MOTORSPORT: Prodrive boss in copter crash too

Monday motorsport reportSeptember 17, 2007

Richards almost goes the way of McRae
What a weekend it's been in motorsport. Much of it bad, and sad.

Amid Formula 1's 'Spygate' and Belgian Grand Prix and the Sandown 500 for V8 Supercars, we did not expect to be leading today's report on matters about men best known through rallying.

But just hours after the death of Colin McRae in a helicopter crash in Scotland, the man for whom McRae drove in his rallying heyday -- David Richards, the boss behind Ford Performance Vehicles and Ford Performance Racing in Australia, and who will head Formula 1's new team next year bearing the name of his flagship company Prodrive -- was in a copter crash too.

Richards and his wife escaped serious injury when the chopper in which they were flying crashed near North Weald airfield north of London as they returned from Spa, venue of the Belgian GP.

"Something failed on the transmission system," Richards says. "Because of what happened with Colin yesterday, we didn't want to stay at Spa, we wanted to come back home early.

"We were nearing Stansted airport when we heard this bang at the back of the aircraft.

"I was talking to the control at Stansted at the time, so I immediately gave them a May Day call, and the rescue crew came within minutes. Then, everything failed but I managed to bring it down to the ground, and it fell on its side."

Among his vast automotive interests, Richards' Prodrive fields the Subaru factory team in the world rally championship -- and it was with that team that McRae won the world title in 1995.

The Scotsman also finished runner-up in the WRC in 1996 and '97, and again in 2001 with Ford. He won 25 WRC rallies and had 42 podium finishes from 146 starts.

McRae's five year-old son and another man and his son were in the helicopter that crashed into a fireball close to McRae's home.

McRae's younger brother, Alister, himself a former British rally champion, living in Australia with his Perth-born wife, has been on the lookout for a drive in the Australian Rally Championship and was at the championship's new round, the Great Lakes Rally on the NSW North Coast, at the weekend.

A former Hyundai and Mitsubishi WRC driver, Alister had rides with Toyota factory team leader Neal Bates and Ford factory lead driver Michael Guest during Friday's shakedown for that event.

He has contested two rounds of the New Zealand Rally Championship this year.

Perfect 10 for the Evans' and Toyota
Defending ARC champions Simon and Sue Evans won the Great Lakes Rally, making it 10 heat wins from 10 starts this year in their Neal Bates Motorsport Group N prototype Corolla.

They will have to retire from both heats of the final round, the Rally of Melbourne, to have any chance of losing the title.

The last two stages of Saturday's heat were cancelled because of communications problems, meaning the day's rallying ended three hours early.

The 39-year-old Finn won the world title in 2000 and 2002 and has 30 wins to his name, making him the second-most successful driver in WRC history behind 33-time winner Loeb.

He leads Loeb by 10 points in this year's championship, with five rounds remaining and has spearheaded Ford to the top of the manufacturers' table ahead of Loeb's Citroen.

It's Raikkonen's fourth victory of the season; his first with the Italian squad after leaving McLaren, and his third win in a row at Belgium's famous Spa circuit -- although there was no GP there the past two years.

Raikkonen has now won 13 GPs in his career, while Ferrari has taken its tally to 199.

Fernando Alonso finished third to narrow the championship lead of his McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton to just two points, with Raikkonen 13 points off the lead and Massa now 20 behind Hamilton.

Australia's Mark Webber qualified eighth, was promoted to seventh on the grid when BMW's Robert Kubica's dropped 10 places because of an engine change, and drove an excellent race -- including a superb pass of Heikki Kovalainen's Renault in the early stages -- to finish seventh.

Apart from the Ferraris and McLarens, the only cars ahead of Webber's Red Bull were Nick Heidfeld's BMW and the Williams-Toyota of Nico Rosberg.

With McLaren ineligible -- under last Thursday's staggering penalties from the FIA's World Motor Sport Council, including a US$1 million fine -- Ferrari has now clinched the constructors' championship, although McLaren would otherwise have 177 points to Ferrari's 161.

These teams remain the only two to have won GPs this year, but it is intriguing how certain circuits have suited Ferrari better than McLaren and vice-versa.

Raikkonen says: "We know the reasons why we cannot challenge on the circuits like Monaco, Monza, Montreal.

"We try to fix that problem for next year, hopefully we can, and then we should be pretty strong.

"This (circuit) is more to do with aerodynamics and our car is strong in that area, so any circuits like this are going to be okay for us."

The next race is at Japan's Fuji circuit which has not hosted a GP since 1976.

Hamilton angry about Alonso tactics
Lewis Hamilton came off second best in a fierce dice with teammate Alonso on the opening lap at Spa -- and is not happy about it.

"I started to accelerate and all of a sudden Fernando came sweeping across me, and he knew I was there, so ..." Hamilton says.

Asked whether Alonso had been hard but fair, Hamilton says: "I wouldn't say fair, but it was hard.

"For someone that's always complaining about people doing unfair manoeuvres, and wanting to be fair, and someone I look up to ... he has gone and swiped me and pushed me as wide as he could.

