MOTORSPORT: Webber linked to Ferrari

The Sun shines speculative light on Prancing Horse ride
Ahead of the crown jewel of Formula One races, the Monaco Grand Prix, Australia's Mark Webber is suddenly being mentioned as a possible Ferrari driver next year.

The V8 Supercars are at Winton in northern Victoria this weekend, with most interest in whether Ford -- and most probably James Courtney -- can win again against the championship leader Jamie Whincup, and whether Toll Holden Racing Team's Garth Tander can charge further back into contention.

The third round of the Australian Rally Championship, in which Scott Pedder in a Mitsubishi leads Simon Evans in a Subaru by 30 points, is on NSW's Coffs Coast.

In America NASCAR's Sprint Cup reaches the one-third point of the season with round 12 at "The Monster Mile" oval in Dover, Delaware, where Australian Marcos Ambrose is seeking his second top 10 finish of the year.

And at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway practice gets underway for the Indy 500. The traditional "month of May" at The Brickyard has been condensed to 15 days now, with qualifying next weekend and the race on May 30.

Apart from Australian drivers Will Power and Ryan Briscoe competing for Team Penske, another expatriate Australian, Barry Green, who had enormous success in Indy racing as a crew chief and team owner, returns to run a KV Racing-owned car for controversial 41-year-old Canadian Paul Tracy -- that pair still feeling they were robbed of a Brickyard victory eight years ago.

Ferrari flattery but Webber better running with the Bulls
The first two practice sessions for the Monaco GP are already over, with today a lay-day in the rich Mediterranean principality.

Fernando Alonso set the pace overnight in his Ferrari, while Mark Webber -- such a dominant winner in Spain last Sunday -- was only 10th in his Red Bull RB6 by the end of the day.

A report in The Sun newspaper in London has linked Webber to Ferrari next year. See here.

There could be some truth to it, or it could be a ploy by Webber's management to extract a super deal for him to continue with Red Bull next season.

Poland's Robert Kubica, now with Renault, is the more likely replacement -- because of his youth -- at Ferrari next season for Brazilian Felipe Massa, who this author would not be surprised to see back with the Sauber team.

It would be a huge honour for Webber to race for Ferrari. He would be the first Australian to do that in F1, although Tim Schenken was a Ferrari factory driver in sports cars in the 1970s. And 1980 world champion Alan Jones greatly regrets not having accepted an invitation to race for Ferrari in the twilight of his F1 career.

If indeed there is a prospect of Webber going to the revered Italian team he will have to decide where his best chance of winning a world title lies -- in terms of the machinery he would have, and the teammate.

Even in the best team, a world championship is going to be a tall order for Webber, but he surely would have more chance of beating the young Sebastian Vettel to the title at Red Bull than the experienced and proven Alonso at Ferrari.

The excellent post-Spanish GP behind-the-scenes article by BBC pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz says the decisive factor that has made Red Bull's RB6 so much quicker than rival cars this season is its low-slung exhausts, see here.

Kravitz also makes the point that the Red Bull team wanted Vettel to retire from the Barcelona race because of his brake problem towards the end, but that he "effectively relieved the team of their (safety) responsibility and took the risk into his own hands".

The third place Vettel earned ultimately may prove crucial in the championship fight.

Kravitz's article also informs us that Jenson Button's McLaren-Mercedes topped 311km/h on that long Barcelona straight as he frustratingly sat behind the factory Mercedes of Michael Schumacher, which reached only 303km/h.

This BBC follow-up column has become compulsory reading for this author the week after a GP.

While Red Bull must be favourite to win in Monaco, and certainly has favouritism to fill the front row of the grid, McLaren has won on the famous street circuit 15 times and Ferrari only nine times -- and not since 2001 (the last of Michael Schumacher's five wins there).

Five of the past six Monaco GPs have been won from pole position, but in the five years before that the pole did not even convert into a podium finish.

Webber's view is that a good qualifying position in Monaco "is half the race".

There's a nice line in Planet-F1's Monaco preview that Webber "gets his chance to be like a London bus ... you wait for ages for a win and then two come along together".

"Mark's never been that lucky on the streets of Monaco, yet he's always been fast, so he could make it two wins on the trot. That would really set the championship alive," a Planet-F1 scribe quite rightly wrote.

