MOTORSPORT: Stars emerging in rallying too

It's a form of motorsport that doesn't get a lot of attention, but we've noticed a couple of things this week that may be of significance. Or may come to be of significance.

Of all the things happening in motorsport at the minute, these are relatively -- indeed very -- small matters, but they caught our eye.

The first was that 20-year Brendan Reeves won the Rally of Lithgow, a round of the NSW championship. Victorian Reeves was driving a Subaru WRX with his sister, Rhianon Smyth, as his co-driver (pictured). They've been on the scene a couple of years now, and there has been talk of serious international competition for Brendan, but he's still in Oz.

It's hard to assess yet what winning a NSW state round will mean for him, but he's a young talent it might be worth keeping an eye on. And his and Rhianon's brother, Nathan, won the Bonnie Doon Rallysprint in Victoria last weekend with Rory Lyle as co-driver.

Next up for Brendan and Rhianon is next week's Targa Tasmania, the five-day tarmac classic in which they will drive a Mazda 3 MPS for Mazda Motorsport. They also are eyeing the new Rally Australia in NSW's Northern Rivers in September.

And news reached us overnight that Rhianon will also be co-driving for top New Zealander Emma Gilmour in the Asia-Pacific championship that includes the Rally of Queensland on May 8-10. They will be teammates to Australia's multiple Asia-Pacific champions Cody Crocker and Ben Atkinson (Emma's partner) in the Singapore-based MotorImage team.

Another youngster going well in rallying is Molly Taylor from Sydney. Molly is the daughter of Coral Taylor, who has co-driven Neal Bates to victory in four Australian championships -- most recently last year. Driving a Suzuki Swift Sport (pictured), Molly has won her class in both rounds of this year's British Rally Championship, beating six male rivals last weekend.This weekend Molly tackles the Somerset Stages in a Nissan Micra with English co-driver Jemma Bellingham. So there's another young Aussie to keep an eye out for on the international scene.

And an even bigger name to look out for in rallying in years to come will be MotoGP superstar Valentino Rossi, who has said overnight that he wants to have a 10-year career in cars once he finishes racing motorcycles.

"I think the World Rally Championship is the main option," Rossi said.

"I have a great relationship with Ford, so maybe it will be (with) Ford. In the summer of 2010 I will decide."

And the latest on Rally Oz, from the Tweed Daily News, is that there is argument over whether the Speed on Tweed course at Murwillumbah is part of the course for the September 3-6 WRC round, and protesters against the event wore kangaroo masks and koala hats at the Tweed Shire Council meeting this week. Reports on those matters here and more here

Auto Action magazine has an extensive interview this week, by editor-at-large Mark Fogarty, with Australia's top rally driver, Chris Atkinson, about his hopes of getting back into the WRC with the Citroen Junior Team.

It's round five of the WRC this weekend in Argentina. What chance a fifth straight win for French ace Sebastien Loeb?

Also this weekend Formula 1 is in Bahrain and the IndyCar series is in Kansas -- the third round, and the last before the Indianapolis 500. More on those later.

The announcement about those races that particularly intrigued us this week was from Walkinshaw Performance regarding Toll Holden Racing Team, Team Autobarn and Bundaberg Red Racing Team. The four co-drivers it named were Craig Baird, Steve Owen, Shane Price and Andy Priaulx, the three-time world touring car champion who raced at Bathurst in 2002 and '03, and in the Queensland 500 in 2002, for Kmart Racing.

The Walkinshaw announcement made no mention of Mark Skaife, the former owner of HRT, the five-time V8 Supercar champion, winner of a record 40 rounds, and five-time Bathurst 1000 winner. The most successful driver of the V8 Supercar era.

Now Skaife retired at the end of last season, prematurely, in his early 40s, and it's always been expected that he would drive in the endurance races this year. In the December 1, 2008, announcement that Tom Walkinshaw had regained ownership of HRT from Skaife it was stated: "Walkinshaw has requested Skaife to remain an ambassador for the Holden Racing Team, reflecting his achievements for the team and the sport. In addition, Skaife will remain as a major ambassador for the Holden brand and its products. ... Walkinshaw ... said ... he and Skaife looked forward to an exciting future for HRT. (And) Holden chairman and managing director Mark Reuss said the outcome (of the ownership agreement) would help to keep HRT as a benchmark racing team while ensuring Skaife retained involvement with the brands he had represented for so long."

