Supercar safety 'well down the track'

Supercar safety a touchy subject
V8 Supercars chief executive Wayne Cattach is prickly about the safety concerns aired by Bathurst winner and championship leader Craig Lowndes. Cattach is quoted in today's Brisbane Courier-Mail newspaper saying Lowndes' call -- in the wake of Mark Porter's death -- for more to be done on side-impact safety has little substance. Lowndes said side impact was a major worry and "now we've got to figure out ways to prevent it".

Cattach told the Courier-Mail the safety of V8 Supercars is constantly under review and the cars have been given the seal of approval by a prominent international touring car safety officer who came to Australia recently to examine them. "It's all very well for Craig Lowndes to declare a call for action but it hasn't got any substance," says Cattach, defending  the structural integrity of V8 Supercars. "Look at the accidents we've had -- and Craig was involved in one of them (at Calder Park in 1999). The cars are well down the track in terms of safety. Look at the statistics ... there's a lot more people killed in rock fishing and horse racing than there are in V8 Supercars."

Teams group chairman  Kelvin O'Reilly says he has never seen as much side damage to a V8 Supercar as that in last Friday's development series race crash, but adds: "The roll cage really very much stayed intact."

Mark Porter's funeral is being held in Hamilton, New Zealand, today at 2pm NZ time.

Racers stack up in fitness stakes
V8 Supercar drivers are elite athletes, in some ways as fit as any footballers and with the strength of national basketballers, according to research by Exercise Research Australia, the Victorian Institute of Sport, Intel Health and Stone Brothers Racing on its young drivers James Courtney and Luke Youlden. The research also highlights that racing drivers need great mental strength and concentration -- perhaps more than in other sports.

"Very few athletes suffer such extreme conditions as V8 Supercar drivers," says Dr Troy Flanagan, VIS head sport science co-ordinator. Flanagan says the heat generated inside a Supercar and a driver's fire suits compares with that of AFL football in the hottest part of the day in Darwin or a cricketer playing on the sub-continent. Intel Health is working with Stone Brothers to trial a new heart monitoring device. V8 Supercar champion Russell Ingall's heart rate has been measured fluctuating from 130 beats a minute to more than 230 within seconds.

Super-six plan for V8 teams
Ford Performance Racing chief David Richards says V8 Supercar racing needs six-car super teams. "The economies of scale indicate that six-car teams would make sense in the future," says Richards, who also runs world rallying, Subaru's world rally program and will be back in Formula One in 2008 with a new team. "Tom (Walkinshaw) would agree with me on this one." Walkinshaw, another British international automotive entrepreneur, already runs a four-car operation with Holden Racing Team and Toll HSV under his umbrella. Speaking to Brisbane's Courier-Mail, Richards also says Ford and Holden don't have enough representation in V8 Supercar decision-making. "As far as I can tell they don't get a whole lot of say in things," he says.

The pre-Indy publicity is producing some great headlines in the Gold Coast Bulletin. Among them: "Indy police to bust bare boob babes", about a crackdown on the tradition of women on high-rise balconies exposing their breasts over the track, and "Flower guy puts petal to the metal", about IMG executive Greg Hooton becoming Indy boss after running the Melbourne international flower and garden show.

The sale of the Commodore that Radisich crashed -- for almost $400,000 -- has been voided. "I have been able to pull rabbits out the hat on many occasions over the last six years, but I do not know if there are any more rabbits to be pulled out this time," says Team Kiwi owner David John. Meanwhile, Paul Cruickshank Racing has leased an ex-Larkham Motorsport Falcon to replace the one Marcus Marshall crashed at Bathurst. Mark Winterbottom drove the Larkham car last year and, while Marshall won't get to try it before the start of the Gold Coast meeting, he knows that track from his Champ Car drive there last year and a hat-trick of Formula Three wins on the street circuit in 2004.

