Motorsport: V8 Supercar bad blood rumbles on

Midweek motorsport reportJanuary 24, 2007

Leaked Kelly letter keeps angst alive
While Craig Lowndes has been insisting that the bad blood over the way the V8 Supercar Championship ended last year is over, the contents of a leaked letter revealed in today's Auto Action magazine won't letter the matter die.

Auto Action editor-at-large Mark Fogarty reveals that the letter was sent to backers of Kelly's Toll-sponsored HSV Dealer Team late last year and that Ford superstar Lowndes took his Holden rival, and 2006 champion, Kelly to task when he got wind of its contents.

Fogarty reports that the letter contains inflammatory comments about Lowndes and his Triple Eight team's reaction to losing the title fight, and in a sidebar story quotes extensively from the document.

"Most controversially, the letter charges Triple Eight boss Roland Dane tried to convince the stewards that Kelly planned the title-deciding collision (at Phillip Island)," Fogarty writes.

"Lowndes took such exception that he sent Kelly an email complaining about the contents and tone of the letter, which went out to HSVDT's sponsors and business partners in mid-December. It was issued just days after Kelly and Lowndes had spoken amicably at the V8 Supercar Gala Awards Dinner. But on top of Kelly's subsequent comments to the media blaming Lowndes, the letter provoked the Ford star into responding personally. He is understood to have expressed bitter disappointment that Kelly had inflamed the situation, as well as objecting to the comments and claims ascribed to him.

"The Kelly letter was intended only for distribution among HSVDT's backers, but a copy obtained by a Ford supporter was forwarded to Lowndes. It was also mistakenly posted on Toll's website, being quickly removed."

Fogarty reports that the letter was clearly headlined for the attention of the team's business partners, sponsors and dealers, signed 'Rick', and that there was some embarrassment that the document became public.

There was also concern about the source of the leak, as it appears to have been a draft version -- with a mock advertisement for a Lowndes tissue box -- that was circulated.

Kelly is understood, according to Fogarty, to be uncomfortable about the leak, while Lowndes clearly wants to put the matter behind him, saying that -- while he disagrees with Kelly's views -- he has no lingering ill-feelings.

However, in motorsport circles these latest revelations are likely to overshadow the launch this week of the new-look on the Triple Eight cars.

The overwhelming red paintwork in the Vodafone livery is raising some eyebrows over the extent to which it overpowers Ford's blue oval logo.

With Ford and Holden under massive financial pressures, more questions may be asked by the manufacturers in future about exactly what it is they want, and are getting, out of participating in racing.

Ford presses pause button on Orion
Ford's racing replacement for the BF Falcon may not make its debut until 2009, according to today's edition of Motorsport News magazine. It reports that Ford will persist with the existing Falcon against Holden's new VE Commodore, due to debut at Adelaide's Clipsal 500 in a little over a month, until at least mid-2008.

Motorsport News says there has been a policy shift within Ford away from parallel development of the new model for the road and the racetrack. It quotes Ford racing manager Ray Price saying the launch date for the new Supercar, codenamed Orion and originally to have been unveiled in the first quarter of '08, won't be decided for about another month.

The indications increasingly are that it won't be until '09.

Double vision at Britek with Gurr
Jason Bright's Britek has confirmed its second V8 Supercar entry -- and that the Falcon will be driven by Alan Gurr, who did some sprint races last year in a Paul Morris Commodore.

Gurr's Falcon will be sponsored by American tools company IRWIN, which has been synonymous with Roush Racing in NASCAR. Not surprisingly, Bright confirmed that Caterpillar has followed him from Ford Performance Racing to Britek.

After racing in five different series last year -- the Indy Racing League, Grand American (Daytona 24-hour), A1GP, Australian V8 Supercars, and the Champ Car World Series -- Briscoe passed up several Champ Car approaches for this year to become one of nine factory drivers Porsche has named for its racing program in the US. He will be paired in the 12-round American Le Mans Series with reigning LMP2 champion, Belgian Sascha Maassen, in an RS Spyder.

It was in this car that Briscoe shaded French sports car veteran Emmanuel Collard by 0.22 seconds in a sister Porsche on his first outing. "It really is amazing to drive," Briscoe says. "I thought it was going to be dramatically different than what I've driven before. It's like an open-wheel car with covers on. It's so quick in the corners."

