Motorsport: Pukekohe is Commodore country

Midweek motorsport reportApril 18, 2007

Not only have VE Commodores won all five races so far in this year's championship, and four Holden drivers -- those in cars built and prepared by Walkinshaw Performance -- occupy the four top spots in the points standings, but Holdens have won 17 of the 18 races of the Australian V8s at Pukekohe over the past six years.

NZ's favourite racing son of recent times, Greg Murphy, has won the Pukekohe round in four of those six years and was on the podium another time, although this year he goes there with his new team, Tasman Motorsports, only 12th in the series -- and not giving himself much chance of victory.

The HSV Dealer outfit's reigning champion Rick Kelly and teammate Garth Tander head the championship and have won four races between them already, while Holden Racing Team's Todd Kelly won the first race of the season in Adelaide.

Mark Skaife is yet to take the chequered flag first so far this year, but the veteran's form in coming third at the second round in Perth was excellent.

And Skaife's worries over the long-running wrangle with the Touring Car Entrants Group about the ownership and control of HRT have been eased in recent days -- perhaps not permanently yet, but at least for this round and the next at Winton in Victoria.

Today's Auto Action magazine reports that Skaife and Tom Walkinshaw have declared a truce in their financial dispute to secure HRT's immediate future.

Auto Action says Skaife met Monday's deadline to provide TEGA with assurances that he complied with team ownership rules after crisis talks with Walkinshaw late last week.

"They hammered out a settlement of Skaife Sports' multi-million dollar debt to Walkinshaw Performance to preserve their strained relationship," AA's editor-at-large Mark Fogarty reports.

"But the deal only exists in principle and further negotiations are required before it is finalised.

"The proposed settlement is enough to ensure that Walkinshaw Performance will run the HRT Commodores, which it leases to Skaife Sports, at Pukekohe this weekend and at least the following round at Winton next month."

It was at Pukekohe last year that Skaife equaled Peter Brock's record of 37 Australian touring car championship round wins.

Having been bothered by the HRT ownership issue for months, another victory at the 2.8km circuit this weekend -- before the move of the NZ round to a new street circuit further south at Hamilton next year -- would not only take Skaife past Brock on that score but be a belated present for the 40th birthday he had this month.

However, Tander is the fastest man in the championship and winner of all three races in Perth a month ago, and Rick Kelly is the craftiest accumulator of points in the series.

Tander had dominant speed for most of last year's Pukekohe meeting, taking pole position and setting the fastest lap times in two of the three races -- but a controversial drive-through penalty for jumping the start in the first race was his undoing.

Apart from the HSV pair denying him, Skaife's HRT teammate Todd Kelly is quick and dependable too.

On the Ford side of the ledger, Pukekohe is one of only five of the 14 V8 Supercar venues where Craig Lowndes hasn't won a round; indeed, he has never finished on the podium in NZ, and fourth place last year was the only time he has finished in the top 10 at Pukekohe in his six visits.

Only 10th in the series to date this season, three places lower than Triple 8 teammate Jamie Whincup, Lowndes does have the distinction of the only pole position at Pukekohe for Ford, in 2005.

And Fords filled second to fifth places behind round winner Skaife last year.

The best of the Blue Oval's performers that weekend was Ford Performance Racing's Mark Winterbottom, who took his first podium on the way to third place in the 2006 championship.

Pukekohe is where Gold Coast-based Kiwi brothers Ross and Jimmy Stone, of Stone Brothers Racing, got into motorsport.

They first went to the circuit in 1962 -- when Ross was 9 and Jimmy 15.

Despite three championship titles and two Bathurst victories, they have never had an outright V8 victory at the track.

"It's the one thing Jimmy and I want more than anything else," Ross Stone says.

"Pukekohe is a special place and has great atmosphere."

The brothers have had drivers on the podium in five of the six years -- Marcos Ambrose was third in 2001 and 2002 and second in 2004, and Russell Ingall was second in 2005 and third last year.

And Ambrose is the only Ford driver to have won an Australian V8 Supercar race there -- the opening heat in 2004.

James Courtney, who got his slot with Stone Bros when Ambrose went to the US to pursue his NASCAR dream, is keen to deliver his masters the victory they crave at their home track, especially after his disappointments in WA.

However, Ford's top driver so far this season is Steve Johnson for the reborn Dick Johnson Racing, while teammate Will Davison is also in the top 10.

Jason Bright, winner at Pukekohe in 2004 in a Holden, has borrowed a Falcon from Brad Jones Racing after his Pirtek team  was unable to repair his own Ford crashed in practice in Perth in time for the trip to NZ.

