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Geoffrey Harris22 Aug 2014
NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Courtney and a contemporary

James Courtney has won a V8 Supercar title and has his sights on another, while his teammate from 12 years ago will make his F1 debut this weekend

Sports car ace’s hybrid expertise earns him F1 start
James Courtney has the sniff of a second V8 Supercar Championship in his nostrils.

Holden Racing Team is coming off strong performances at Townsville and Queensland Raceway and its contract to represent Holden has been renewed.

Courtney is fourth in the championship, 192 points behind fellow Holden-supported team Triple Eight Race Engineering’s leader Jamie Whincup, 177 behind Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and just 30 behind Triple Eight’s Craig Lowndes.

Courtney, 33, has every reason for confidence ahead of this weekend’s round at Sydney Motorsport Park, the last sprint event before the endurance races at Sandown, Bathurst and the Gold Coast.

Twelve years ago Courtney was racing in the British Formula Three Championship and was a test driver as well for the Jaguar Formula One team, which subsequently became Red Bull Racing.

Courtney’s F3 teammate at the time was a German, Andre Lotterer who also doubled as a Jaguar F1 test driver and indeed was that team’s official reserve driver.

Courtney had a huge crash at Italy’s Monza circuit in 2002 while testing for Jaguar. He revealed years later that it probably took him a full year to recover from it – and it sapped him of ambition to race in F1.

Instead he went off to Japan, where he raced successfully for several years, before coming home to V8 Supercars and a meteoric title with Dick Johnson Racing in 2010, before switching to HRT.

Lotterer’s F1 hopes seemingly were extinguished as Ford lost interest in grand prix racing and offloaded its Jaguar Racing to Red Bull.

Lotterer too wound up in Japan, where he has had success in the Formula Nippon and more recently Super Formula open-wheeler series.

He also became a sports car racer and has won the Le Mans 24-Hour classic in France three times in the past four years with Audi.

And this weekend, at 32, Lotterer gets to make his F1 debut, drafted into the Caterham team that has not finished a GP in the top 10 in the four and a half years of its existence.

His lucky break comes at the famous Spa-Francorchamps circuit near where he was brought up in Belgium.

Colin Kolles, the mysterious Romanian dentist now in charge of Caterham after it was sold by Malaysian aviation tycoon Tony Fernandes, has drafted Lotterer in place of Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi , perhaps only for this race, because of his familiarity with Spa’s notoriously tricky weather but particularly his experience with Audi’s high-tech hybrid sports cars, and probably because he has financial backing.

Caterham survives in the new hybrid F1 era on the heftier financial contribution that comes from its Swedish rookie driver, Marcus Ericsson.

Autosport’s sports car specialist Gary Watkins says Lotterer has “supreme technical ability” but that he will have “to come to terms with F1’s quirky Pirelli tyres after racing on Michelins in the World Endurance Championship (for sports cars) and Bridgestones in Super Formula”.

Lotterer has asked that not too much be expected of him.

“I have to learn everything very fast,” he said. “F1 is dictated a lot by the car and I’m aware that, unfortunately, we don’t have a winning car.

“[But] to have the chance to drive [in F1] is something special. Not everybody has the chance to jump in like that.”

Spa famously was the scene of Michael Schumacher’s F1 debut in 1991, in his only race for the Jordan team, and there will be another debutant there this weekend too.

Alex Rossi will be the first American to race in F1 since Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso dumped Scott Speed seven years ago.

Rossi, 22, was the reserve driver for Caterham until recently but switched to Marussia and that team, little better performed than Caterham, has taken his sponsorship money for this event while British driver Max Chilton’s backers consider their future association with it.

Teenager has bloodlines for success
Much has been made this week of Toro Rosso signing a 16-year-old Dutch driver to race in F1 next year.

Max Verstappen will be 17 by the time he makes his debut at the Australian Grand Prix in March; indeed by the time he begins the first of three Friday practice sessions at this season’s American Grand Prix at Austin, Texas, in November.

Verstappen’s father Jos drove more than 100 GPs, most memorably as Michael Schumacher’s teammate early in the German’s first world title season in 1994 when the Dutchman was embroiled in a pitlane fireball during a refueling stop.

The youngster’s mother, Sophie Kumpen, was from a prominent Belgian racing family and was a terrific kart racer.

The latest Verstappen won a karting world title at 15 and now is challenging for the European Formula Three title, having won eight races in that series.

He will be almost two years younger than Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari was when he became the youngest GP racer at 19 and 125 days in 2009.

