Around the tracks June 19 2009

CHAD Reed hit another major milestone in his American motocross career when he scored his first outdoor race win on a 450-class bike last weekend in Pennsylvania. After a pair of third-place results, the indoor supercross star qualified fourth and completed a 1-1 sweep that also moving him to the top of the championship pointscore with his Makita-Rock Star Suzuki.

A monster off-track shakeup has changed the operation of V8 Supercar racing. CEO Cameron Levich is out, chairman Tony Cochrane will run the day-to-day operations as caretaker CEO until the end of the year, Mark Skaife has joined the board as an independent and technical chief Campbell Little is working through a three-month notice period after tendering his resignation.

A lacklustre 31st place was all Marcos Ambrose could take home from the high-speed Sprint Cup battle at Michigan International Raceway last weekend. Ambrose had a tail-happy car all weekend and only qualified 33rd after a string of recent top-10 efforts in his Toyota Camry, although he still holds 20th place after 15 races on this year's Nascar circuit.

AUSTRALIAN co-drivers Dale Moscatt and Glenn MacNeal were close to the front at the Acropolis Rally in Greece, as world title leader Sebastian Loeb made a rare mistake and handed victory to Ford's Mikko Hirvonen after destroying his Citroen C4 in a massive crash. MacNeal took 10th place and third in Group N production cars with Japan's Toshi Arai in a Subaru Impreza as Moscatt guided Russian teenager Evgeny Novikov to four fastest stage times and a points place in a privately entered Citroen C4.

DICK Johnson is now officially an icon. The retired touring car racer was one of 150 icons named by the Queensland government last week, joining a list which included everything from barbecues to sunshine after votes from 30,000 Queenslanders.

JAMIE Whincup and Steven Johnson teamed up for a surprising off-track success on the Gold Coast last week. The two V8 Supercar stars, who are deadly rivals on the track, combined in a B-grade indoor cricket team _ the Tank Slappers _ to take their championships with a convincing win.

A major innovation has come to the Australian Rally Championship with a top-10 shootout ahead of the next round in Adelaide on July 31-August 2. The Pedders No Bull Shootout will match the top-10 seeded drivers over a single special stage for additional title points a $1000 prize ahead of the two-day main event.