MOTORSPORT: Squeeze on our international events

Developments in Asia will increase the pressure on Australia to retain its major international four-wheel motorsport events – the grand prix and, more imminently, Rally Australia.

Vietnam is to be added to the Formula 1 World Championship calendar in 2020 – a fourth Asian F1 round along with Japan, China and Singapore.

Moves for the return of a Japanese round of the World Rally Championship also are gaining steam. It’s not happening for next year, as had been widely expected, but Toyota – poised to win the WRC manufacturer championship with its Yaris at next week’s Rally Oz at Coffs Harbour in just its second year back in world rallying – wants it badly.

And it wants its Japanese rivals Subaru and Mitsubishi back in the sport too.

There are indications of that happening.

Japanese reports this week suggest Subaru is developing a new sub-compact hatchback – with a 1.8-litre turbocharged four-cylinder boxer engine – for a return to the WRC after its pull-out 10 years ago, as the global financial crisis struck, and a decline in its European sales since.

Mitsubishi had already been reported to be “well advanced” on a return to the WRC with its Mirage.

Chile has been added to next year’s WRC calendar, after Turkey’s return this year, making 14 rounds in 2019 – probably the limit for the manufacturers.

Rally Australia is on the schedule again next year, but if Japan is added for 2020 – coinciding with the Tokyo Olympics – that will create a squeeze on existing events, especially those a long way from the bases of the European-based manufacturer teams.

Japan held WRC rounds before the GFC on its northern island, Hokkaido. It recently held what is called a WRC ‘candidate rally’ – a trial run for addition to the championship, monitored by Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) officials – on asphalt stages at Shinshiro in Aichi prefecture, on the ‘doorstep’ of Toyota City in Nagoya.

Leading global rallying correspondent Martin Holmes has said that “the FIA must now choose which existing event should be removed from the series to make way for the return of Japan to the series in 2020”.

Incidentally, Australia won’t have an Asia-Pacific Rally Championship round next year for the first time since 1987.

APRC rounds have been held at Rally Australia in its days in Western Australia, and in Queensland and Canberra, but Indonesia is expected to pick up ‘our round’ after the Brindabella Motor Sport Club in the ACT decided it was not financially viable.

Vietnam’s new grand prix will be a street race in Hanoi and F1 correspondent Dieter Rencken has quoted a senior government official, Mai Tien Dung, on RaceFans.net saying it will not be funded from state coffers but “the private sector”.

The promoter is Vingroup and its event will be the first GP added since American group Liberty Media took control of F1 from Bernie Ecclestone and private equity empire CVC.

Liberty has hopes of expanding to 25 GPs a year, although the teams prefer a ceiling of 20 – certainly unless events are cut back to just Saturday-Sunday.

The prospect of another Asian race in Thailand – from where Red Bull originated and now hosting a MotoGP – could create a further squeeze with implications for the Australian F1 GP, although it is secure for the time being with Melbourne’s contract until at least 2023.

Mercedes could clinch its fifth straight constructors’ championship in the five years of F1’s hybrids at the Brazilian GP in the early hours of Monday and, despite Lewis Hamilton having wrapped up the drivers’ title, the race could be well worth a look with a 50 per cent chance of rain.

It will be Daniel Ricciardo’s penultimate outing with Red Bull before his switch to Renault factory team. He’s in a more positive frame of mind now after his retirements with mechanical failures in the US and Mexico, but Interlagos in Sao Paulo is one of his least favoured tracks. His best finish there has been sixth, although he loves the carnival atmosphere.

Red Bull has not led a lap in Brazil in the hybrid era and had only podium – Max Verstappen’s third place two years ago.

While its Renault-engined RB14s will be under-powered for this track, Verstappen goes into the race the last-start winner in Mexico after his second place in the US and carsales.com.au global ambassador Ricciardo was well placed in both before his retirements.

Four drivers will fight out NASCAR’s Monster Cup in 10 days, but with just one ‘qualifying’ race before that finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida there is only one certain participant – the Penske-Ford team’s Joey Logano.

Kevin Harvick, driver of one of Tony Stewart’s Fords, had been locked in too until the rear spoiler of his Fusion was found to be too far off centre after his win last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.

Harvick and his team were each penalised 40 points and two crew suspended from the remaining two races, with the more senior of them, Rodney Childers, fined US$75,000 ($A103,500). Stewart Haas Racing did not challenge the penalties.

Six drivers other are vying at Phoenix, Arizona, this weekend with 2014 champion Harvick for the other three spots in the Florida decider – Toyota’s 2015 and 2017 champions Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Junior, as well as three other Ford drivers – 2004 champion Kurt Busch, Aric Almirola and Clint Bowyer – and Chevrolet-mounted Chase Elliott.

Team Penske and another of its drivers, Ryan Blaney, lost 20 points after Texas, where Blaney finished second, over a panel infraction.

While 28-year-old Logano is the only certainty so far for the four-way shootout at Homestead-Miami, he has come under fire from others for his tactics in recent weeks and runs the risk of retaliation in the final as he shoots for his first Cup title.

The first manufacturer confirmed for the World Endurance Championship’s new era from 2020, with variations of ‘hypercar’ road machines in place of hybrid prototypes, is America’s Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus.

It will build its 007 cars for the series – which includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans – in Turin, Italy, most likely with General Motors-sourced engines.

The ‘hypercar’ regulations are to be ratified by the FIA next month, with Aston Martin’s Adrian Newey-designed Valkyrie set to be among the participants.