Briscoe into the unknown
Ryan Briscoe is not sure what goals he can set for his Champ Car debut at Surfers' Paradise. "It's definitely going to be a challenge coming in at the tail end of the championship, but I've got a good feeling about it," says Briscoe, who has joined RuSPORT -- in place of injured Cristiano Da Matta -- for the final two rounds of the series (the other is in Mexico). "Hopefully we'll be good right out of the box. I'm getting used to jumping from different car to different car, which hopefully will help because I'm going to have to pick up on what it takes to be fast pretty quickly."

In the past fortnight Briscoe has driven an A1 open-wheeler and a V8 Supercar, although he didn't get to do a lap in the Great Race after Jim Richards crashed the second Holden Racing Team Commodore. Briscoe will be the fifth Australian to make his Champ Car debut on the Gold Coast. Will Power, the other Aussie in next week's race, leads the rookie standings in the series this year.

Firstly, though, Rossi is trying to overhaul American Nicky Hayden's 12-point MotoGP lead in the final two rounds of that series before the end of the month. Rally NZ will be very much just a "guest appearance" but Rossi has rally form. Although he crashed a Peugeot out of the 2002 Rally of Great Britain within 17km of the start, more recently he beat Colin McRae on the way to second in Italy's Monza Rally in a Subaru.

NSW in frame for ARC
A new NSW round is in the offing for the Australian Rally Championship next year -- and there is talk the state may even have two rounds after missing out this year. A submission has been made for a round at Forster on the Mid-North Coast, using some of the classic stages from the Southern Cross Rallies of the 1970s. Long-time Rally of Canberra event director and clerk of course Mike Bell is heading the push for the event, possibly in September. Rumors of another NSW application are hazy. The calendar is due within the next month, with no indication yet of whether it will introduce any tarmac events.

F1 bits and pieces
The engine blow-up in Michael Schumacher's Ferrari last Sunday wasn't his only technical failure in Japan. Schumi's private plane had a problem at Nagoya airport and he had to quickly board a commercial flight, with his helmet as hand luggage, to get to Jerez in Spain for the final test session of his career.

McLaren is unlikely to give black British sensation Lewis Hamilton his F1 debut at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix. "This is a hero-to-zero sport -- why put everything at risk?" says McLaren boss Ron Dennis, who seemingly prefers to let Hamilton get kilometres under his belt in off-season testing and make his debut in Melbourne in mid-March. Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa says he's kept his seat for Brazil and dreams of making history with Fernando Alonso next year in what would be the first all-Spanish line-up in F1. Dream on, Pedro.

Nick Heidfeld is a little put out about the fuss over his new Sauber-BMW teammate, Polish youngster Robert Kubica. At last weekend's Japanese GP the team apparently radioed Heidfeld telling him Kubica was faster. "I am usually faster than him and have scored more points since we came together, so if Kubica is so good then what am I?" Heidfeld says.

Bernie Ecclestone is playing down what will be F1's loss of Michael Schumacher, Jacques Villeneuve and Juan Pablo Montoya in just a few short months. "It is painful, but not a tragedy," says Ecclestone, adding that the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 was a bigger blow than Schumacher's imminent retirement. He's pleased with the new crop of drivers that includes Kubica, Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel. "Others will arrive as well," Ecclestone says.  "Elvis died, but music went on. When I am gone, things will be the same as they were before."

With Fernando Alonso in line for a second world title next weekend, Spain may get a second Grand Prix at Valencia, perhaps from 2008. Barcelona has the Spanish GP until 2011. A Valencia race could be called the Mediterranean or European GP.

Dan Wheldon, the Englishman who won last year's Indianapolis 500 and the Indy Racing League title, is being linked to a drive with Spyker, the Dutch-owned team that was formerly Midland and originally Jordan.

NASCAR team Roush Racing has signed 20-year-old David Ragan to replace Mark Martin in next year's Nextel Cup, seemingly ending any hopes Jacques Villeneuve harbored of going stock car racing.