MOTORSPORT: Post-Bahrain perspectives

So what are we to take out of the Bahrain round? First and foremost how Jamie Whincup has set himself up so beautifully to win the title.

If the championship had come down to a battle between three drivers -- Whincup, Mark Winterbottom and Garth Tander -- in recent times, it is now, barring something horrendous, solely within Whincup's grasp. But we'll come back to that in a minute.

What Bahrain showed is that it is possible to have great, interesting, entertaining, action-packed racing at a permanent circuit.

That races don't have to be on Mickey Mouse street circuits, and indeed are much better on a good permanent track.

The vision we see each year now of V8 Supercar racing in Bahrain is as good or better than anything else we see on our TV screens during the year, although it obviously doesn't have the importance of Bathurst to us fans.

Bahrain also emphasised again that motor racing is so much more about television than crowds. Indeed, if things were judged on crowds Bahrain would rank not only a distant last but, in the vernacular of other forms of racing, trailed off or pulled up.

And, if crowds alone were to be a determining factor, again in the vernacular of other racing, Bahrain might need to withdrawn by order of the stewards -- or simply scratched before the event.

Judging by the pictures in the Seven Network telecast there must have been more Australians in Bahrain with the V8 Supercar show than there were locals and/or tourists at the track.

That part -- long, modern grandstands next to empty -- is not a pretty sight.

But V8 Supercar Australia no doubt has its pockets lined by the Bahrain organisers to be there, and we trust the teams get some flow-on from that, so who's to complain? The racing was terrific.

So back to Whincup… He's now won seven races straight -- Bathurst, three on the Gold Coast, and three in Bahrain.

There may be elements of luck in how and why Winterbottom and Tander have fallen off the chase -- they're now 187 and 292 points off the lead respectively -- but Whincup and Triple 8/Team Vodafone simply haven't put a foot wrong, or a wheel out of place, of late.

Whincup has now won five rounds this season. And he got no points at the new Hamilton street round in New Zealand; indeed he didn't even get to start a race there.

To be so in command now just emphasises how Whincup has been the class act the rest of the season. A class above many champions of the past.

Bahrain also re-emphasised to us how comprehensively Ford has blitzed Holden this season. Not Ford the manufacturer so much as the top Ford teams.

The irony is that the best of these teams, Triple 8/Team Vodafone, won't have Ford financial backing next year.

And the most Ford of the Ford teams -- Ford Performance Racing -- while massively improved over the past three years, coinciding with the "captaincy" of Tim Edwards, is still coming up a bit short.

If Triple 8/Team Vodafone wasn't around, FPR would look like the premier team, but the reality is that the former is around and is very much the sport's benchmark.

While it has made giant strides, FPR still does not have a Bathurst or a V8 Supercar Championship to its name. Getting close, but still no cigar.

Stone Brothers Racing looks to us as though it is on the way back and -- as one of Ford's two anointed teams next year and with Jason Bright under its umbrella in a third car -- there is further upside there.

Stone Bros is the kind of team that could prosper in the more difficult economic times.

We presume everyone is competing clean and fair. We'd certainly like to think so.

Going forward, Triple 8/Team Vodafone's performances tell us it probably doesn't need Ford's support, either technically or certainly financially. It is playing on another level.

On the Holden side, it is time for a major appraisal of how the manufacturer and its teams are doing things.

How has the plot been lost so comprehensively? Two rounds to go and no Holden driver, realistically, in the hunt for the championship.

Tander has given his title defence a red-hot shot, but it's not going to be.

Russell Ingall has boxed his way back to the pointy end of the field -- and the championship, and particularly Holden, needed some of that spirit.

But this is the season of the Blue Oval -- and Jamie Whincup.

V8 Supercar Championship standings are 12 of 14 rounds -- Jamie Whincup (Ford) 2916 points, Mark Winterbottom (F) 2729, Garth Tander (Holden) 2624, Craig Lowndes (F) 2367, Steve Richards (F) 2178, Will Davison (F) 2153, James Courtney (F) 2136, Rick Kelly (H) 2046, Russell Ingall (H) 1908, Steven Johnson (F) 1837.

Bahrain round points -- Whincup 300, Lowndes 264, Ingall 246, Courtney 230, Lee Holdsworth (H) 192, S. Richards 190, Winterbottom 188, Johnson 172, Paul Morris (H) 150, Shane Van Gisbergen (F) 134.

Remaining rounds -- Symmons Plains, Tasmania, November 21-23; Oran Park, Sydney, December December 4-7.

Gold Coast may be news capital
Might be worth keeping eyes and ears trained on the Gold Coast over the next few days.

An announcement on the future of the Gold Coast Indy -- if, indeed, there is a future for IndyCars there -- is due this very day and may yet come later in the day.

Entrepreneur and motor racing sponsor Craig Gore has been making headlines again in recent days, with a report in the Gold Coast Bulletin on Friday that he was quitting the sport.

He was quoted as saying he was "just seriously over motorsport", but the next day a statement was issued on Gore's behalf that he was "disappointed" with that report, that he had not said he was quitting motorsport and that he considered the conversation he'd had to have been in confidence.

Surely a man of Gore's smarts and experience knows when he's talking to a journalist -- and that journalists file stories.

