MOTORSPORT: VW almost seals it in WRC

Volkswagen, and especially its superstar rally driver Sebastien Ogier, is happy to have been back on tarmac for the German round of the World Rally Championship on the weekend.

The German giant's fourth straight manufacturer and driver world titles may be only one more event away after the weekend’s success in Rally Deutschland .

Meantime, Australian Brendan Reeves and his co-driver sister Rhianon Gelsomino won the final round of the New Zealand Rally Championship in a Mazda2.

And, in open-wheeler circuit racing, Sydney’s Joey Mawson has a strong lead over Michael Schumacher’s 17-year-old son Mick in the German Formula 4 Championship – a series with fields of more than 30 youngsters from around the world – with just one three-race round remaining.

Finally, Thomas Randle, runner-up in the inaugural Australian F4 season last year, was the top Formula 3 rookie at the F3 Masters in Europe.

Volkswagen and Ogier could clinch titles next up
Sebastien Ogier and his fellow Frenchman co-driver Julien Ingrassia hadn’t won for six months in the WRC but they were back on the top step of the podium at Volkswagen’s home round.

Rally Deutschland is a tarmac event – the first full tarmac round this year – and that meant that starting first on the first two legs was not the disadvantage to the triple world champions and this year’s series leaders that it has been most of this season when they have found themselves sweeping the gravel roads for following competitors.

“I haven’t had the chance to win on the recent rallies … I was missing that feeling,” a delighted Ogier said after taking victory by more than 20 seconds in a Polo R at the ninth round of the championship around Trier in Germany’s wine district.

Hyundais finished second and third – with Spaniards Dani Sordo and Marc Marti just one-tenth of a second ahead of Belgians and final Power Stage winners Thierry Neuville and Nicolas Gilsoul in a pair of i20s.

They nudged VW’s Norwegian pairing, Andreas Mikkelsen and Anders Jaeger, back to fourth place. Their Polo R had no brakes and its left-rear wheel was on fire as it battled the Hyundais at the end.

New Zealanders Hayden Paddon and John Kennard were fifth, more than another three minutes behind, but that gave the Korean manufacturer three cars in the top five and lifted the Kiwis to third in the driver and co-driver championships.

Now that Rally China, which was to have been the new round in mid-September, has been cancelled, Ogier-Ingrassia and VW could wrap up fourth consecutive titles on France’s Mediterranean island Corsica on the first weekend of October.

Rally Australia, which gave up the mid-September slot to become the finale, will be at Coffs Harbour on November 17-20, after rounds in Spain and Britain.

Although the WRC was back on tarmac, conditions were made tricky by constantly-changing weather.

A huge crash on the long Panzerplatte stage on Saturday in Germany put the sole Citroen DS3 competing, driven by French pair Stephane Lefebvre and Gabin Moreau as privateers for PH Sport, out and them in hospital with fractures and internal injuries.

While it ended a long victory drought for Ogier-Ingrassia since they began the season with successes in Monte Carlo and Sweden, VW won in Poland with Mikkelsen-Jaeger and in Mexico with Finns Jari-Matti Latvala and Miika Anttila – who were out of contention in Germany after early gearbox problems but salvaged two points with second place on the Power Stage.

Ogier-Ingrassia edged out the Hyundai of Sordo-Marti for third place on that Power Stage by 0.001 second – the equivalent of 3cm.

The latest overall triumph though means that VW’s German team principal Jost Capito heads off to his new job in Formula 1 with McLaren having overseen 39 WRC wins and 81 podium finishes with the Polo Rs.

Capito said it was “a very emotional moment for me”.

“I am particularly pleased to see the pair of them (Ogier-Ingrassia) back on the top step of the podium after something of a barren spell,” he said.

“As much as they have had to suffer on gravel tracks as a result of the rules requiring them to open the route, thereby meaning they have no chance of winning, they used the slight advantage that this starting order had on asphalt.

“But it wasn’t easy – changeable conditions made it tricky to select tyres and left no room for errors.”

Hyundai’s second and third was its first double podium of the season and came on the event where earlier i20s driven by Neuville and Sordo denied VW a first victory on its home soil two years ago.

