MOTORSPORT: Test of V8Supercar strength in Sydney

Apart from the V8SC title contenders battling it out at the Creek, Marcos Ambrose is chasing another NASCAR victory, this time at the short, high-banked Bristol oval in Tennessee, in the race to make The Chase for the Sprint Cup and Will Power is trying to extend his newly-regained IndyCar lead in California as that series nears its climax.

Chris Atkinson is to drive a MINI for the first time in the World Rally Championship round in Germany, but the driver he has replaced is taking legal action against the team over his ousting. Meantime, Australian youngster Brendan Reeves is challenging for the WRC Academy title, in which he is running second to British driver, Elfyn Evans.

In Australian rallying, the opening round of the new Australian Targa Championship, Targa Adelaide, is on, with Tasmanian Jason White having led the opening stages in atrocious conditions in his Lamborghini Gallardo ahead of Tony Quinn in his Nissan GTR.

The return of the V8s to Sydney’s sole remaining permanent circuit, as the last round before the endurance races, came about after the failure of the series organisers to get up another international event this year. It also comes against a backdrop of clouds over the future of the street race at the Homebush Olympic precinct beyond the current contract that expires next year and intensifying negotiations for a new TV deal for the sport.

The Nine Network reportedly has shown interest in V8SC but its interest may have been diminished by the mega money it is shelling out to secure National Rugby League’s TV contract. This likely leaves the contest between Ten and Seven.

Ten prided itself as 'The Home of Motorsport' when it had the V8SC telecasts for a decade and is keen to get them back. It needs major sporting content but it won’t want to pay, or be capable of paying, too high a price.

After an enthusiastic start to its five-year contract Seven’s commitment to the V8s has been questionable, although (having failed to get rugby league and unlikely to get the cricket it wants off Nine) it may seek to retain them -- perhaps in a shared arrangement with pay network Fox somewhat like its AFL deal.

With the introduction of the Car of the Future next season - and V8SC chairman Tony Cochrane tipping a fourth make to join Holden, Ford and Nissan by the middle of next year - Ten would appear to be the best outcome for motorsport fans as it could commit to screening all races on its primary channel. This is something Seven hasn’t been prepared to do.

This weekend, among the state capitals, only Sydney and Brisbane viewers will get the racing from the Creek on the main Seven channel, with it relegated to 7Mate in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

Fox is an increasingly important player in sports telecasts, with the capacity to pay hefty prices for rights. It is not hard to envisage a Seven-Fox proposal that would see key rounds (Bathurst, Adelaide, the Gold Coast and perhaps the Sydney street race, if it survives) on free-to-air and the others on pay TV.

While that would not be palatable to V8SC fans who don’t have pay TV, and unwilling or unable to fork out for it, it could be the way for the series organisers to extract the best price for the rights.

Mr Cochrane says the new TV arrangements will be announced in V8SC Australia’s own good time. Soccer (Football Federation Australia) is also trying to bed down its next TV contract now that the AFL and NRL arrangements are in place.

Meanwhile, viewing figures this weekend for Eastern Creek (where there has been no V8SC racing since 2008) will be interesting. While the venue was often maligned in the past, particularly by Cochrane, the TV audiences for Homebush often have been no better than those from the Creek, and in some cases lower.

One factor for the Creek -- on which more than $10 million has been spent in recent times on an upgrade -- is the impact of the subdued economic conditions on attendance. A three-day crowd of 28,000 was claimed in 2008, and expectations for the two-day meeting this weekend are for only 25,000.

Attendances at other sports recently give little cause for optimism, however, it is vital that there be signs the sport can re-establish itself at the one permanent circuit in Australia’s biggest market – particularly if the Homebush event is doomed.

This weekend’s round is a one-off return, but Sydney Motorsport Park chief Glenn Matthews has flagged already that the venue wants to take up options for next year and 2014.

Eastern Creek a gaping hole in Whincup’s record
The format for the Creek is two races – 140km (36 laps) Saturday afternoon and 220km (56 laps) Sunday afternoon – with hard and soft tyres to be used in both. Almost half the field – 11 of the 28 drivers – have never raced a current-spec V8 there, although most have experience in other categories.

The main change to the track is that the right-left approach to turn six has been replaced with a straight.

As amazing as it may seem, triple champion and series leader Jamie Whincup has never won a V8 Supercar race at the Creek. However, Whincup and Lowndes have won all four races at the past two championship rounds – Whincup at Townsville and Lowndes at Ipswich. And the Triple Eight pair and Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison have won all 17 races in this championship between them.

The top two teams also are the only ones to have completed their 2013-spec Cars of the Future, with FPR to start testing of its Falcon next month.

Winterbottom was the last winner at the Creek, while Davison scored his breakthrough victory there that weekend – for Dick Johnson Racing, before his two seasons with Holden Racing Team.

HRT has been the big flop this season, with British-based team owner Ryan Walkinshaw (son of late founder Tom Walkinshaw) admitting in this week’s Auto Action magazine that the team's performance at Ipswich, where Garth Tander was lapped on the Sunday, was “unacceptable and embarrassing”.

