MOTORSPORT: Mitsubishi could return to WRC in 2021

Now that Toyota is back as the pacesetter in the World Rally Championship, fellow Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi is said to be “well advanced” on a return to the WRC.

Mitsubishi could re-enter the championship in 2021 with its Mirage, German website Rallye has reported.

Rallye’s Michael Heimrich said Mitsubishi representatives “are expected to be a major contributor to the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile’s technical working groups”.

Toyota is leading the manufacturer standings in this year’s WRC and its Estonian ace Ott Tanak is a contender for the drivers’ title with just the Spanish round at the end of this month and then Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour in mid-November to go.

Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda has said that he wants to see both Mitsubishi and Subaru back in the WRC.

The return of a Japanese round to the championship has been delayed until at least 2020, with Chile the only addition for next year – taking it to 14 rounds, starting with the Monte Carlo in late January and ending again at Coffs Harbour in mid-November.

Robby Gordon is refusing to concede defeat after the failure of his court case against the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport over the suspension of his Stadium Super Trucks in Oz.

Gordon says CAMS chief executive Eugene Arocca’s assertion that “we have been open with the category management” about what it sees as significant safety risks “and what action could be taken to enable them to return to action in Australia” is false.

“SST has always been, and remains, willing to work with CAMS to address the concerns raised by CAMS,” Gordon said.

“SST challenges CAMS to meet and immediately review SST’s proposals.

“SST has numerous contracts that it is about to breach. CAMS is forcing SST to breach these agreements.

“If CAMS fails to respond, then SST will have no alternative but to pursue all its options against CAMS.”

A petition that began on change.org on Saturday seeking reinstatement of the SSTs had garnered more than 1200 signatures by early today.

Geoff Emery has claimed the Australian GT title for the second straight year.

Emery had Supercar star Garth Tander to help him the win the final round of the series in an Audi R8 LMS at New Zealand’s Hampton Downs circuit.

“At the start I thought we might be on for a podium at best, but Garth had good pace at the end and all of a sudden we were in with a good chance,” Emery said.

Tony D’Alberto and Max Twigg in a Mercedes AMG GT3 earned the Australian Endurance Championship with third place, behind the Walkinshaw Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by John Martin and Liam Talbot.

Australia’s international Porsche racer Matt Campbell was the fastest driver in the Le Mans GTE Am class at the World Endurance Championship’s Fuji Six-Hour but missed out on another win.

An electrical problem in the Dempsey-Proton Racing 911 RSR cost him and his co-drivers,

German Christian Ried and Frenchman Julien Andlauer, 40 minutes and they finished 25 laps down on two similar Porsches that were first and second ahead of two Aston Martin Vantages.

“Unfortunately it wasn’t our day. Such a promising race for us too, having a good strategy that was paying off!” Campbell said.

Porsche also won LMGTE Pro, while the pair of Toyota TS050 Hybrids took first and second outright – with Fernando Alonso in the runner-up position.

Mercedes has concluded its 30 years of participation in the German touring car championship, the DTM, with its 10th manufacturer title this century and its British driver Gary Paffett winning his second crown.

Paffett finished third in a C63 in the final race of the season at Hockenheim, behind Germans Rene Rast in an Audi RS5 and Marco Wittman in a BMW M4.

Rast ended up only four points behind Paffett after having been 93 off the lead before six straight wins at the end of the season.

Paffett’s title came 13 years after his first in 2005 and he became Mercedes’ first DTM champion since German-Mauritian Pascal Wehrlein in 2015.

Scotsman Paul Di Resta started the final round as a championship contender in another Mercedes but qualified only 11th and finished 14th, dropping him to third for the season.

Paffett finished with 255 points, Rast 251 and Di Resta 233.

While Mercedes has won the DTM manufacturers’ championship 10 times this century, this was its first since 2010. It scored 903 points to BMW’s 623 and Audi’s 599.

Ulrich Fritz, the head of Mercedes’ DTM program, praised Rast’s late-season charge and thanked Audi and BMW for “the great racing and wonderful times we have had together over the years”.

“We will miss you,” Fritz said as the Silver Arrows now prepares to focus on the Formula E electric open-wheeler series instead.

Volkswagen has now won the World Rallycross Championship’s teams title in both years since its previous four year domination of World Rally Championship.

It becomes the first manufacturer to win the World RX teams title in consecutive seasons in the five years of the series.

Norwegian Petter Solberg, a WRC champion (with Subaru in 2003) and two-time World RX winner (as a privateer in Citroen DS3s in 2014-15), runs the VW team’s pair of Polo R ‘Supercars’ under the PSRX Volkswagen Sweden banner.

It has 532 points to the 452 of Swede Mattias Ekstrom’s Audi Sport squad. Solberg’s Swedish teammate, Johan Kristoffersson, won the drivers’ title last year and has clinched it again this year.

VW will go to this season’s finale in Cape Town, South Africa, at the end of November, having won 18 of 23 rounds in two years.