MOTORSPORT: Stadium Super Trucks grounded

The spectacular Stadium Super Trucks that American daredevil Robby Gordon introduced to Australia four years ago have been banished from next month’s Gold Coast 600.

The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport has suspended the category from racing in Australia on safety grounds, after a wheel that came off one of the trucks at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway in May hit a spectator bridge crossing the track.

While competitors and fans are unhappy about the ban, the highly-sprung trucks renowned for their huge jumps have been replaced on the Gold Coast 600 program by the Kumho V8 Touring Cars, the unofficial third tier of Supercar racing.

The Stadium Super Trucks were a sensation when introduced at the 2015 Adelaide 500 and, apart from returning there each year since, have also featured at the Gold Coast in 2015 and ’16, the Sydney 500 in 2015, at Townsville in 2016, Darwin’s Supercar event last year and in Perth the past two years.

Although they are hugely entertaining, Gordon’s competition visa was withdrawn by CAMS in mid-2017 after he was charged with dangerous driving by Northern Territory police, and fined $4000, for performing burnouts in one of the trucks in Darwin’s city centre.

The visa ban was reversed after an apology from Gordon and a $10,000 donation to the Australian Road Safety Foundation.

Matthew Brabham, grandson of late triple Formula 1 world champion Sir Jack Brabham, has been the top competitor in the trucks as his international open-wheeler career has stalled.

Versatile businessman-racer Paul Morris, winner of the 2014 Bathurst 1000 with Mark Winterbottom, has been another prominent competitor in the trucks and says the axing of them from the Gold Coast event on October 19-21 is “devastating”.

The Kumho V8s have completed their four-round series – at Victoria’s Phillip Island and Winton circuits, Queensland Raceway and South Australia’s new Tailem Bend facility – but have now been invited to join the Gold Coast support program along with the Porsche Carrera Cup, SuperUtes and Aussie Racing Cars.

Australian Rally Championship leader Eli Evans could wrap up a fourth national title in this weekend’s penultimate round, the Adelaide Hills Rally, but says he expects his tussle with Steve Glenney to continue to Rally Australia in mid-November.

“The points system rewards consistency,” said Skoda Fabia R5 driver Evans, who has a 51-point gap (290-239) on Subaru Impreza WRX STi rival Glenney.

“I need to be 102 points clear after this event, as there are 101 points up for grabs at Coffs Harbour (Rally Australia).”

Harry Bates is third in a Toyota Yaris with 206 points and 2016 champion Molly Taylor fourth on 200 in her production rally car (PRC) class Subaru WRX.

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The event begins tonight (Friday) at The Bend Motorsport Park, with drivers making two runs side-by-side in pairs on a 1.7km stage. Saturday’s six stages are south-east of Adelaide and Sunday’s nine stages on mainly forest roads in and around Mt Crawford, which had been long been Rally SA’s hub, north-east of Adelaide, with the podium at the Mt Barker service park.

Glenney admits his Subaru does not have the pace of the Skoda but says he and co-driver Andy Sarandis are enjoying “annoying” Evans and his co-driver Ben Searcy.

Having spent most of his life in the Adelaide Hills, although he now lives in Tasmania, Glenney particularly welcomes the inclusion of the Mawsons Road stage in Rally SA.

“It is the road that many of us (rally drivers) regard as probably the most enjoyable in the country,”Glenney said.

“It’s a cracker … just constantly-linking corners – left, right, left, right – so you’re sideways the whole time.”

Another feature will be the 37.3km Monardo Mega that will be stages seven and eight, separated only by a 20-minute service, to complete heat one on Saturday.

It’s almost two years since Volkswagen quit world rallying after four years of dominance, but it will be back with a works team at next month’s Rally Catalunya in north-eastern Spain.

It will be a one-off though, in the WRC2 class, and with 2003 world champion Petter Solberg driving a Polo GTI R5.

The October 25-28 event is after Rally Great Britain and the last before Rally Australia on November 15-18.

It is the competition debut for this Polo, and another will be driven by Frenchman Eric Camilli.

The model will then be run by customer teams in national and international championships under the R5 regulations -- 1.6-litre turbocharged engine, 32mm restrictor and five-speed gearbox, with the price capped at 180,000 Euros (about $A290,000).

Charismatic Norwegian Solberg, nicknamed Hollywood, won 13 WRC rallies in a 15-year career with Toyota, Ford, Subaru and Citroen (eventually as a part-time privateer), before concentrating on rallycross.

He won World RX titles in 2014 and ’15 and now runs a VW team with which his Swedish teammate Johan Kristoffersson took last year’s crown and will collect it again this season.

VW does the development and technical preparation of the two Polo R rallycross ‘Supercars’, while Solberg’s team looks after the logistics, running of the cars at competitions and the marketing.

VW motorsport director Sven Smeets said Solberg had been chosen for “the debut of our new customer sport car because to give everything, always 110 per cent, is Petter’s trademark”.

Rally Catalunya will be the first time in eight years that a WRC event has had three world champions competing, with the sport’s most successful driver, nine-time world champion Sebastien Loeb, back for a cameo with Citroen, while his countryman Sebastien Ogier in an M-Sport Ford Fiesta is fighting for a sixth straight world title.

Ogier is being touted for a return next year to Citroen, his original manufacturer – which he left in 2011 and which hasn’t won a WRC title since Loeb’s retirement from full-time rallying in 2012.