MOTORSPORT: Sandown form up the pole

Thursday motorsport reportSeptember 13, 2007

Melbourne classic is anybody's race
It's the Sandown 500 this weekend, and there's one golden rule with this endurance classic: beware the form guide.

Garth Tander, the leader of this year's V8 Supercar Championship and widely regarded as the quickest driver in the sport these days, has had pole position at Sandown the past two years but has not finished better than fourth.

Tander's Toll HSV Dealer teammate and reigning series champion Rick Kelly had pole at Sandown in 2004 but hasn't won the race either.

The last driver to win Sandown from pole is Craig Lowndes way back in 1996, when paired with Greg Murphy in a Holden Racing Team Commodore.

Holden has dominated V8 Supercar racing this year, particularly Tander and Kelly, who are just six points apart, yet Ford has won the past three Sandown 500s.

Although Kelly has not won at Sandown, he has an excellent record there -- including coming within 0.15 seconds of victory last year with his brother Todd amid Holden's controversial driver swaps.

Rick Kelly has finished in the top five every year, and twice on the podium, since the 500km pre-Bathurst race returned to the Melbourne circuit from Queensland Raceway in 2003.

Sandown is the traditional warm-up enduro for the Bathurst 1000, which Lowndes and Jamie Whincup won last year for Ford in a Triple 8 Falcon.

Whincup and Lowndes are the best-placed Ford drivers in this year's championship, in third and fourth places respectively, and are the Blue Oval's best chance for another Sandown victory this weekend.

Triple 8, which now races as Team Vodafone, has at least put its two regular drivers in the one Falcon.

It will be Whincup's car, and because of the youngster's performances this year, he will qualify it and is scheduled to drive two of the three scheduled stints.

HSV, on the other hand, won't finally decide until after Friday's practice whether Tander and Rick Kelly will drive together, or be split and then be partnered by its other endurance drivers, New Zealanders Paul Radisich and Craig Baird.

Teams obviously have to make the decisions they see as best for them, and some -- in particular Ford Performance Racing and Stone Brothers Racing -- have weighty sponsorship issues to consider, as well as championship standings and chances, but our preference is to see the top teams put their regular drivers together to give them the best shot at winning the enduros.

Mark Winterbottom, who won at Sandown last year with Jason Bright before the latter went off to start his own team this year, will be partnered in his FPR Falcon this weekend by New Zealander Matt Halliday.

Now Halliday is a well-credentialled race driver, but mainly with openwheeler experience.

For FPR to have the best chance of another endurance victory this weekend it would make sense for the team to have its other regular driver, Steven Richards, paired with Winterbottom.

Instead, Richards will drive on Sunday with Owen Kelly, who is well-performed in the V8 development series but without the familiarity with the team and machinery that Winterbottom has.

FPR reportedly is working hard on convincing sponsors to agree to it teaming Winterbottom and Richards for Bathurst in three weeks.

As much as sponsors are a vital part of motor racing, particularly in meeting the cost of people being able to go racing, it's a pity such decisions are reliant on sponsor agreement.

Winterbottom is seventh in the championship, making his 50th V8 round start and his fifth at Sandown, and he has a perfect finishing record in this event.

Richards is ninth in the championship and comes to Sandown in good form, having been second in the previous round at Oran Park behind surprise victory Lee Holdsworth.

While it is still seen as falling short of its potential, FPR has a consistently good record in long-distance races.

This will be the 40th touring, production or V8 Supercar endurance classic at Sandown since 1964.

Up until 1984 the race was run over various distances and lengths -- six hours, three hours, 250 miles and 400 kilometres.

Peter Brock won the event nine times, including seven years in a row, while Allan Moffat has six wins.

This Sunday's race will be Sandown's 24th over 500km -- 161 laps from 1.30pm, on Channel 7.

John Bowe has been racing 35 years and this will be his 20th Sandown enduro, bearing in mind that there were a few years ago that the pre-Bathurst 500 was run at Queensland Raceway before its eventual return to the eastern Melbourne circuit.

Bowe has won the Sandown classic three times -- in 1992 and ' 94 with Dick Johnson in Fords (Sierra and Falcon respectively) and in 2001 in a Ferrari when it was a production car race -- has had four pole positions for the event and been on the podium eight times.

And Bowe reckons that in some ways Sandown is harder to win than Bathurst, even though it is only half the distance.

"Sandown is just as hard on the car over 500km as Bathurst is over 1000km -- the mix of second gear corners and a bumpy track is very hard on the drive train," he says.

"Then there's the weather, which is always a major variable at this time of the year in Melbourne."

Making a welcome return to V8 Supercar ranks this weekend is two-time champion Glenn Seton -- in a Holden for the first time, as he prepares for yet another try at the Bathurst crown that has so famously eluded him.

Seton will share HRT's second Commodore with endurance specialist Nathan Pretty, while Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly are paired in HRT's main entry.

That is a combination well capable of winning on Sunday, while the time may be right for Dick Johnson Racing's Steve Johnson and Will Davison and Tasman Motorsports' Greg Murphy and Jason Richards to shine in Falcon and Commodore respectively.

"Murph's won Sandown twice and I've done well there in the past," says Richards.

But might Holdsworth and Dean Canto be the dark horses in their Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore?

