Motorsport: Townsville keeps up fight for V8 race

Race row heats up in Far North
Townsville is not taking the Queensland Government's scuttling of plans for a V8 Supercar street race in the city well. Saturday's Townsville Bulletin newspaper contained an advertisement that was an open letter to Queensland Premier Peter Beattie on the issue. The city's business community is demanding the government give it a fuller explanation of its rejection of a street race.

The thumbs down was given two weeks ago because the government could not see how the event, proposed from 2008, made financial sense. The state's Sports Minister, Andrew Fraser, says an approach was made for a one-off $11 million capital injection from the government but it believes the race would cost $24.7 million in capital works, but that it and the Townsville City Council would then have to put in $3 million a year each.

The Townsville Bulletin reports that two bodies -- the city's V8 Supercars Steering Committee and Townsville Enterprise -- have joined forces to get a fuller explanation. About $850,000 has already been spent trying to secure a V8 Supercar Championship round and there is a feeling in Townsville that a Labor Government won't fund the race because the city is a Labor stronghold and it doesn't see the need for any electoral sweetener. Steering committee chairman and car dealer Tony Ireland says: "I just can't get my head around it (the government's stance). At the very least we demand dialogue."

The Italian-speaking Swiss driver was also a man of immense presence and charisma and a very special favorite of the Ferrari tifosi (fans), winning four GPs for the Prancing Horse. His other victory was the first in a Williams after the sister car of Australian Alan Jones broke down while leading the 1979 British GP. Tragically, 'Regga' was killed in a collision with a truck on a motorway near Parma in Italy at the weekend.

Aged 67, 'Regga' had been a paraplegic for more than a quarter of a century after a crash at the US GP West at Long Beach, California, in 1980. The brakes on his Ensign car failed at the end of a long straight and he went off the track, ran into an abandoned Brabham car and the Ensign launched into the air and hit a concrete barrier. 'Regga' was paralysed from the waist down.

Years later he returned to racing in hand-controlled vehicles on the Paris-Dakar Rally and in 2000 he took part in the London-Sydney Marathon Rally in a specially-modified 6.3-litre Mercedes.

In F1, his victories were especially memorable. The first came in the 1970 Italian GP, two days after the death in a Lotus of Austrian Jochen Rindt, who would become world champion posthumously; the second was the '74 German race at the old Nurburgring, the world's most demanding circuit; there was another Italian victory at Monza in '75; then at Long Beach in '76; and finally the breakthrough for Williams at Silverstone in '79. Apart from Ferrari, Williams and Ensign, 'Regga' also drove for BRM and Shadow.

Enzo Ferrari remembered 'Regga' as "among the most audacious" of the Scuderia's drivers, and from the Old Man that was a mighty compliment. The world of F1 is a lot poorer for his death.

Swede success in Race of Champions
Swedish touring car and sometime rally driver Mattias Ekstroem is the surprise winner of this year's Race of Champions, the annual pre-Christmas event in Europe that pits stars from various championships against each other. Ekstrom beat France's triple world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in the final at at the Stade de France in Paris.

Ekstrom's -- whose biggest achievement has been winning the 2003 German Touring Car Championship, known as the DTM -- says of Saturday's victory: "It's great to beat the best driver in the world (Loeb)."

The 16 competitors were split into a rally group and a racing group and drove cars ranging from an Aston Martin V8 GT Rally, a Porsche RSR GT3 and a Renault Megane Trophy on a custom-built 1.2km figure-of-eight asphalt track with a crossover bridge.

F1 world champion Fernando Alonso and Britain's latest GP winner, Jenson Button, missed the event but David Coulthard took part, as did Renault's new F1 driver, Finn Heikki Kovalainen, who won the 2004 Race of Champions.

Ekstrom defeated Loeb 2-0 in a best-of-three final after overcoming Kovalainen and France's three-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais in the heats. Loeb was racing for the first time since breaking his arm in September and beat American Rally Champion and X-Games racer Travis Pastrana in the quarter-finals and Britain's Colin McRae in the semis.

It was the third straight year Loeb had made the final. He won in 2005 but lost to Kovalainen in 2004. Marcus Gronholm, the Finn who finished within a point of Loeb in this year's world rally championship after the Frenchman missed the final four rounds, also raced in Paris. Next year's 20th anniversary event will be at London's new Wembley stadium.

As part of the agreement, Alonso's Mercedes-powered car did not have a timing transponder, but he was clocked third fastest, 0.3 seconds slower than Hamilton with Renault's Heikki Kovalainen sandwiched between them. Alonso did 94 laps in his first drive for his new team and on Bridgestone tyres, after spending the past five years on Michelin rubber.

