MOTORSPORT: The no-win Indy?

One thing's for sure: lots of people, hundreds of thousands, will have a great time. They always do.

This year they will have Danica Patrick to marvel at. Even ogle on. A 45kg woman who has appeared in a swimsuit on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine in charge of a brutal IndyCar and with a chance of winning, something she's already done once this year.

It's far more likely though that Brisbane-born New Zealander Scott Dixon -- this year's IndyCar series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner -- or Aussies Ryan Briscoe or Will Power will be in Victory Lane on Sunday afternoon.

Power has had the pole position twice at this circuit in Champ Cars without converting it to a race win.

As much as we admire his efforts, Briscoe's chances must be better this weekend with the mighty Team Penske.

Power is a top-notch racer but doubts continually swirl about the future of Power's team, KV Racing, and his place in it, especially if Craig Gore's Team Australia sponsorship dries up.

Much as we enjoy it, whether the racing this weekend is going to mean much to anyone is debatable.

The V8 Supercar Championship ought to be coming to a head.

It is, with 10 rounds gone and four to go (including this one), and the three title contenders banded within 82 points -- Triple 8/Team Vodafone Ford driver Jamie Whincup on 2316, Ford Performance Racing's Mark Winterbottom on 2283 and Holden Racing Team's Garth Tander 2234.

But the V8 races can pretty much only be anti-climatic after Bathurst.

And the talk may be more about whether HRT's Mark Skaife is going to retire at the end of the season, or perhaps even sooner. (We doubt the latter).

And whether Will Davison is going to replace Skaife at HRT.

It's most unlikely that Davison will stay at Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing with James Courtney heading there.

Davison is the hot tip to join HRT, although there may still be the option of remaining a Ford man with Stone Brothers Racing, based on the Gold Coast where Davison already lives and one of only two teams, along with FPR, that will have Ford factory financial support beyond this season.

We wonder whether a third FPR Falcon, run in a satellite operation, might still be a third good option for Davison.

That was the plan for Courtney before his shock switch to DJR/Jim Beam became known.

That way Davison could not only stay in a Falcon and be anointed a Ford factory driver, but indeed with a connection to the team that will clearly be the factory's No 1 -- FPR.

How ironic that triple Bathurst-winning Triple 8/Team Vodafone will be out of the official Ford family next year!

It may be better for Davison to stay on the blue side of the fence.

Not sure that the environment at HRT would be as pleasant as with the Ford options, and Garth Tander may be a more difficult teammate, certainly more intense, than any he may have in blue -- other than Courtney.

But we digress from this weekend's Indy.

We've always liked lots of things about this event, although as we've pointed out previously, its real reason for being is outdated.

It was created to showcase the Gold Coast into the US tourist market.

While the TV audience in the early days was respectable, although far short of what many would have thought it was or claimed, in recent times the numbers viewing the open-wheeler race in the US have not been anywhere near enough to justify staging it.

We wrote in detail a year ago about how horrific those figures are and that report's here

And we mentioned a week ago that the US audience last year was similarly woeful to recent years. That mention is in this column, here

Now Sunday's race will be the first for cars from the Indy Racing League, which this year has incorporated the remnants of the old Champ Car series.

Measures of interest in the series in North America this year have been marginally up, in the main it seems because the people there who like open-wheeler motor racing -- admittedly comparatively few in a country of 300 million people -- have been pleased at the amalgamation of the IRL and Champ Car after a 12-year split.

Now the drivers are very happy to come to the Gold Coast, and for everyone else in the teams it's a pretty nice trip away after the end of the championship season.

Yes, that's right, remember. The race this Sunday is not a championship round. It is a post-championship, non-point-scoring event. Put another way, it's an exhibition race.

And next year it is not even on the IRL calendar in that capacity.

It ain't on the 2009 IRL calendar at all.

Now there are to be talks this weekend between Gold Coast Indy and Queensland government officials and the IRL, most notably its supremo Tony George, if indeed he is around the place.

Queensland government representatives claimed five months ago to have a deal for the Gold Coast Indy race for another five years.

Then it became clear that did not amount to a contract but only a memorandum of understanding.

What it's come down to is that if there is to be a new deal -- a continuation of this race on the Gold Coast -- it has to be concluded either this weekend or very soon after.

The Queenslanders have set themselves a deadline of 14 days from Sunday.

