MOTORSPORT: Shame on F1 manufacturers

...But this author has a bee in his bonnet today about something else -- the shameful performance of manufacturers, specifically in Formula One. More of that in a moment.

Ford and Holden each won a race at the Queensland Raceway round of the V8 Supercar Championship. So too did the top two drivers in the championship -- Jamie Whincup (Team Vodafone/Triple Eight Race Engineering/Ford) and Will Davison (Toll Holden Racing Team).

Marcos Ambrose notched up what he regards as his best result in NASCAR's Sprint Cup in America -- third on the short oval at Bristol, Tennessee, in front of 160,000 fans. Now, as we told readers on Friday, it's been announced he will race a Grand-Am sports car -- a Dallara-Ford! -- this weekend in Montreal, Canada, where he will also race in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series round.

Ryan Briscoe is back in the lead of the IndyCar championship with just three rounds remaining (at Chicagoland this week, then Motegi in Japan and Homestead in Florida), after finishing second to Dario Franchitti at Sonoma, California, this morning. That was Briscoe's seventh runner-up finish for the season, on top of two race wins, and he's now four points ahead of Franchitti and 20 clear of New Zealand's reigning champion Scott Dixon.
A Sonoma race report is here. Aussie James Davison was third in the Indy Lights round there. Unfortunately Briscoe's occasional Penske teammate, fellow Aussie Will Power, was badly hurt in a big crash during IndyCar practice at Sonoma, T-boning the stalled Conquest Racing car of former Gold Coast Indy race winner Nelson Philippe as he crested a blind corner. Power has two compressed vertebrae -- L2 and L4. He also had concussion.
He will be in Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for several days, be fitted for a custom back brace, and then be transported to Indianapolis, where he will be treated by the Indy Racing League's renowned orthopedic consultant Dr Terry Trammell. Philippe has leg injuries and both cars were destroyed.

Rubens Barrichello won his first F1 grand prix for five years at Valencia in Spain. Richly deserved after his wretched luck, and what he saw as poor treatment by his BrawnGP team, for much of this season. This victory came because McLaren botched a pitstop by its world champion Lewis Hamilton. Barrichello drove with the yellow and green colors of his injured countryman (and his Ferrari replacement) Felipe Massa on his helmet -- and a message to Massa: "See you on the track soon."
The most experienced driver in the field, Barrichello moved up to second place in the world championship, half a point ahead of Australia's Mark Webber, who qualified and finished ninth (out of the points) for Red Bull Racing, but the Brazilian is still 20 points behind Brawn teammate and championship leader Jenson Button, who was only seventh at Valencia. Hamilton finished second and Kimi Raikkonen third for Ferrari.

Which brings us to the matter that has us steaming today -- the performance of manufacturers in F1.

These manufacturers, remember, throughout the recent negotiations over the future of F1, painted themselves as so important, so crucial to the sport.

Well, this author feels that in many ways they are a disgrace.

And here's the evidence:
FERRARI: After Michael Schumacher's comeback was aborted, it plonked Luca Badoer, who hadn't raced in a F1 for a decade, in Felipe Massa's car for the European GP at Valencia. The 38-year-old Italian qualified last, much slower than French newcomer Romain Grosjean (14th in a Renault) and 1.5 seconds off the pace of 19th-placed Jaime Alguersuari, the Spaniard in his second GP for Scuderia Toro Rosso with a similar Ferrari engine. Badoer then spun on the opening lap, copped a drive-through penalty for crossing the pit-lane line, and ended up 17th -- the last of the classified finishers and a lap down. He now has the distinction of having driven 49 GPs (although this was his first for Ferrari) without scoring a solitary world championship point.
Nobody in F1 history has a worse record. Kimi Raikkonen qualified his Ferrari sixth at Valencia and finished third for the second GP in a row. That is an indication of where the Ferrari is at right now. While Badoer cannot be expected to be Schumacher, Raikkonen or Massa, his performance was a joke -- and Ferrari has to take the blame for it. Sure he had not raced on the streets of Valencia before, but it was Badoer himself who told us over the weekend that he had done 150,000 kilometres of testing for Ferrari in the decade since he last raced in F1 and that he was accustomed to driving as much as two GP distances in a day's testing (although, admittedly, F1 testing has been severely curtailed this year).
Ferrari has indulged a loyal test driver, fulfilled his boyhood dream by giving him a race seat in the sport's most revered and most successful team -- and made a fool of him and itself in the process. It says it expects him to do better at next weekend's Belgian GP at Spa, where he has raced before. But it is patently obvious the guy is not up to F1.
Ferrari had the much-better credentialled Spaniard Marc Gene, its other test driver, in reserve too. He had raced in F1 not only for Minardi, like Badoer, but Williams. And just a couple of months ago he won the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race in a Peugeot with Australia's David Brabham and Austrian Alex Wurz. Even Sebastien Bourdais and Nelson Piquet Junior, dumped recently by Toro Rosso and Renault, would have done a much better job than Badoer at Valencia. Barrichello winning there for Brawn, and at 37, was the ultimate irony.
Perhaps he should have been back in a Ferrari in the absence of Massa, who is to fly from Brazil to the US for further tests and treatment after the head injuries he suffered in Hungary. What Valencia also demonstrated is just how much Ferrari has lost the plot since the departure of former team boss Jean Todt, now campaigning to succeed Max Mosley as the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president, Ross Brawn, now running his own team born out of Honda's exit from F1, and -- dare we say it again -- the disgraced former top mechanic Nigel Stepney, the central figure in the 2007 Spygate saga.

