MOTORSPORT: Schoolboy's touring car hat-trick

Alex Rullo won a V8 touring car race as a 14-year-old. Now he's won another three just weeks after his 15th birthday.

The Perth schoolboy who is still a year away from being eligible for a learner's licence to drive on public roads took a clean sweep of the Kumho V8 Touring Car Series round at Ipswich's Queensland Raceway at the weekend.

He races a Ford Falcon driven by Mark Winterbottom in the 2006 and '07 V8 Supercar Championships in the Kumho series, which is part of the Shannons Nationals.

The car is now run by Matthew White's MW Motorsport.

Rullo's first victory, on his last day as a 14-year-old in June, came at the Winton circuit in northern Victoria.

That made him the youngest winner of a national level touring car race in Australian motorsport history.

He made his debut in the Kumho series – the third level of touring car racing in Australia, behind V8 Supercars and the Dunlop development series – at Melbourne's Sandown in March.

At the halfway mark of the Kuhmo series Rullo is just five points off the championship lead held by another teenager just a couple of years his senior, Queenslander Liam McAdam.

The pair tangled early in the third race at Queensland Raceway, with McAdam ending in a gravel drop and pole-position starter Rullo suddenly down in fourth but recovering after a safety car intervention to complete his clean sweep and second consecutive round victory.

The sons of a couple of legendary touring car drivers also had great success at QR.

Ben Grice, son of Allan, extended his dominance in the Super Six Touring Car Series to six with a repeat of his dominance last month at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Grice's three comfortable victories came ahead of the series' defending champion Gavin Ross, both of them in Holdens.

Jack Perkins, son of Larry, upstaged long-time sports sedan master Tony Ricciardello in winning all three races in that category.

Perkins, these days a V8 Supercar endurance series co-driver, raced an Audi at the weekend in place of its injured regular driver Darren Hossack and set a sports sedan lap record for the circuit.

Ryan Simpson won all three races in the Porsche GT3 Cup, Jon Collins extended his Formula 3 Championship lead with a double for Gilmour Racing and Cameron Hill strengthened his grip on the Formula Ford series with his two latest wins making it eight victories in the past nine races for him in that category.

Ron Walker, who has retired after heading the GP organisation since the event moved from Adelaide to Melbourne in the mid-1990s, publicly anointed Harnden as his successor 18 months ago.

However, it seemed the government had favoured Paul Little, the former chief of the Toll Holdings logistics group that for many years was a major sponsor of the Holden Racing Team, for the GP post.

Little has been in the headlines in the past couple of years as the chairman of the Essendon AFL club involved in a protracted anti-doping controversy, although he assumed that position long after the questionable practices at the centre of that saga.

Harnden was the AGPC chief executive for four years until 2002 and has been on its board since 2006 and was Walker's deputy from 2007.

He is better known for having run Melbourne's 2006 Commonwealth Games and this year the ICC Cricket World Cup.

"John Harnden has a history of helping to deliver some of the biggest and best sporting events our state has seen. His leadership and expertise will be invaluable," Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said.

It seems likely that Little will join the AGPC board before too long with the organisation  – which also runs the annual MotoGP at Phillip Island – under constant government pressure to contain losses now consistently around $60 million a year.

The 10 teams have been allowed 15 days of private testing already, although the only one to have used all of those was the one backed by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin brand and now associated with Citroen offshoot DS Automobiles.

While most of the teams have had new powertrains approved for the 10-event second season – still without an Australian round – there are reports that at least two are likely to revert to the McLaren-Hewland system used by all teams in the first season.

Brazil's series champion Nelson Piquet Junior remains with Team China, while Jacques Villeneuve – Canada's 1997 Formula 1 world champion – has been confirmed with the Monaco-based Venturi team and Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne has moved from America's Andretti Autosport to DS Virgin Racing.

That could open possibilities of more Formula E drives with Andretti for 21-year-old Australian Matthew Brabham, whose main aspirations are in IndyCar racing.

Andretti is expected to retain Switzerland's Simona de Silvestro as its main Formula E driver and rotate others in its second car.

Logano, who won the Daytona 500 at the start of the season in February, snatched victory at The Glen in his Ford as series leader Kevin Harvick's Chevrolet ran out of fuel at the last corner.

Kyle Busch, who has had a hot streak in recent weeks, snuck by Harvick too, to take second place in a Toyota.

Busch, who missed several races early in the season with leg injuries, is now in the top 30 in the points standings and likely to make The Chase for the title over the final 10 rounds.

Logano charged from 14th at the final restart in the race at The Glen while Harvick led 29 of the last 30 laps.

Harvick still leads the series by 42 points.

Tony Stewart, the three-time series champion now facing civil proceedings over the death a year ago of a young dirt-track speedway rival a year ago, started third but was classified last after his Chevy dropped oil and ground to a halt before two-thirds distance.

NASCAR's most successful road racer, the retiring Jeff Gordon, ended four laps down after a broken brake line.

A.J. Allmendinger, who beat Ambrose to the finish at The Glen last year, started from pole position and led the first 20 laps but wound up 24th after a battery change.

Penske's 2012 Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski finished seventh.

In the meantime Frenchman Davy Jeanney has won his second straight round of World Rallycross Championship in Canada.

Jeanney drives a Peugeot 208 RX Supercar for the Swede Timmy Hansen's team.

He led the final from the starting lights to the chequered flag at Trois Rivieres, while Volkswagen Polo drivers and Marklund Motorsport teammates, Finn Topi Heikkinen and American Tanner Foust, joined him on the podium.

It was the first final since World RX began last year that Norwegian superstar Petter Solberg had not reached.

However, reigning champion Solberg still leads this season by 46 points.

Team Peugeot-Hansen now trails fellow Swedish outfit Ford Olsbergs MSE by just two points in the teams championship.

Olsbergs MSE's Norwegian Andreas Bakkerud is now the only driver to have made every final this year.

World RX chief Martin Anayi boasted that eight nationalities and five manufacturers were represented in the Canadian final, in which drivers topped 200kmh on the straight.

The next round is in Norway on August 22-23.