MOTORSPORT: Wacko the daddy-o

And this kid, Austin Cindric, progeny of Team Penske president Tim, comes to you in a 560-horsepower, 6.3-litre V8 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3. One of Betty Klimenko's.

Yes, to race at Mt Panorama, perhaps the most daunting circuit in the world other than the old Nurburgring in Germany – the one Sir Jackie Stewart called 'The Green Hell' – and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.

At 16. Out of the US Formula 2000 Series, with three podium finishes in the 'Lites' category of American rallycross and a test in an Australian V8 Supercar Development Series car under his belt.

Five months ago it was announced that a 16-year-old from The Netherlands, Max Verstappen, would make his Formula One race debut at Melbourne's Australian Grand Prix in mid-March with the Toro Rosso team.

Verstappen, also the son of a dad with a racing pedigree, has since turned 17.

But the governing body of world motorsport, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), has now closed what it saw as a loophole that allowed such a youngster step up to F1 so soon with so little experience.

Jos Verstappen raced in more than 100 GPs but his boy has had just one season in car racing, finishing third in the European Formula Three Championship – although he did win 10 races, more than any other driver in the series.

From next year, though, any boy – or girl – racer will have to have done at least two years in FIA-nominated championships and achieved success prescribed under a special points system to gain a 'super-licence' to break into F1.

Last September the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) knocked on the head 14-year-old West Australian Jake Kostecki's plan to race in a round of the V8 Touring Car Series at Phillip Island. That's the third-tier touring car category in Australia, but the engines are V8s and this kid was 14.

CAMS chief executive Eugene Arocca said at that time: "We applaud young drivers getting involved in motorsport, and think it is a wonderful story, but we are not prepared to compromise safety for a good yarn."

Beloved Betty Klimenko has so much money – or at least she did when she came into motorsport – that she fields teams in both GT racing and V8 Supercars, under the name Erebus – which a dictionary tells us is the dark region of the underworld through which the dead must pass before they reach Hades.

One of Betty's Merc SLSs won the Bathurst 12-Hour in 2013, driven by an accomplished German trio – Bernd Schneider, Thomas Jager and Alex Roloff.

Her team had podium finishes at The Mountain in February the year before that and again a year ago.

On February 6-8 this year one of her GT3 Mercs is to be driven by 34-year-old Dean Canto and two 22-year-olds, Richard Muscat and Jack Le Brocq – a trio of some note. The other is to have 20-year-old Simon Hodge and 22-year-old Nathan Morcom, the reigning and a previous Bathurst outright lap record holder (both in F3 open-wheeler cars), and 16-year-old Cindric.

The second of these cars is an 'amateur class' entry.

There's talent aplenty in the two Mercs (five of the drivers have won championships in various categories), but might it be a stretch for Betty's husband Daniel, team principal of her GT team, to call it the "perfect" balance of youth and experience?

Perfect? Experienced?

If he gets a start, Cindric – who won't be 17 until September – will be the youngest driver in the history of the Bathurst 12-Hour, being run this year for the 14th time.

"Sometimes the world doesn't want to give young guys a chance," Daniel Klimenko says.

But this exercise, he insists, "is what the 'Erebus Academy' [with the stated aim of building careers in motorsport] is all about".

"Believing in a 16-year-old is nothing unusual for Erebus," says Mr Klimenko.

"We ran Matthew Soloman [from Hong Kong] at the age of 16 with [dual F1 champion] Mika Hakkinen at Zhuhai [in China]."

That was 15 months ago, and they won. But Zhuhai isn't the unforgiving Mt Panorama, where there could be as many as 54 other cars in 12-Hour – including many millions of dollars worth of Aston-Martins, Audis, Bentleys, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, a dozen Porsches, other Mercs, a McLaren MP4-12C and a Nissan GT-R in the premier class.

Young Cindric says the chance to race at Mt Panorama is "really cool".

"The Bathurst 12-Hour is something many drivers dream of doing," he says.

"I'm really looking forward to my first race in Australia.

"The opportunity to compete for the overall win, with a team like Erebus, so early in my career, is unbelievable.

"I can't thank Erebus Motorsport enough for believing in me and helping to make this happen."