"We're a really good chance, the GRM Commodores are always strong in enduros, and we have more race pace than previously, as was evident at Oran Park last month," Holdsworth says.

"And if it rains it won't worry us. Both of us have proved this year we can mix it with the race favorites, so bring it on!"

We would like to have seen Russell Ingall and James Courtney together but feel that the Stone Brothers/Ford outfit has diminished its chances by running Ingall with Luke Youlden and James Courtney with David Besnard.

All things being equal, our money will be on Tander and Rick Kelly if they drive together.

Otherwise Whincup and Lowndes, who have both been on the podium at Sandown the past two years.

But, as we said at the outset, don't be misled by any form guide when it comes to the Sandown 500.

Lots of things in the melting pot
A few little, and some not so little, matters before we take a look at where American open-wheeler racing is at today.

>> Townsville representatives are in Canberra today lobbying for $10 million of  Federal Government money to get the proposed V8 Supercar street race in the North Queensland city off the ground in 2009.
>> We reported quite extensively a couple of weeks back on the $30,000 fine imposed on veteran Sydney racer, and Aussie Racing Cars father figure, Phil Ward over a disagreement with officials at Oran Park last month. We gather there was a CAMS hearing on the matter late last week and the outcome is expected next Monday (September 17).
>> The Formula 1 world is awaiting with great interest tonight's (Thursday's) new sitting of the World Motorsport Council in Paris on the espionage saga involving McLaren and Ferrari. There are suggestions that McLaren may try to rope Renault into the case. We shall endeavour to report on the case Friday if there is a decision overnight.
>> A prominent Italian journalist who claimed to have evidence of emails between dual world champion Fernando Alonso and his Spanish countryman and McLaren test driver Pedro de la Rosa now at the centre of the spy scandal has reportedly confessed to inventing the quotes. Pino Allievi, of the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper, says he always insisted the quotes -- about how Ferrari got the maximum out of its Bridgestone tyres -- were "hypothetical". Allievi told Associated Press: "I made a free interpretation of what might have been said in the email."
>> India is now reported to have signed a commitment to build a grand prix circuit in Delhi. The deal, between Suresh Kalmadi of the Indian Olympic Association and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, is supposedly conditional only on the payment of a rights fee -- thought to be US$30 million -- by the end of this month.
>> We have noted reports from Qatar in the Middle East that it is going to cost US$15 million to light the 5.4km Doha track for the night race scheduled to open the 2008 MotoGP world championship there. That is an interesting benchmark cost in case Melbourne's Albert Park is ever lit for F1.

The state of American open-wheeler racing
The decade-long divide in American open-wheeler racing has always fascinated us.

So it was with great interest that this week we came across some comment from Gordon Kirby, a prominent journalist observing that scene.

Here's what Kirby says: "Both of this country's duelling open-wheel series are over for this year, on American soil at least, and each of the Indy Racing League and Champ Car's futures remain clouded, as ever.

"One thing that is clear is that the IRL has pretty well won the war for dominance of American open-wheel racing.

"In the past few years, Champ Car's TV ratings and overall media coverage have dwindled to barely measurable numbers.

"The IRL's ratings are hanging in there, but there's nothing to be proud of in its poor overall media numbers either.

"At least the IRL enjoyed an exciting and compelling championship battle this year, with a great grandstand finish (won by Dario Franchitti over Scott Dixon), but both series face serious problems in attracting more ink and air time, and in rebuilding and retaining their fan bases too.

"The loss of some of the IRL and Champ Car's biggest stars (Franchitti and Sam Hornish Junior perhaps to NASCAR and Sebastien Bourdais to F1) perhaps will make this problem even more difficult.

"Over the last two years Champ Car has lost the last of its oval races and now runs only on road and street circuits.

"While Champ Car has walked away from the ovals, the IRL has taken on enough road and temporary circuits that it's much closer to the broad-based challenge of the old CART Indy Car World Series than today's Champ Car series.

"An IRL driver has to be able to win on short ovals, intermediate ovals, long ovals, road and street tracks.

"This used to be CART's great claim to fame. It was the specific challenge which separated IndyCar racing from F1, and made it even more of an adventure for drivers like Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi and Nigel Mansell, each of whom won both F1 and CART titles.

"But, today, the IRL has a much more legitimate claim to that mantle than Champ Car which has lost the plot entirely in so many regards; diversity of tracks included.

"Of course, Champ Car now finds itself in the invidious position of turning to Europe for growth and income."

If you're interested in Kirby's columns his website is www.gordonkirby.com

Champ Car has just had races in Belgium and Holland, and its only remaining events this year now are on the Gold Coast on October 21 and then in Mexico on November 11.

Since reading Kirby's assessment, we have also discovered that San Jose in California has opted out of next year's Champ Car series, not wanting to pay another US$4 million race fee (it was only prepared to pay US$600,000) for a race on its 2.4km street course, and will be replaced on the calendar by another northern Californian track, Laguna Seca -- where CART and Champ Car ran for 22 years until 2004.

The race will be in mid-May, clashing with the build-up to the IRL's Indianapolis 500 in the MidWest.

San Jose's three-day attendance this year of 81,538 was reportedly a drop of 102,097 on last year.

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