ARC outing last year in a Civic Type-R. Hardly full-time campaigns though.

"Porsche and MINI do invest in one-make series, if that counts.

"The fact there was already so little dependence on factory funding is a key reason local racing categories are largely weathering the financial storm. Compared, at least, to our counterparts overseas.

"The world's three most popular four-wheel racing series -- F1, NASCAR and the WRC -- have taken a hit, with sponsorship drying up and teams pulling down the shutters.

"These series share two common traits: escalating costs and teams too reliant on manufacturer funding. Both are intertwined. When a resilient team like Williams is in strife, something is seriously wrong."

While we respect columnist West's opinion, we don't quite follow him on all this.

Williams is in strife because it's trying to compete against manufacturer-bankrolled or backed teams without any such alliance with a manufacturer. The simple reality there is that Williams is not, and for some years now has not been, the great team we like to remember it having been. It's lost its way.

Now we agree with West that "local racing categories are largely weathering the financial storm", but we feel it is dismissive that there's "already so little dependence on factory funding".

Especially in the V8 Supercar context.

We don't doubt that the Triple 8/Team Vodafones of the world can survive without factory funding, but how many others?

Indeed, there aren't many other Triple 8/Team Vodafones in the world. Certainly not in V8 Supercar racing.

OK, so Ford is now officially and formally only financially supporting two V8 Supercar teams. And it has generally been meaner with its motorsport bucks than Holden.

But don't try to tell anyone that there would be anywhere near as many Holden Commodores in V8 Supercar racing without the General's continued, albeit diminished, support.

Yes, "just two manufacturers remain actively involved in motorsport domestically".

Those who continue to enjoy what benevolence there is from those manufacturers ought remember and appreciate that, and not bite the hand that -- to quite a degree -- still feeds them.

Casey Stoner, Australia's 2007 MotoGP world champion, has been running around in karts a bit lately -- at a Ferrari/Ducati camp in the Italian Alps, and at Tamworth and Murray Bridge in Australia.

And he's hinted at an interest in a career on four wheels somewhere down the track.

"Karting-wise I'm planning to maybe do some racing in the future to hone my skills on four wheels and see how we go," Stoner said.

"In the distant future I'd really like to go to V8s and karting is the way forward.

"I'm going to learn everything set-up wise, how to drive and be more comfortable in a kart."

Stoner racing a V8 Supercar could be a marriage made in heaven for Australian motorsport. As might Chad Reed in a Commodore or Falcon.

But Stoner is 23. He ought to have another seven, perhaps 10, good years in him on two wheels. And that's what he ought to be solely focused on; not getting himself distracted by things a long way down the line.

And, if that point is seven or 10 years down the track, will V8 Supercars still be around?

Word is it's to be announced later this month.

There's already a website, usf1.com, but at the minute it has nothing more than a logo.

The key players reported to be involved are media man Peter Windsor, an Englishman who grew up in Sydney, and American Ken Anderson.

Anderson was technical director of the defunct French team Ligier and has held similar positions with Chip Ganassi's and A.J. Foyt's Indy Racing League teams.

He has also designed the G-Force Indy chassis.

Anderson is co-owner of the full-scale Windshear wind tunnel near Charlotte, North Carolina -- the heart of NASCAR country.

The intention apparently is for the team to be run from there under the slogan "Made in America".

We recall an announcement four or five years ago about a new team that was to have involved Dan Gurney. No more was ever heard of it.

Windsor is known to us, and indeed we regard him as a friend, but this latest idea all sounds a bit far-fetched. Certainly overly ambitious.

Webber's rehabilitation includes standing in a chamber at temperatures down to 130 degrees Celsius for three minutes at a time.

"It's very good for your general well-being, your immune system and apparently it's good for cellulite -- not much of a worry for me -- but it's very good for the whole body," Webber said.

The therapy apparently helps boost blood supply, especially important in helping to heal fractures like Webber's.

"There's been some stuff in the press that I won't be 100 per cent fit for Melbourne, which pissed me off.

"I will be 100 per cent ready to do my job."