MOTORSPORT: Power strikes – and new doubt on Rally Oz's future

It's been a lean year for Australia's international open-wheeler superstars, but Will Power has finally broken the ice with a victory in the United States.

The Toowoomba racer won the 14th round of the IndyCar Series – shortened by lightning – at Pocono, Pennsylvania, for Team Penske.

He led six times – for a total of 31 laps – in the 128 of the scheduled 200 laps completed at the 4km track known as the 'Tricky Triangle' and set the fastest lap at an average of more than 347km/h.

"I'm over the moon to get this win!" Power tweeted.

He said he had been "very determined" to win this round for Penske's Chevrolet-powered team.

"We were able to overcome some issues, had some great stops and the strategy was right," he said.

However, Power – the 2014 IndyCar Series champion and 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner – remains a distant fifth in this year's standings.

Daniel Ricciardo is only 11th in the Formula 1 World Championship, with sixth place in the Canadian Grand Prix in early June the carsales.com.au global ambassador's best finish since his switch from Red Bull Racing to Renault's factory team this year.

Power, 38, maintains his record of winning a race in a major North American open-wheeler championship every year since 2007, when he was in the Champ Car World Series during the great split from the Indianapolis-based Indy Racing League.

At Pocono today (Australian time) he was almost 5.5 seconds ahead of New Zealand's five-time and reigning IndyCar champ Scott Dixon, driving a Honda-powered car for Penske's great rival Chip Ganassi.

Penske's winner of this year's Indy 500, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, finished third and remains a title contender.

American Josef Newgarden, champion two years ago and leader this season, was fifth at Pocono – behind 21-year-old fellow American Santino Ferrucci in a Honda-engined Dale Coyne Racing entry.

The IndyCar drivers set to race a Holden Commodore in this year's Bathurst 1000 for Walkinshaw Andretti United, American Alex Rossi and Canadian James Hinchcliffe, were caught up in a first-lap crash in which Japanese driver Takuma Sato ended upside down. Swedish rookie Felix Rosenqvist, driving for Ganassi, was the only driver taken to hospital from the pile-up but appeared to have escaped serious injury.

Pocono is the track at which British driver Justin Wilson suffered fatal head injuries when hit by flying debris in 2015 and where Canadian Robert Wickens was paralysed last year. The venue does not have a contract for an IndyCar race next year.

Despite being classified only 18th in today's race, Rossi is still second in the series points, with 500 to Newgarden's 535, while Pagenaud now has 495, Dixon 483 and Power 407 – with three rounds remaining, the first of them at Madison, Illinois, next weekend. The last two races are on the west coast of the US, at Portland, Oregon, on September 1 (the same weekend F1 resumes at Spa in Belgium), and Laguna Seca, California, on September 22.

Finland is a heartland of rallying, much like Britain and Italy are in Formula 1, and word out of the Nordic country is that New Zealand is set to replace Australia on next year's World Rally Championship calendar.

Finnish photo-journalist Jarno Saari tweeted at the weekend that the calendar, originally due by the end of June and which is finally expected to be revealed this week, will have "major changes", according to a Finnish rally publication with which Saari is associated, Hanaa.

"In Kenya, Japan, New Zealand. Out Corsica, Turkey, Australia," Saari said.

Speculation was rife in April-May that NZ was lobbying to replace Australia, if only for a year until a new location was found for Rally Oz.

The company that organises the WRC, Red Bull-linked WRC Promoter, has been unhappy about the venue for the Australian round in recent years, Coffs Harbour, which will host this season's finale on November 14-17, being too far from a major city and not attracting big enough crowds.

Mid-year there was fresh talk of the event being relocated to a Gold Coast base and late last week there were whispers about the event moving next year to Canberra, long a rally stronghold.

Rally Australia chief executive Darryl Ferris told Australia's RallySport Magazine last week that the organisation was "looking forward" to the announcement of the 2020 calendar "shortly".

NZ was once a regular fixture on the WRC calendar but last held a round in 2012.

WRC Promoter has been keen to get Japan back into the series to entice Japanese manufacturers other than Toyota into the sport.

It also wants the Safari Rally in the championship again, but the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) had safety concerns about the recent event in Kenya.

The Safari was part of the WRC until 2002 but has only been a round of the African championship since then.