Around the tracks 19 February 2010

BATHURST veterans John Bowe and Paul Morris pulled off a major upset when they shared Garry Holt's BMW 335i in a victorious run in the Bathurst 12-hour production car race. Morris and Holt are previous winners in the same car but they were expected to have no chance against hordes of Lancer Evos, including the car of pole sitter Steve Owen, on a rainy day at Mount Panorama that even saw the race stopped while a fallen tree was removed from the course at the top of Conrod Straight.

JAMIE McMurray was the surprise winner of Nascar's blue-ribon event, the Daytona 500, after a series of stoppages to try and repair track   damage. Marcos Ambrose went out of the race after just 80 laps with a terminal engine oil leak that sent him to the garage.

MIKKO Hirvonen took first points in the Swedish Rally when he beat   defending and six-time world champion Sebastian Loeb into second on the snow-covered winter event. Hirvonen led from the start in his Ford Focus and his team mate Jari-Matti Latvala was third, although high-profile stars Marcus Gronholm, Petter Solberg and F1 refugee Kimmi Raikkonen were all back in the pack after problems including off-road excoursions.

PAUL Morris gets an unplanned early start to his V8 Supercar season in Abu Dhabi this weekend when he takes Greg Murphy's seat in the new Castrol Commodore. Murphy has clashing commitments with the Top Gear Live world tour but will be in the Middle East in time for round two of the series in Bahrain.

THE new look for the 2010 contenders in the Formula One championship includes longer chassis and removal of fully-faired wheel covers. The aero additions to the cars' wheels were banned as a safety move after a wheel came off Fernando Alonso's Renault last year when the cover was not properly secured.

MOTOGP racers Jorge Lorenzo and Nicky Hayden are battling to get back   to pre-season testing with Yamaha and Ducati because of injury dramas. Lorenzo hurt his hand when he fell off a motocross bike during pre-season training while Hayden is recovering from surgery on his right arm to try and overcome what is called 'arm-pump', a common problem for many riders.

MARK Skaife is busy designing another V8 Supercar track as he trims the course for the 2010 SuperCarnivale on the Gold Coast. Skaife was   the chief designer for the Townsville and Sydney circuits which joined the championship in 2009 and is responsible for the layout and safety of the Queensland track as it takes a major cut from the course previously used for IndyCar events.

RETIRED F1 racer David Coulthard could make a comeback this year in the German Touring Car Championship. He has already tested a Mercedes-Benz racer in a move which means he could follow his former team mate   Mika Hakkinen - as well as retired F1 drivers Ralf S
chumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Jean Alesi and Keke Rosbert _ who turned to touring   cars once he was finished in grand prix racing.

DANICA Patrick made the worst possible start to her career as a stock car driver, crashing out of the second-tier Nationwide Series season   opener at Daytona last weekend. The IndyCar driver is eventually planning a fulltime switch to the Sprint Cup but only qualified 15th   and was eventually caught up in a 10-car pileup that caused too much damage for her Chevrolet to continue.

A radical new racecar, similar to 1950s 'car of the future' concepts in the American motor industry, is one of the proposals for a new chassis for the 2012 IndyCar World Series in the USA. The car, called the DeltaWing, looks more like the Batmobile than a traditional Indy 500 open-wheel runner but will have to beat out proposals from specialist makeers Lola, Swift and Dallara to win the next car contract.