Briscoe and Maassen will be joined by a third driver for the longer races -- at Sebring it will be Collard, while Penske's two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves will be in the team's other Spyder there.

Briscoe was recruited to replace Lucas Luhr, who has gone to the DTM (German Touring Car Masters Championship) with Audi, and the Porsche connection could take the Aussie into 24-hour classics like Le Mans in France and Daytona in America.

In ALMS the Porsches will be up against makes including Ferrari, Lola, Panoz, Corvette and Audi, as well as three Courage C75 Honda Acura-powered entries.

The fastest of the Acura cars at Sebring early this week as the Highcroft Racing entry in which Australia's David Brabham is making his return to ALMS.

The Tango will have four stages each on Friday and Saturday and three on Sunday, with nine uphill and two downhill runs.

Among the entries are Channel 7 personality Grant Denyer in the STi Spec C Subaru Impreza in which Cody Crocker won the 2005 Australian Rally Championship. The car has been converted to Subaru Motorsport tarmac racing specifications. It will be Denyer's four-wheel-drive debut in rallying, and alongside him will be Crocker's former co-driver, Dale Moscatt. For Tango info, see www.lakemountainsprint.com

Crocker won the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship last year after taking the ARC title the previous three years. However, he is in limbo after Tasmanian entrant Les Walkden, with whom Crocker won the Asia-Pacific crown, could not raise the budget for a Production World Rally Championship campaign this year.

Have noticed a couple of interesting comments around from Crocker. He says Walkden's operation is "just as professional to what I was used to (in Subaru's now-disbanded ARC team) and possibly even more so", and that "one area the ARC needs to improve is the accessibility for spectators to come to events and view lots of different action without having to travel huge distances. Enticing people to events and then entertaining them though is a huge challenge."

The ARC, as always, is facing other challenges too, with only two manufacturers committed for '07 reigning champions Toyota, which will field a new Super 2000 car as well as one of its Group N prototypes Corollas, and Ford, with a pair of four-wheel-drive Fiestas from the Britek stable of V8 Supercar star Jason Bright.

F1 'customer' car row hotting up
Formula One's season-opening Australian Grand Prix in March could become a legal bunfight in something like the way it did two years ago when Australian Paul Stoddart's Minardi ran outdated cars others, particularly Ferrari, saw as breaching the rules.

Team principals have been unable to agree a solution to the "customer car" row which has embroiled F1 for some months now.

Scuderia Toro Rosso, the second Red Bull team and formerely Minardi, and Honda-related Super Aguri, want to run chassis this year that were the cars of their "parent" teams last year, but Dutch team Spyker -- formerly Midland and originally Jordan -- is strongly opposed, claiming the rules still require each team to exclusively design its chassis.

Clearly Spyker sees itself being disadvantaged, with the prospect of it finishing last in the constructors' championship, if Toro Rosso and Super Aguri can run chassis which have already shown degrees of competitiveness.

Motorsport Aktuell, a German language magazine known for its authorative reporting, says F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone waded into the argument last week with a compromise but the team principals could not agree on it.

The row now threatens to rumble on until scrutineering in Melbourne on March 15 -- and could even end up in the courts.

Super Aguri fails FIA's crash test
Super Aguri, F1's newest team, has reportedly failed the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) crash test with its '07 chassis -- the '06 Honda with, reportedly, some changes to the sides of the cockpit and the rear-end. It supposedly failed the new rear-impact test after passing the frontal test.

Word is that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone will announce a grand prix will be held there from 2009, on a new purpose-built circuit designed by the German architect Hermann Tilke. This will be the second GP in the Gulf region -- Bahrain already has one, and Dubai already has a circuit capable of hosting one.

South Korea is preparing for a GP in 2010 and Indian interests are keen to get on the F1 calendar. All of this is increasing the pressure on European circuits, and for that matter Australia, to keep races.

"It was beautiful," Raikkonen was quoted as saying by Italy's ANSA news agency. "I was a bit choked up but it gave me a kick to be back in a (race) car. My first impressions were positive, even if I would have preferred to do more laps in the dry."

