MOTORSPORT: Power's Indy title hopes fade

Six weeks ago Will Power had just become the first Australian to win the Indianapolis 500 and looked on course for his second IndyCar title.

Now the other Queensland-born driver in the North American open-wheeler series, Scott Dixon, is running away with the championship and Power, the proud product of Toowoomba, is almost 100 points behind him with five of the 17 rounds to go.

Already a four-time champion and the most successful IndyCar driver behind long-retired AJ Foyt and Mario Andretti, New Zealander Dixon – born in Brisbane 38 years ago next weekend – won today’s chaotic race on the streets of Toronto, Canada, almost doubling his series lead over one of Power’s Penske teammates, reigning champion Josef Newgarden.

American Newgarden finished ninth in Toronto and Power only 18th, two laps down (although he set the fastest lap late in the race), while Penske’s Frenchman Simon Pagenaud was runner-up to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Dixon, with Canadians Robert Wickens and James Hinchcliffe third and fourth for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports.

It was Honda-powered Dixon’s third win and sixth podium of the season and the 44th victory of his IndyCar career. He now has 464 points to Power’s 371, with Newgarden on 402 and Americans Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-Reay also ahead of Power, who had numerous problems in Toronto including getting caught up in a multi-car mid-race incident.

Another American, Charlie Kimball, led the first lap in Indy racing in renowned British open-wheeler outfit Carlin’s debut season in the series.

Four seasons in, Formula E gets extra spark

Daniel Ricciardo’s teammate during the 2012 and ’13 seasons he raced for Red Bull’s junior Formula 1 team Toro Rosso, Jean-Eric Vergne, has won the fourth Formula E electric street racing championship that concluded in New York at the weekend.

However, Chinese-owned privateer team Techeetah, run by Australian engineer Mark Preston and for which Vergne races (and is reported to own a stake in), was pipped for the teams’ championship by manufacturer outfit Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler.

The double-header round in Brooklyn, with the Manhattan skyline as the backdrop, was the last for the first-generation Formula E open-wheelers. For the fifth season, starting in Saudi Arabia 10 days before Christmas, the cars will be faster, more powerful and with longer-lasting 385kg batteries, ending the need for mid-race car swaps for the drivers.

Vergne clinched the latest drivers’ title on Saturday despite finishing only fifth in that day’s race, having started from the back of the field as a penalty for using too much power during what would have been the pole position lap, but he won the 12th and final race of the season.

However, the Audi team – with its previous season’s champion and Saturday’s victor Lucas di Grassi, of Brazil, and Daniel Abt, of Germany – overhauled Techeetah by two points as Vergne’s teammate, German Andre Lotterer, finished only ninth.

Techeetah, pronounced Ta-chi-ta, is set to become a manufacturer team next season, expected to be with Citroen’s DS brand, which will allow it 15 days of private testing – a luxury it has been denied as a customer of Renault, which is now withdrawing after having been the strongest supporter of the series among manufacturers so far.

However, Renault’s Japanese associate Nissan will take its place, with BMW also entering next season, and then Mercedes-Benz and Porsche in the sixth season. Jaguar is already involved and finished sixth of the 10 teams in the season just completed and its New Zealander Mitch Evans, a protégé of Mark Webber, was seventh in the drivers’ championship.

Techeetah, owned by Chinese sports marketing and management company SECA, has only been in the series two seasons, having taken over the franchise of Japan’s Team Aguri. It inherited Geelong-born, Monash University-educated Preston in that transformation.

Not only had he been in Formula E with former Japanese racer Aguri Suzuki, but before that with the Honda-supported Super Aguri F1 team in 2006-2008 after earlier stints at McLaren and the Arrows team of the late Tom Walkinshaw that collapsed ignominiously.

Preston’s start in racing came developing the Spectrum 05 Formula Ford car in Melbourne with Michael Borland in the mid-1990s. He also worked at Holden and Holden Special Vehicles.

Youngsters out front in rallycross

While big-time rallycross made its debut at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas at the weekend, there was a ding-dong battle between the two young stars of the Australian Rallycross Championship at Winton in Victoria.

Arron Windus took his second consecutive win in the series, driving his father’s Hyundai i20 after problems with his own, defeating rival Troy Dowel in a Volkswagen Polo.

Experienced Steve Glenney was third in a production-class Mitsubishi Lancer and Will Orders won the two-wheel-drive class in a Ford Fiesta.

The next round is at Marulan in NSW on August 5, followed by one at South Australia’s new The Bend Motorsport Park in September and the finale back at Winton in November.

The second round of the new Americas Rallycross at COTA was won by ex-F1 racer Scott Speed for the Volkswagen Andretti team, with Ken Block second in a Ford Focus and Speed’s teammate Tanner Foust third. Travis Pastrana and Australian Chris Atkinson raced Subarus.