America's 1979 world champion Mario Andretti's 19-year-old grandson, Marco, did 68 laps in his first F1 outing in a Honda and was 2.4 seconds off Hamilton's pace and 15th of 16 drivers on the track.

"It's a shame that it was only a day," says Andretti III, the son of Michael, who drove in F1 for McLaren for two-thirds of 1993. "It took me a little while to get used to the traction control and the brakes but, once I got to grips with them, the times were more and more consistent."

A winner in the Indy Racing League and close runner-up in this year's Indianapolis 500, Andretti III has signaled he wants to move to F1 after another two years in the IRL, in which time he wants to win the Indy 500. Michael's Andretti Green Racing is looking at fielding five cars at the Brickyard next year -- for Marco, Michael, Danica Patrick, Tony Kanaan and Dario Franchitti.

The latest Jerez test also marked the end of Frenchman Olivier Panis' F1 career. Panis raced for Ligier, Prost and BAR before joining Toyota in 2003. After two years in a race seat for the German-based Japanese team he retired from active competition but was retained for testing. His 157 GPs included a memorable 1996 Monaco victory in a Ligier from 14th on the grid. However, the 40-year-old's final day petered out early due to a cold. It was also Brazilian Ricardo Zonta's final day testing with Toyota as he moves to Renault in the same role next season.

No Moya at Subaru World Rally Team
Subaru's under-performing world rally team's sporting director Luis Moya is departing, just as he was talking effusively about next season. Richard Taylor, managing director of the team owned by David Richards' Prodrive, says it has decided to "slim down the top management" and will not renew the consultancy contract of Moya, who has been in the role for three-and-a-half years and was previously Spanish rally great Carlos Sainz's co-driver.

Richards has indicated he will be more hands-on in 2007 after Subaru's first season without a victory since 1992. Norwegian Petter Solberg scored Subaru's four podiums this year and Moya is taking the fall for a season the team admits was "a disaster".

Australian driver Chris Atkinson's best result in his second season with the team was fourth in Japan, where he finished third in 2005. Atkinson says he wants a bag of podiums in '07 and, without a Rally Australia next year, is looking forward to the supposed relocation of Rally Oz to Queensland in '08.

"We (Atkinson and co-driver Glenn Macneall) have led our rally twice now at home but it would be nice to lead it all the way to the finish. Hopefully we can do that in 2008," Atkinson says.

Unser in clear over police clash
Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Senior has been cleared of charges of resisting and disobeying police in his home town, Albuquerque in the American state of New Mexico.

Unser, 67, was arrested in August on a road named after his famous racing family when he got into a dispute with police and other officials at a roadblock set up after a man who led authorities on a high-speed chase and fired shots at them.

Unser says he has lost speaking engagements and work as a consultant after the humiliation of publicity about the clash. "Wherever I go, people want to know if I'm a jailbird," Unser told the court. A police mug shot of him appeared in racing magazines and the case was the subject of Jay Leno's late night television show.

Unser's lawyer, Charlie Daniels, says they are "glad to see justice done" with the acquittal. Unser could have been jailed or fined if convicted. His older brother, Bobby, a three-time Indy 500 winner, is due to face court in the new year on charges over a similar incident.

Al Unser's trial was told he was pulled from his sports utility vehicle, thrown face down into a thorny patch of weeds, then handcuffed. A long-time police officer, Sam Costales, told the court his colleagues had been "rude" and unprofessional in the way they handled Unser.
The sheriff of Rio Arriba County, where Unser is an honorary deputy, was in court supporting Unser, while Indy icons Parnelli Jones and Andy Granatelli, and Unser's wife, gave character evidence for him.

They say they have issued proceedings regarding illegal termination of the agreement and other breeches of the contract by Derrick Walker, who operates the team. They say they "made a significant financial commitment" to the series and are "very disappointed in the team management's performance in not fulfilling undertakings given".

"Testing was not forthcoming, thereby adversely affecting James' competitiveness," the Davisons say. "At no time was there any adequate or satisfactory explanation given by Team Australia. At the Lexmark Indy Grand Prix the Davisons endeavored to meet Derrick Walker to discuss the issues, however he proved uncooperative. Throughout 2005-06 two Australian families, the Marshalls and Davisons,  invested significantly into the foundation of both the Champ Car and Atlantic teams, however in less than 12 months both families ende in dispute with Team Australia."