MOTORSPORT: Mercedes truck brand backs Holden V8 Supercar

Brad Jones Racing snares Freightliner support for multiple race winner Fabian Coulthard's Commodore

A Mercedes-Benz truck brand will have the naming rights to a V8 Supercar for three years from 2015 – but it won't be one of the Mercedes cars.

The Freightliner name will be splashed over the Holden Commodore of Fabian Coulthard, one of three full-time Brad Jones Racing drivers and sixth in the V8 Supercar Championship heading to this season's finale, the Sydney 500, in a week's time.

Freightliner's origins are in America but it was acquired by Daimler-Benz in 1981. Its Australian website describes it as "a key unit in Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific's commercial vehicle activities".

Mercedes-Benz Australia has not supported Betty Klimenko's Erebus Motorsport fielding AMG Mercedes E63s in the V8 Supercar Championship since the category was opened up to participants other than Holden and Ford from the start of last season and the team has struggled to find other substantial sponsorship.

The announcement of the Freightliner naming rights deal on the Coulthard car was made last night at Mercedes-Benz Australia's Melbourne headquarters.

Daniel Whitehead, managing director of the Daimler truck and bus operations in Australia, was coy on whether there had been negotiations with Erebus as well as BJR – and our efforts at clarification on that matter were not helped by a couple of interruptions to the interview, which the otherwise affable Whitehead clearly was not disappointed about.

However, the deal was painted as an extension of a long relationship between Freightliner and BJR involving transporters for race cars and Whitehead said the team had made an impressive naming rights proposal.

It is a three-year deal for the brand, which has perhaps 10,000 trucks on Australian roads.

Whitehead said Freightliner had detected that many of its owners and drivers were in "the V8 Supercar demographic".

"There is a lot of customer interest in V8 Supercars," he said.

Whitehead said that while television exposure would be important to Freightliner, under the deal ride days and hot laps in the Coulthard car would also be of great benefit to it. V8 Supercars will enjoy a lot more air time from next year, although the audience will be restricted as a consequence of the switch to pay TV, with only six events to be simulcast live on free-to-air.

In the past two seasons Coulthard has won four V8 Supercar races, had six pole positions and been on the podium 19 times for sponsor Lockwood and BJR.

Another Mercedes-Benz truck brand, Fuso, has already been involved in V8 Supercars as a sponsor in the race telecasts for eight years.

Other truck brands are expected to become prominent in the sport too, with American automotive icon Roger Penske taking control of Dick Johnson Racing to field dual V8 Supercar champion Marcos Ambrose after almost a decade in NASCAR. Penske has the distribution rights to the Western Star, MAN and Dennis Eagle brands here in Australia, through Brisbane-based Penske Commercial Vehicles.

Meanwhile, it has been announced this week that David Wall – driver of one of the DJR Ford Falcons this season, having previously been at BJR – will switch to the second Volvo S60 next season with the return of Robert Dahlgren to Sweden after just one year.

New Zealander Scott McLaughlin has been one of the pacesetters in the debut season of Volvo in V8 Supercars in the lead S60. He has been a multiple race winner, including two of the three at Victoria's Phillip Island a fortnight ago, and is fifth in the championship, while Dahlgren is 25th and last of the full-time drivers.

While Jamie Whincup has clinched a record sixth championship with Triple Eight Race Engineering/Red Bull Racing Australia in a Holden, Ford Performance Racing's Mark Winterbottom, Whincup's veteran teammate Craig Lowndes and Tekno Autosports' Shane Van Gisbergen will fight at the Sydney 500 to be the season runner-up.

Winterbottom is 95 points in front of Lowndes, who has been runner-up the past three years, while Kiwi Van Gisbergen, racing a Holden for Tekno Autosports, is another 39 points back, with a maximum 300 to be scored at the Homebush Olympic precinct street circuit.

Instead of the traditional two 250km races there over the weekend, the format will follow that of this year's opening round in Adelaide with Saturday's leg split into two 125km sprints.

Ambrose has had two test days at Queensland Raceway this week since last Friday's ride day at Lakeside as he prepares for his comeback to V8 Supercars – and his first outing at Homebush.

He said "the hardest part" in adapting to the new-generation V8 Supercars was braking deeply and getting accustomed to the sequential gearbox.

"These cars roll, [have] good corner speed ... you've got to be on part throttle a lot just trying to carry momentum," Ambrose said.

"Whereas a Cup Car [in NASCAR's Sprint Cup] has so much horsepower you're either on the loud pedal or you're on the brakes – there's no in-between.

"These cars are finely set up as well. One millimetre here, two millimetres there can make a big difference."

V8 Supercar chief executive James Warburton, who attended last night's Freightliner announcement, will reveal his "white paper" on the 2017 regulations – expected to allow two-door cars and smaller engine capacities with turbocharging alongside the existing 5-litre, four-door V8s – mid next week before the Sydney 500.

Bye bye double points, standing restarts idea in F1

The World Motor Sport Council is to meet in Doha next Wednesday and is expected to rubber-stamp a recommendation of F1's strategy group and the F1 Commission to scrap the double points for the final race of the world championship that Bernie Ecclestone introduced this year.

It also will ditch the proposed standing restarts after safety car periods in grands prix after widespread safety concerns.

However, F1 seems no closer to serious cost controls to make competing more viable for small teams, nor agreement on relaxing the freeze on development of the hybrid power units introduced this year. World champion constructor Mercedes has resisted the pressures from Ferrari and Renault to allow development.

Porsche is to run a third car at the Le Mans 24-Hour next year in its second season back in the big league of sports car racing.

German Nico Hulkenberg, who races for the Force India team in F1 with Mercedes power, will be one of the drivers of the third Porsche, while the six drivers in the other two 919 Hybrids in the full World Endurance Championship – including Australia's Mark Webber – have been retained.

And rallying's most successful driver, Frenchman Sebastien Loeb, will make a one-off return to compete in the Monte Carlo Rally – opening round of the category's world championship – in January.

Loeb and his co-driver Daniel Elena, who will join him again in a Citroen DS3, have won the Monte seven times in 10 previous starts.

MOTORSPORT: Mercedes truck brand backs Holden V8 Supercar

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