What is now clear, and what we -- and plenty of others -- suspected at the time, is that those words of less than five months ago were hollow. What transpired last December between Skaife and HRT/Walkinshaw was a divorce. And that divorce is now absolute.

We read in this week's electronic Motorsport News that Skaife is set to drive several of this year's V8 Supercars in a back-to-back comparison for telecaster Channel 7 -- for which he is now an expert commentator. The venue is expected to be Queensland Raceway, with a Triple 8 FG Falcon and perhaps one from Stone Brothers, and a VE Commodore from Paul Morris' Supercheap Racing.

"Skaife is reportedly close to making a decision on whether to return as an endurance co-driver," MNews said.

It hinted that return could be with the new Kelly Brothers team. Others say it could be with Supercheap. It will be in a Holden for sure. But certainly not with HRT. Divorce absolute.

Time has passed rapidly since, but we spotted a short story in Auto Action -- a breakout to its main race coverage -- that summed up a lot about Hamilton. And since AA is a "cousin" of ours we'll lean on what was reported there, under the heading 'Star of the Race'.

"Ordinarily two wins (by Whincup) to maintain an unbeaten streak would be enough (to be star of the race), but not this week... Both driver combinations from Dick Johnson Racing (Steven Johnson and James Courtney) and Garry Rogers Motorsport (Lee Holdsworth and Michael Caruso) enjoyed exceptional results, particularly Johnson (second career pole) and Holdsworth (leading Holden runner for the weekend)...

"But (New Zealander) Fabian Coulthard produced one of the drives of the weekend (for Paul Cruickshank/Wilson Security Racing)... Accepting responsibility for committing to the wrong strategy in qualifying 21st for Saturday's race, Coulthard simply put his head down and sliced through to sixth on a street circuit more notoriously difficult to overtake on than Adelaide... A blinding start, patience where necessary, some judicious passing, good compulsory stops and, hey presto, a real result by getting on with the job. Fab' showed it wasn't by any means a flash in the pan by running a competitive fifth in the Sunday race."

Auto Action also reports that the qualifying session for the Sunday race is likely to be extended and run earlier at Winton, with two sessions -- for each half of the field.

European reports suggest that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone is prepared to subsidise three new teams to the tune of 30 million British pounds to make it happen. We can see Bernie's brain at work from here: if he pumps in that sort of money the (financial) value of his whole show will promptly increase by many times that amount. More importantly, perhaps, in the overall scheme of things it will generate value for his big private equity partner/investor, CVC.

An Aston Martin effort would be headed by David Richards of Prodrive/Ford Performance Racing (and formerly Subaru world rally team) fame. Richards already controls the great British sports car marque with Middle Eastern financial backing -- and he has a Le Mans 24-hour sports car classic campaign in train for this year. He has run two F1 teams before -- Benetton (now Renault) and Honda (now Brawn) -- and came close to establishing a "customer" McLaren-Mercedes team a couple of years ago.

Lola, which has been in motorsport for 50 years, has been in F1 before too, not with much success. It supplied chassis to various teams in the 1960s and ran under its own name at the start of 1997, but that effort lasted an inglorious two GPs.

Cosworth is in the background of the broader picture, with the capability -- and the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) blessing -- to provide cheap engines to new teams like these.

Expatriate Aussie Paul Stoddart, the last owner of the Minardi F1 team before it morphed into Scuderia Toro Rosso, may be involved with Cosworth, along with the engine company's major owner, Kevin Kalkhoven, the American-based Aussie of Champ Car fame.

While it would be great to see another six cars -- and drivers -- on the grid next year, it is perhaps too much to hope for. And it is dependant on the FIA succeeding in its cost-cutting drive. David Richards, for one, wants hard evidence of that.

However, we note that Red Bull's main motorsport man, ex-F1 driver Helmut Marko, has said that Webber resisted using 21-year-old wonder boy Vettel's set-ups early this year, but that now he is happy to accept them "because it is just faster". Marko also has been quoted as saying that the relationship between the pair is not exactly "harmonic", calling it more "healthy competition". more here

Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz is a happy man at the minute, though, with the Shanghai result a marvelous dividend on his F1 investment. And Mateschitz, a nonchalant guy but brilliantly clear thinker, has claimed that Red Bull has "the strongest driver pairing in the field, besides Ferrari (with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen)."