TOYOTA: The Japanese manufacturer is approaching the end of its eighth season in F1. It has spent billions of dollars. Mark Webber made his GP debut, in Melbourne in 2002, the same day as Toyota. It took him more than 130 starts to chalk up a win -- longer than any other driver has taken in achieving an F1 world championship race victory. It was an agonising wait. Yet Toyota has still not won a GP -- and it's hardly like to this year.
Its factory cars are consistently outperformed by the Toyota-engined Williams of Nico Rosberg. Honda quit F1 at the end of last season and, despite having signed up to the new Concorde Agreement to remain in the sport until 2012, Toyota's future in GP racing is again unclear. Apart from the cloud over its F1 team, the Toyota-owned Fuji circuit will no longer rotate with Honda-owned Suzuka as the venue for the Japanese GP. It's an ignominious history in motor racing's premier competition.

BMW: We commented on it here at length at the time of the announcement, but BMW's withdrawal from F1 at the end of this year is pathetic. Sure, it is free to take its corporate decisions, but it has whimped it in GP racing. The game got too tough for it, especially competing against its German rival Mercedes, and it has thrown in the towel. In the process it has endangered the magnificent creation of the Swiss gentleman Peter Sauber and jeopardised the future of two fantastic drivers, Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld. For the record, an interview with BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen is here. We regard it largely as corporate spin, although Theissen is the meat in a sandwich. Far more frank is an interview Kubica gave, here.

RENAULT: In years gone by we admired the French manufacturer for achieving success, including world titles, against rivals spending much more money. But its recent performance is lamentable -- and, in all likelihood, is going to cost it the services of the most complete driver in GP racing today, dual world champion Fernando Alonso, seemingly set to be announced/confirmed at next month's Italian GP to have a Ferrari contract (although we suspect he may not race a red car until 2011).
The question we ask about Renault is: why is it sitting seventh (of 10 teams) in the constructors' world championship, and a driver of Alonso's supreme talents only equal 10th in the drivers' championship, when Red Bull Racing, with Renault engines in Adrian Newey-designed RB5 chassis, is second in the constructors' championship and Red Bull drivers Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel third (by just half a point, and previously second) and fourth (previously second and third) in the drivers' championship? And why has Vettel had four engine failures this season -- two of them at Valencia? The young German superstar joked that he may be an engine "killer" but commentator and ex-driver Martin Brundle made the point it was almost impossible for this failure record to be Vettel's fault.
Speculation has resurfaced about Red Bull changing its engine supplier next season. To Mercedes, we presume. That was the talk a while back. What an irony that would be. Webber could so easily have been killed at Le Mans a decade ago in two horrific crashes at the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz sportscar that was then banished from racetracks -- and, already almost broke, he had to buy his way out of his Mercedes contract.

MERCEDES-BENZ: Such a proud and wonderful name and brand, but so little to show for its time in F1 -- and the money and energy it has injected into it. McLaren has been its partner for a decade or so and is effectively its factory team. Yet this year a "customer" team, the new Brawn GP, has won seven GPs with a Mercedes engine to the one of the manufacturer's "factory" team. 

