MOTORSPORT: Will Power No. 1 in America

Dominance in IndyCar racing gets nod in close vote
Australia's Will Power has been acknowledged as the top race driver in America right now. But this weekend he's in Brazil, for the fourth round of the IndyCar series -- which he leads after two race wins already this year and pole position at the other.

Power was voted the driver of the first quarter of the racing year by 21 broadcasters and journalists in America. He scored eight first-place votes and a total of 99 points to the 98 of nitro funny car drag racer Robert Hight, who also scored eight number one votes.

"I don't recall such a close quarterly vote," said Driver of the Year Foundation president Barry Schmoyer.

It may not mean that 31-year-old Power from Toowoomba is regarded as the very best driver in America but that he is the form driver, even though Hight has won four straight National Hot Rod Association rounds driving for John Force Racing.

Greg Biffle, the leader of NASCAR's Sprint Cup, finished third in the poll with 78 points and two No. 1 votes.

Power said it was "a great honour" to be the quarterly winner again -- the Team Penske driver earlier topped the poll in the third quarter of 2010.

Power had pole position and set the fastest lap in the opening race of this year's IndyCar series at St Petersburg in Florida but finished seventh after an early pitstop while his Brazilian teammate Helio Castroneves won.

Power charged from ninth to victory in the second round at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama and from 12th -- after all drivers of Chevrolet-powered cars were penalised 10 places on the grid for engine changes -- to first at Long Beach in California.

Power has won seven of the past 11 races on road and street courses and the past two years on the 4km street course in Sao Paulo, where the IndyCars will race early Monday, Australian time.

"The Sao Paulo track (7000 feet above sea level) is one of the best in the calendar, without a doubt," Power said. "There are two long straights which allow drivers to take some risks in overtaking."

Power has 127 points in the championship, chasing his first title after being runner-up to Ganassi team driver Dario Franchitti the past two years, while second-placed Castroneves is on 103 points. The third Penske driver, Australian Ryan Briscoe, has 73 points and was the fastest qualifier at Long Beach (although, like Power, he started 10 places back).

Power attributed the team's latest dominance to being the best prepared with the new wide-bodied Dallara DW12 cars.

Teams running Honda engines have been given the all-clear to use a new 0.74 A/R compressor cover for their single turbochargers from Sao Paulo for the sake of parity. Chevrolet and Roger Penske had objected to the change but was overruled midweek.

Honda, the only engine supplier using a single turbocharger on the new 2.2-litre V6 engines this season, said the new compressor cover "helps to offset a demonstrable performance disadvantage".

Meanwhile, third engine supplier Lotus is winding back from four teams to two. Bryan Herta's Barracuda team has ceased using the Lotus engine already and has not made the trip to Brazil because it is 24th in the series and expenses to and from Sao Paulo are only being paid for the top 22.

Brazil will be Dreyer and Reinbold Racing's last outing with Lotus power, leaving just Jay Penske's Dragon Racing and HVM using it.

Lotus said this week its place in the series was "like David versus Goliath" but that it "remains completely committed to IndyCar and has worked diligently to rise to the challenge". However, IndyCar circles are rife with speculation that Lotus will pull out after next month's Indianapolis 500.

Toyota and Ford say they are not interested in returning to Indy racing, which one series devotee says "just keeps blowing its own feet off instead of racing fans' socks off".

Barrichello heads seven rookies for Indy 500
Brazilian racing veteran Rubens Barrichello, making his fourth IndyCar start in his native Sao Paulo this weekend in what he jokes is just "a change of address" after 19 years in Formula One, is among seven rookies entered for the Indianapolis 500.

Barrichello, the oldest of the seven, will turn 40 on May 23 -- four days before the classic, billed as "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing". It will be his oval-track debut.

Another rookie in the field for the 500 is New Zealander Wade Cunningham, who has raced in America for several years. So too is Frenchman Simon Pagenaud, while his countryman Sebastien Bourdais will make his first start in the race since 2005.

The other rookies are Bryan Clauson, James Jakes, Katherine Legge and 21-year-old Josef Newgarden.

The starting line-up is limited to 33 and there are 34 drivers entered at this stage -- a much smaller list than in the event's heyday.

