MOTORSPORT: VW's diesel Dakar glory

Touaregs dominate toughest event on earth
What a contrast the dull launches of the new Formula 1 cars are to the excitement of the Dakar rally.

Despite the raft of F1 rule changes this year, the little bit of interest in the season starting at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne in little more than two months is more about politics than the engineering of the new cars with much revised aerodynamics, slick tyres and Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS).

Ron Dennis is stepping down as principal of the McLaren F1 team but insists he's not retiring and will be working harder than ever, while Prodrive's David Richards has reiterated that he doesn't think the time is right for him to re-enter F1 by buying the Honda team. And the process of that sale is becoming more controversial by the day.

The Dakar is not without its controversy -- especially the death of a motorcyclist, other competitors badly injured, and the shortening, and in one case cancellation, of stages -- but, unlike with F1, it is easy to see a relevance of the event to the car, bike, truck and quad industries.

It is the most gruelling motorsport test on earth, is watched by millions of spectators in person and many millions more through excellent TV coverage.

And Australia's Bruce Garland finished just outside the top 10 in the diesel Isuzu D-Max he built in Sydney -- the first diesel ute finisher in the 30th Dakar.

Volkswagen won the event that ended at the weekend back where it began 15 days earlier in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

VW's diesel Race Touaregs blitzed Mitsubishi -- which had won the previous seven Dakars -- and BMW. Indeed, VW finished first, second and sixth.
It won 10 of 13 long stages -- six by Spain's former world rally champion Carlos Sainz and four by ultimate winner, South African former touring car champion Giniel de Villers, who bears a striking resemblance to pop star Robbie Williams.

VW factory drivers occupied 24 of 39 possible podium positions at the end of the daily competitions.

Each of its four Race Touaregs finished at least three of the stages among the top three.

VW motorsport director Kris Nissen said: "We wanted to be the first automobile manufacturer to win the Dakar rally with diesel power. We have now done this, and with a one-two victory at that.

"We've got the 'Das Auto' (The Car), we've got 'The Team', and together we have won 'The Race'.

"We not only beat our strongest rivals, Mitsubishi and X-raid BMW, but prevailed against the Dakar itself.

"It was more challenging, demanding and murderous on the machinery than ever, but Volkswagen was tougher, more reliable. Three of our four cars reached the finish, and not one of the Race Touaregs retired due to a technical problem."

Sainz retired from the event last Thursday after his Touareg tumbled into a ravine. The Spaniard was unhurt and could have continued but his co-driver, Frenchman Michel Perin, had a shoulder fracture.

While Sainz said not finishing after being on course for a victory to add to his two WRC titles was "a particularly bitter pill", it was a reminder that "one must never underestimate the Dakar".

It was ironic that the first Dakar run outside Africa -- after terrorism fears caused the last-minute cancellation of the 2008 event -- was won by an African, but that did nothing to diminish de Villiers' joy.

"It was definitely a genuine Dakar rally -- and the toughest I've contested," de Villiers said. "This victory is worth more than any of the titles I won in touring car racing.

"The Race Touareg ran like a charm."

De Villiers dominated South African touring car racing from 1997 to 2000, then turned to offroad racing in that country and was a Nissan driver in the Dakar from 2003 until 2005, with a best finish of fourth in '05.

In 2006 he joined VW when it entered the Dakar -- the 1980 Paris-Dakar was won by privateers Freddy Kottulinksky and Gerd Loeffelmann in a VW Iltis prepared by Audi.

De Villiers finished second for VW in '06, and the next year dominated the event until his Touareg slipped to 11th with engine trouble.

The second-placed Touareg this year was driven by American Mark Miller, while the Hummer of American NASCAR and former open-wheeler racer Robby Gordon was third.

The sixth-placed VW was driven by German Dieter Depping, and finished behind two Nissans.

The only one of Mitsubishi's new diesel Racing Lancers that finished, driven by Spaniard Nani Roma, was classified 10th, demoted from sixth for note completing last Thursday's stage, while a privateer Mitsubishi L200 from the Czech Republic ultimately took seventh place.

The other Racing Lancers of past winners Stephane Peterhansel, Luc Alphand and Hiroshi Masuoka had all retired in the first week.

Roma won the penultimate stage last Friday but copped a 10-hour penalty from the day before.

Vowing to bounce back, Mitsubishi factory team director Dominique Serieys said: "We will work as hard as possible and invest everything to be ready for 2010 and make sure that we can win back the title."

World rally-raid champion Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar, winner of two early stages in his BMW X3, was disqualified on day six for short-cutting the route and missing several checkpoints.
 
Aussies do us proud on the Dakar
Aussie Bruce Garland, his co-driver Harry Suzuki and their Isuzu D-Max ute were ninth on the final Dakar stage and ended up 11th outright -- the first diesel ute finisher in the event.

