MOTORSPORT: New star from west keeps rising

Australia’s biggest international motor racing star of this decade, Daniel Ricciardo, came out of Western Australia – and perhaps it’s produced the next one too.

Kalgoorlie’s Anthony Martin is leading North America’s Pro Mazda open-wheeler championship and if he clinches it in the next month he’ll pocket $US800,000 – more than $A1 million at the minute – towards the next step up the Road to Indy pathway, Indy Lights.

Martin, 22, is following in the tracks of Matthew Brabham, but needs to find a way to make more of his success in America – by continuing to win, find the right drives and tap into sponsorship (the biggest hurdle).

If he gets it all right he could be Australia’s successor in IndyCar racing to Toowoomba’s Will Power, who won the title in America’s premier open-wheeler formula in 2014 and is now 36.

Matthew Brabham, grandson of Australia’s late triple Formula 1 world champion Sir Jack Brabham, won the Pro Mazda series in 2013, raced in Indy Lights in 2014 – winning on the road course at Indianapolis -- and briefly in 2015.

Management and sponsorship secured him a start in the 100th Indianapolis 500 last year, but his career path has been all over the place the past three years – predominantly stadium super trucks and briefly Formula E (electric open-wheelers) and even a one-off in Supercars.

The year before his Pro Mazda title Brabham won the US F2000 series. Martin did that too last year, collecting a $US378,000 scholarship – then worth a little more than $A500,000 – towards this year’s Pro Mazda campaign.

Sticking with Florida-based Cape Motorsports, he has won five of nine races this season to lead Brazilian Victor Franzoni, 21, winner of the other four races, by four points (259-255) with three races remaining.

The first of these is the only oval-track race in the series, at Gateway Motorsports Park in Illinois on August 26, then two races on the famous Watkins Glen road course in upstate New York on the first weekend of September.

Martin went into the most recent round at the 3.63km Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Lexington, Ohio, seven points behind Franzoni – who drives for Juncos Racing, run by Argentinian Ricardo Juncos, who also fields cars in Indy Lights, had two entries in this year’s Indianapolis 500 and has ambitions to do the whole IndyCar series – but emerged ahead of his rival.

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It’s a two-man race for the title, with Californian TJ Fischer a distant third – 84 points behind Martin.

The Aussie won two of the three races at Mid-Ohio and was unlucky not to have been the victor in the other. As he came up to lap Juncos Racing’s Jeff Green on the penultimate lap of the second race the American teammate of Franzoni drifted wide into his path.

While there was no contact, Martin had to take evasive action and Franzoni slipped inside him to take the lead and win. Officials cleared Green of blatantly hindering the Aussie, who still finished second and picked up bonus points for setting the fastest lap and leading the most laps.

Martin made sure of victory in the third race, running away to take the chequered flag almost 14 seconds clear of Franzoni.

Team owners Dominic and Nicholas Cape said in a post-round report: “Anthony did a wonderful job controlling Victor in both of the first two races, while the outcome of race two was a bitter pill to swallow.

“Then we really got to see what Anthony is made of – to come back and truly let it rip in the final race was awesome to see. We’re all looking forward to the (2km) oval at Gateway and resuming the championship fight.”

Martin – who spent time in Perth before his move to America, where he had been offered a soccer scholarship – said that, despite the incident that cost him a clean sweep at Mid-Ohio, that round “gives us confidence going forward in the season”.

“I knew I had one job to do in that third race and that was to win,” he said.

“I was a little ticked off from the day before – it’s bad when lapped cars affect a championship – so I might have had a little more aggression, but I had to put what happened out of my mind – racing is racing and those things happen.

“I didn’t look behind me [on the opening lap] until the back straight, when the team told me that Victor was in second and that I needed to go. From there it was head down.

“It was almost a 100 per cent successful weekend. It was great to see we could do it – and that helps with three races to go.

“Pressure motivates me to do better and I think being on top makes me go faster.”

Apart from staying ahead of Franzoni, Martin will need Green – for whom the Gateway oval is his home track – to stay out of his way if he’s to clinch the Pro Mazda title and continue his march towards Indy racing.

Not a great year for Aussies overseas
Martin’s continuing success has been welcome news in a year that young Australians have not had as much success as in recent seasons.