While we may sometimes take issue with the actions or statements of F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone and 16-year FIA president Max Mosley, we wholeheartedly agree with their stance on car manufacturers in F1 -- that they will come and go according to their marketing strategies, and that they should not be allowed to make the rules, let alone own the show.

As Ross Brawn and Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz are now showing, and the legendary Colin Chapman, Frank Williams and even Ron Dennis have shown before, F1 teams are best run by entrepreneurial individuals with car manufacturers as engine suppliers.

Ferrari is a different, and special, case. We just wish it would get back to being the Ferrari it ought to be. And not bring disgrace on itself and Luca Badoer by fielding him in GPs.
 
F1 drivers' world championship standings after 11 of 17 rounds -- Jenson Button (Great Britain, Brawn-Mercedes) 72 points, Rubens Barrichello (Brazil, Brawn-Mercedes) 54, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 51.5, Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 47, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Williams-Toyota) 29.5, Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 27, Kimi Raikkonen (Finland, Ferrari) 24, Jarno Trulli (Italy, Toyota) 22.5, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 22, Timo Glock (Germany, Toyota) 16, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Renault) 16, Heikki Kovalainen (Finland, McLaren-Mercedes) 14, Nick Heidfeld (Germany, BMW-Sauber) 6, Robert Kubica (Poland, BMW-Sauber) 3, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 3, Sebastien Bourdais (France, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 2.

F1 constructors' world championship -- Brawn-Mercedes 126 points, Red Bull-Renault 98.5, Ferrari 46, McLaren-Mercedes 41, Toyota 38.5, Williams-Toyota 29.5, Renault 16, BMW-Sauber 9, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 5, Force India-Mercedes 0.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after 16 of 26 races -- Jamie Whincup (Ford) 2007 points, Will Davison (Holden) 1824, Garth Tander (H) 1479, Craig Lowndes (F) 1478, Steven Johnson (F) 1374, Mark Winterbottom (F) 1332, Lee Holdsworth (H) 1269, Russell Ingall (H) 1187, James Courtney (F) 1154, Michael Caruso (H) 1134.

NASCAR Sprint Cup driver standings after 24 of 36 races -- Tony Stewart (Chevrolet) 3564 points, Jimmie Johnson (Chevrolet) 3344, Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 3310, Denny Hamlin (Toyota) 3141, Carl Edwards (Ford) 3110, Kurt Busch (Dodge) 3103, Ryan Newman (Chevrolet) 2995, Greg Biffle (Ford) 2986, Juan Pablo Montoya (Chevrolet) 2975, Mark Martin (Chevrolet) 2971, Kasey Kahne (Dodge) 2963, Matt Kenseth (Ford) 2945, Kyle Busch (Toyota) 2911, Brian Vickers (Toyota) 2906, Clint Bowyer (Chevrolet) 2833, David Reutimann (Toyota) 2785, Marcos Ambrose (Toyota) 2639.

IndyCar drivers standings after 14 of 17 rounds -- Ryan Briscoe (Australia, Team Penske) 497 points, Dario Franchitti (Great Britain, Ganassi Racing) 493, Scott Dixon (New Zealand, Ganassi) 477, Helio Castroneves (Brazil, Penske) 371, Danica Patrick (United States, Andretti Green Racing) 335 points.

Other matters, briefly:
>> Not only will Australia's top rally driver, Chris Atkinson, be missing from the new Rally Australia in NSW's Northern Rivers region on September 3-6 but also Cody Crocker, the multiple Australian and Asia-Pacific champion, who said on Melbourne radio station SEN (Sports Entertainment Network) at the weekend that his Singapore-prepared Subaru would not have been cleared through Customs in time. Rising star Brendan Reeves won't be competing either after his big crash with his co-driver sister at the final round of the Australian Rally Championship in South Australia.

>> Steven Jones and Ruari Souter-Dawson have taken back-to-back wins in the modern competition class of Targa West in a Nissan GTR. An exhaust irregularity on a similar car cost Tony Quinn and Naomi Tillett second place. Details at rallysportmag.com.au or targawest.com.au

>> NASCAR is considering getting rid of carburettors and moving to fuel-injection systems. See here.

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