MOTORSPORT: V8 Supercars v World Cup cricket

The V8 Supercar pre-season test was moved this year, supposedly to avoid a clash with the start of the cricket World Cup, but infamously it clashed with the Bathurst 12-Hour.

Now a V8 Supercar race this Sunday is going to clash with the final of that cricket tournament.

The second round of the V8 Supercar Championship is at Tasmania's Symmons Plains circuit next weekend.

It will be the first event in the championship's history exclusively televised live on pay-TV – on Fox Sports, with only delayed highlights on the free-to-air Ten network.

The two Saturday races at Symmons Plains have been shortened this year – to just 25 laps each, from 42 laps last year.

Sunday's race remains at 84 laps and is to start at 2pm, Australian eastern summer time, with 83 minutes allowed for it in the event schedule – until 3.23pm.

Play in the World Cup final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground is to start at 2.30pm, Australian eastern summer time.

So 53 minutes of the V8 Supercar race are going to clash directly with the cricket match.

In reality, it's a complete clash because there will be previews of the cricket, which will be screened both on Fox Sports and free-to-air Nine as the V8 Supercar race gets underway.

It was V8 Supercar chief executive James Warburton who said when the pre-season "Super Test" and Bathurst 12-Hour clash first loomed in the middle of last year that "a World Cup in Australia ... is going to be huge, so we've got to look at the timing of that".

The V8 Supercar round has also been hit by the absence from the track of Tasmania's two favourite racing sons, Marcos Ambrose and John Bowe.

Bowe will miss the Touring Car Masters races at Symmons Plains because he's attending a Dunlop dealers' conference in Fiji. Steve Johnson will drive Bowe's Ford Mustang in his place.

Ambrose stunned the motor racing community and broader public last week with his decision to "bench" himself for the time being from racing DJR Team Penske's FG X Ford Falcon, especially as it came ahead of his return to his home circuit after almost a decade in America's NASCAR.

While Ambrose was reported at the weekend to have taken himself to central Australia to "clear his head", DJR Team Penske managing director Ryan Story has said the 2003-04 V8 Supercar champion will be at Symmons Plains and that "when there's an opportunity for us over the weekend Marcos will correctly address some things".

"There's really nothing more to it beyond Marcos thinking the best thing for the team right now is to put Scott Pye back in the car ... Marcos is heavily invested in this program," Story said.

The explanation that is awaited is just how Ambrose feels he is going to get better at racing one of these "Next Generation" V8 Supercars by not being in the driver's seat.

Briscoe shared the Chevrolet Corvette C7.R that won the GT Le Mans class at the weekend's Sebring 12-Hour.

In January he and co-drivers, Denmark's Jan Magnussen and Spain's Antonio Garcia, also won their class at the Daytona 24-Hour.

Fellow Australian James Davison shared the Aston-Martin Vantage that was second in the GT Daytona class at Sebring.

And, just a week after his clean sweep of the V8 Supercar non-championship races at Melbourne's Grand Prix, Mark Winterbottom co-drove the second-placed car in the opening round of the Brazilian stock car series at the Ayrton Senna Circuit in Goiania – a former home to that country's MotoGP.

Winterbottom was third in the event last year, after post-race penalties, and this time cruised to what he called a "pretty straightforward" podium in a race that included 14 drivers with Formula One experience.

Winterbottom said his tyres deteriorated quite quickly after he took over from teammate Marcos Gomes and so he backed off, still finishing within 7 seconds of winners Ricardo Mauricio and Nestor Girolami and well ahead of the other 33 cars in the 35-lap race.

Meanwhile, Sebring was a Chevrolet benefit, with Corvette-engined prototypes taking all three outright places on the podium – with Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, well-known to Australians as an Indy racer, in the victorious car.

Briscoe's class win came ahead of a Ferrari 458 Italia and a Porsche 911 RSR.

The GT LM class is the most competitive at Sebring because of the manufacturer involvement.

Davison's GT Daytona class had the most starters, 14 in the field of 46 cars, and the V12 Vantage finished within 10 seconds of the class-winning Porsche.

A Dodge Viper led the class until the last five minutes, when it overheated.

   
Merc generosity couldn't save German GP
Mercedes, now the dominant manufacturer in Formula One, tried in vain to save its home grand prix in July.

The German GP was officially dropped from the world championship calendar on Friday after the Nurburgring and Hockenheim circuit both declined to host it because of the financial losses they knew they would incur.

British newspaper The Observer has reported that Mercedes offered to act as promoter of the race and to meet half the potential loss on staging it.

"In principle, we do not believe it is the job of the competing teams to provide financial support for individual events and we do not believe this is a sustainable model for the future," a Mercedes spokesman said.

"Nevertheless, the German GP is a core race on the F1 calendar and we have a significant interest in this race taking place.

"Mercedes-Benz has participated in discussions and offered a significant contribution to support a successful German GP, at the Hockenheimring, in 2015. This offer was, unfortunately, not accepted."

Meanwhile, Spanish dual world champion Fernando Alonso is set to fly to Malaysia for this weekend's second round of the championship after missing the Australian GP while recovering from concussion suffered in his mysterious crash, testing the McLaren-Honda MP4-30 pre-season.

Alonso is reported to have passed short and long-term memory and reflex checks by eminent physicians at Britain's Cambridge University.

He will face further tests on his arrival at Kuala Lumpur's Sepang circuit.