"I was just really lucky there was a run-off area so I could take that.

"I felt there was enough room for all of us to get around, but somehow I ran out of road.

"It has been a tough week, and for sure a lot tougher week for me than for Fernando because ... I won't say any more."

'Spygate' … too much to comprehend
A mountain of reading material has surfaced over the weekend about 'Spygate' and it's going to take us a few days to digest.

Suggestions are surfacing that perhaps the harsh penalities on McLaren are a payback to team boss Ron Dennis for the troubles that the threatened manufacturer-backed rebel series that he sided with caused FIA president Max Mosley and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone for several years.

Sir Jackie Stewart -- triple world champion driver, former team owner and a man who himself has been on the rough end of some Mosley and Ecclestone tactics -- says: "This isn't murder that has been carried out, this is something that has happened before and there wasn't even a fine or disciplinary action taken by the same governing body. There is something very strange going on, there is no doubt about that."

The politics of it all aside, it has become abundantly clear over the past few days that many more people at McLaren knew about the Ferrari dossier, and what was in it, than the team tried for so long to have us believe.

And it seems that, rather than occasional contact, there were more than 300 messages between Ferrari's Nigel Stepney, since sacked, and McLaren's chief designer, Mike Coughlan, still suspended.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo dedicated last night's Spa victory to not only everyone in the team but "this English gentleman who in the month of June wanted to inform us that someone linked to an opponent team entered into his shop and asked him to copy dozens of pages containing technical information about our car. Without him it would never have been possible to shine the light on to one of the worst pages in the history of motorsport".

Mosley insists that history may judge the punishment of McLaren as very minor.

He wants half the US$100 million fine to go to other F1 teams and the other half to be distributed to national sporting authorities -- like CAMS in Australia -- to assist the development of young racing drivers.

F1 world drivers' championship standings after 14 of 17 races - Lewis Hamilton 97 points,  Fernando Alonso 95, Kimi Räikkönen 84, Felipe Massa 77, Nick Heidfeld 56, Robert Kubica 33, Heikki Kovalainen 22, Giancarlo Fisichella 17, Nico Rosberg 15, Alexander Wurz 13, Mark Webber 10, David Coulthard 8, Jarno Trulli 7, Ralf Schumacher 5, Takuma Sato 4, Jenson Button 2, Sebastian Vettel 1.

F1 world constructors' championship standings - Ferrari 161 points, BMW-Sauber 90, Renault 39, Williams-Toyota 28, Red Bull-Renault 18, Toyota 12, Super Aguri-Honda 4, Honda 2.

Remaining F1 races -- Fuji, Japan, September 30; Shanghai, China, October 7; Interlagos, Sao Paulo, Brazil, October 21.

Blue Oval stamp on Sandown 500
The Sandown 500 looked to us like a pretty good V8 Supercar race, and a very good pipe-opener for the Bathurst 1000 in three weeks.

Readers may recall that the Craig Lowndes-Jamie Whincup/Triple 8 Team Vodafone Falcon combination was our tip.

It's good to see a top team putting its two regular drivers together winning these big races.

It's Lowndes' fourth Sandown victory -- and second in three years. Sandown has become very much Ford's race. That is four in a row now for the Blue Oval at the eastern Melbourne circuit.

An interesting observation from Lowndes at the finish yesterday, that it was the same three teams on the podium again this year -- with Triple 8 and Ford Performance Racing swapping places, and the Holden Special Vehicles/Rick Kelly Commodore in between them.

Unfortunately time and circumstances prevent a more comprehensive report, although the Channel 7 telecast and most of the daily newspapers have provided extensive coverage.

Now the build-up to the country's iconic race at Bathurst.

And, if Sandown has become Blue Oval territory, Holden has more often than not come out on top at Bathurst's Mt Panorama -- although it was that Lowndes/Whincup/Ford combo that did the business there last year -- and wouldn't they love to repeat it this year!

Australian V8 Supercar Championship standings after 9 of 14 rounds - Rick Kelly (Holden) 443 points, Garth Tander (H) 434, Jamie Whincup (Ford) 389, Craig Lowndes (F) 373, Todd Kelly (H) 324,  Mark Skaife (H) 273, Steven Richards  (F) 238, Mark Winterbottom  (F) 234, Russell Ingall  (F) 214,  Will Davison  (F) 194, James Courtney  (F) 168, Lee Holdsworth (H) 167, Steven Johnson  (F) 156, Greg Murphy (H) 131, Jason Richards (H) 108.

Remaining V8 Supercar races - Bathurst 1000, October 4-7; Gold Coast Indy, October 18-21; Bahrain, November 1-3; Symmons Plains, Tasmania,  November 16-18; Phillip Island, Victoria, November 30-December 2.

CAMS decision on Ward fine due
The CAMS appeal tribunal verdict on the $30,000 fine imposed on veteran Sydney racer Phil Ward over his run-in with officialdom at Oran Park last month is awaited today.

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