V8SC: V8 Supercars a two-team battle

Six straight now for Triple Eight/Team Vodafone
Double success for Craig Lowndes at Queensland Raceway. It’s good for the V8 Supercar Championship to have its highest-profile driver winning and in contention for the title.

What cannot be good for the championship though is that, after 17 races this season, still only two teams have won this year.

Traditionally it has been Formula One that has been criticised for the dominance of its top two or three teams. Yet this season F1 has had seven winners from five teams, and it is widely anticipated that Lotus-Renault and perhaps both its drivers, Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, will crack it for a win in the remaining nine races.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Will Power has regained the lead in America’s IndyCar series with three races remaining while Marcos Ambrose was 10th in the rain-interrupted and shortened round of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup at the “Tricky Triangle” in Pocono, Pennsylvania.

Chris Atkinson crashed the Citroen in which he was deputising for Qatar’s Olympic shooting medalist Nasser Al-Attiyah at Rally Finland.

However, Brendan Reeves finished third in the World Rally Championship’s Academy round there and is second in the season’s standings among the young stars in identical Ford Fiestas. Fellow young Aussie Molly Taylor drove terrifically too in an Italian team’s Citroen DS3T, until engine problems put her out.

Back home the eighth round of the V8 Supercar Championship was a perfect outcome for Craig Lowndes, winning both the weekend’s race at Ipswich’s Queensland Raceway.

The podiums after Saturday's 45-lap, 140km sprint and Sunday's 65-lap, 200km race had the same three faces, with Mark Winterbottom - second in both - and Jamie Whincup - third in each - joining Lowndes.

Lowndes made up 42 points on his series-leading Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone teammate Whincup, but there is still 256 points separating them. Both the Team Vodafone drivers are triple champions but it is 12 years since Lowndes won a title and he’s still fourth in this year’s standings.

Winterbottom, long-time team leader of Prodrive-run Ford Performance Racing, made up 18 points on Whincup at Ipswich but is still 82 points behind in second place with 14 races remaining.

After the next round at Sydney Motorsport Park — previously known as Eastern Creek — on the last weekend of this month, come the 500km and 1000km events at Melbourne’s Sandown and at Bathurst’s Mt Panorama.

Winterbottom's teammate Will Davison, dominant early in the season and still with the most wins (six), remains third in the standings after sixth and fourth places in his Ford Falcon at the weekend. A misguided strategy, that involved a very early stop to change tyres, cost Davison any chance of a podium on Saturday, while on Sunday he squandered pole position with a shocking start.

Winterbottom led early in the longer race until Lowndes overtook him on lap six. They were only 2 seconds apart at the chequered flag but Winterbottom and FPR team boss Tim Edwards were furious that blue flags were not waved, with one belated exception, as the pair lapped more than half the field.

“I am absolutely appalled at the standard of race direction we witnessed today,” Edwards said, although neither he nor Winterbottom pretended the Orrcon Falcon would have got past Lowndes’ Commodore.

Of the 16 teams and 28 cars in the championship, Team Vodafone and FPR and their four drivers have won the 17 races so far this year between them. And Team Vodafone has won the six races at the past three rounds, with Lowndes and Whincup taking three wins each.

It also is the first team to have built a car for next year’s new rules – with many standard components and larger, 18-inch wheels – and Lowndes was to start serious testing of it at Queensland Raceway today after Whincup shook it down last week.

Ipswich was a good round for young New Zealander Fabian Coulthard, fourth and fifth in the two races, and the oldest driver in the series, Russell Ingall, fifth and sixth - both of them driving Holdens.

Tim Slade (Ford) and Michael Caruso (Holden) were in the top 10 both days too. Canada's 1997 Formula One world champion Jacques Villeneuve contested his second round of the season in a Commodore, but with little more success, finishing 23rd on Saturday after a late spin and 24th on Sunday after a spectacular spin across the infield in the first-lap flurry.

Frenchman Alex Premat, Caruso’s teammate at Garry Rogers Motorsport, continues to struggle too, finishing only 19th and 23rd.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after 17 of 31 races - 1. J. Whincup (H) 2052 points; 2. Mark Winterbottom (F) 1970; 3. W. Davison (F) 1876; 4. C. Lowndes (H) 1796; 5. S. van Gisbergen (F) 1472; 6. T. Slade (F) 1344; 7. G. Tander (H) 1323; 8. F. Coulthard (H) 1261; 9. L. Holdsworth (F) 1217; 10. D. Reynolds (F) 1017.

Third time lucky for Power in IndyCar title chase?
While Will Power’s second place in the IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio put him back in the lead of that series he could not catch New Zealander Scott Dixon, who won there for the fourth time in six years.

Ganassi driver Dixon returned Honda to the victor’s circle after rival engine supplier Chevrolet’s string of recent successes.

The previous series leader, American Ryan Hunter-Reay, had engine troubles and didn’t finish, handing Power a five-point advantage with three races remaining. Perhaps it will be third time lucky for Power after Dixon’s teammate Dario Franchitti denied him the title the past two years.

The other title contender this year, Power’s Penske teammate, Brazilian Helio Castroneves, finished 16th at Mid-Ohio and is 26 points off the lead, while Aussie Ryan Briscoe was seventh and is ninth in the championship.

Four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon ended a drought of almost a year in taking the Sprint Cup victory at Pocono after five-time champion, Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet teammate Jimmie Johnson lost the lead when he got loose, perhaps because of a puncture, before the last rain delay.

Meanwhile, Frenchman Sebastien Loeb chalked up his 73rd win in the World Rally Championship with victory at Rally Finland. It was Loeb’s third victory in an event traditionally dominated by Finns.

This time it was his new Finnish and Citroen teammate Mikko Hirvonen who trailed him home, albeit by only 6.1 seconds, while the Fords of Finn Jari-Matti Latvala and Norwegian Petter Solberg were third and fourth.

Loeb is 43 points clear of Hirrvonen on the way to a ninth world title.

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