MOTORSPORT: Perfect 10 for Aussie rally aces

Monday motorsport reportAugust 13, 2007

Crocker and co-driver Ben Atkinson won the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship round in Malaysia -- their 10th win from 10 starts together in less than two years.

The Aussies have not been beaten in the two seasons and, with the Indonesian and Chinese rounds to go, are just four points away from back-to-back titles.

They are driving a Subaru Impreza WRX for Singapore-based MotorImage this season and beat the similar car of Japan's Toshi Arai and New Zealand-based Australian co-driver Glenn Macneall by 24 seconds in Malaysia.

The Mitsubishi Evo Lancers of Japan's .Katsu Taguchi and Finland's Jussi Valimaki, second and third in the series respectively, both had mechanical problems at the weekend, but Indian Naren Kumar grabbed the third podium position in Malaysia in another Evo 9.

The next round in Indonesia is on November 7-9.

In the world rally championship, it's the German Rally this weekend and then Rally New Zealand at the end of August-start of September, with Scott Pedder and Glen Weston in a Mitsubishi Evo and and John Murray and Ben Searcy in a Subaru Impreza representing Australia along with the country's full-time WRC star Chris Atkinson in the Subaru factory team.

Suzuki will confirm at the Frankfurt Motor Show in mid-September its drivers for the two WRC rounds it will enter at the end of this season in Corsica and Britain, before its entry into the whole championship in 2008.

Although tied to Subaru until the end of this year, Chris Atkinson has previous links to Suzuki and may be in line to drive for it next year.

Although pushed by last year's Rally SA winner Steve Glenney, who made a one-off return to gravel rallying with co-driver Bernie Webb in the Subaru in which Cody Crocker won last year's Asia-Pacific title, the Evans' have won all four ARC rounds this year.

Although the first heat in SA was close and Glenney won three stages on Sunday morning, the Evans' took the second heat by almost 20 seconds -- gaining 15 seconds in 13km on the last two stages.

Including the final heat of last season, they have now won nine ARC heats in a row.

They have a 93-point lead in this year's championship over Toyota team boss Neal Bates and his co-driver Coral Taylor in the first Super 2000 Corolla.

Simon Evans described the weekend's event in the Barossa Valley and around Mt Crawford, north-east of Adelaide, as "a pretty wild rally -- amazingly fast and really slippery".

Dean Herridge and Bill Hayes, on the podium in a Chinese championship round the previous weekend, took third place in SA in their Subaru Impreza WRX on a countback ahead of Bates and Taylor -- and are only 10 points behind the Toyota pair in the drivers' championship.

Fifth and sixth for the weekend, and in both heats, were Victorian youngster Brendan Reeves with his sister Rhianon Smyth in Subaru Impreza WRX and the returning Spencer Lowndes with Chris Randell in a Mitsubishi Evo.

The next ARC round is the new Rally of the Great Lakes on NSW's mid-north coast on September 15-16.

Australian Rally Championship driver standings after four of six rounds -- Simon Evans 323 points, Neal Bates 228, Dean Herridge 218, Brendan Reeves 152, Michael Guest (Ford Fiesta S2000) 110, Eli Evans (Subaru Impreza WRX Group N) 104.

Ambrose only got in eight laps of practice in the Gordon car at the Glen and was 35th fastest, but once the rain came the starting line-up was determined by car owner points for the season, which immediately eliminated the dual Australian V8 Supercar champion.

"Robby promised me that he was going to give me another shot, so I'm going to twist his arm until he gives me one," says Ambrose, whose hopes of Nextel Cup outings with his regular Wood Brothers team seem to have evaporated after the announcement last Australian summer that he would do at least two Cup races with that team this year and perhaps as many as 10.

In the Busch Series round at the Glen, Ambrose finished 13th in his Wood Brothers Ford Fusion after qualifying seventh and making up five places in the last 10 laps of the race.

He is eighth in the series after 24 of the season's 35 races.

Kevin Harvick notched his second straight Busch Series win, finishing ahead of teammate Jeff Burton and top qualifier Kurt Busch.

Ambrose now moves on to Michigan International Speedway next weekend.

Busch Series standings - Carl Edwards 3534, David Reutimann 2768, Kevin Harvick 2743, Jason Leffler 2614, David Ragan 2586, Bobby Hamilton Jr 2495, Stephen Leicht 2427, Marcos Ambrose 2395, Mike Wallace 2325, Greg Biffle 2309.

