MOTORSPORT: Toyota breaks through in NASCAR

A Toyota driver has claimed NASCAR’s Sprint Cup in the US for the first time, with 30-year-old Kyle Busch coming back from broken legs at the start of the season to deliver glory to the Japanese manufacturer against three Chevrolet challengers.

Busch took the chequered flag 1.5 seconds ahead of one of those Chevy drivers, defending champion Kevin Harvick, to win the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Retiring four-time champion Jeff Gordon finished sixth for the mighty Hendrick Motorsports and the fourth title contender, Martin Truex Junior, 12th for the underdog single-car Furniture Row Racing.

Busch gave his team owner and gridiron legend Joe Gibbs his fourth NASCAR title – one more than the number of Super Bowls he won.

Toyota entered the Sprint Cup in 2007 but Chevrolet has remained the dominant brand in NASCAR, winning the past 13 manufacturer championships.

Busch’s brother Kurt won the 2004 Cup – the last driver to do it in a Ford.

Chevrolet had won nine of the past 10 Cups, with the exception being Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski in a Dodge in 2012.

Keselowski led the most laps in Florida today – 86 of 267 – in a Ford but was overtaken by Busch on the last restart with seven laps to go.

Busch missed the first 11 races of the 36-round season after breaking his right leg and left foot in the season-opening race of Nascar’s second-tier XFINITY Series the day before the Daytona 500 in February

After his return mid-season he won four times in five races before Penske’s other driver, Joey Logano, loomed as the title favourite.

However, Keselowski and Logano were eliminated from “The Chase” title fight last week at Phoenix, although they finished third and fourth in the Homestead-Miami finale.

Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton and legendary American Mario Andretti were among the crowd there, the majority hoping to see a fairytale end to the popular Gordon’s career.

Gordon led nine laps early but his “Drive for five [championships]” went unfulfilled.

Truex also led briefly, but Harvick loomed as the championship favourite for much of the race as he chased back-to-back titles with the Stewart-Haas Racing of triple champion Tony “Smoke” Stewart and Gene Haas, the industrialist behind a new F1 team to debut next year.

But Harvick conceded that Busch and the Gibbs Toyota were too good in the end.

“To come back from everything’s that he’s come back from – that’s a great comeback story,” Harvick said of his successor as champion.

Busch had been flat on his back in hospital as the season got underway but finished it in victory lane holding up the Cup.

Ford lends historic team a hand
Team Penske could not raise the sponsorship to field a third NASCAR next season for 21-year-old Ryan Blaney, as part of its ultimate aim of four cars, but instead the sport’s oldest team, Wood Brothers, will field the youngster – with Ford’s support.

Wood Brothers have been in the sport since 1950, always with Ford, and in the 1970s ran the driver second only to Richard “The King” Petty for NASCAR race wins, David Pearson.

However, the team has not campaigned full-time in the Sprint Cup since 2008, although it won the sport’s premier race, the Daytona 500, in 2011 with rookie Trevor Bayne.

Team co-owner Eddie Wood said Blue Oval executives Edsel Ford, Dave Pericak and Raj Nair had helped make it happen.

“When we asked them to regroup and consider going part-time in 2009 it was always with an eye on getting back to this day – and we are thrilled it is finally here,” Edsel Ford said.

Maybe the decision is cause for hope that Ford Australia might one day support local racing again.

F4 champ the new ‘Power’ from Toowoomba
Jordan Lloyd – a teenager from Toowoomba, the city on Queensland’s Darling Downs that produced 2014 IndyCar champion Will Power – has clinched Australia’s first Formula 4 Championship with a round to spare.

Lloyd, who will turn 20 on December 9, won all three F4 races at Victoria’s Phillip Island at the weekend, giving him 13 victories for the season.

Part of his prize will be a test drive with top British-based Formula 3 team Carlin.

The F4 field in Australia remains thin, with only 10 cars competing at Phillip Island.

The final round is at the Sydney 500, another V8 Supercar event, on December 4-6.

Next season’s seven-round F4 calendar includes five at V8 Supercar events, one at the Shannons Nationals and the finale at Tony Quinn’s Highlands Park in New Zealand, where category manager Cameron McConville hopes to see several Kiwi drivers participate.

McConville said it had been decided to concentrate on F4 racing at purpose-built tracks rather than street circuits.

2016 Australian Formula 4 calendar:
Round 1 – Tasmania SuperSprint, April 1–3
Round 2 – Phillip Island SuperSprint, April 15–17
Round 3 – Shannons Nationals Sydney Motorsport Park, July 1–3
Round 4 – Ipswich SuperSprint, July 22–24
Round 5 – Sandown 500, September 16–18
Round 6 – Gold Coast 600, October 21–23
Round 7 – Highlands Park 101, November 11–12

Bowe the master yet again
Two-time Bathurst 1000 winner and 1995 Australian Touring Car Champion John Bowe has won the Touring Car Masters series for the fourth time – at age 63.

Synonymous with Ford throughout his career, Bowe has clinched this latest title in a Holden Torana SLR 5000 after handing his previous mount, a 1969 Ford Mustang, to friend Steve Johnson, who no longer has even an endurance co-drive in V8 Supercars.

Johnson won the final TCM race of the season at Phillip Island at the weekend, but second place sealed Bowe’s championship ahead of runner-up Jim Richards.

Meanwhile, Maro Engel – the Monaco-based German who drove a Mercedes V8 Supercar for Erebus Motorsport in 2013 – won the inaugural GT “World Cup”, a chaotic 14-lap race in Macau, in a Mercedes SLS AMG that he had crashed in qualifying.

In Bahrain, Mark Webber’s New Zealand protégé Mitch Evans scored his second GP2 victory of the year from sixth on the grid, but the 21-year has accepted that his chances of breaking into F1 without the financial support of his rivals are slim and he is likely to turn to sports cars.