World Rally Championship driver standings after nine of 13 rounds – 1. Sebastien Ogier (France, Volkswagen Polo R) 169 points; 2. Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, VW Polo R) 110; 3. Hayden Paddon (New Zealand, Hyundai i20) 94; 4 Thierry Neuville (Belgium, Hyundai i20) 94; 5. Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, VW Polo R) 89; 6. Dani Sordo (Hyundai i20) 86; 7. Mads Ostberg (Norway, Ford Fiesta RS) 78.

WRC team standings – 1. Volkswagen Motorsport 256 points; 2. Hyundai Motorsport 201; 3 M-Sport (Ford) 122; 4. Volkswagen Motorsport II 121; 5. Hyundai Motorsport N 96.

Aussie rally siblings strike gold in NZ
Brendan Reeves and Rhianon Gelsomino dominated New Zealand’s Goldrush Rally Coromandel, winning the one-day, 10-stage event by more than a minute.

They were never headed after taking the first stage, although Reeves said they made the wrong tyre choice for the Force Motorsport-entered Mazda2 in the middle of the rally.

It was the first victory for Mazda in an NZ Rally Championship round for 23 years and the Victorian siblings led home another brother-sister combination, Matt and Nicole Summerfield in a Subaru.

The Reeves car was not the two-wheel drive Mazda2 he drove in the Australian Rally Championship in 2013-14 – this one was four-wheel-drive and turbocharged.

Joey Mawson edges closer to European glory
Australian Joey Mawson won another race – his eighth this season – in the German Formula 4 Championship round held at Holland’s Zandvoort circuit and his only rival for the title now, Mick Schumacher, didn’t.

They now go to the final round at Germany’s Hockenheim on the first weekend of October with 39 points between them and a maximum of 25 points from each of the three races there.

The gap between the 20-year-old Mawson, from Sydney and in his fourth year in Europe, and 17-year-old Schumacher had been 46 points heading to Zandvoort.

It was 56 points after Mawson won the first of the three races at the track in the sand dunes on the Dutch North Sea Coast, but came back to 41 points when he was unplaced after a collision in the second race, then to 39 when he was classified eighth in the final race of the weekend and Schumacher sixth.

'Schu Jr', the only son of the still-disabled seven-time F1 world champion Michael Schumacher, notched two third places at Zandvoort before that.

Only half points were allocated on the wet third race, which was halted with less than 75 per cent of the scheduled distance completed after a multiple pile-up – started by Mawson and involving Schumacher – as well as another incident on the same lap.

Mawson had been charging from 12th at the start – the order of the top drivers had been reversed – but caught a large puddle on the inside of a left-hand corner that pitched him into another driver and off the track, and Schumacher into a spin across the grass.

Kami Laliberte, a 16-year-old Canadian teammate of Mawson at Dutch-based outfit Van Amersfoort Racing was declared the winner. He said he had been given “plenty of tips and advice” by Mawson, who he called “a super driver”.

Mawson said his victory in the first race of the round had been “perfect for Van Amersfoort Racing, because it’s a home race for them, and perfect for me”.

He pulled out a 3.5-second gap before a safety car intervention, then kept the field at a safe distance after the restart.

“I got a great start, quickly opened up a gap and then controlled the race,” said Mawson, who headed home 16-year-old German Mike David Ortmann, who was to win the second race.

Schumacher was a teammate of Mawson last year but this season switched to Italian-run Prema Powerteam for which Australian Ryan Briscoe won a European F3 Championship more than a decade ago.

Randle top rookie amid Swede success at Masters
Zandvoort also hosted the long-established F3 Masters, which was won for the third time in six years by a Swede – this time 18-year-old Joel Eriksson.

All three drivers on the podium were in cars fielded by German team Motopark, with which Max Verstappen – now Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull F1 teammate – won the event two years ago.

Second this time were Red Bull junior development squad drivers, 16-year-old Finn Niko Kari and Brazilian Sette Camara.

Australian Thomas Randle performed best of the five newcomers to European F3 machinery at the Masters.

Driving for British team Double R, Randle was 11th in the final – one place higher than in the earlier qualifying race.

Fellow Aussie Ricky Capo, a multiple F3 race winner at home, finished behind Randle in both races on his European debut, driving for Britain’s Fortec Motorsport.