MOTORSPORT: V8s, Safari and rallying double vision

Something for almost everyone this weekend.

What a week for motorsport news -- V8 Supercar’s top team switching from Fords to Holdens next year, BMW pulling out of Formula 1 at the end of this season, Michael Schumacher back racing for Ferrari in three weeks.

And today (Friday) an extension of Holden Racing Team’s contract as the official factory V8 Supercar team was confirmed, more here.

Still no word of a resolution of the Splittergate affair though, but there’s lots of immediate motorsport action:

• A V8 Supercar round at Melbourne’s Sandown circuit this weekend.
• The final round of the Australian Rally Championship near Adelaide.
• The World Rally Championship enters the final third of its season with Rally Finland, the last event before the new Rally Australia in northern NSW on September 3-6.
• The week-long Australian Safari gets underway in Perth tomorrow (Saturday).
• IndyCar this weekend is in Kentucky, with Australians Will Power and Ryan Briscoe among the favorites driving for Team Penske.
• And NASCAR, with Australia’s Marcos Ambrose in the Sprint Cup field, is at Pocono, Pennsylvania.

The soft compound sprint tyre will be used again in the Sandown V8 Supercar round, which is sure to spice up the racing -- even if some of the drivers, especially reigning champion and leader again this year Jamie Whincup, don’t like it.

Apart from the track action -- 32-lap and 65-lap races around the 3.1km power circuit -- it will be worth watching the reaction of fans to the Team Vodafone switch that will return Craig Lowndes and Whincup to the Holden fold next season.

Inevitably dealing with that is going to be a distraction for the pair, but they are Sandown specialists.

They won all three races there last year. Over the years Lowndes has won eight Sandown races and the younger Whincup three.

And Whincup already has won seven races this season to lead HRT’s Will Davison by 174 points in the championship.

On the other side of the country the 22nd Safari -- the Australasian Safari these days, and the third straight in Western Australia -- promises to be something special as a competition and endurance test but unfortunately low on visibility.

For cars, motorbikes and quad bikes, the Safari almost invariably is an event in which there is more interest overseas than in Australia.

A highlight this year is American four-time Baja 1000 winner Josh Hall’s 6.2-litre Hummer H2 SUT.

Its motor is too big for Hall to be eligible for outright honors, but this is essentially a practice run ahead of a return next year with a 5.7-litre Hummer.

There’s also a three-car team from China in 3.8-litre normally-aspirated Changtong Motors -- a Chinese variation of the Mitsubishi Pajero.

Other international entries are from Germany, Sweden, South Africa, Japan, the Czech Republic, Britain and New Zealand.

The 3600km Safari starts with a prologue at Perth’s Russell Square in inner suburban Northbridge, with overnight stops at Geraldton, Mt Magnet, Leonora and Laverton before the finish at Kalgoorlie next Saturday.

Steve Riley, a dairy farmer from Victoria’s Gippsland region, is the defending winner, back with his rebuilt Mitsubishi Pajero with its 6-litre engine.

Riley expects his biggest challenge to come from five-time Safari winner Bruce Garland, who was third last year and is determined to score the first diesel victory in the event with his Isuzu D-MAX.

"This is the vehicle we (Garland and co-driver Harry Suzuki) ran in the Dakar this year in South America, but we’ve done a lot more work on the suspension since then, so it should ride even better," Garland said.

"We’re also going to be trialing some new diesel technology, which we believe will give us a lot more speed."

Other well-recognised names in the field include circuit racers Paul Weel and Tony Quinn.

Weel, who won the 1997 and ’98 Australian Off-Road Championships before going V8 Supercar racing, is in a Holden Colorado co-driven by his father Kees.

Quinn is in a Mitsubishi Pajero hopeful of at least a finish after last year’s engine failure.

"The Safari is an extreme event. I didn’t go to school long enough to learn enough words to best describe it, but brutal and phenomenal are the two that come to mind," Quinn said.

To follow the Safari’s progress the website is www.australasiansafari.com.au

The Australian Rally Championship -- shortened by the cancellation of the Coffs Harbour round in NSW -- will be decided in the Mt Crawford Forest and Barossa Valle north of Adelaide this weekend.

Simon and Sue Evans, in a family-run Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX, head their former Toyota factory team boss Neal Bates and his long-time co-driver Coral Taylor, in a Super 2000 Corolla, by 8 points.

Both pairings are multiple national champions and, as Bates says, "Whoever wins the rally will take it (this year’s title)."

That’s on the fairly safe presumption that either Evans or Bates wins the rally, although Eli Evans (Simon’s brother) and co-driver Glen Weston won an SA heat in a Subaru last year.

That pair, along with Darren Windus in another Bates-built, ex factory-backed S2000 Corolla, and brothers Glen and Matt Raymond, in a Group N Corolla, promise to be among the main players. Rallying, certainly domestic rallying, sadly has fallen off the national motorsport radar this year, but it always has plenty for its hard-core fans.

Flamboyant South Australian Jack Monkhouse will be back out in the forests this weekend in his old Datsun 180B.