Verstappen will be paired with Russian Dani Kyvat, who was 19 years and 324 days when he made his debut in Melbourne this year.

Verstappen only agreed to join Red Bull’s junior development program recently if he was guaranteed a race drive next year with Toro Rosso and he will replace Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne, who lost out to Australian Daniel Ricciardo for promotion to Red Bull Racing this season and now may end up in sports car racing unless another F1 team picks him up.

Red Bull Racing looking ahead to Singapore
Red Bull Racing is not expecting to be a match for the Mercedes factory cars and the Williams-Mercedes at Spa and the next GP at Italy’s Monza.

Daniel Ricciardo’s victories for Red Bull in Canada and Hungary have been the only GPs not won by Mercedes this season, but Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that the Singapore GP on September 21 “has to be the next golden opportunity for us in reality”.

Red Bull’s four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel has said the undulation at Spa is like “riding a roller-coaster” but he remembered fondly that it was the circuit where he began a streak of nine straight wins last season.

Ricciardo has said that “above all, Spa is a racing circuit – one that really encourages exciting wheel-to-wheel action”.

“That said, F1 has changed over the years and whereas Eau Rouge and Blanchimont were once the standout sections, now it’s probably the Pouhon downhill lefthander at turns 10 and 11. That’s seriously, seriously fast.”

Record loss for Lotus F1 team
The Lotus F1 team has reported the biggest loss in the history of motorsport – almost A$116 million last year.

Lotus was fourth in the constructors’ world championship the past two years but, having failed to secure major new investment last year after months of promises and losing top driver Kimi Raikkonen back to Ferrari when it could not pay him, is only eighth this season.

The team’s major shareholder is European private equity company Genii Capital, whose chief Gerard Lopez was an early investor in Skype.

Venezuelan driver Pastor Maldonado brought his massive sponsorship from his country’s oil company PSVDA to Lotus after Raikkonen’s departure.

The Lotus F1 team no longer has close ties to the Lotus road car business.

Doubts on Dragon’s enduro wildcards
There also have been fresh signs of financial strains in V8 Supercar racing this week, with doubts that development series team Dragon Motor Racing will field the two wildcard entries it was granted for the Bathurst 1000.

Dragon, headed by Melbourne businessman Tony Klein, has been intending to run two ex-Garry Rogers Motorsport Holden Commodores at Bathurst – and one of them in the Sandown 500.

The Bathurst field will be only 26 cars without those entries.

The only other wildcard entry approved by the V8 Supercar Commission is a Ford Falcon to be prepared by Ford Performance Racing and run by New Zealand’s Super Black Racing.


Stewart sits out third NASCAR round
NASCAR triple champion Tony Stewart will miss a third straight Sprint Cup round in the wake of the sprintcar incident in which he struck and killed 20-year-old rival Kevin Ward.

Stewart has kept a low profile since that fatality in New York State while investigations continue, although it appears unlikely he will be charged with any criminal offence.

However, Ward’s family may take civil action against Stewart.

Having already skipped the Watkins Glen Sprint Cup race the day after the fatality and last weekend’s Michigan 400, Stewart will miss this weekend’s event at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

Bristol and the following races at Atlanta and Richmond are the remaining chances for Australia’s Marcos Ambrose to make The Chase – the “playoffs” over the final 10 rounds for the Sprint Cup title.

Ambrose is 20th in the Chase standings, with 16 drivers to qualify this season.

He is 46 points behind fellow Ford driver Greg Biffle and the final wildcard spot reserved for drivers who have not won a race this season.

Fellow Australian Will Power could tighten his grip on the IndyCar title at the Sonoma road course in California this weekend, with the only other race this season at Fontana Speedway, also in California, the following weekend.

While six drivers have a mathematical chance of taking that title, Power’s main rival is one of his Penske teammates, Brazilian Helio Castroneves.

Rolling start for Hyundai rally star
Belgian rally race Thierry Neuville rolled his Hyundai i20 six times during the shakedown for this weekend’s World Rally Championship round in Germany.

However, Neuville is expected to start the event tonight.

“There’s no major mechanical issues with the car and roll cage wasn’t damaged,” a Hyundai team spokesman said of the crash into a vineyard.
Neuville finished second in Rally Germany last year in a Ford Fiesta RS.

Volkswagen is dominating the WRC for the second season with its Polo Rs driven by French world champion Sebastien Ogier and Finn Jari-Matti Latvala.

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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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