MOTORSPORT: Time for Holden to turn tables

Reigning champion Jamie Whincup in one of Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone's FG Falcons has won all four championship races so far.

The car is very much a Ford, even if it displays the Hogster mascot of the Hog's Breath café chain rather than Ford's blue oval logo because Triple 8 no longer has financial support from the manufacturer, despite being the sport's dominant team.

Indeed, Whincup has won 14 of his past 17 V8 Supercar championship races.

Ford (but not Whincup) also won all three of the V8 Supercar races at Melbourne's Formula 1 Grand Prix little more than a month ago.

It's time for Holden to lift its game and stop the Whincup/Triple 8/Ford domination. Lee Holdsworth of Garry Rogers Motorsport is being talked up now as the main Holden challenger. And the usually rather introverted Holdsworth is even talking up his Winton chances in this week's Auto Action magazine.

While he has made an impressive start to the season and is the leading Holden driver in the championship so far, second in the points to Whincup (498 v. 600), the challenge should be coming from the Holden Racing Team pair, Garth Tander and Will Davison.

Davison has made a pretty smooth transition to HRT from Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing and is third in the series (on 483 points), while Tander was the Winton round victor last year.

However, three drivers ended that Winton round on equal points, and Tander's overall victory was only because he won the third and final race.

The other drivers in that three-way tie were Whincup and Davison. Expect all three to feature strongly again this weekend, along with Holdsworth.

The other driver particularly keen to be in the hunt this weekend will be Mark Winterbottom, carrying the hopes of Ford Performance Racing -- the Victorian-based Ford factory team.

There's a couple of tweaks to the format again this week -- the introduction of a super-soft tyre compound, and while the new Sunday morning qualifying session remains a 20-minute all-in for the 30 cars, the allowable time extension has been stretched from five to 15 minutes.

He's not really giving anything away despite starting out by saying "it's time to come clean about these stories about me having overseas driving offers".

However, he alludes to wanting to sort his future soon.

"It's true that opportunities have come in after my track successes in the past two seasons," Whincup says.

"I have been overwhelmed with the doors that are opening for me both here and overseas.

"And I'm going to make a decision about these offers sooner rather than later. I'm very much in the thick of things about my future from next year.

"The one thing I want to mention is how happy I am and thankful for my time in V8s and with Team Vodafone in particular, and although my ambitions lead me to new challenges overseas, I'm still having so much fun here in Australia, so it makes it a very tough decision.

"What Marcos Ambrose is doing in NASCARs in the US is massively appealing to me and there are some very, very cool cars over in Europe.

"I'm jealous of my friends who have had the opportunity to drive overseas, so one day I want to be able to experience more than just a V8."

On the very immediate future, Whincup says of this weekend's V8 Supercar round: "I'm on a high after four wins from four points races, but Winton is going to be a lottery.

"It was brought forward from round 8 to May so the weather would be warmer. But they tell me there's been 20cm of snow and it's blistering cold at the moment.

"Looks like the plan … has backfired. I'll be packing 24 jumpers … what it means for us is that we will have pretty much the same set-ups as last year.

"The big question mark is the optional super-soft tyre which has to be used during the race. That will throw a massive spanner in the works. It has a big orange strip around the outside so everyone can see when it's being used.

"We should go about three seconds a lap quicker for about five laps, then it should tear itself apart fairly quickly. There will be a lot of different strategies among the teams, so it will be a real lottery."

>>>The field will be 34 cars for both endurance races -- four more than the sprint race maximum. There is scope for development series teams to lodge entries for the Phillip Island 500 and Bathurst 1000. Among those reported to be interested are the Sonic, Howard and Jay teams. Main series teams can also explore taking up the four "wildcard" entries, and Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing is thought to be a possibility -- to enter TV star racer Grant Denyer -- and Tasman/Sprint Gas Racing another.

>>>Four tenders were lodged for the Team Kiwi Racing licence (or Racing Entitlements Contract) this week, but Dean Fiore is reportedly the frontrunner because of the infrastructure he has. Fiore wants to continue running a Paul Morris Motorsport-prepared VE Commodore.

>>>Moves to oust veteran Larry Perkins from the V8 Supercars Australia board have failed. Auto Action reports that the position of Perkins, who was re-elected last October for two years, has been endorsed by the V8SA board.

"We thought at the beginning of the season that we would have a shot to win at a road course, but now we feel like we have a shot to win before we even get to a road course," Ambrose's  crew chief Frank Kerr said this week.

"We keep getting better and, unfortunately, the points are not indicative of just how well we have been running.

"If it hadn't been for a few mechanical failures, we would be in the top 10."

After last weekend's fourth place on the superspeedway at Talladega in Alabama, Ambrose jumped seven places in the Cup standings to 19th. That is only 144 points out of 10th place in the owner championship standings.

"We've surprised ourselves and we are doing really well," Ambrose said.

But, heading into this weekend's round at Richmond, Virginia, the Aussie wisely has his feet more firmly on the ground than his crew chief.