Raikkonen's teammate, Felipe Massa, drove the new F2007 at Vallelunga, where Ferrari will test for another two days, but it will be next week before Raikkonen gets behind the wheel of the new model.

In what some are seeing as another attempt to create similarities between Raikkonen and Schumacher, the Finn has a new white and blue helmet design similar to one of Schumi's early color schemes.

It's interesting that Peter Sauber, who several years was accused of being incapable of running a proper F1 team, has not only sold his Swiss team to BMW but played a big part in the elevation of seven-time world champion Schumacher, Raikkonen and Massa to the big league.

Sauber fielded Schumacher in Mercedes sports cars before his F1 debut, and Raikkonen and Massa both began their F1 careers with him.

McLaren clamp on new-boy Hamilton
The recent sale of half his 30 per cent stake in McLaren to Bahrain prompted talk that Ron Dennis may be planning for retirement, but perhaps contradicting that is some classic "Ronspeak" from the McLaren boss regarding the team's rookie driver, Lewis Hamilton. There is a lot of attention on Hamilton, not only because of his outstanding form as he came through the lower ranks to F1 but also because he's black -- of Caribbean ancestry.

Dennis is wary of the prospect of too much media coverage distracting Hamilton from his job, saying: "The desire to over-expose Lewis and put up the whole Lewis story is not just an English issue -- it's a global issue. All you can do is go down the path of quality-controlled exposure, with fair rules of engagement.

"We will make Lewis available, but we will certainly limit one-on-ones (exclusive interviews), because they are so massively time-consuming and can be very intrusive and distracting for a young driver. In some instances, it's like the young driver being thrown to the wolves and that certainly isn't going to happen."

Ralf's manager admits he's a challenge
Ralf Schumacher's manager, German media veteran Hans Mahr, is vowing to improve his driver's image in the first year after the golden era of Ralf's older brother, Michael.

Mahr admits to sport1.de that improving perceptions of the younger Schumacher's is "a challenge" as he has some "rough edges". He has already pushed Ralf into appearing on the German version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. "The best promotion, however, is sporting success. Everything else will follow," says Mahr.

Success is something Ralf's Toyota team desperately needs. A survey late last year by the FIA which attracted 90,000 respondents found that, after spending billions of dollars in its six years in F1, Toyota is the sport's least popular team, with it being the favorite team of less than 1 per cent of F1 fans. That's less even than Super Aguri, which has been in the sport only a year.

Hill talks up Button, cool on DC
It's a decade now since Britain had an F1 world champion, but that champion, Damon Hill, sees great hope for the Brits this year. Hill is predicting, on crash.net, that Jenson Button will be this year's champion and that Lewis Hamilton will win a GP in his first season.

Hill also notes a "quiet determination" in Anthony Davidson, who is with Super Aguri, but is hedging his bets on veteran David Coulthard, his teammate at Williams back in 1994 after Ayrton Senna's death.

Of Coulthard, who will have Aussie Mark Webber as his teammate at Red Bull Racing this season, Hill says: "He can win GPs, but maybe that window of opportunity has now passed David by. If the (Adrian Newey-designed, Renault-powered) car turns out to be competitive there's no reason why David can't win on a regular basis, but his career has shown he has not always grabbed opportunities that have been right there in front of him. I won the title when I was 36 though, so he is still young enough (approaching his 36th birthday at the end of March) to convert that into the championship given the chance."

Montoya fully booked in stock cars
As an F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya competed in less than 20 races a year, but in his first full season of NASCAR in America he's booked for 63 -- a combination of his duties in the premier Nextel Cup and second division Busch Series, in which Aussie Marcos Ambrose will be racing. In his boss Chip Ganassi asks, though, Montoya is reportedly not interested in driving again in the Indianapolis 500 he has already won.

Wilson sticks with Champ Car team
Englishman Justin Wilson is staying with RuSPORT in the Champ Car series after approaches from at least three other teams. Wilson, who drove in F1 in 2003, has finished second and third in the American series the past two years. Swiss driver Neel Jani has joined PKV Racing in the same series, while Paul Stoddart's Minardi USA is due to start naming its drivers any day now that Champ Car testing is underway at Sebring in Florida.