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Geoffrey Harris28 Mar 2014
NEWS

MOTORSPORT: A mega banquet of racing

V8 Supercars, Shannons Nationals, Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR and a big sports car test ... it's a weekend with the lot, especially rumours about Roger Penske's interest in Australia

Penske prospect has V8 Supercars abuzz
The 25-car, five-make V8 Supercar field is in Tasmania for the second round of its championship amid great excitement that legendary American team owner Roger Penske might enter the series next year.

In Melbourne 24 more exotic cars representing 11 marques are assembled at Sandown for the opening round of the Australian GT Championship.

Formula One is about to pick up in Malaysia where it left off in Melbourne two weeks ago, with the controversy over fuel usage that led to young Australian Daniel Ricciardo's disqualification from second place in the season-opening grand prix unresolved and the fuss over the quiet new hybrid cars rumbling on.

A new IndyCar season – with 18 races in five months, three of them carrying double points – begins in Florida too this weekend. Australians Will Power and Ryan Briscoe are likely to be among the frontrunners, while Matthew Brabham makes his Indy Lights debut.

As if all this is not enough, there's NASCAR at Martinsville, Virginia – the sixth round of the Sprint Cup, in which Marcos Ambrose has dropped from 15th to 20th – and a two-day test of World Endurance Championship cars, including Mark Webber's new Porsche 919, at the Paul Ricard circuit in France.

Captain's eyes might wander beyond Blue Oval
Reports of Roger Penske looking at entering V8 Supercar racing have been around for three months, since his lieutenant Tim Cindric visited the Sydney 500 with Ford's American racing director Jamie Allison.

Most of it has been speculation, but now Auto Action magazine has quoted Penske himself saying: "We like the series. We have invested in the commercial vehicle businesses [trucking] in Australia and we're reviewing our options for 2015. We would like to enter if possible."

The speculation has focused on the possibility of Penske buying Ford Performance Racing or fellow Ford team Dick Johnson Racing, perhaps with dual V8 Supercar champion Marcos Ambrose returning from NASCAR as his lead driver.

Other options are for the 77-year-old, whose Penske Automotive Group owns 250 car dealerships with a multitude of brands, to pick up two or three of the Racing Entitlement Contracts (ERCs) unused this season and start a V8 Supercar operation from scratch, or buy another team.

There's a whisper from an excellent source that a very successful team aligned to a manufacturer other than Ford could be available to "The Captain" at the right price.

Option two – starting from scratch – is probably the Penske way, although it is hard to imagine eight or nine Fords on track next season, assuming FPR and DJR remain four and two-car outfits if not taken over by him.

In the immediate future the interest in the series is in whether newcomer Volvo Polestar and its star young New Zealand driver Scott McLaughlin can notch a championship race victory at Symmons Plains near Launceston.

The combination already has had a win in a non-championship race at Melbourne's GP and a second place in one of the races at Adelaide's Clipsal 500.

"Symmons Plains has got pretty long straights and a good flow, which suits our [S60] car," said McLaughlin, who has had a quick trip to Sweden and a Volvo winter proving ground with Swedish teammate Robert Dahlgren since the GP.

Volvo had success at the Tasmanian circuit in a previous sporting incarnation, with another Kiwi, Robbie Francevic, winning the 1985 and '86 Australian Touring Car Championship rounds in his 240 Turbo. 

This weekend's format comprises two 42-lap races Saturday and a third of 86 laps Sunday – all on soft-compound Dunlop tyres.

Holden Racing Team driver Garth Tander's 212th ATCC/V8 Supercar event brings him level with the late Peter Brock in fifth on that list – behind only Russell Ingall, John Bowe, Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife. Tander has won seven races at Symmons Plains, while Red Bull Racing Australia's four-time champion Jamie Whincup has won eight and his teammate Craig Lowndes six.

Lowndes leads the series this season with 282 points while Whincup is seventh on 174 and Tander ninth on 150 – 42 behind his fifth-placed teammate James Courtney. It's been an unusually tardy start to the championship for Whincup and he's not happy about the recently-shortened practice sessions at sprint rounds.

Brad Jones Racing's Fabian Coulthard and Tekno Autosports' Shane Van Gisbergen – both New Zealanders – are closest to Lowndes so far on 230 and 221 points respectively. It was at Symmons Plains that Coulthard scored his maiden V8 Supercar win while Van Gisbergen won three of the four races at the GP.