The HRT Commodores will front at the Creek with a major front suspension change. A major engine development program is underway as the once-dominant team tries to salvage something with a successful defence of its Bathurst crown.

While Will Davison remains the most winning driver this season, with six victories to Whincup’s five, Lowndes – with three wins, like Winterbottom – has the best record at the Creek in this weekend’s field. He’s won five times at the track before, a tally bettered only by the retired Mark Skaife(10) and now NASCAR driver, Marcos Ambrose (7).

While the Creek has so often been unloved, Winterbottom – who grew up nearby – said it was “a track that drivers rate as one of the best”.

“Seeing it not used was wasting one of the country’s great racetracks,” he said.

Ambrose in five-way contest for Chase
Only one spot in NASCAR’s Chase looks to be open – and Marcos Ambrose wants it.

The top 10 drivers in the Sprint Cup after the next three races automatically make The Chase (contested over the final 10 rounds) and there are two wildcards, with Kasey Kahne – a two-time winner this season – almost assured of one of them.

Ambrose needs to add another victory to the one he scored at Watkins Glen two weeks ago to improve his chances. Four other drivers have one win each this season.

Ambrose has had three top 10 finishes in seven previous Cup starts at Bristol, and was fifth at Michigan last weekend, but even if he wins this weekend’s night race he may need to do more to gain the second wildcard.

Richard Petty Motorsports has swapped some crew members on the cars of Ambrose and teammate Aric Almirola to try to improve Ambrose’s chances.

“I think we’ve got a shot on Saturday night,” Ambrose said.

“We have to get another victory to try and get into The Chase – and that’s exactly what we’re going to try to do. I had a great car at Bristol earlier this season and we got caught up in a mess early, knocking us out of contention.

“We are going back with that same car, so I feel confident.”

Ambrose’s crew chief Todd Parrott said: “Marcos has been driving his tail off the past few weeks. Now we just have to carry that momentum to ‘Thunder Valley’. Hopefully we’ll have a fast hot rod.”

Sonoma chance for Power to tighten grip
Three races to go in the IndyCar series and Australia’s title contender Will Power says it’s “insanely competitive”.

“No one dominates in this series,” he said.

Having missed out on the title to Dario Franchitti the past two seasons, Penske Racing’s Power leads by five points from Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay going into this weekend’s round at Sonoma, California – where the 31-year-old Toowoomba star has won the past two years after a big practice accident in 2009 in which he broke his back.

Sonoma, near San Francisco, is the last road course of the season, with the penultimate round on the streets of Baltimore on September 2, then the finale at the Fontana Speedway back in California on September 15.

Mathematically 15 drivers can still win the title, but the only other serious challengers are Power’s Brazilian teammate Helio Castroneves, 26 points behind him, and the Chip Ganassi team’s New Zealander Scott Dixon, 28 points behind Power.

Penske’s other Australian driver, Ryan Briscoe, is ninth – 112 points behind Power.

Last year Penske cars swept Sonoma one, two, three, with Castroneves second and Briscoe third, while Hunter-Reay has never finished better than eighth in five starts there.

Atkinson, Reeves have lots to prove in Germany
As Chris Atkinson prepares to start the first of five World Rally Championship rounds in a MINI, the Portuguese driver “benched” to make way for him has begun legal action against the Motorsport Italia team that runs the car under the WRC Team Mini Portugal banner.

Armindo Araujo, a two-time production world rally champion, is claiming “unfair dismissal”.

The MINI is the third car Atkinson will have driven in the WRC this year – he drove a Ford for American Ken Block’s Monster team in Mexico, and substituted for Qatar’s Dakar Rally winner and Olympic shooting medallst Nasser Al-Attiyah in a Citroen in Finland.

Along with leading the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship in a Skoda, Atkinson is using the MINI drive to stake a claim for a full-time return to the WRC after Subaru withdrew its factory team for which he drove at the end of 2008.

The German event - based at Trier and on tight, twisty vineyard roads through the Baumholder military base, where huge concrete boulders known as hinklesteins can create havoc - is the first pure tarmac rally of this year’s WRC, with two more in the remaining four rounds.

French great Sebastien Loeb won in Germany eight years in a row for Citroen but a puncture recked his chances last year, while Ford has never won this round.

A Ford will win the 12-stage WRC Academy round, as all the rising stars drive identical Fiesta 2s – with young Victorian Brendan Reeves and his co-driver sister Rhiannon Smyth among them.

Britain’s Elfyn Evans won the second and third rounds but Reeves is second, 18 points behind Evans, going into this fourth round.

“I haven’t done a tarmac rally since April [Targa Tasmania], so we will have to learn to be very smooth and straight with the car again,” Reeves said.

“We have raised more money through our supporters by running 20 names on the bonnet of our Fiesta in Germany to pay for a much-needed test to help us be in the groove when the first stage goes ‘green’.

“We also participated in the driver training that M-Sport [the British team that runs Ford’s factory WRC team] arranged for us Lommel [in Belgium] and have been to the Nurburgring [race circuit in Germany] and done some laps in a front-wheel-drive car.

“Our preparation has been excellent,” Reeves stated.