MOTORSPORT: Parity squabble looms in V8 Supercars

So too is expansion of the calendar, but with Tony Cochrane’s international ambitions shelved it is major regional cities like Newcastle and Geelong that new chief executive James Warburton has brought back into play.

Lots more going on in V8 Supercars too with the next sprint round at Victoria’ Winton circuit three weeks away, before the first of the enduros, the Sandown 500 in Melbourne, in mid-September.

The Bathurst 1000 is on October 13 and the Gold Coast 600 on October 26-27.

Top team Triple Eight Race Engineering is to run a third Holden Commodore in its Red Bull livery but with the drivers not yet named.

There have been rumours of man-of-many-hats Mark Skaife being one in a comeback, and even more ridiculously of Mark Webber – but Bathurst and the Gold Coast clash with the Japanese and Indian grands prix and he most certainly won’t be missing them.

More likely is that the driver pairing will be international and with established Red Bull links. Perhaps rally great and Pikes Peak record-setter Sebastien Loeb could be one.

But not Casey Stoner, who does not seem inclined to pursue a V8 Supercar career beyond dabbling in the development series – when not testing a Honda MotoGP bike again now.

Meanwhile, recently greatly more competitive Ford Performance Racing is losing its engineering manager of the past three years, Mathew ‘Techno’ Nilsson, seemingly back to rival Holden Racing Team.

On the international open-wheeler front Pirelli wants bigger, fatter tyres in F1 next year to cope with the new turbocharged engines – see BBC chief F1 writer Andrew Benson’s report here.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo this week admonished the team’s lead driver Fernando Alonso, widely regarded as F1’s best.

Alonso, asked what he wanted for his 32nd birthday after finishing only fifth in last Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix,had said:  “A faster car. The one the others have.”

And, on what he will do during F1’s four-week break, he said: “I will pray.”

Di Montezemolo called it “a rash outburst” and demanded the world’s most famous team to close ranks as rumours swirl of Alonso heading to Red Bull Racing and Kimi Raikkonen returing to Ferrari and young Aussie Daniel Ricciardo waits to hear whether he will be Mark Webber’s replacement.

The proposed Russian and New Jersey GPs are in doubt for next year, while India is likely to skip a year on the calendar to March 2015 – coinciding with Melbourne’s final race under its existing contract! – but Austria will regain a GP next year, courtesy of Red Bull.

IndyCar has its parity issues too and all its engines next season will have to have twin-turbos.

Ryan Briscoe’s broken right wrist is not sufficiently recovered for him to race at this weekend’s IndyCar round at Mid-Ohio, his place with Panther Racing taken by Spaniard Oriel Servia.

James Davison, cousin of V8 Supercar drivers Will and Alex Davison and a two-time Indy Lights race winner, will make his IndyCar debut there with Dale Coyne Racing as fellow Aussie Will Power chases his first win of the year with Team Penske in a series in which he usually is a title contender.

Ford is to run a pair of its Rangers with V8 Coyote engines, prepared in South Africa, in next January’s Dakar Rally in South America, while Belgian Thierry Neuville is a surprise early leader in Rally Finland in a Ford Fiesta RS.

Neuville heads world championship-leading Frenchman Sebastien Ogier in a Volkswagen Polo R, but Finnish star Mikko Hirvonen claimed officials cost him 20 seconds in his Citroen DS3.   

But now back to V8 Supercar parity – a regular topic years ago but rarely mentioned in the final years of the Holden-Ford duopoly in the sport.

Now that there are four brands racing under the Car of the Future rules, and the enduros are approaching, it’s become a very hot potato.

That’s because the newcomers with more modern engine technology, Nissan Altimas and Mercedes-Benz E 63 AMGs, don’t have fuel consumption as good as the pushrod Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons.

There is talk of reducing the size of fuel tanks for the enduros, but the Nissans and Mercs may still take longer to refuel in the pits.

Another suggestion has been to restrict the flow rates in the fuel rigs of the Holden and Ford teams – something they would strongly resist.