Now to get a new deal done is going to take some ingenuity.

The IRL officials and Tony George, who -- as head of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500 -- knows a bit about big races, may be pleasantly surprised, even blown away, by the attendance, location and atmosphere this weekend.

But the reality is, our informed US sources tell us, that the IRL is not interested in coming to Australia again, and particularly at the time the Gold Coast organisers want it to -- late October.

September or early October, it seems, the Americans might, just might, be interested in. Or earlier in the year -- March or April.

It's hard to see a compromise here.

But the bottom line is that this event does little for IndyCar's American sponsors, particularly when you look at those embarrassingly small US TV figures to which we've referred.

So it's unlikely that the IndyCars will be coming back, unless someone on the Aussie side of the negotiations can come up with something compelling enough to strike a deal.

Money, of course, always speaks loud in these situations.

But the Queensland government is already tipping $11 million or more into this event.

Surely it won't increase that outlay greatly in light of the world financial meltdown, those dreadful US TV numbers (if it's even bothered to look at them, or know where to look), and its financial commitment to the new Townsville V8 Supercar street race.

It's been said many times in recent months, by us as much as anyone else, that the A1 GP series could be a replacement for the IndyCars on the Gold Coast.

A1 would likely be agreeable to the timeslot that the Queensland organisers want, it presumably would be cheaper, its on-track show is quite good, but its problem is that its drivers are nobodies.

And there is the question of whether A1 will even survive much longer.

It didn't even have all its cars ready for the opening round of its fourth season four weeks ago in Holland, and there's a question of whether its private equity owners will be bothered to stick with their investment much longer.

And the TV picture is not much, if any, prettier on the A1 TV front.

Now Britain, as we often point out in an F1 context, is an important motorsport market.

And an informed European source has brought to our attention A1's Dutch season-opener was watched on Britain's Skysports 3 TV channel by just 60,000 people.

And that was a peak, not an average, figure.

And, as our Euro source pointed out, that 60,000 is less than 2 per cent of the average British audience that watches a Formula 1 grand prix on ITV.

It's also, it seems, only a third of the audience that dear old speedway motorcycles get on Skysports 3.

Already the Queensland government is shelling out $11 million or more for a race with next to no international TV audience.

The Victorian government's bill on Melbourne's F1 grand prix is now running at about $40 million a year, but at least it has a global TV audience of perhaps around 50 million viewers.

The costs are outrageous on both these street races, but there's got to be a whole lot more value in F1's TV audience than there is for Queensland in Indy's.

A1 would want to come cheaper than the IndyCars, and in reality it would.

But at any price it is not going to provide value anywhere near Melbourne's F1, even if that value is usually grossly exaggerated.

Although A1 isn't exactly setting the world on fire, at a price -- very cheap -- it's probably worth a try at the Gold Coast.

Of course, the V8 Supercar fraternity would like nothing better than to be the sole main act from next year.

But the Queensland government has repeatedly said it wants the mix of international open-wheelers and Aussie touring cars.

Forget the talk of the DTM -- the German touring car championship -- coming out here.

We suspect that if push really comes to shove that the government might buckle to V8 Supercars Australia's wish to be the sole main act, although if it wants a pure V8 Supercar street race it will already have one next year with Townsville.

There are many in the V8 fraternity happy to tell the government that Adelaide's Clipsal 500 is a template for a pure V8 round that could just as easily suffice on the Gold Coast.

But the government and the public, particularly the Queensland government's taxpayers, are entitled to query whether $11 million or more would need to be spent each year on any such pure V8 round.

The query would be not only on the amount, but whether it would be appropriate for what -- at the end of the day, or three or four days -- would be a very bogan street party. Certainly more bogan than in Adelaide.

So lots of things in the melting pot on the Gold Coast this weekend -- other than the outcome of a few races. On a bleak assessment it looks a bit of a no-win situation. Hopefully some good comes out of it all though -- at not too great a price.

And one of those GPs is Australia's, in Melbourne, where ING is the naming rights sponsor.

ING has been looking at a US$670 million third quarter loss. Its share price has been buffeted. The Dutch government has propped it up with a US$19 billion helping hand.

You can bet your bottom dollar that Bernie Ecclestone will have a watertight contract that ensures his empire is not any the poorer if ING suddenly decides to quit, or even scale back, its F1 involvement.