Exhausted but relieved to have made it back to Buenos Aires after about 9000km, including about 5000km of competition even after the shortenings and a cancellation, Garland said: "We've done it and it's a huge achievement.

"I think less than 10 per cent of the cars did the entire course and ours was one of them, so we are really, really proud of that.

"It (the D-Max) just did not miss a beat.

"We've put a year's worth of work into the event, so to get both cars home (Swedes Pelle Wallentheim and Olle Ohlsson finished 44th in the other Garland-built D-Max), with just a few problems with the other one, is pretty special.

"Obviously Harry and I would have liked to have snuck into the top 10 and we gave it our best shot. But 11th, given everything this event has thrown at us, is a fantastic achievement.

"I think it will have more of a chance to sink in after we've had the final parade ... in a couple of days.

"The event has been an absolute ball-buster ... extraordinary."

Close to 500 machines left Buenos Aires on January 3, 177 of them in the car class, but few more than half made it back -- with 92 in the car class on the final stage.

Spaniard Marc Coma took his second Dakar motorbike title in three years aboard a KTM.

The best-placed two-wheel Aussie was David Schwarz, 36th on a KTM, while Simon Pavey was 68th of more than 110 finishers on a BMW.

And another Aussie, Richard Hayes, was aboard a Mercedes with two Spaniards that finished 50th -- of 52 -- in the truck section.

All of which means that five of the six Aussies who started the Dakar made it to the finish -- the other was forced out with an arm injury.

They've been a long way from home and, because of their positions, largely out of TV view, but what an effort by all of them.

Villeneuve reckons he's fair dinkum
Jacques Villeneuve has said in a radio interview that he's quite interested in the idea of racing a V8 Supercar in Australia this year.

At least a lot more interested than we would have expected, and he has said he would not want to be running around at the back of the field.

But the 1997 Formula 1 world champion -- and 1995 Indianapolis 500 victor and Indy series champion -- has said it would be "quite a big decision" and "quite a big move" from Montreal to come to Australia for a season.

We still doubt that Paul Morris' overtures to Villeneuve will come to much, but apparently the full interview with the V8 Insiders crew will be played on Thursday's Inside Motor Sport show, which apparently is on various radio stations around Australia.

And highlights of the interview are supposedly on V8X.com.au, although we couldn't see any sign of it there.

In case you don't have time for the whole audio or even highlights, Villeneuve said the initial thought was to do Bathurst but then it became 'Why not do the whole season?'

"The V8s has always been an exciting series. I always saw them when I was racing in Melbourne (at the F1 GP) and they looked like amazing cars to race in -- it looked a fun championship," he said.

On Villeneuve's radar this year is another outing for Peugeot in the Le Mans 24-hour sports car classic, the Speedcar series in the Middle East (in NASCAR style machines), a return to the "Top Race Super Series" in Argentina, and he still harbors hopes of breaking into NASCAR in North America.

Based on his experience, or dearth of sponsor interest, before the financial meltdown it's hard to see that happening.

Which is an indicator of what a feather it is in Aussie Marcos Ambrose's cap that he's now a full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup racer -- one of only two newcomers in the big league of American stock car racing this year, although apparently some sponsorship is still needed for three of the 36 races.

Government assurance Townsville street circuit on schedule
Queensland Sports Minister Judy Spence, that well-known motorsport authority who tried to kid people eight or nine months ago that the Gold Coast Indy race was good for another five or six years, has given a public assurance that all is on schedule for Townsville's new V8 Supercar street race mid-year.

The reason for this assurance, other than a politician just trying to draw attention to herself, is that monsoonal rains have caused flooding in North Queensland recently.

"The Reid Park site has fared reasonably well," Spence said. "As with all major construction projects in Queensland's north, the implications of wet weather at this time of year have been factored into the project management schedule."

What Spence did not mention was what impact the demise of the Storm investment outfit that has featured so heavily in the national press in recent days might have on Townsville's morale.

Similar to the collapse of the Pyramid building society in Victoria's Geelong more than a decade ago, we suspect.

Anyway, construction of the racetrack is progressing in Townsville. Leighton Constructions has reported that 500 barricades are in place and 30 of the 80 higher barricades needed for pit lane are ready, while fabrication of deck panels for a new bridge over a creek are also said to be on target.

Great news that V8 Supercar racing is going to North Queensland, although a permanent circuit would have made a lot more sense.

Formula 1 ... McLaren, Honda, Ferrari
As you may have guessed at the outset today, the F1 launch season is not greatly exciting us, despite the biggest shake-up of the sport's technical rules in 15 years.