That seems a little extravagant, but the Red Bull pair are perhaps more equal than in most other teams which have evolved with more traditional No. 1 and No. 2 drivers. Perhaps BMW-Sauber, with Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, could claim to have a stronger pairing than Red Bull or perhaps even Ferrari, but there's not much advantage in that if your cars are not among the very best -- and BMW is not at the minute.

Mateschitz said this week that Vettel, surely in the sights of every team in F1, is "indispensable at the moment".

Yes, indeed. He's probably earning a couple of million dollars a year, maybe a few more suddenly, in the wake of his second GP victory at such a tender age, but in comparison with Kimi Raikkonen, reportedly the sport's highest paid driver on a deal that may be even bigger than Michael Schumacher had, the kid is great value for money. And he's almost as much of a talent off the track as on it -- he reckons racing cars should have names like ships or cyclones.

"A car should be named after a girl as it's sexy," Vettel said.

He christened his original RB5 car Kate, "but then it got smashed at the opening race in Australia, so we called this one (that won in Shanghai) Kate's Dirty Sister because it is more aggressive and faster."

Inevitably Vettel must end up at Ferrari or perhaps BMW, for which he drove his first GP (and scored a world championship point) at Indianapolis in 2007 and which feels it has some claim on him. But not for a year or two yet, and perhaps longer if Red Bull technical director keeps coming up with winning machinery.

Newey is now busy redesigning his RB5 car to accommodate a double-decker rear diffuser and has said: "It's not the easiest task getting it to fit... There is no doubt that a double diffuser does give performance... How much performance depends on how you interpret the regulations and how you adapt it to suit your own car, so that some teams will get more out of it than others.. It will certainly involve a lot of work, so we won't have a double diffuser before Monaco (May 21-24).

Other comments we've noted this week have been Webber's increasing outspokenness. Perhaps that comes with more than seven years of experience in F1 now and him being a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

He is taking up the concerns of drivers about twilight and night races and has said that "Melbourne was more of a concern than Malaysia" -- that the glare in Oz was a bigger worry than rain in Kuala Lumpur. Weber says he's particularly worried that it may rain during Singapore's September night race, and plans to talk to MotoGP riders about their recent experience in Qatar.

Webber also has said that KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) would not be missed if outlawed. Now that is not going to happen, because it is a "baby" of FIA president Max Mosley -- and it is important for F1 to appear to be a proving ground for road car advances. But -- with KERS being used on only a handful of cars (Ferraris, McLarens, and generally one BMW and at most one Renault -- Webber has said it's turned into "a bit of a mess".

"If you got rid of it now, I don't think it would hurt anyone -- and not the public. You've got a common unit coming for next year anyway, so it's not like anyone's developing it for next year."

Webber also highlighted KERS problems on Raikkonen's Ferrari in Malaysia, saying: "This is dangerous stuff."

Motorsport can do without any more danger, but we disagree with Webber on this subject. KERS is one thing that can give F1 relevance to everyday motoring. In terms of racing, we just worry a little that when every car has it, will we return to processional racing? Certainly hope not.

There has not been a Ferrari or McLaren driver on the podium at a GP this year. The last time those two teams were not represented in the presentations for three races in a row was 1993. Ferrari and McLaren are also yet to qualify on the front row this season. It's been 12 years since they went three successive GPs without a car on the front row.

But, hey, isn't it making F1 great!

Displaying some of his legendary uncle Ayrton's determination, Senna said F1 was his absolute priority.

"Bernie Ecclestone told me that I should not too tightly commit myself, because opportunities may come up," he said.

Perhaps a hint that Renault's Nelson Piquet Junior, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais, the Force India drivers -- Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil -- or Williams' Kazuki Nakajima are on borrowed time. Seeing a Senna back in F1 would be the cream on what is a delicious cake.

It was reported there that the Chinese GP "delivered the Ten network's new sports channel One its best audience to date" -- helped by the late-afternoon timeslot.

"One scored 143,000 viewers, according to preliminary OzTam ratings -- roughly twice its previous best," Mumbrella said

There was also a comment there that "the F1 ratings for One are a combination of the viewing to the SD and HD signal" and that "the delayed broadcast (11.20pm) on Ten averaged 146,000".

