MOTORSPORT: The new Schumacher?

Monday motorsport reportJanuary 21, 2008

German kid the star, even though NZ takes A1 lead
Once upon a time there was a young boy who was very good at karting at a place called Kerpen in Germany, near the Nurburgring.

His name was Michael Schumacher and he grew up to be a Formula 1 driver and won the world championship seven times.

Now another boy who was very good at karting at Kerpen has made an impression on international open-wheeler racing.

Still a teenager, Christian Vietoris won yesterday's New Zealand round of the A1 Grand Prix series. He wasn't even sure afterwards whether he is going to be in the seat of the German car for the next round at Sydney's Eastern Creek on the first weekend of February. He just hoped so.

While the NZ fans were excited about their Jonny Reid taking the series lead, after winning the sprint race at Taupo and finishing fourth in the feature race, Vietoris emerged as the shining star.

He was runner-up to Reid in the sprint race before winning an incident-packed feature.

Germany's A1 team is run by Michael Schumacher's manager Willi Weber -- with the cars prepared by the David Sears-run Supernova outfit from Britain -- and has already seen another German wonderboy, Nico Hulkenberg, through its ranks.

Hulkenberg is now the main test driver for the Williams F1 team.

Germany also has plenty of other rising stars, including Sebastien Vettel in the Toro Rosso F1 team -- despite the bagging he copped over costing Australia's Mark Webber a possible win in last year's wet Japanese GP.

The disgraced Ralf Schumacher, though, is now reportedly eyeing a drive in the German touring car championship, or DTM.

We watched pretty much all of the A1 telecast on Fox Sports yesterday and reckon that, while the World Cup of Motorsport concept still has a way to go, the series has a bit going for it.

The telecast left a bit to be desired, but in terms of action A1 lived up to its promoters' recent claims to be the world's most exciting open-wheeler racing at the minute. Critics will argue that it doesn't have much to beat. A1 doesn't have the enormous stars of Formula 1, and never will, but the racing is a lot spicier.

The big Taupo crowd -- reportedly between 40,000 and 50,000 -- observed a minute's silence for NZ's history-making Mt Everest conquerer Sir Edmund Hillary almost 10 days earlier.

But a bigger, more recent cloud over the event was a gruesome murder of a young Scottish woman on a working holiday in Taupo on the eve of the event.

Australia's new A1 driver, John Martin, had an eventful but difficult weekend.

Martin showed good pace during practice, fouled up in qualifying to be only 17th on the grid for the sprint race, but improved to ninth at the finish of that race.

For the feature Martin had qualified 12th, got clobbered on the opening lap and then again on lap three, lost 11 laps in the pits while the left sidepod of his car was changed, then spun on sand and got beached, thought his day was over, only to be assisted back on to the track by officials, although he was classified only 17th and 13 laps down.

A1 Team Australia principal Alan Jones seemed happy enough with Martin's efforts in the circumstances, having installed the Queenslander in place of Sydney's Ian Dyk from the NZ round.

The Dyk camp, apparently still very unhappy about their man being dumped, could point out that Australia slipped another place on the points table, to 18th of 22 competing countries, but Martin can't be fairly marked on just one round.

Kiwi Reid, who dropped from fifth on the grid in the feature to 12th in the early laps before clawing his way back to fourth in the one-make formula, could hardly believe in taking the series lead.

He had hoped to overhaul France, but not previous leader Switzerland. Reid now likes his chances for Sydney, and for the series title. NZ has 82 points to France and Switzerland's 80 each.

The Australian round will bring the series to its halfway point.

"I know Eastern Creek well -- it's fast and flowing and suits my style," Reid said. "We have one of the strongest teams in pit lane, and I am confident that I can win this championship."

Canadian Robert Wickens, second to Vietoris, and France's Loic Duval joined the German on the podium after the feature race.

Duval had also finished third in the sprint and felt he was fastest all weekend, although Siwtzerland's Neil Jani set the fastest lap of the feature.

However, Jani copped two drive-through penalties -- one for jumping the start, even though some of the television footage indicated he just made a brilliant getaway, and later for passing under yellow flags.

A1 Grand Prix series points after five of 12 rounds -- New Zealand 82, Switzerland 80, France 80, Germany 65, South Africa 59, Ireland 50, Netherlands 49, Great Britain 48, India 28, China 28, Brazil 27, Canada 22, Mexico 18, Czech Republic 10, USA 9, Portugal 5, Australia 4, Italy 4, Malaysia 2.

Hamilton's pay rise way ahead of CPI
While Vietoris and some others in A1 are potentially big stars, Lewis Hamilton is already well and truly entrenched as a superstar after the debut season that almost saw him win the F1 title.

For that performance, Hamilton's contract has been extended by five years to 2012 -- at fees variously reported at between £10 and £20 million a year -- a huge increase on the £1 million he reputedly earned last year.

And, incredibly for McLaren, it is allowing Hamilton to sell his own personal sponsorships and endorsements.

"I am with the right team to compete for race wins and the drivers' and constructors' world championships," 23-year-old Hamilton said

"We will have a lot of challenges ahead, but I am 100 per cent positive I am with the people to take them on."

One challenge Hamilton won't have this year will be from dual world champion Fernando Alonso in the same team, with the Spaniard now back with Renault.

Signs are that McLaren's new driver, Finn Heikki Kovalainen, and Hamilton are getting on much better, but then Kovalainen is unlikely be as much of a rival.

Toyota plans hybrid for Le Mans assault
Toyota is going to take a hybrid to the Le Mans 24-hour sports car classic, according to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

The paper quoted a Toyota official saying the company wanted to leverage its hybrid products off the great event and use its hybrid program to boost its image as an environmentally-friendly company.

"Audi proved the superiority of the next generation diesel engine at Le Mans," the Toyota said.

"Toyota wants to do the same with the hybrid."

7.8 million dodgy dollars in Melbourne
An interesting story in Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper today about the Victorian government shelling out almost half a billion dollars from a "slush fund" on emergency projects and to top up various budgets.

One of the budgets that had to be topped up, to the tune of $7.8 million according to this report, from the fund officially called the Advance to the Treasurer, was Melbourne's grand prix.

This looks like the extent to which the loss on last year's GP exceeded the budget the Australian Grand Prix Corporation would have given the state government.

The final loss came close to $35 million, making a total of almost $70 million in official red ink in the past three years.

That performance may have had something to do with the change at the executive helm of the corporation after last year's race, although to date the board appears to have escaped scrutiny, let alone rebuke.

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