Matt Campbell, 22, the reigning Porsche Carrera Cup Australia champion from Warwick Queensland, has had a win in the Porsche Supercup – at Austria’s Red Bull Ring – and is fourth in that series.

Nick Foster, 25, from Brisbane and previous year’s local Carrera Cup champion, has been in Europe racing a Porsche 911 RSR in the World Endurance Championship’s GT category and recently was on the podium in a Blancpain GT Series Asia race at Suzuka in Japan.

He has been retained by Craft-Bamboo Racing to race the same 911 GT3 R at upcoming rounds at Fuji and then in Shanghai, China.

Sydney’s Joey Mawson, winner of last year’s German Formula 4 Championship ahead of Michael Schumacher’s son, is 13th (and two places behind Schumacher junior) after six of 10 rounds of the European Formula 3 Championship.

Melbourne’s Thomas Randle began the year with a sensational victory in New Zealand’s Toyota Series for young open-wheeler racers from around the world. He has since concentrated on the British LMP3 sports car series, in which he’s sixth.

Randle is also one of five young Aussies to have raced in the 2-.0litre Formula Renault Eurocup for open-wheelers this season. The most successful of those five has been Tasmanian Alex Peroni with a victory at Pau in France and he’s eighth in the series.

Randle is 14th with a best finish of fourth, the Northern Territory’s Thomas Maxwell 15th (best finish fifth), Melbourne’s Luis Leeds 17th and Gold Coaster Zane Goddard 20th.

The vastly more experienced Victorian James Davison, 30, substituted for Sebastien Bourdais in the Indianapolis 500 after the Frenchman’s huge crash in the lead-up and will now drive two road races in NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series for Toyota team Joe Gibbs Racing. The first of these is at Mid-Ohio this weekend, with the other at Road America in a fortnight.

Ryan Briscoe continues to race a Ford GT in North America while Will Power is fifth in the IndyCar series after a troubled start.

Daniel Ricciardo is fourth in the F1 world championship, having won in Baku, Azerbaijan, and regularly been on the podium, but – after being taken out by teammate Max Verstappen at the Hungarian Grand Prix before the mid-season break – is now only one point ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

NZ comes up short in campaign for WRC slot
New Zealand’s hopes of a return to the World Rally Championship calendar next year almost certainly have been dashed.

WRC organisers are reported to have decided against any more rounds too far from the motorsport bases of the competing manufacturers.

The 2018 calendar expected to be announced soon is anticipated to drop Poland, because of spectator control problems, revive a round in Turkey and add a new event in Croatia – which has been competing with NZ for a slot.

Rally Australia appears safe on the calendar, presumably remaining the final event.

The Kiwis are hugely disappointed but have vowed to continue the right to regain a round in the WRC, which they last had in 2012.

“There is still a small chance that we could be included on the 2018 calendar, but at this stage the WRC promoter has said that the costs to venture to NZ are a major hurdle,” Rally NZ spokesman Peter Johnston said.

An event has long been scheduled on NZ’s North Island in November as a trial event for a WRC return.

While there has been a lot of support in the Land of the Long White Cloud for getting the country back on the WRC calendar, especially from NZ’s WRC driver Hayden Paddon, the money available to secure and run it clearly has not been enough to persuade the world championship organisers.

Meanwhile, nine-time world champion Sebastien Loeb this week tested a Citroen C3 WRC car on wet French tarmac roads and the manufacturer’s rally team boss Yves Matton now wants him to do it on gravel.

Citroen has struggled against the Fords, Hyundai and Toyotas this season, particularly on gravel.

“We will see if it’s possible [for Loeb to do another test, on gravel],” Matton said.

“He’s quite busy with his rallycross programme and his cross-country events (for Citroen’s sister brand Peugeot).

“But his feedback is really interesting and his technical knowledge helps us a lot.”

Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen, who won last year’s Rally Australia for Volkswagen before it quit the WRC, will make his third start of the season for Citroen at Rally Germany, along with regular drivers Kris Meeke and Craig Breen.

While there is speculation about 43-year-old Loeb returning to the WRC, Matton has made it clear it won’t be this season – because of a shortage of cars.