So the greatest open-wheeler race in America is getting back to something like its former glory, although the regular IndyCar series field during the economic downturn is 22-26 cars.

Team Penske will field three cars at The Brickyard: Aussies Ryan Briscoe, winner of the series season opener; Will Power, second at Long Beach last weekend; and Brazilian two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, now cleared in his big US tax evasion case. Canadian Paul Tracy will be there with KV Racing, the team for which Power raced last year. Rahal Letterman Racing will be there too, even though it could not find the financial support to run a full season, and John Andretti will drive for Dreyer and Reinbold in association with NASCAR's Richard Petty Racing.

The Penske line-up is that mighty outfit's first three-car entry in the Indy 500 since 1994, when it had the dream team of Al Unser Junior, Emerson Fittipaldi and Tracy. Roger 'The Captain' Penske has said: "Will (Power) has proven he's fast. He's certainly been a great team player working with Helio and with his crew. He's proven he's a great driver."

And Power said: "Running at Indy in a Penske car is a dream come true. It's the best possible combination you could have."

Word from the IndyCar paddock is that, once the 500 is over, there may be a drive for Power for the rest of the series with Dale Coyne Racing as teammate to Briton Justin Wilson.

The improved coverage from the Tele quarter began with Ray Kershler following the V8 Supercar races, and he's been followed by James Phelps. And for a while now Tim Blair has contributed a broader motorsport perspective.

We enjoyed Blair's commentary last Tuesday, when he touched on the performances of five Aussies recently -- Casey Stoner in MotoGP, Mark Webber in F1, Will Power in IndyCar, Marcos Ambrose in NASCAR, and Jamie Whincup in V8 Supercars. No mention of Ryan Briscoe in IndyCar, David Brabham in the American Le Mans Series or Daniel Ricciardo winning the first two races in the British Formula 3 Championship.

Blair reckoned "an era of (Australian) prominence comparable to the tennis reign of Laver, Hoad and Rosewall is beginning in motorsport, where Australians are pounding international rivals".

And Blair wrote that "motor racing attracts little government money".

Now -- as much as we enjoyed Blair's column, and applaud the broader coverage the Tele is giving motorsport than just V8 Supercars -- we reckon he's overstating the Australian "prominence" on the world stage to date (it's certainly well short of that golden era in tennis). And Blair's stretching things with his final comment that: "These blokes (Stoner, Webber, Power, Ambrose and Whincup) have made it by themselves. Who needs tennis?"

We also should point out that vast amounts of government money go into motor racing -- it's just that it's into events (most notably the F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne, the Gold Coast Indy, soon the Sydney 500, and many others) rather than to drivers or teams. It's for governments to decide whether they want to splurge big money on motor racing events on street circuits (we reckon it's mostly money down the drain), but we can't see how they could justify bankrolling individual careers in such a big-money sport.  But at least it's good to see a bit of motorsport in a major Sydney daily paper.

Now if Webber wins a GP, Briscoe or Power the Indy 500, Ambrose a Sprint Cup oval race, and Whincup and Stoner blow away their rivals again we'll equate it with that golden era of tennis. And be very happy to do it.

Australian Sam Abay -- who drove in British F3 last year for Carlin, the team Ricciardo is now with -- is still trying to find the sponsorship to take up what he has called "an amazing offer" from the Hitech team, which already fields Austrian Walter Grubmuller, who was second to Ricciardo in one of the races at Oulton Park two weeks ago. Abay's best results last season were fourth places at Thruxton and Spa in Belgium.

Three of the 10 rounds of the series are outside Britain.

The names of the drivers meant little to us, other than Vanina Ickx, daughter of former Belgian F1 star Jackie Ickx and herself a former DTM racer, and German touring car legend Klaus Niedzwiedz, a two-time winner of the Nurburgring race but better know in Oz for his relationship with Allan Moffat in a couple of Bathurst/Ford Sierra campaigns.

VW is also entering three Sciroccos on petrol, with one of them driven by its Dakar winner, South African Giniel de Villiers, and the other two driven by Volkswagen's competitors from that event -- Spanish rallying great Carlos Sainz and German Dieter Depping.

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