But the last thing F1 -- and particularly the Oz GP -- needs to see at the minute is such a prominent sponsorship player walk away, or even contemplate it.

A lot of noise has been made about Mosley meeting F1 team representatives Luca di Montezemolo of Ferrari and John Howett of Toyota this week, and further talks -- perhaps with all the teams -- are on the cards at next weekend's season-ending and championship-deciding Brazilian GP.

But what is farcical is that "significant" progress was claimed to have been made in this week's talks, yet no details were forthcoming.

F1 has become all too common with that kind of horse...

Mosley, and to a lesser extent Bernie Ecclestone, have been grandstanding about a generic engine, which is just nonsense.

It's an opening gambit perhaps intended to get teams to toss up alternatives in containing costs, although at the end of the day Mosley will do and get what he wants -- Whatever that may be.

Power, most likely.

Already there are indications that the latest manouevrings are all about getting the big, rich, powerful teams to make engines available at affordable cost to smaller, poorer teams -- like Force India, which will probably get Mercedes-Benz motors via McLaren, Scuderia Toro Rosso and even Williams and Red Bull to keep them somewhere near viable.

There is also talk of common chassis parts, including standard suspension and wheels and other expensive parts which add nothing to the public spectacle of, or public interest in, F1.

Mosley is pushing the kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) barrow particularly hard at the minute, saying that -- if engines are largely standardised -- that will be an area of performance differentiation between F1 teams.

And, being the politician he is, Mosley is also pushing the potential benefits for everyday motoring that could come from KERS.

"KERS will be essential on all road-going vehicles in the future, irrespective of their means of primary propulsion," Mosley has said.

"The FIA therefore intends to keep KERS as a performance differentiator in F1 and, indeed, increase its importance in 2011.

"This will give F1 far more relevance and credibility than the use of vastly expensive racing engines or extremely light and sophisticated gearboxes, both of which are almost entirely irrelevant to modern road transport."

Now Mosley can make almost anything sound plausible.

But with everything Mosley says it is increasingly a matter of trying to assess what is genuinely good for the sport and what is about him engineering himself into another term as FIA president.

Common sense points to Hamilton, but it's not difficult to envisage another Ferrari world champion.

"That's how it should be. He'll deserve it if he wins it," Webber said in his latest BBC Sport column.

"You could say, though, that Robert Kubica has been the driver of the year.

"He's probably been, at every single venue, the best and most consistent driver with the least errors (except for the British GP at Silverstone).

"But, out of Hamilton and Massa, I'd say Lewis deserves the championship.

"For motorsport enthusiasts in Australia his abruptness and sureness doesn't come across brilliantly.

"They would probably like to see him a little bit more humble but, on the other side of the coin, Australians like winners as well, and he's been doing a lot of winning."

It will continue to support Roush Fenway Racing whole-heartedly in the Sprint Cup, and to a lesser degree Yates Racing and, almost unbelievably, Wood Brothers -- which Aussie Marcos Ambrose has been associated with, along with JTG Daugherty Racing.

Wood Brothers is the sole Ford team outside the top 35 in the Sprint Cup. Its glory days are long gone.

Ford won't give money next year to teams fielding cars bearing its name in NASCAR's second-tier Nationwide Series or the pick-up truck series.

No wonder Ambrose has jumped ship to Toyota, along with JTG Daugherty.

Brian Wolfe, director of Ford Racing Technology, confirmed that the Blue Oval's '09 racing budget is less than last year as part of a reduction in marketing funds overall for the company.

Management at Sydney's Oran Park says the circuit will remain open throughout 2009. Makes us wonder why no V8 Supercar round has been scheduled there then, and why there has been the presumption for so long that it would not be available beyond this year and -- with V8 Supercars Australia refusing to return to Eastern Creek -- why there needed to be such urgency about Homebush's Sydney 400. We came across a little article in a local paper. It's here

An interesting perspective on the fuel consumption of F1 cars is here

It overlooks that while 20 cars zoom around for up to a couple of hours, lots of road cars are at a halt -- i.e. not burning fuel -- while people watch.

A piece on the 50-year history of Lola from the local paper in the town where the company began: here

The Confederation of Australian Motorsport is looking for a promoter or promoters to run Australian Rally Championship rounds in New South Wales and Victoria next year. That's here.

And former rally ace Bob Watson has written his autobiography. The book hasn't been sighted yet, but mention of its imminent appearance is here

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