Yes, but that doesn't mean it's wise – and safe – to allow a 16-year-old, inevitably with little experience, to race at Bathurst.

Erebus trumpets that the kid "last year alone raced at 17 different tracks across five different series in the US, Canada and Australia".

But, hey, the boy himself says this is to be his first race in Oz.

The FIA, and its Australian arm CAMS, must feel unease about this situation.

SAFETY IS NOT JUST FOR THE YOUNG
As mentioned on this site a couple of times recently, the FIA is very uneasy, in the wake of Jules Bianchi's crash in last October's Japanese Grand Prix, about F1 races starting on circuits without floodlights within four hours of sunset or dusk.

Frenchman Bianchi remains in a critical condition with severe head injuries after his 700kg Marussia car hit a 6.5-tonne mobile crane at 126kmh in torrential rain and fading light as the crane was recovering German Adrian Sutil's already-crashed Sauber.

The recommendation on GP start times of the 10-member Bianchi crash panel – headed by the president of the FIA's safety commission Peter Wright and including the vastly-experienced and respected Ross Brawn, Stefano Domenicali, Emerson Fittipaldi and Alex Wurz – ought to mean a return to a 3.30pm kick-off in Melbourne.

Sunset in the Victorian capital on March 15, the day of the opening race in this year's world championship at the Albert Park temporary street circuit, will be at 7.40pm.

Australian GP Corporation chief executive Andrew Westacott has publicly resisted any move from Melbourne's 5pm start of recent years, introduced as a compromise to F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone's wish for an Australian race friendlier to the European TV audience.

GP drivers have complained of glare with the race starting later. Imagine the danger of driving at F1 speeds with setting sun in your eyes.  

Ecclestone had wanted Melbourne to become a night race, but the Victorian government – already subsidising the event to the tune of $60 million a year – wouldn't fund the lights.

Ecclestone also wanted Malaysia to light its Sepang circuit for a night race, but they settled on a one-hour later start there, only for the event to become more prone to tropical downpours.

Now Sepang circuit boss Razlan Razali has told international news service Reuters that, in view of the FIA's stance since Bianchi's crash, Ecclestone is telling Malaysia it is going to need to revert to its original start time.

"Mr Ecclestone mentioned that because of the Suzuka incident the FIA has some time limit," Razali said.

"So he is reviewing to move the start to the original time, maybe this year.

"It's a safer time bracket."

The AGPC's Westacott told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper a week ago that a 5pm start for the city's race was set in stone.

"The race time will remain at 5pm as per agreement with the AGPC and Formula One Management," Westacott told the paper.

That is the Formula One Management headed by Ecclestone, who is reportedly indicating to Malaysia that its race start time is going to have to change, because of the FIA stance safety.

The FIA may not have enshrined the recommendations of the Bianchi report in its regulations yet, but a bulletin on the day that report was made public (December 3, 2014), said its (the FIA's) World Motor Sport Council "accepted the findings and gave a mandate to implement the full recommendations and conclusions of the report".

Not only that, but – unless something has changed all of a sudden – an Act of the Victorian parliament for 20 years now has behoved the AGPC to stage the best and safest GP in the world championship. To aim to be not only the best, but also the SAFEST.

Fourteen years ago a track marshal, Graham Beveridge, was killed at Albert Park by a flying tyre from Jacques Villeneuve's BAR-Honda after it collided with Ralf Schumacher's Williams car.

On one hand, it was a freak accident. On the other hand, a coroner's inquest found, there was a design fault with the circuit catch-fencing. That fault was remedied for the next Melbourne GP, at great expense.

No price was too high for safety then.

Now, in seemingly wanting to defy the FIA on the start time at Albert Park when that body clearly wants it changed to avert a repeat of the Bianchi crash or see another terrible incident, it could be perceived that safety is no longer the top priority of the AGPC.

Yet not only the FIA but an Act of parliament is telling it that safety should be paramount.

A headline tucked away at the bottom of page 12 of this week's Auto Action magazine on this matter reads 'Safety comes second'. And that can be a recipe for disaster.

Even if it means a lot of egg on face, a retreat from the 5pm position would be pragmatic, prudent and politic.