"We're just going to keep doing what we have been doing and go to Richmond to race without expectations. The team is keeping an open mind," Ambrose said.

Like the chances of Mark Webber winning in Formula 1, Ambrose is going to need a big slice of luck to pull off a win.

One recent race -- in Phoenix, Arizona -- was down 18 per cent -- from 7.2 million viewers last year to an estimated 6 million this year.

All the races have had lower ratings. The average for the first eight Sprint Cup rounds was 9.3 million viewers compared with 10.6 million last year.

Veteran NASCAR correspondent Don Coble has attributed the drop to the Car of Tomorrow (COT) rather than the economy.

"If the economy is bad and people aren't going to races, it should increase ratings, not kill them," said Coble, who has covered NASCAR for 30 years.

"I've had three track general managers tell me the COT, not the economy, is their greatest threat because there's no such thing as side-by-side racing on the 1.5-mile (2.4km) and 2-mile (3.2km) tracks.

"The COT also was supposed to make it easier for new teams to win, but in fact it's narrowed the field -- and one of those on the outside looking in is Dale Earnhardt Junior."

Coble's theory that the COT is to blame is food for thought for those advocating V8 Supercars go in that direction in Australia. And irrespective of what has caused the TV drop in NASCAR, we'll keep an eye on the V8 Supercar television figures now that the season is getting into full swing.

They have been given a suspended three-race ban for "deliberately misleading" the stewards in Melbourne. At a Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) hearing in Paris this week, McLaren pleaded guilty on all five counts of breaching article 151c of the International Sporting Code.

The World Motorsport Council said it took into account "the open and honest way" in which new McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh had addressed them.

It also said there had been a "change of culture" within McLaren -- a pointed reference to long-time team principal Ron Dennis stepping away from F1 activities to concentrate on road car development and the sacking of veteran team manager, New Zealander Dave Ryan, who was blamed for instructing Hamilton to tell the stewards fibs.

In reality, F1 could not afford to be without any team and especially its world champion for even one race. The F1 championship resumes in Europe on May 8-10 with the Spanish GP in Barcelona.

There is now a very real prospect that Britain will lose its GP after this year. There are major wranglings over money and permits at the proposed new venue, Donington Park, and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has vowed that Silverstone will not be considered as the home for the race beyond this year.

While Ecclestone and FIA president Max Mosley continue to wield power over F1, triple world champion Sir Jackie Stewart remains something of a conscience for the sport, even if he has had to come to terms with representing one of its tarnished sponsors.

Stewart has been speaking out again on Lewis Hamilton, Max Mosley and that sponsor, see here
 

This weekend's British round at Brands Hatch has suddenly become the finale of A1's fourth season, with the round scheduled for Mexico City on May 22-24 cancelled. Battling the global financial crisis and its own money woes, that means it has been reduced to just seven rounds this season.

The three chances for the "World Cup of Motorsport" title are Switzerland (driver Neel Jani) on 88 points, Ireland (Adam Carroll) on 86 and Portugal (Filipe Albuquerque) 82. Australia (John Martin) is eighth in the standings on 30 points -- 6 behind seventh-placed New Zealand.

The potential fillip for A1 is the introduction of the Gold Coast in October as one of the early rounds in its fifth season.

Rally Oz organizers have announced that "the sight and sound of historic racing cars in the popular Festival of Speed on Tweed will return to the streets of Murwillumbah as part of the Repco Rally Australia entertainment program in the NSW Northern Rivers in September".

"Speed on Tweed, in which around 200 historic racing cars of many types and some of Australia's best drivers of past years race against the clock on closed public roads, will be staged on September 5-6.

"The event will be run on a 1km temporary circuit, similar to that used in previous years, which also will be used on three nights as a super special stage by competitors in the Rally Australia World Rally Championship round on September 3-6."

We're hearing, though, that the Rally Oz organisers still have more than their share of headaches, including the cost of policing the event.

Not our/my fault, but that was no consolation. Will report on the outcome after Targa concludes on the weekend.

It says that an outfit called WorldFirst Racing has created a chocolate-powered Formula 3 race car. Built in England at Warwick University's Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre, it was created to prove a competitive race car could be made from environmentally sustainable components.

It has a BMW engine powered by biodiesel produced from waste and chocolate vegetable oil, and lubricated by plant-based oil.

Much of the car is made from potato starch core and flax fibre, and the steering wheel is created from carrot fibre polymer and the seat of a flax fibre shell with soy bean oil foam filler. The car can reportedly reach 235kmh.

A team spokesman said: "Following the recent turmoil in Formula 1 arising from the high costs of running competitive motor racing teams, and doubts in sponsors' minds over the commercial value of their involvement, the viability of motor racing is being critically questioned.

"The new WorldFirst race car is a clever piece of lateral thinking. It is the first F3 racing car designed and made from sustainable and renewable materials, putting the world first by effectively managing the planet's resources."

The AA article concludes by stating it is unclear if the car will turn laps in anger -- and that it's not thought to be edible!

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