MOTORSPORT: Terror fears shroud 30th Dakar

VW tries again to break Mitsubishi's Dakar stranglehold
The world's hardest, longest, most dangerous and most challenging motor sport event, the Dakar Rally, is celebrating its 30th year, starting tomorrow (Saturday) from Lisbon in Portugal -- and it's potentially more dangerous than ever for the 570 entries.

On the eve of the iconic 16-day rally that runs down the north-west of Africa to the capital of Senegal, the French government has called for the eight days through the "sea of sand" in relatively uninhabited Mauritania to be skipped after two mass killings for which an Algerian group linked to the al-Qaida terror organisation has been blamed.

Four members of a holidaying French family were shot dead on Christmas Eve and an attack on a military base three days later left three soldiers dead.

The Mauritanian government is desperately trying to reassure the international community the country is safe.

It says it is mobilising 2000 soldiers apart from the plainclothes security it already had in place for the nine stages through its sandy land on the 15-stage Holy Grail of cross-country rallying, which originally began from Paris.

The epic event was dreamed up by adventurer Thierry Sabine from the depths of the Libyan desert in 1977.

In total, 5736km of competition are planned this year, but the whole distance is almost 9300 km -- with just one day set aside for rest, on January 13 in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

The list of entries -- with 60 more than last year -- includes 205 vehicles registered in the car category, 245 motorbikes and 100 trucks.

The challenges facing competitors each day range from sandstorms and getting lost in the vast desert to bandits and now, potentially, terrorism.

Mitsubishi, Volkswagen and BMW all have strong entries in the car section, although BMW does not have works status.

Mitsubishi has dominated the event in recent years -- it is unbeaten since 2001 and has 12 victories in all.

Heading the drivers in its fleet of MPR 13 Pajeros is the greatest name in the history of the Dakar, 42-year-old Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel, who won a record six times in the bike category between 1991 and 1998 and has since had three wins in the car section -- including last year.

Peterhansel says rule changes, with a switch from six-speed to five-speed gearbox and from 32mm to 31mm engine air-restrictor, "tend to put the MPR13 at a handicap in outright performance terms".

"But we have spent all year working on the chassis and ride comfort, so there is good reason to be positive about our chances -- despite the high standard of the opposition," he says.

Peterhansel's countryman Luc Alphand, the 2006 Dakar winner (and 1997 alpine skiing World Cup champion), is likely to push him hard.

Japan's two-time Dakar winner Hiroshi Masuoka and Nani Roma, a Spaniard and another former bike competitor, complete the Mitsubishi driver line-up.

Volkswagen is desperate to end Mitsubishi's reign as the "unbeatables" and to become the first manufacturer to win with a diesel entry -- one of its Touaregs powered by a 280hp, 2.5-litre five-cylinder TDI engine and with air-restrictors reduced from 39mm to 38mm.

VW's line-up is headed by Spaniard Carlos Sainz, world rally champion in 1990 and 1992 and who has had sizeable leads in the Dakar the past two years but seen them erased in the desert.

VW won the FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup in November with Sainz and co-driver Michel Perin, a three-time Dakar winner who is convinced the stages before and after the rest day in Nouakchott will be decisive.

"The route between Nouadhibou and Atar was last used in 1994 and caused drama after drama at that time because the majority of the competitors got stuck in the dune mountains," Perin says.

As temperatures in the cabin can reach almost 70 degrees Celsius, it will be a bonus for driver Sainz that his Touareg will be air-conditioned for the first time.

South African Giniel de Villiers, second in 2006, and American Mark Miller, who was VW's top finisher in fourth place last year, are again with the German manufacturer.

Veteran Finn and four-time Dakar winner Ari Vatanen was dropped by VW and replaced by three-time German rally champion Dieter Depping, making his Dakar debut.

Portuguese driver Carlos Sousa, who led the event on the European leg last year, will drive a similar diesel-powered Touareg but in the colors of Team Lagos.

BMW's X3s also have an impressive driver contingent. Team X-Raid had intended to run Scottish icon Colin McRae, but his death in a September helicopter crash caused it to find another experienced campaigner.

Frenchman Bruno Saby, who won the Dakar in 1993 and was a Monte Carlo and Corsica rally winner, was called up to replace McRae. He will be fielded along with freestyle skiing star Guerlain Chicherit and Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah, who was sixth last year and is outstanding in sand.

Ex-Formula One driver, two-time Dakar winner and a podium finisher last year, Jean-Louis Schlesser, is running a trio of his self-built, Ford-badged buggies for himself, French compatriot Dominique Housieaux and Spaniard Jose Luis Monterde.

World touring car championship drivers Tiago Monteiro of Portugal and Yvan Muller of France are in SMG buggies and looking for top 10 finishes, while American Robby Gordon, a three-time Baja 1000 winner and now a NASCAR racer, is competing for the fourth time in a Hummer H3.

Gordon is the only American to have won a Dakar stage -- a feat he has achieved three times.

Japanese ex-F1 driver Ukyo Katayama is again driving a Toyota, while former Hollywood stunt driver Krzysztof Holowczyc is in a Nissan Navarra.

Belgian woman Vanina Ickx is again following in the footsteps of her great father, Jackie, while former DTM (German Touring Car Championship) lady driver Ellen Lohr is in the event for the third time.

Surfaces vary greatly over the long distance but seeded drivers are only allowed one type of tyre -- although they each have about 75 of the type they choose.