Another matter of some interest is that Sports & Entertainment Limited, 25 per cent shareholder in V8 Supercar Australia, is chaired by David Coe, whose publicly-listed company Allco has gone into voluntary administration because of its difficulties in meeting the repayments on its massive debts.

Allco headed the syndicate that tried to take over Qantas a couple of years back.

Now there is no suggestion that Allco's difficulties automatically have any impact on SEL or V8SA, but it might just be worth paying attention in case there are any developments -- even whether Coe still has the time or inclination to remain in the SEL chair around the board table with CEO James Erskine, director Tony Cochrane and the fourth director, Basil Scaffidi.

SEL has many interests other than V8 Supercar racing and, as far as we know, remains a very vibrant and viable business.

For the good of Australian motorsport let's hope it continues to be, but V8 Supercars is going to feel the impact of the national and global financial crisis, as are countless other businesses.

In the motorsports industry, NASCAR in the US -- along with Bernie Ecclestone's Formula 1; one of the great sporting businesses on earth -- is already feeling the pinch, with news over the weekend that the France family's International Speedway Corporation, which owns 12 NASCAR tracks, is laying-off 50 workers.

NASCAR also is in urgent talks with its four competing manufacturers -- Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge and Toyota -- about ways of cutting costs quickly.

NASCAR's second hat-trick champ coming up
Californian Jimmie Johnson won the past two NASCAR premier division titles and now he's in line to complete a hat-trick next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida.

After his seventh win of the Sprint Cup season at Phoenix International Raceway early today the Chevrolet star only needs to finish 35th at the final race to equal the feat of the great Cale Yarborough, the only driver to have won three titles in a row -- in 1976-78.

Johnson led 217 of the 313 laps at Phoenix and his victory stretched his lead in the standings from 106 points to 141 over Ford driver Carl Edwards, who finished fourth.

Aussie Marcos Ambrose, now full-time in the premier division and now driving a Toyota, finished 18th in his 100th start in three forms of NASCAR -- the pick-up truck series, the Nationwide secondary series, and the main game.

While Johnson has come to the fore in The Chase -- the final rounds which effectively become a separate series for the leading drivers of the season -- 21-year-old Toyota driver Kyle Busch from Las Vegas has still been the biggest star of the year for many looking on and those racing against him.

A piece about that, written just before the Phoenix race, is here

Busch and Edwards have each won eight races this season.

NASCAR Sprint Cup standings after 35 of 36 rounds -- Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 6561 points, Carl Edwards (Ford) 6420, Greg Biffle (Ford) 6358, Jeff Burton (Chevrolet) 6292, Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 6233, Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 6226, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 6151, Matt Kenseth (Ford) 6091, Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 6090, Dale Earnhardt Junior (Chevrolet) 6087, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 6080, Tony Stewart (Toyota) 6059.

Ferrari chief's emotions boils over
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has admitted smashing his TV set at home in Italy as he watched McLaren's Lewis Hamilton take the Formula 1 title from Felipe Massa in that thrilling last lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix a week ago.

"I must tell the truth, I broke the television," Montezemolo said. "When a television breaks it makes a terrible bang. My daughter in the other room was given an awful fright.

"Luckily we had another television so I was able to watch the podium ceremony, which I enjoyed."

And Massa has won worldwide acclaim for the dignity and sportsmanship with which he handled winning the race but having the title snatched from his grasp by Hamilton's last-corner pass of Timo Glock's Toyota.

We note also that Fernando Alonso was big enough to congratulate Hamilton on his title.

Meanwhile, Hamilton is being mooted as possibly the world's first billionaire sportsman -- and he's said he'd be happy to spend his whole F1 career racing for McLaren, which groomed him for superstardom and took him to the very top in just two years in the sport.

There are indications now that long-time McLaren chief Ron Dennis will scale back his hands-on involvement in the team, although he says he will continue to attend races.

Moves also at Force India, most notably with technical chief Mike Gascoyne departing.

Gascoyne has a history of not staying at teams very long and has been a somewhat controversial character in the sport, but we've long felt that he has been either responsible for or at least had a big hand in the few major technical advances in F1 in recent times.

Next year F1 will see a return to slick tyres (from those with four grooves), engines will need to last three races instead of two, there will be more aggressive aerodynamic regulations, and Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) will be introduced -- which Aussie driver Mark Webber has predicted will penalise heavier drivers like him (see here)

Ireland's Adam Carroll won the sprint race, ahead of Dutchman Robert Doornbos -- who raced for Paul Stoddart's Minardi during its one season in Champ Car -- with Martin 11th.

In the later, longer feature race Martin finished 15.5 seconds behind victor Filipe Albuquerque of Portugal, with Carroll, Brit Danny Watts, Switzerland's reigning champion Neel Jani and Malaysia's Fairuz Fauzy in the four positions between them.

Martin headed American Marco Andretti in both races, with the son of Michael Andretti and grandson of Mario 15th in the sprint and eighth in the feature.

A1GP World Cup of Motorsport standings after two rounds -- Malaysia 28 points, Ireland 23, France 23, New Zealand 20, Netherlands 20, Portugal 18, Switzerland 17, Great Britain 16, Australia 13, South Africa 9, Monaco 9, US 6, Korea 4, Lebanon 3, Italy 2, China 2, India 1, Brazil 0, Indonesia 0, Mexico 0.

Next round: Sepang, Malaysia, November 21-23.

Images: Bahrain, Whincup from jamiewhincup.com.au

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