MOTORSPORT: The year of seventh heavens

At long last, Australia had the Supercars Championship finale it needed.

Not only did the title fight come down to the last race, but to the last lap. Even then controversy still raged on.

Scott McLaughlin, a 24-year-old New Zealander, had made an all-out attempt to snare the title ahead of a six-time champion a decade older than him, Jamie Whincup.

The day before McLaughlin had snatched the series lead, but the next day the pendulum swung back, despite the Kiwi’s every effort. He won twice as many races as Whincup, eight to four, and went to the absolute limit – and a little beyond.

So Whincup became a seven-time champion. This had been his hardest battle and strengthened his claim – not made by him – to be the greatest touring car/Supercar driver the country has had.

The series climax came at a new venue, Newcastle, which looked picture-postcard perfect and produced excellent racing.

For all the positives though, let’s not forget that this event was created as a consolation out of the failure of Tony Cochrane’s Sydney 500 at Homebush, the wisdom of a temporary circuit may yet prove misguided, and the organisers wouldn’t welcome too much scrutiny of the TV figures.

Surely the championship finale, especially a new one and so exciting, should be the next-biggest thing to the Bathurst 1000, which it wasn’t. But let’s hope for the future.

Lots of other positives though in the Supercar season, including new heroes at The Mountain – David Reynolds and motoring.com.au’s own Luke Youlden breaking through for Betty Klimenko’s Erebus Motorsport – and the Sandown 500, in which Cam Waters was victorious with Richie Stanaway, another Kiwi now in a full-time drive.

And, while Triple Eight’s Whincup took the driver’s title, the long-running outfit now owned by American icon Roger Penske but still largely fronted by local legend Dick Johnson toppled it in the teams championship.

Unbeatable on ultimate torture test
Greater even than Whincup’s achievement was the feat of Frenchmen Stephane Peterhansel and Jean-Paul Cottret in winning the Dakar Rally for the seventh time on four wheels.

South America has been the Dakar’s home for a decade now, after originating in Europe and Africa. It is the toughest event on earth in the most extreme conditions, with driving skill and the speed and reliability of machinery needing to be complemented by navigational excellence.

In a clean sweep of the podium by two-wheel-drive Peugeots, Peterhansel and Cottrett beat nine-time world rally champion and countryman Sebastien Loeb and offsider Daniel Elena by barely five and a half minutes after two weeks.

And all this after ‘Monsieur Dakar’ Peterhansel’s earlier six wins in the event on motorcycles.

He is the superman of world motorsport.

‘David’ reigns over the Goliaths

Of the four teams vying for glory in the new era of more aggressive cars in the WRC, the one with the least manufacturer support – Britain’s M-Sport, fielding Ford Fiestas – triumphed over Hyundai, Toyota and Citroen and gave Sebastien Ogier his fifth straight, and most satisfying, driver’s title after four with departed Volkswagen.

Ricciardo passes with flying colours
Lewis Hamilton became the most successful British driver in Formula 1 history, and generally second overall to Michael Schumacher, with a fourth world title as Mercedes dominated rejuvenated but at-times erratic Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel.

Daniel Ricciardo’s year was perceived as disappointing, a view coloured by late-season unreliability of his Red Bull’s Renault power unit.

Although the carsales.com.au global ambassador slipped from what should have been fourth in the championship at the end, he was still well clear of ‘wonderboy’ teammate Max Verstappen.

Ricciardo is the pass master of F1. He came from nowhere to overtake Kimi Raikkonen at Monza in front of Ferrari chiefs who may be his employer within a year, if not Mercedes, and overtook two cars at once on the way to victory from eighth on the grid at Baku in Azerbaijan.

Give him the gear and he’ll be a world champion.

Porsche exit leaves Toyota in no-contest
Porsche has departed top-level sports car racing after hat-tricks in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship with its 919 Hybrid, although Toyota won five of the year’s WEC rounds to Porsche’s four.

The way is now open for the Japanese brand to finally triumph at Le Mans – it’s been going there, on and off, since 1985 – but it will be hollow without a hybrid rival, and hugely embarrassing if beaten by anything else.

Charge towards electric championship
Manufacturers are stampeding to Formula E, seeing big benefits for future road cars from electric racing, but the enthusiasm of BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Nissan and perhaps, longer-term, even Ferrari to join those already in there is not matched by the public.

All change on the American scene
While the focus of Australian fans is largely at home and on European-based motorsport, it’s been a big year in America. NASCAR has a new champion, Martin Truex Junior, for the unlikely Furniture Row Racing, and Toyota was the top make for the second year, winning 16 Cup races to the 10 each of Chevrolet and Ford.

A young American, Josef Newgarden, beat the very international field to give Roger Penske his 15th IndyCar series title in his first year of driving for ‘The Captain’.

Own goals on ownership fronts
It’s almost a year since America’s Liberty Media edged Bernie Ecclestone out of the ‘driver’s seat’ of F1 management but there’s little evidence it has a handle on what it paid billions of dollars for.

Private equity company Archer Capital can’t offload its controlling stake in Supercars for even a third of what it paid six years ago.

Finally, a new year’s wish

What would we most like to see in 2018? Daniel Ricciardo win the Australian F1 Grand Prix.