Rookie orientation for the 96th Indy 500 will be on May 10, the opening day of practice May 12, pole qualifying day May 19 and bump qualifying day May 20 -- a week before the race on the Memorial Day weekend.

NASCAR's Johnson 'most influential athlete'
Will Power may be the man of the moment in American racing but Jimmie Johnson -- NASCAR's Sprint Cup champion every year from 2006 to 2010 -- has been rated the most influential athlete by Forbes magazine for the second year in a row. Forbes said Johnson's "talent and guy-next-door demeanour endears him to fans, as well as to marketing chiefs".

Dale Earnhardt Junior, son of the late seven-time Cup champion and NASCAR's highest earning driver despite enduring a long victory drought, dropped from third to seventh on the Forbes list.

This weekend's Sprint Cup round is on the three-quarter-mile (1.2km) oval at Richmond, Virginia.

Australia's Marcos Ambrose's best finish at Richmond has been fifth. He is standing equal 20th in this year's championship.

Atkinson eyeing Asia-Pacific repeat
It's a double-header weekend for rallying, with the second round of the Asia-Pacific championship in New Caledonia -- where Australia's Chris Atkinson is the defending winner -- and the fifth round of the world championship in Argentina, where wild weather is forecast.

Atkinson and Belgian co-driver Stephane Prevot won in Noumea -- Grande Terre, the largest island in New Caledonia, 1500km east of Queensland -- in a Proton Satria Neo last year but this time are in the Skoda Fabia in which they lead the Asia-Pacific series after victory in New Zealand's Rally of Whangarei for India's Team MRF.

Wet weather is a strong possibility in Noumea and Lane Heenan, managing director of Perth's Race Torque, which builds Team MRF's cars in Perth, said the Skodas to be driven by Atkinson and India's Gaurav Gill had an upgraded Reiger suspension package with different valving and slightly longer suspension travel.

Heenan said the Super 2000 cars were "really sensitive" and Atkinson said they would opt to be "on the safe side with the set-up".

"You need to have a car that's easy to change depending on the conditions," Atkinson said. "But I was really happy with the car in New Zealand, so I can't see us making too many changes.

"This is a rally I really enjoy. Some of the stages are really good fun, while others are quite tricky... If it's wet then it's a real lottery and hard to drive.

"The plan is to continue to learn the intricacies of the Skoda and keep the momentum going... I still need to approach every rally [in the series] with the aim of winning it, because if P-G (Per-Gunnar) Andersson [Proton] and Guarav win in New Caledonia then we'll lose the championship lead."

Swede Andersson, a two-time junior world rally champion in his first year in the Asia-Pacific series, was fastest on 11 of the 16 stages in New Zealand but, forced to drive more than 20km on a puncture, finished 30 seconds behind Atkinson in second. The Proton team calculated that the puncture cost Andersson 90 seconds. Its other driver is defending series champion Alister McRae, the Perth-based brother of Scotland's late world champion Colin McRae.

There are four stages in the Rally of New Caledonia today; nine tomorrow and six on Sunday, for a total of 253km of competition.

At Rally Argentina, renowned for its "unrivalled atmosphere", the forecast is for rain and fog throughout the weekend.

"This is going to be a very, very hard rally," Ford team director Malcolm Wilson said.

Citroen's eight-time world champion Sebastien Loeb, winner of the past six rallies in Argentina, said the fog was his biggest concern. "When you have the visibility down to 20 metres there's nothing you can do," Loeb said.

Spaniard Dani Sordo, the former Citroen driver running only a part-time schedule for the Prodrive MINI team after BMW scaled back its support, is deputising in the Ford team for Finn Jari-Matti Latvala, who has a broken collarbone after a skiing accident.

Sordo was second, 3.6 seconds behind, to Ford teammate Petter Solberg in the opening stage in Villa Carlos Paz. "I only tested one day with the [Fiesta] car with not many kilometres and then I come here to do a rally which is very, very difficult," Sordo said.

Norwegian Mads Ostberg, who inherited the win at the previous round in Portugal after Mikko Hirvonen's Citroen was excluded for an illegal clutch, was third on the opening stage in his Fiesta.

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