Montoya was running sixth, trailing fifth-placed Harvick, when the Colombian tried to defend his position and got tapped from behind by Martin Truex Junior that spun Montoya's Dodge into Harvick's Chevrolet and put them both out of the race.

After officials separated the squabbling pair, Harvick said: "I was talking about kicking his ass, because that's how I felt about it.

"A chance to win there all goes up in smoke because some people get impatient.

"I'm frustrated with the No. 42 (Montoya). It just seems like he runs over somebody every week."

Montoya's side of the story was: "He (Harvick) got out of the car, came out disrespectful, saying all kinds of things, grabbed me -- and I don't appreciate that.

"I'll say 'I'm sorry,' when it's my fault, but when it's not my fault, I don't want him to come over and push me like that'.

"I have a little respect for the guy -- well, I used to have a little respect for the guy -- because he helped me a lot to start with (when the Colombian moved to NASCAR from Formula 1)."

Series leader Jeff Gordon was looking good for his fifth Nextel Cup win of the year until he made a braking error two laps from the finish, leaving Tony Stewart to claim his third victory of the season.

Gordon finished only ninth, while Dale Earnhardt Junior had yet another engine failure.

Bourdais to the fore as Power out
Something we tipped here eight months ago was confirmed at the weekend -- that Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais will race in Formula 1 next year for Scuderia Rosso, the second F1 team owned by Red Bull.

And, after this morning's Champ Car round at the Road America course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, it's even more likely that Bourdais will make the move as a four-time Champ Car champion.

After dominating qualifying, Bourdais led 51 of 53 laps in today's race, set the fastest race lap and won by almost 10 seconds -- from Englishman Dan Clarke, the second driver in Australian Paul Stoddart's Team Minardi USA.

Early in the race Stoddart's No. 1 driver, Dutchman Robert Doornbos was on the Frenchman's tail but then ran wide and soon after collided with Clarke, which damaged Doornbos' front wing and he had to pit for a replacement and later for suspension repairs.

Doornbos was ultimately classified 14th. Australian Will Power was 16th of the 17 starters after his gearbox jammed in fourth gear mid-race.

Having qualified alongside Bourdais on the front row, Power had already dropped a couple of spots at the start as he had trouble engaging first gear.

Although Power remains third in the series, he now trails Bourdais by 53 points and Doornbos by 16.

The series now heads to Europe for rounds at Zolder in Belgium and Assen in Holland before the Gold Coast Indy on October 21; a round in Mexico in November and then the finale at Phoenix, Arizona, on December 2.

Minardi driver Clarke's second place today was his best finish in Champ Car, while 18-year-old Graham Rahal -- son of former series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby -- was third.

Meanwhile, at Toro Rosso in F1 Bourdais will partner young German Sebastien Vettel, who has already replaced American Scott Speed.

The Frenchman's move will leave Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi without a seat in F1 next year.

Champ Car Standings after 10 of 15 rounds - Sebastien Bourdais 250 points, Robert Doornbos 213, Will Power 197, Justin Wilson 190, Graham Rahal 170, Oriol Servia 170, Neel Jani 167, Simon Pagenaud 164, Alex Tagliani 161, Bruno Junqueira 138.

While Brazilian Tony Kanaan won the latest oval race in Kentucky for Andretti Green Racing, teammate Franchitti finished eighth but ran up the back of Japan's Kosuke Matsuura after the chequered flag, and his car got airborne for the second week in a row and flipped.

Franchitti's car pirouetted on its nose and landed, wrecked, against the outside wall in the first turn.

Kanaan's win was his fourth this year and he beat Dixon to the chequered flag by 1.745 seconds.

A.J Foyt IV finished third for the first top-five finish of his IRL career, while Marco Andretti was fourth as Danica Patrick's hopes of a first victory crashed again.

Aussies fourth and fifth in ALMS
Despite some severe handling problems, Australia's Ryan Briscoe finished fourth, with German Sascha Maassen, in one of Roger Penske's Porsche RS Spyders in the weekend's American Le Mans Series round at Road America, the day before the Champ Car round.

Fellow Aussie David Brabham was fifth in a Honda Acura with Swedish veteran Stefan Johansson and American Duncan Dayton.

