MOTORSPORT: Supercars CEO on the move

James Warburton is to depart Supercars at the end of the season after almost 4½ years as chief executive of the organisation running Australia’s premier motor racing championship.

Warburton’s exit was announced today amid suggestions in the sport he was unable to reach financial terms on an extension of his contract with the Supercars board. There is speculation his next job will be announced as early as tomorrow (Tuesday) but no word on his replacement at Supercars – or the process for finding one.

A former senior executive with the Seven and Ten television networks, Warburton said it had been “an honour and a privilege to work with such inspiring people within the Supercars family and to lead a sport of which I have been a fan since the age of five.

“I am truly in awe of the passion and commitment across the entire industry and the dedication to entertain our fans,” Warburton said.

“The sport is in great health, we have achieved so much and, more importantly, the path is set to raise the sport to even greater heights.”

Warburton said that he would remain the number one fan of Supercars and next year “will be sitting opposite pit lane, finally in shorts and a T-shirt with family, cold beer in the hand cheering”.

SA pulls plug on Australian Rally Championship round
South Australia is arguably the state most supportive of motorsport, but it seems SA won’t be part of the Australian Rally Championship next year.

Adelaide’s 11 years of a Formula 1 grands prix, its Supercar 500, its annual motorsport festival and the development of a brand new complex at Tailem Bend are evidence enough of SA’s enthusiasm for the sport.

When an ARC round was revived in the state in 2001, the Wayville Showground in Adelaide was packed to the rafters for a Saturday night stage, despite wet conditions making the competition difficult on the oval track.

Rally SA has been a popular event since, certainly with competitors, but organiser Ivan Stanelis has told the state’s rally panel and CAMS (Confederation of Australian Motor Sport) “that we won’t be running Rally SA) in 2018”.

“We’ve been running this event in its various guises since 2001 and in that time we’ve seen everything from World Rally Cars to the latest AP4 spec ARC cars compete for glory,” Stanelis said. “We’ve loved running this event, but like all good things they eventually have to come to an end. The organising committee thought it best to go out on a high and with the great success of our 17th event this year the time is right.”

Stanelis said his Rallyone organisation would continue running its other event, the SA state round event – Rally of the Heartland, in the Burra region - on the first weekend of June.

Despite the loss of the SA round of the ARC, RallySport magazine editor Peter Whitten has reported the 2018 ARC calendar will feature a new event at Coffs Harbour, in conjunction with Australia’s round of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, and perhaps a revived Tasmanian round.

Ford team right at home with prospect of WRC crown
M-Sport, the team running the Ford Fiestas leading the World Rally Championship, most likely will reap its greatest reward on home soil at the end of this month.

Team principal Malcolm Wilson says that “all we have to do is get one of our cars to the end” of Rally Great Britain in Wales on October 29 to clinch the WRC manufacturers’ title.

“If we do that then that’s enough to clinch the championship,” Wilson said. “If we don’t win the manufacturers’ title in the UK, for sure, we don’t deserve it.”

M-Sport drivers Sebastien Ogier and Ott Tanak are currently first and second in the drivers’ championship. Frenchman Ogier is poised for a fifth straight world title after his four with Volkswagen, while Estonian Tanak is one of the sport’s rising stars.

Wilson said M-Sport’s success with the Fiestas this year - against the factory teams of Hyundai, Toyota and Citroen - had far exceeded his pre-season expectations. “To have our two drivers leading the way is something we never thought possible,” he said.

While Hyundai will field four of its i20s at Rally GB, it will bring only three of the cars to Australia for the season finale at Coffs Harbour on November 16-19.

Apart from its permanent drivers Thierry Neuville and Andreas Mikkelson (winner of last year’s Rally Australia for Volkswagen), New Zealander Hayden Paddon will be in the third car, preferred ahead of Spaniard Dani Sordo for the gravel roads on the NSW north coast.

Neuville, 37 points behind Ogier and one behind Tanak after having been joint leader of the championship just weeks ago, has pretty much conceded defeat for the season with a maximum 60 points to be scored in Britain and Australia.

A huge year for Volkswagen in rallycross
While it’s out of rallying, Volkswagen has dominated rallycross in 2017 – on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Volkswagen has already claimed the World Rallycross Championship with its Polo model - with a round still to run in South Africa next month - and now it has again won North America’s Global Rallycross Championship (GRC) with its Beetle.

Ex-F1 racer Scott Speed, champion driver for the third straight year, and television presenter Tanner Foust won nine of the 12 events in this year’s GRC. Foust was the victor at the weekend’s finale in Los Angeles, but Speed beat him to the title by 19 points.

Volkswagen was the top manufacturer for the second straight year, with its Beetles fielded by the Andretti family’s Andretti Autosports team (which joins Australia’s Supercar racing next year as part-owner of the Mobil1 HSV racing team).

Despite not finishing in the LA finale, the Gold Coast’s Chris Atkinson finished seventh in the GRC drivers’ championship in a Subaru WRX STI, one place ahead of his teammate Patrick Sandell.

https://www.facebook.com/ScottSpeed/videos/10155696654717649

“Nothing really went to plan [in LA],” Atkinson said. “I got a pretty good start and got up to sixth from last during the final, but we had a slow puncture, so that was it.

“Otherwise the day was awesome for the team with another podium [for Sandell], which now makes three events in a row. Very encouraged going into next year.”

Lance Smith, president of Vermont SportsCar, which prepares the Subarus, said: “Last year we were at the bottom of the pack trying to get toward the top. Now we’re consistently running third, which leaves only two places in front of us.”

Subaru notched five podiums for the GRC season, two of them by Atkinson, and was on the rostrum at each of the final four rounds.

Meanwhile, Swede Johan Kristoffersson has won the World RX for Volkswagen ahead of his team boss Petter Solberg.

Toyota reigns in the Fuji rain
Toyota has ended its victory drought in the World Endurance Championship with a one-two result ahead of the rival Porsches at its home track, Fuji in Japan, in what was to have been a six-hour race.

However only 75 per cent of the distance was completed because of rain and heavy fog.

After two red flags, seven safety car periods, one full-course yellow and multiple slow zones imposed at restarts, Japanese officials relented and called-off the race 14 minutes from the scheduled end.

It was Toyota’s fourth success in five years with its hybrid sports cars at its home WEC round.

The Toyota quinella has given the Japanese marque, which had not won since the race at Spa earlier this year, a mathematical chance of overhauling Porsche in the remaining races in Shanghai and Bahrain.

Toyota drivers Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, victors at Fuji, sit 39 points astern of Porsche’s top trio, New Zealanders Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber and German Timo Bernhard. There are a maximum 52 points left for drivers to score in the final two races.

Further to last week’s news that Hartley was favourite to fill an F1 vacancy with Red Bull’s Toro Rosso team at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix in Texas, the 27-year-old Kiwi has now been confirmed as NZ’s first F1 driver in 33 years and will hit the Circuit of the Americas in an F1 car for the first time on Friday morning (Australian time).