Mark Hughes of ITV, the British telecaster of F1 for the past decade (although the race this year will return to the BBC), has characterised the launches as anxious in the case of Ferrari, hopeful at Toyota (most probably without KERS in Melbourne, Hughes says) and confident at McLaren -- particularly because of its super-sophisticated tyre modelling software and its progress with KERS.

We know it is an era of severe cost-cutting in F1, but the budgets are still huge and we wonder why the teams don't make a lot more of their functions to reveal their cars.

There was some kudos, but also almost outrage in some quarters, when McLaren spent a million pounds on the Spice Girls to launch a car a decade ago.

Since then most launches have become little more than rolling a new car out of a garage at a test track.

Surely they can do better, even in this era of financial stress, for the benefit of the fans of the sport, the media and -- in particular -- the sponsors who part with such enormous amounts of money for them to go racing.

Certainly competitiveness on the track needs to be their priority, but -- as otherwise disgraced Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Max Mosley has frequently pointed out -- the public can't see much of the technology on which the teams spend so much.

Yet the launches, via the mainstream media and now internet, ought to be a great way for the teams to relate to the sport's fans.

McLaren's Ron Dennis used the launch of the MP4-24 for world champion Lewis Hamilton and Finnish teammate Heikki Kovalainen to make his long-anticipated announcement that he is handing the reins of team principal to long-time No.2 Martin Whitmarsh.

Dennis was at pains to stress he is not retiring, will be working harder than ever and still going to most races.

It seems that while Dennis will take his hands off McLaren's F1 operations after 28 years he will get more involved in its road car business, including development of a new supercar, codenamed the P11 and powered by a 600-horsepower AMG-sourced 6.2-litre V8 Mercedes-Benz engine, slated for release next year.

Apparently it will come in three versions -- road, convertible and race-ready.

McLaren is said to be working on two other models, including one to challenge Porsche's 911.

Meanwhile, the eyes of Britain's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) are reported to be on the Honda F1 sale process amid gripes about team chief Nick Fry being involved in scrutinising offers while also interested in heading a buyout.

Unhappiest is said to be Achilleas Kallakis, a Greek property tycoon and heir to a shipping empire, while Fry insists he has kept BERR fully informed.

With Honda refusing to supply engines beyond a sale that we have confirmed now needs to be arranged by the end of this month (i.e. within two weeks), and Ferrari declining to help out, it now seems the team will adapt is 2009 design to Mercedes-Benz engines if it is to race in Melbourne.

Prodrive's David Richards has reiterated that he is not a buyer.

As much as Richards said he wanted to return to F1 "one day", he still did not see the sport as "financially viable" despite moves to cut costs.

"The environment is too unsettled," Richards said. "Finding the money to buy the team is not the problem; it is the ongoing overheads and running costs that would be the issue.

"The days when people are prepared to throw hundreds of millions of pounds or dollars into F1 are over."

And, while F1 commercial tsar Bernie Ecclestone dropped in on Ferrari's traditional post-launch media talkfast in the Italian Alps, we note he is still the target of some barbs from Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo.

"F1 has to be a normal sport that is not connected to single people," Montezemolo said.

The increasingly statesmanlike -- or is it crafty manipulator? -- Montezemolo also said:
"I think that this sport has four Ss: stability, seriousness, spectacle and sustainability.

"Stability means not changing the rules every six months or every year. We need to plan ahead -- and the spectators remain puzzled by too many changes.

"Seriousness, because you need a lot to be able to deal with difficult moments: we need to stay united and humble, without ever giving the impression that we're divided.

"Spectacle means attention to the circuit layouts, to enable overtaking, to the sporting rules, but also to the use of new technologies such as the internet, high-definition TV and much more that you can introduce in this field.

"Sustainability, because no company can stay alive if costs and earnings don't balance."

More rumours than racing in A1 GP
A few whispers of fresh, or extra, financial difficulties in the A1 Grand Prix series due in New Zealand this week for the round at Taupo.

There are suggestions the cars have been stranded in Malaysia, where the previous round was run pre-Christmas, because of disputes over transport costs.

We are also hearing rumours that the Indonesian round, scheduled for a new venue in Jakarta two weeks after NZ, may not go ahead because of money woes -- but on the pretext the circuit has not gained FIA approval.

A1 GP has been the subject of rumours of collapse since its beginnings four years ago.

It's hung on against all the doubters and we hope it can survive to take its place on the Gold Coast in place of IndyCars in October, which could be the fillip it needs.

If the going gets even tougher, and private equity owner RAB Capital wants out, we wonder whether Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateshitz might be a potential saviour.

This season's A1 cars have engines from Ferrari, with which Mateshitz has ties, and -- with drivers from 20-odd countries -- it could be a way of restructuring the Red Bull junior driver program, particularly once the world economy picks up again.