Apart from Murphy, the Kiwi hopes will ride with his Tasman teammate Jason Richards, Steven Richards of Ford Performance Racing, and Paul Radisich for Team Kiwi in an ex-FPR Falcon -- but this home round hasn't been particularly kind to any of that trio, although Steven Richards has only finished out of the top 10 one year.

Pukekohe will mark the 100th round for Cameron McConville of Supercheap Auto Racing -- and it will be interesting to see how much attention that milestone gets on the Channel 7 telecast in light of McConville's role as the specialist commentator on Channel 10's Formula 1 telecasts.

Hopefully 7 will give credit where it's due.

And let's hope this final Pukekohe round can be got away safely. It was there last year that a Porsche flew over a safety fence into a spectator area -- fortunately without injury to any fans.

V8 Supercar Championship after two of 14 rounds -- R. Kelly (Holden) 115 points, G. Tander (H) 102, T. Kelly (H) 85, M. Skaife (H) 75, S. Johnson (Ford) 74, J. Courtney (F) 61, J. Whincup (F) 56, M. Winterbottom (F) 53, W. Davison (F) 50, C. Lowndes (F) 50,
R. Ingall (F) 48, G. Murphy (H) 42.

The 1.6km Phoenix oval features different banking in the turns at each end as well as a "dog leg" kink in the middle of the back straight.

With two top-10 finishes so far this season, Ambrose leads the Busch rookie-of-the-year chase -- by just two points from David Ragan and three from Juan Pablo Montoya.

Winds of change at GP
A changing of the guard has been announced this week at the Australian Grand Prix Corporation.

Tim Bamford is vacating the chief executive's chair to make way for Drew Ward, a former AGPC executive who returns after a detour via the Sydney Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

In 2004 the Formula 1 GP cost Victorian taxpayers $12.5 million but in the three years since Bamford's ascension to the top job the losses have ballooned, to more than $21 million last year, and press reports have variously predicted the loss on last month's race to be somewhere between $28 million and $35 million, despite the attendances being -- according to the organisers -- similar to last year.

This year's GP was missing the V8 Supercars and an official vehicle supplier -- or alternative sponsor -- for the celebrity race.

Ward faces quite a challenge to breathe some life back into the event.

On the board to lend advice, as deputy chairman to Ron Walker now, is former AGPC chief executive John Harnden, who ran Melbourne's Commonwealth Games last year.

Some bright ideas, other than just moving the F1 race to night-time at very considerable cost, are going to be needed.

Coulthard and cohort see positives
After Sunday's Bahrain GP, we pointed out that Australia's F1 driver Mark Webber was increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of his Red Bull car, while veteran teammate David Coulthard was more optimistic and patient.

We've now noticed another, broader perspective from Coulthard since that race.

"We were quicker than Renault, who are the current world champions, so -- as quickly as they have gone backwards -- we have gone forwards," Coulthard says.

"Obviously we are still a long way from Ferrari, McLaren and BMW-Sauber, but I believe we are better than we were last year and there are still good races to come.

"It is race three and our goal has got to be to try to be the fourth team by the time we get to the end of the European season (in September).

"We are a relatively young team still and we are in front of Toyota and Renault, who are two big manufacturers. [Coulthard forgot to mention Honda, who have trailed off abysmally].

"We have to be realistic and, as painful as it is 'parking' (retiring) the car, I'd rather 'park' the car having had a good race than what we had last year, which was just a slow car and not very good for anyone."

That seems a fairly sober assessment, although Webber's need for greater speed and reliability is more urgent than Coulthard, who has had his share of success and is coming to the end of his career.

Echoing Coulthard's remarks is Red Bull's motorsport advisor and former GP racer Helmut Marko, who reckons the team is now the fourth quickest in F1.

"Everyone was talking about our crisis, but at the beginning of the season we were 1.5 seconds (a lap) behind Williams and now we have overtaken them," Marko told the news agency APA.

"Here (Bahrain) we were even (competitive) with Renault. We have made giant steps."

Madrid's mega move on Barcelona
Think the GP tracks built in Shanghai, Bahrain and Turkey in recent years -- the first two for about half a billion US dollars each -- are out of this world?

Well a Spanish delegation has reportedly presented F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone with plans for a circuit south-west of Madrid that will cost US$950 million!

The Diario As newspaper says the 5km Pinto circuit, designed -- as most F1 tracks are -- by Hermann Tilke, could be completed by 2010 and that the aim is to "steal" the Spanish GP from Barcelona.

Money talks very loudly with Ecclestone, but Barcelona is his favourite European city.

Now Norbert Haug, motorsport manager of German rival Mercedes-Benz, reckons BMW will win a GP this season.

"I think that BMW-Sauber will soon win a race, and whoever writes off Renault is in my opinion making a mistake," Haug says, while vigorously disputing a leading journalist's tip that Ferrari will win 14 GPs this season.

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