Penske's other Porsche drivers, German Timo Bernhard and Frenchman Romain Dumas, scored an improbable fourth outright victory of the season -- 1.783 seconds ahead of Audi's Italian Dindo Capello and Scotsman Allan McNish, with another Audi driven by Italian Emanuele Pirro and German Marco Werner 0.706 seconds back in third.

Sixty-five minutes of the four-hour race were run under continuous caution as thunderstorms and lightning hit Elkhart Lake.

The Porsches, which have now won six races straight, are in the LMP2 category and the diesel Audis are in LMP1 but have not won outright since the opening round at St Petersburg, Florida, in March.

Dumas and Bernhard lead the LMP2 class with 150 points, Briscoe and Maassen , who wound up a minute behind their teammates at the weekend, have 133 points and Brabham and Johansson are third with 90 points.

The next round is at Mosport, Canada, in two weeks.

Davison wins, then loses, in US
Young Aussie open-wheeler racer James Davison crossed the finish line first in the eighth round of the Star Mazda Championship at Road America -- but later found himself relegated to fourth place for alleged blocking.

An angry Davison says that he was not notified of any infringement at any time during the race and that no other team protested against him.

Davison says his team was told by officials there would be discussion of the decision, there was no right of appeal, and that if he didn't accept the decision the penalty would be increased.

"When I joined the series it became apparent that there was considerable frustration and annoyance from team owners and competitors at the incompetency (sic) of the officials, with particular reference to the stewards, and that this frustration had existed for some time," Davison says.

"After having victories taken away at Sebring and now Road America, I can only conclude that the level of officialling (sic) is an absolute disgrace."

Davison is equal second in the series with arch-rival Ron White, behind leader Dane Cameron, with another round next weekend at Trois Rivieres in Quebec.

"If I were Alonso, I'd go to (Lewis) Hamilton and say, ‘Right mate, all bets are off. Every man for himself. If you don't want to play the game, this is what we can do.' Then I'd say: ‘Mate, you're leading the championship. If you'd like me to bugger that up for you a bit more, you keep going...'," Jones told The Observer newspaper in London.

"The first guy you've got to beat in F1 is your teammate.

"I'd be applying all sorts of tricks, psychological or otherwise.

"By doing what he did in the pit lane (during qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix, denying Hamilton the chance at a last shot at pole position), Alonso might have taught Hamilton a bit of a lesson (even though Hamilton won the race after Alonso was stripped of pole position and relegated to sixth on the grid).

"Hamilton needs to remember that he is leading the championship and he might require Alonso's help later on.

"Given that Hamilton was supposed to let Alonso through during qualifying, the only thing that surprised me about Alonso's delaying tactics in the pits was that he didn't pretend to stall the car.

"Then they couldn't have done a bloody thing to him.

"If he had stalled it, by the time they had got the starter attached and got him going again, it would have equated to the same amount of time lost.

"These guys are just not thinking quickly enough!"

Amid reports that it was McLaren boss Ron Dennis who uttered the f-word during that qualifying session, rather than Hamilton as earlier thought, Jones says Dennis has to take firm control at McLaren.

"If you are operating a multi-million dollar operation and you're going for the world championship, then if you are the boss you are entitled to call the shots," Jones says.

"Ron has got to get his drivers back into some sort of order.

"You can't just go on for the rest of the season with all this going on. You have these highly talented guys and, while they will want to do their own thing and not become puppets, there has to be some sort of arrangement.

"They might agree that there is no arrangement -- if you know what I mean -- but they have to sit down and establish a game plan.

"It's like cricket. The captain will instruct his guys to do something for the betterment of that team and for the end result, which is victory.

"That is not doing anything for the benefit of one individual; it's for the benefit of that team winning."

Jones thinks Alonso probably underestimated Hamilton before the season started.

"I think Alonso, quite rightly, thought he was going to go to McLaren and be the senior partner," he says. "Being a double world champion, he probably thought he should get a bit more attention than he feels he is getting.

"This young kid has come in and to all intents and purposes, blown him away -- and Alonso doesn't like it. Fair enough. Neither would I."

It reports that a McLaren F1 car has 15,000-16,000 separate parts and there are about 750 suppliers to the team.

McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale has told the paper: "From the moment the car is formed in January to the last race in October, we make an engineering change on average every 20 minutes."

Ferrari fans awaiting the outcome of next month's appeal hearing in the F1 espionage case might wonder whether the changes are even quicker when a dossier of files from Maranello is received by a senior engineer at Woking!

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