The man in the hotseat here is Mark Skaife, who has headed the Car of the Future project as well as the V8 Supercar Commission – although he is unlikely to remain in the latter role more than another 10 weeks.

In an incredibly political sport Skaife is under pressure over the costs of this year’s cars being much higher than was projected and traditional teams unhappy at concessions given to the newcomers which they claim were not fully telegraphed to them.

The Nissans and Mercs have had neither the power nor the economy of the Holdens and Fords in the 24 races to date and are yet to feature on a podium.

While AMG in Germany has improved the power of the Mercedes engines, with more yet expected for the enduros, fuel consumption remains a bigger headache in Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport that fields the three E 63s.

Nissan Motorsport leader and driver Todd Kelly has estimated that the four Altimas are eight per cent worse on fuel usage than the Holdens raced previously under the Kelly Brothers banner.

Kelly, a member of the V8 Supercar Commission, has declared that Nissan is “pushing to try to work out some way to make it a level playing field”.

“If we can’t make a big enough improvement it will just kill us, not only at Sandown and Bathurst but at the Gold Coast and Homebush (the season-ending Sydney 500),” Kelly told speedcafe.com this week.

“There’s too big a disadvantage if we go into those events with 8 per cent more fuel burn than anyone else.”

How these parity issues are addressed during the lead-in to the enduros is likely to become the dominant feature of V8 Supercars in coming weeks.

Beyond that there is the future of the championship calendar, with new chief executive James Warburton intent on adding new Australian rounds to the series now that departed executive chairman Tony Cochrane’s broader international expansion plans have been dropped.

Newcastle has been talked about spasmodically as a potential venue for a championship round, but without any signs of real progress.

It is amazing a city of Newcastle’s size or somewhere else in the Hunter Valley or on NSW’s Central Coast have not been home to a round of the championship already in the past 20-30 years.

Townsville’s Reid Park venue, a combination of permanent and temporary facilities, is being put forward as the template for events in “four or five regions”, with Newcastle and Geelong the most obvious.

The Newcastle Herald newspaper this week recalled that plans for a Newcastle circuit using Wharf Rd, Shortland Esplanade and Scott and Hunter streets were drawn up by local enthusiasts 15 years ago.

It also reported that Central Coast developer Peter Lee had sought to establish a permanent circuit at Ringwood but his application was rejected by the Port Stephens Council on environmental grounds.

The paper also mentioned that controversial businessman Nathan Tinkler’s former business partner Matthew Higgins submitted plans for a track in the same area less than a year ago and was still awaiting a decision.

While the V8 Supercar administration traditionally has favoured government-subsidised street circuits in expanding the national calendar, Mark Skaife – originally from the Central Coast – has said previously that a NSW venue to the north of Sydney “needs to be used as a driver training facility”.

“It has to be more than a race track,” Skaife said two and a half years ago.

Newcastle mayor Jeff McCloy said this week he liked the idea of anything that promoted the city but was not aware of what it would cost to establish a V8 Supercar round in the area.

Wayne Russell, who runs the Novocastrian Motorsport team in the V8 development series, told the Newcastle Herald a Supercar event would be “one of the most amazing things ever to happen to this town”.

“If they get it over the line there’ll be a packed house, guaranteed,” Russell said.
“But I think James Warburton is pissing into the wind (facing an uphill battle).”
Geelong also has been on the radar at times as a potential Supercar venue – again without any sign of any real advance.

Transport tycoon Lindsay Fox, whose Linfox company owns the Phillip Island circuit, has made noises about building a motorsport precinct adjoining his Avalon Airport near Geelong if it could be guaranteed to host the Australian Formula One Grand Prix long-term rather than the temporary circuit at Melbourne’s Albert Park that has held it for almost two decades.

There would be some support in Geelong for a waterfront street race, but it would be ironic for the city to get a V8 Supercar round as Ford moves towards closure of its engine plant there.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site…