Some wisdom from Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn ahead of this race too.

"The drivers play their role at Monaco perhaps more so than at any other track," he said. "Precision, consistency, speed and control are essential."

More so this time with 24 drivers in the field -- eight of them newcomers to those streets.

Rising star Ricciardo gets a taste of Monaco
Another newcomer to Monaco is Australia's rising star Daniel Ricciardo, the reserve driver for Red Bull Racing but competing in the Formula Renault 3.5 Championship race several hours before the GP.

Ricciardo, in only his third meeting in the category, was eighth in practice overnight, while his main championship rivals -- the more experienced Russian Mikhail Aleshin and Estonian Sten Pentus -- headed the pack.

"The track is awesome -- it's fantastic, but there is absolutely no margin for error," Ricciardo said. "There were lots of yellow flags in practice, but I'm fairly confident for qualifying Saturday."

The 20-year-old West Australian has 28 points in the series so far to Aleshin's 38 and Pentus' 27, while Ricciardo's New Zealander teammate Brendon Hartley -- who set the fastest lap in this race at Monaco last year -- is eighth on 15 points.

Pye hot in British Formula Ford Championship
Another rising star progressing well in Europe is Scott Pye, who has now won four of the six races so far in the British Formula Ford Championship.

Pye won two of the three races last weekend at the Knockhill circuit and his Jamun Racing teammate Josh Hill - son of 1996 F1 world champion Damon Hill and grandson of late dual world champion Graham Hill -- the other.

Originally from Mt Gambier, Pye has backing from the Australian Motor Sport Foundation and Roland Dane's Triple Eight Race Engineering.

The series is super-competitive, with drivers from 11 countries, six makes of chassis (including the Australian-made Spectrum, which was third in one of the Knockhill races, driven by a Brit) and the winning margins are often in the hundredths of a second.

Despite being the most winning driver this season, Pye trails (by 23 points) the consistent Scott Malvern, who has had only one win -- but the Aussie is stamping himself as the class of the field in his French-made Mygale car.

Ford/Courtney or Tander main Whincup rival at Winton?
The V8 Supercar series has been overshadowed in recent days by Mark Webber's success but should regain its share of the spotlight with the sixth round of its championship at Winton.

James Courtney's twin victories at Queensland Raceway for Ford and Dick Johnson/Jim Beam Racing spiced up the championship, as he narrowed Jamie Whincup's lead to 24 points.

However, it should be remembered that Triple Eight/Team Vodafone star Whincup finished fourth in the first race there and was leading the second until his retirement -- so it's not as though his competitiveness suddenly evaporated, even if his championship lead shrunk.

There are other key players in this championship too -- most notably Garth Tander, who has been the top-scoring driver since his horror start to the season in the Middle East.

With a haul of 825 points from the past three rounds, Tander has rocketed from 22nd to fourth -- and just eight points behind Ford and Stone Brothers' young Kiwi ace Shane Van Gisbergen.

Tander's 219 ponts behind Whincup and 195 in arrears of Courtney, so it could be game on for Tander at Winton, which he has said is the "litmus test" for the category's Dunlop sprint tyres.

"Traditionally it's a very difficult circuit to pass on, so I think the real test will be whether the sprint tyre generates passing," Tander said.

"I think the sprint tyre will have more longevity at Winton. It seems to last a lot longer in braking and power-down scenarios than when you apply lateral force to it. And Queensland is tough on the tyre laterally, whereas Winton is the opposite and it's more about getting the power down to the road."

Saturday's race is 120km over 40 laps and Sunday's 200km over 67 laps.

Tander, Whincup and Triple Eight/Team Vodafone's Craig Lowndes are proven performers at Winton, while Courtney's best in three years at the circuit has been a sixth place -- but maybe things will be different this time around.

Optimism on Sandown future, concerns in NZ
There are indications of a deal being close for V8 Supercars to continue racing at Melbourne's Sandown circuit for 10 years, contrary to a sense the venue's days were numbered.

In New Zealand there appears to be growing disquiet about the Hamilton street race. See here.

for which the contract was recently stretched to 2017, with V8 Supercars Australian taking over promoter.

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