Nissan's Rick Kelly is the top non-Holden driver – fourth on 198 – although it was teammate Michael Caruso who fared best of the Nissan drivers at the GP with a pole position and a podium.

Another Nissan driver, James Moffat, has flagged that Symmons Plains is "the worst-case scenario" for the Altimas with the slowest corner in the series, its banked hairpin, leading on to the 270kmh back straight.

Pressure for success is mounting in the Nissan camp, with the company's road car sales flagging this year and an executive instrumental in getting it involved in V8 Supercars, Jeff Fisher, recently jettisoned.

FPR's Bathurst 1000 winner Mark Winterbottom has only won one race at Symmons Plains, four years ago, but he's an excellent qualifier at the circuit and a consistently high finisher – in the top five in 18 of its past 20 races. Winterbottom is sixth in the championship on 189 points.

Mercedes drivers Lee Holdsworth and Will Davison are only 18th and 19th and looking for big improvement in Betty Klimenko's AMG E63s.

Apart from the Seven Network free-to-air telecasts of Symmons Plains, Foxtel has announced it will kick off coverage of the V8 Supercar season across its internet-delivered platforms Foxtel Play and Foxtel Go. It also said all live V8 Supercar Championship races now can be viewed ad-break free on Fox Sports Plus 4, saying this "sets in motion the six-year, $241 million media deal announced by V8 Supercars late last year".

Shannons Nationals the exotic alternative
The Shannons Nationals is becoming a mighty serious motor racing show, although without the live telecasts and other media attention V8 Supercars enjoys.

The nine rounds of the Nationals will feature 11 categories of racing, with six of them on the Sandown program this weekend.

The 24-car GT field includes seven in the premier, championship class – a McLaren MP4-12C, an Aston Martin Vantage GT3, a Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, two Ferrari 458s, a Lamborghini Gallardo LP600+ and a Porsche GT3-R.

There will be one-hour GT races Saturday and Sunday, each with a compulsory pitstop and the option of a driver change. 

Four of the championship class entries have two drivers, the professionals including John Bowe, Steven Richards and Steve Owen.

Two-time and reigning GT champion Klark Quinn is solo in the McLaren and his father Tony in the Aston Martin, while young reigning Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge champion Richard Muscat debuts in the Mercedes.

The other three GT classes are trophy, challenge and sports.

Among the 11 entries in the trophy class, for 2011 and older GT3 machinery, is a BMW V8-powered Ascari KZR-1 to be driven by Touring Car Masters (TCM) regular Keith Kassulke.

The TCM series will run at V8 Supercar rounds this year, but not in Tasmania this weekend.

The Formula Ford series that has replaced the long-running national championship will begin at the second Shannons Nationals round at South Australia's Mallala on the last weekend of April.

This weekend's Sandown program includes a three-hour production car race as well as competition for six-cylinder touring cars, previously called saloons, and the Formula Three open-wheelers.

Unlike the live Seven Network telecasts of the V8 Supercars from Symmons Plains, highlights of the Shannons Sandown round will be packaged for screening on SBS TV's Speedweek over the following two weeks.

However, the meeting will be streamed this weekend on thenationals.com.au, australiangt.com.au and the MotorsportsTV app available via iPhone and Android-based smartphones.

F1 still hasn't come to its sensors
Fuel-flow sensors on the new-generation Formula One cars are the hot topic as the Malaysian Grand Prix gets underway today, with arguments likely to continue between Red Bull Racing and Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) officials.

RBR has claimed that a pre-season FIA technical directive on the sensors was not a regulation.

"We believe, and we believe we will be able to demonstrate in the court of appeal [in Paris on April 14 at the hearing of the appeal against Daniel Ricciardo's Melbourne disqualification] that we fully complied with the technical regulations," RBR's team principal has told Autosport.

Christian Horner said RBR had "no other choice" than to rely on its own "entirely reliable" measurements of the speed at which fuel was pumping into Ricciardo's Renault engine at Albert Park rather than an "erroneous" FIA device that showed it was "consistently" exceeding the 100kg/hour limit.

"We know that some cars' fuel sensors' didn't work at all in Melbourne," he said. "It is very immature technology in F1 and we [the sport] are trying to rely on a sensor that has proved to be problematic."