The trick is learning how to adapt the tyre pressures to best suit the terrain.

In the bike category, the KTM factory teams are the heavy hitters and with 2006 winner Marc Coma and last year's victor Cyril Despres are likely to give the Austrian manufacturer its ninth Dakar victory, although Yamaha and Honda would love to unseat it.

Since its inception 2000, American ace Donny Schatz has only lost the big race once -- and that was to his countryman Joey Saldana in 2004.

Parramatta also has race meetings on January 12, 17, 18, 19 and 31 and on February 1 and 2 -- with a dozen or so of the top Americans against Australia's best on most nights.

An NZ press report said Hamilton City Council had been granted $160,000 towards the staging of its first event in April -- just a fraction of that given to the A1 GP.

It was reported that -- under the Major Events Development Fund, administered by the Ministry of Economic Development -- the A1GP was given a $750,000 government grant just one year after the Government handed over $2 million to upgrade the Taupo track.

Meanwhile, Taupo Motorsport Park management is checking that circuit carefully to ensure it has not been affected by earthquakes that hit the area in recent days.

A quake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale was recorded at a depth of 120km near Taupo late last week, followed two days later by one measuring 5.6 at a depth of 80km.

Taupo Motorsport Park managing director David Steele said the depth of the quakes should have prevented damage, but the track was being carefully scrutinised before the A1 round on January 18-20 -- two weeks before Australia's round at Sydney's Eastern Creek.

The NZ round will be the first at which the identical open-wheeler cars of 22 competing countries are to use a 30 per cent biofuel mix.

It is an ethanol-based product, hiperflob e30, sourced from sugar beet in Europe and produced specifically for the series.

Shanghai F1 chief gets jail sentence
The sporting entrepreneur who got Formula 1 to China has been sentenced to four years in jail as the latest casualty of a big corruption scandal in Shanghai.

Yu Zhifei, 55, was found guilty of embezzling about $160,000 of public money as part of a scheme to buy a house at a reduced price, the Caijing business magazine said. Yu also was fined about $55,000.

Agence France Presse reports that Yu spent seven years as chairman of the Shanghai Shenhua Football Club during which time he allegedly embezzled large sums.

He became the chief of Shanghai's showpiece F1 track until last May, when he was sacked after his arrest four months earlier as part of a crackdown on corruption that led to the dumping of Shanghai's Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu and action against many others.

Ferrari will be first off the mark on Sunday, with its new missile for world champion Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa to be unveiled at its Fiorano test track at Maranello in Italy.

The F2008 Ferrari is due to be fully tested for the first time at Jerez in Spain a week later -- at the same time as the new Red Bull RB4 of Aussie Mark Webber and David Coulthard.

McLaren-Mercedes will reveal its MP4-23 at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, on Monday.

This is the car, to be driven by Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen, that was to have been the subject of special Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) scrutiny -- and that of rival teams -- in mid-February until the FIA closed the book on the Spygate saga.

Toyota's TF108 car is set for launch in Cologne, Germany, on January 10, while BMW-Sauber's unveiling is in Munich on January 14.

Honda and Renault will show their 2008 F1 cars on January 29 and 31 respectively.

Toyota team principal Tadashi Yamashina has admitted he has been given two years to prove it can succeed.

Honda principal Nick Fry has called for a cap to be imposed on F1 team budgets.

"Although it will be difficult to monitor, we think it can be achieved," Fry said.

He ought not waste time sitting around waiting for such a cap. Instead, he and Mr Yamashina ought to just get on with seeing that they produce better cars and results than last season's disasters.

"Fernando Alonso aquaplaned off the road in Fuji (at last year's Japanese Grand Prix), even with traction control," veteran David Coulthard said.

"The electronics still couldn't support him -- and that will happen a lot more without traction control because F1 engines are very peaky.

"We don't want to see a monstrous shunt where somebody rides over another car, goes into the crowd or has an accident like (Alex) Zanardi (at Germany's Lausitzring in a Champ Car in 2001).

"When you're flat out at 180mph (in rain) you see simply nothing."

FIA president Max Mosley has played down the driver concerns.

"Driving in the wet is quite dangerous -- with or without traction control," Mosley said.

"It's dangerous in the sense that you're likely to go off, but you're less likely to hurt yourself because the speeds will be lower."

German newspaper Bild-Zeitung reports the seven-time F1 world champion's sponsorship deals guarantee him 35 million euros over the next seven years.

Whether they mean cumulatively or each year, Schumi and the wife and kids ought to be pretty comfortable on that.

Younger Ralf won't be sitting quite so pretty, though, without an F1 drive this year.

Meanwhile, Schumacher M. and the man who headed the Ferrari team during his glorious years there, Frenchman Jean Todt, are set to appear together in a feature film to be called Asterix at the Olympic Games -- along with soccer stars Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham and tennis player Amelie Mauresmo.

Italian sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that Schumacher, who turned 39 this week, will be seen as a chariot racer called Schumix, while Todt -- dressed in red, of course -- gives orders from the pits.

The seven-minute scene featuring Schumi and Todt is said to have taken a month to film and the pair have donated their fees to charity.

The movie, with a French record film budget of 78 million euros, opens in France on January 30.

Spanish hopeful Roldan Rodriguez is said to have a similar amount in his quest to partner German Adrian Sutil.