Queenslander Steve Shepheard recently enlisted Australia’s under-employed WRC veteran Chris Atkinson for a day’s tuition in his Mitsubishi Evo X, which may yield some reward this weekend (but there’s still no sign of a Rally Oz drive for Atko).

Rally SA kicks off with a new shootout today in the Mt Crawford Forest and includes two night special stages at Angaston Oval.

Organisers have promised live vision of the super special stages and in-car vision throughout the weekend at www.sarally.com.au

On the WRC scene, Citroen and Ford have committed for the next two years, hopefully providing some stability.

And Citroen’s superstar French driver Sebastien Loeb has put paid to an imminent switch to F1, saying that rallying -- and renewing his contract with Citroen -- is his priority. More on that later.

This weekend’s Rally Finland will see the WRC debut of Ferrari’s 2007 F1 world champion, Kimi Raikkonen, driving his own Abarth Grande Punto in his homeland.

Raikkonen has said he is interested in a WRC career after next year.

And, with BMW pulling out of GP racing, Polish F1 racer Robert Kubica also is looking at the WRC.

"I’ve had a rally car for five or six years," Kubica said.

"There are many rally drivers I really respect and, when I’ve tried a bit of rallying in the past, I know what big balls these guys have.

"To be on the limit, to fight for tenths of a second on roads lined with trees … in (circuit) racing we know every corner and every kerb, but rallying is different.

"I like(d) Tommi Makinen, Colin McRae, Richard Burns, Carlos Sainz and now, of course, Sebastien Loeb. I also like the way Mikko Hirvonen is driving at the moment."

Indeed, with four rounds remaining, Ford star Hirvonen is a point ahead of Loeb after the Citroen ace’s crashes in the past three rounds wiped out a 20-point lead from five straight wins at the start of the season.

"I have won two rallies (in Greece and Poland), but Sebastien has retired or made a mistake in both of those," Hirvonen said.

"If I want to win then I need to beat him at least twice in a fair fight."

Nordic drivers have dominated the Finnish round, which for many years was known as the 1000 Lakes Rally.

Only three non-Nordic drivers have succeeded in popping the champagne there -- Spaniard Carlos Sainz, Frenchman Didier Auriol, and his countryman Loeb last year.

Courtesy of Citroen, which still leads Ford in the manufacturers’ championship, here is a short Q&A with Loeb ahead of Rally Finland.

How does he see the WRC situation going into the ninth round?

"The way things stand at the moment, it’s hard to have a totally free mind, but I feel quite relaxed. Despite what some people have written, I didn't spend my holidays in an F1 simulator! Indeed, I made the most of the short break to have some time to myself. Some friends came to visit us at our home and we spent a weekend in the Alps doing activities like mountain biking, rafting and canoeing. There are only four rounds of the 2009 championship left and we will have no alternative but to attack! Even if you just take calculated risks, anything can happen, and that's what's making this championship so challenging."

How much did having to retire on the opening day of Rally Poland affect him?

"I obviously didn’t take it well at the time. If I had spotted the tree-stump during recce, we would have noted it and I would have taken a different line through that turn. As it was, I turned in exactly how I wanted to and the stump broke the front suspension subframe. As is the case every time we have a problem, the technical team took a close look at that subframe and they noticed there had been a production-related problem with it. Otherwise, there’s every chance it would have taken the knock in its stride, although we will never know for sure."

With just four WRC rounds to go, how will he approach them?

"Last year showed that we are capable of matching the Finns on their home event. Rally Australia will be new for everyone, so we will all start on an equal footing. In Catalunya (Spain), we have the edge on paper, but I am very much aware of how much Mikko has progressed on sealed surfaces. The season ends with Wales Rally Great Britain, which is an event we won last year, although Mikko will be very much at home on it, too. It promises to be a very close and exciting final run-in. It could go either way should one of us fail to finish an event. If that should happen, it will probably be impossible to catch up if the other driver doesn’t make any mistakes. One thing which is sure is that a win in Finland would give me a psychological advantage going into the last three rallies."

Elsewhere we have noted Loeb being quite emphatic that his immediate future remains in rallying rather than F1.

"I am keen to sign a contract with Citroen and that is the only negotiation that I am having at the moment," he said.

"It would be a pleasure to drive in F1, but I don’t know if I am able to do that or not.

"I will take the opportunity for a race one day and I will be happy to do it.

"I am not sure I would be able to fight for the win and my job is rallying next year and not F1.

"My priority is to stay in rallying."

As much as it would be terrific to see a driver with a legitimate claim to being the best in the world racing in F1 those words are great news for rallying.

On the Rally Oz front, organisers say that 94 per cent of ticket sales so far have come from outside NSW’s Northern Rivers region that will host it.

They claim sales of the Super Pass for the event are four times over budget, and that 46 per cent of all sales have come from Queensland, 26 per cent from NSW areas other than Northern Rivers, and 9 per cent from Victoria.

Sounds healthy, but without actual numbers rather than a few percentages it’s hard to tell.

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