Horner said "there would have been a significant impact on performance" if RBR had relied on the sensor on Ricciardo's car.

"We are absolutely convinced that we abided completely by the technical regulations," he said.

While there is continuing disquiet about the lack of noise from the hybrid power units in this year's cars, Malaysia promises to be an enthralling GP if Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel's Mercedes and Red Bull cars are reliable.

And if the podium stars of Melbourne – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes), Ricciardo (Red Bull) and rookie Kevin Magnussen – continue their form, they and the Williams cars of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen and Jenson Button's McLaren are all in the hunt.

Then there's the weather, with the likelihood of a downpour during the race.

Almost lost under the latest controversies is that it was in Kuala Lumpur last year that the infamous "Multi 21" team orders row erupted between Mark Webber and Vettel.

Even more forgotten is that Rosberg dutifully remained behind Mercedes teammate and third-placegetter Hamilton under instructions.

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff has said that the pair are "completely free to race" this weekend.

Four-time world champion Vettel, winner at the prestigious Laureus Sports Awards in KL midweek, has a better relationship with Ricciardo than he did with Webber, but he has made clear by his actions in the past that he won't wear team orders.

Autosport's Edd Straw commented during the week that team orders are "seen as distasteful and tantamount to race-fixing" and are "the nitroglycerin of F1: unstable, explosive, but incredibly powerful".

Vettel has spoken out against the new-era cars, especially the sound, but Rosberg has said it is all good for the sport.

"It is contemporary. It is very complicated in the car ... [but] it is all very, very energy-efficient, which is a good direction to take," he said.

And Bottas said Melbourne's GP had been "proper racing ... the most fun I have ever had".

F1 race promoters are to meet in Bahrain at the third round of the world championship to consider the engine note issue. Melbourne race chairman Ron Walker has complained that F1 did not deliver the product the Victorian government paid for, even threatening legal action.

But his Malaysian counterpart, Razlan Razali, said the quieter engines "might not be a bad thing" and that F1 remained "amazing".

"Parents should now be less afraid of bringing their children to races with the reduced noise levels," Razali said. "You see a small engine still able to produce 750 horsepower and clock lap times almost as fast as the V8s did last year, so it is just amazing how far technology has advanced."

Power, Briscoe start quest for IndyCar glory
Toowoomba's Will Power reckons his racecraft improved by driving more in the IndyCar pack last season than at the front of the field.

Now 33, Power was the series runner-up in 2010, '11 and '12 but not a title challenger last year – although he was the top qualifier. At one point last season he was as low as 17th in the points but rebounded to fourth by the end of the season with three wins in the final five races.

"It taught me a lot about racing, getting in the pack," Power said. "When you spend a lot of time at the front, the restarts, you're not in the pack. I feel that my racecraft was really good by the end and I enjoyed it."

Team Penske returns to a three-car outfit this season, with Power, Brazilian Helio Castroneves and Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya back in an open-wheeler car after a largely unfulfilled stint in NASCAR with Chip Ganassi Racing. Ganassi, who has won five of the past six IndyCar championships and Indianapolis 500s, has a four-car line-up, including Sydneysider Ryan Briscoe.

"It's kind of like a homecoming for me," said Briscoe, 32, who began his IndyCar career with Ganassi in 2005 after climbing the F1 ladder in Europe as far as test driver with the now-defunct Toyota team. Briscoe has had seven IndyCar wins and 13 pole positions from 111 races. He won five races during his first two years with Team Penske in 2008-09 but just two more in the next three years.

He was only part-time in the series last year but was re-hired by Ganassi when his multiple series and Indianapolis champion Dario Franchitti retired after a serious concussion at Houston late last season.

Ganassi's other drivers are New Zealand ace Scott Dixon, Brazilian Tony Kanaan, last year's Indy 500 victor, and American Charlie Kimball.

IndyCar's third force is Andretti Autosports with 2012 series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, James Hinchcliffe and Marco Andretti, while Sir Jack Brabham's grandson Matthew steps up to Indy Lights now after winning two more junior American open-wheeler championships the past two years.

Schmidt Motorsport is an IndyCar team on the rise and won two races last season with Frenchman Simon Pagenaud. This year the team has added Russian Mikhail Aleshin, who beat Daniel Ricciardo to the 2010 World Series by Renault title in Europe.

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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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