MOTORSPORT: Whincup on world stage next week

Jamie Whincup has been whipping Australia's best race drivers consistently for years and now he's taken on the world's best in the Race of Champions Cochrane Doohan

V8 Supercar champ to race Vettel, Schumacher and other big stars

Jamie Whincup has had a taste of the international motorsport scene but in a week’s time he will be racing against some of the world’s greatest.

Whincup will be the first V8 Supercar champion to drive in the Race of Champions (ROC), an event being held for the 25th straight year and with a field boasting many world champions – including Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher, who have 10 Formula One world titles between them.

The ROC began in Paris in 1988 as a shootout between top rally drivers but has become much broader and in recent years has been held in London, Beijing and Dusseldorf. This time it’s in Bangkok. It is a stadium event on a specially-constructed circuit comprising two parallel lanes and a crossover bridge.

The drivers race each other head-to-head in a range of identical machinery from tin-tops to buggies. This year it includes the Audi R8 LMS, Gallardo Super Trofeo, Toyota GT86, VW Scirroco, a Euro racecar, a ROC car and a KTM X-Bow. It has produced more than its share of surprises over the years – Swede Mattias Ekstrom won it three times, famously beating Schumacher in Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in 2009.

The driver line-up next week also includes the World Rally Championship’s rising star, Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, who won the ROC on his debut last year, Le Mans and world touring car greats Tom Kristensen and Andy Priaulx and America’s new IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Whincup – who has raced V8 Supercars in the Middle East, China and New Zealand and against visiting foreign drivers at the Gold Coast - will pair up with Australia’s five-time motorcycle world champion Mick Doohan in the ROC Nations Cup, being held on Saturday, December 15, then they compete individually the following day for the unofficial title of “world’s greatest driver”. Doohan is going to ROC for the fifth time, while Whincup – almost a neighbour of the 500cc legend on the Gold Coast – is calling himself “a ROC virgin”.

Nonetheless, it is a huge honour for the four-time V8 Supercar champion and a boon for the category’s international profile.

“I am not setting my expectations too high but I will have some fun and hope my big Aussie V8 experience helps me,” Whincup said in his usual modest way.

Doohan said the ROC “is a fun event … but the goodwill evaporates when we’re waiting to blast away from the start line”.

“As usual, I’ll be aiming to prove that anyone estimating us bikers is making a big mistake,” he said.

Reigning MotoGP champion Jorge Lorenzo is also in this year’s field.

Race organiser Fredrik Johnsson - the president of International Media Productions and who founded the ROC with Michele Mouton, the world’s most successful woman rally driver – said Doohan “always gives the car specialists a run for their money”.

Doohan and Whincup will form the first Australian team in the ROC Nations Cup since 2009.

Schumacher and Vettel have won the Nations Cup the past five years running and are going for No. 6 this time. And seven-time world champion Schumacher, now retired from F1 for the second time, has vowed that he will keep returning to the ROC.

“My lucky number is actually seven, so we (he and Vettel) have got to do this year and then the one after (at least). Seven ROC Nations Cups would be the ultimate. I’m not retiring from ROC yet. I could have retired from by the end of this year, but I don’t want to. It’s too much fun.”

Denmark’s Kristensen, winner of the Le Mans 24-Hour sports car classic a record eight times and who has beaten both the German F1 superstars at previous ROCs and was runner-up to Ogier last year, called it “almost better than Christmas”.

Ogier, preparing to spearhead Volkswagen’s entry to the World Rally Championship next year, will be partnered in the ROC Nations Cup by Romain Grosjean, the Frenchman who caused such mayhem in F1 this year but made the ROC semi-finals last year.

The world’s two most populous nations, China and India, will compete along with Thailand and another Asian team for a ROC Asia title, with the winning country going into the Nations Cup. India’s team will comprise Narain Karthikyan and Karun Chandok, both of whom have raced in F1, while China’s drivers are Ho-Pin Tung, who has F1 testing experience, and Han Han, who won his country’s rally and touring car championships this year and is reputed to be the world’s most widely-read blogger.

“Rest assured that Han Han’s expertise stretches to more than one type of hard drive,” ROC organiser Johnsson said.

Not so strong on international expansion

While Whincup will be on the world stage next week, new V8 Supercars chairman James Strong has put a dampener on the category’s international expansion this week.

Departed executive chairman Tony Cochrane had repeatedly said he envisaged six international rounds in the V8 Supercar Championship by 2015, but Cochrane’s non-executive replacement Strong sounded somewhat circumspect about that.

“You must have a good Australian competition,” Strong was quoted by Australian Associated Press saying. “That’s the heart of the business and it always will be. But there are overseas opportunities.”

Whincup favours V8 Supercar expansion in Asia.

“You’ve got to approach every event to make sure there’s going to be a net positive outcome,” he said. “You don’t go chasing overseas events just because they are overseas. You chase them on the basis of adding to the value of the competition both from a reputation point of view as well as a fans’ point of view.”

Ferrari and F1 chiefs fire barbs at each other

There’s been a spat this week between Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone.

Montezemolo, perhaps reacting to Ecclestone’s dismissal of Ferrari’s delayed complaint about a questionable overtake by new triple world champion Sebastian Vettel in the season-ending and title-deciding Brazilian Grand Prix as “a joke”, made some caustic remarks about Ecclestone’s age – 82.

“We must respect the elderly, especially when they can no longer control their words,” Montezemolo said. “Seniority is often incompatible with certain roles and responsbibilities.”

Ecclestone was equally caustic in response, then played it all down.

“Luca is not as old as me (he’s 65) … (but) he’s always been the same. At least he’s consistent. God knows what he’ll be like when he’s 82.

“I don’t feel 82 … (and) I have a thousand more ideas. I’m 82 and nobody can deny that, but I used to discuss things with an 88-year-old gentleman when Luca was 40. His name was Enzo Ferrari.

“Believe me, at that age he could make me shiver because he was terribly tough, incisive and clear-minded. But, no, Luca is a lovely guy. I’m probably as big a supporter of him as anybody.

“I respect his opinion. No drama. More than once he has attacked me, but in the end we understand each other. I don’t have hard feelings towards him.”

The pair probably have too much at stake to let the latest of these occasional verbal stoushes affect relations too much. One of the sources of Montezemolo’s irritation is the ban on testing during F1 seasons, which has negated Ferrari’s advantage from having its own test track, Fiorano at Maranello, and having been left behind by other teams in the development of F1 simulators.

“Our patience has run out, so someone needs to think about whether they want F1 still to have companies that invest and consider it the most advanced research bench for its own cars – as Ferrari has always done since 1950,” Montezemolo said. “We are constructors, no sponsors.”

That got no more favourable reaction from Ecclestone, but at least there’s one count on which Ferrari has overwhelming support – 10 million fans have joined its Facebook page in just three years. While much of its following is in Europe, almost one million of the fans signed up are in one of Ferrari’s newer markets, India.

Meanwhile, the F1 calendar for next year is still being finalised, with the German Grand Prix brought forward a week – from July 14 to July 7 – and July 21 reserved for another European event, in place of the postponed new race at New Jersey in the US.

Contrary to early reports, Turkey is unlikely to be the replacement race because its government won’t contribute financially, saying it’s something for private enterprise. More likely is a revival of an Austrian GP at the redeveloped Red Bull Ring, formerly A1 ring.

Organisers in Austin, Texas, who hosted a super-successful debut GP last month, are also seeking to have the race next year moved from November 17 to avoid a clash with a major University of Texas football game that weekend.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

MOTORSPORT: Whincup on world stage next week

Tags