Motorsports

It’s the last race of the season, which always means it’s time for some racers to get square for incidents during the year. I don’t have anyone to square up, but I’m sure there are a few people out there who bear some grudges.  Maybe some of the drivers who are finishing up like Shane van Gisbergen will have a point to prove as well, so that could lead to some track dramas. I still can’t believe he’s only 23.  He seems to have been around so long. And he still has a lot of good years left in him. It’s also the last race with these cars as we change to the Car of the Future next year, so some people may treat it as a bit of a smash-up derby. I know our cars have already been sold for racing in the development series, so our team principal, Roland Dane, won’t be too pleased if we bring them back bent. I will be quite sad to see these cars go as they have been very good to us, so I’ll certainly be a bit protective of my body panels. But some others will feel they have nothing to lose and go really hard and maybe a bit silly. And then of course there’s the Homebush circuit which is notorious for carnage with a narrow track, no run-off and concrete walls. There’s no doubt there will be plenty of contact. It’s the nature of all street circuits. The format is all hard tyres and two 250km races with a minimum of two pitstops so there will be a fair bit of strategy involved. Most important is to qualify well, get out in front and stay out of the carnage. But I won’t be too upset if I’m not on the front row. My starts have improved a lot this year and I’m sure we can make up positions. There are plenty of passing opportunities on this circuit. You can get a clean pass into turn one and at several places around the back and it’s a 50-50 proposition to pass into turn two. Two hundred and fifty kays is a long way round Homebush and the circuit is quite aggressive and demanding with elevation changes and sharp, unforgiving kerbs. It also gets quite hot and there is a chance of storms which will also play a big part in the strategy. I’m 63 points behind Frosty (Mark Winterbottom), so I’m determined to close that gap and give our team a consecutive 1-2 finish. I can’t remember the last time a team did that. We’ve spent the week so far meeting and greeting old and new sponsors. While it’s sad to see one sponsor go, it's exciting to get on board with Red Bull which will continue our association with an F1 team at Melbourne and Abu Dhabi. It’s always good for our engineers to mix with engineers from the pinnacle of motorsport. They also sponsor Casey Stoner so if he does decide to take up Roland’s offer of a car in the development series, it will be a good mix. We’re still just waiting on Casey to make a decision.  

It makes for exciting racing for both the drivers and the fans. As we’re getting more experience with the soft tyres we are getting more life out of them. I don’t think the quality of the tyres is any better but teams now know how to set the car up for them and we as drivers are learning how to conserve their wear. However, with the new cars next year on 18-inch wheels, we will go back to square one with regards to set-up. When you have a combination of hard and soft tyres in a race, teams have different strategies so you get a lot of speed differential out on the track which means loads of passing. We didn’t start the weekend off well struggling to get the car to 15th on the grid for the first race. I was sitting there on the grid thinking I have nothing to lose so I put everything into it. We had a great start and made up four spots by turn three only to have Jason Bright turn around in front of us and lose some of that advantage. We went into race with the strategy that if there was an early safety car we would do what we did in Darwin and turn it into a two-stop race and get on that set of soft tyres as soon as possible. My race engineer, JJ (Jeromy Moore), did a fantastic job considering the position we started in. Jamie was always the guy to beat, but we fought hard to claim second. Once we had Saturday out of the way, we were more confident in the car and put a decent lap together for qualifying which gave us fourth on the grid. Again Jamie was the one to beat and we would have been second had he not had that unfortunate drive-through penalty for turning his wheels while up on jacks in the pits. He didn’t celebrate after mathematically securing the championship with more than a 300-point lead. He’s still pretty focused on the final at Homebush and won’t celebrate until the job is done and dusted. It was a shame to hear the news this week that we might be losing a couple of Kiwis next year. Shane Van Gisbergen is one of the characters of the sport and we need the next generation of drivers coming through. If he does quit, he will be going home with unfinished business. At the other end of the game is Greg Murphy who appears to be out of a drive for next year. However, I wouldn’t write him off yet. He’s still a talented driver in the right car and he was in this exact same position this time last year. Murph has contributed a lot to the sport over the years and it would be a sad day if he left. However, he’s colourful and opinionated and if the rumours are true it would be great to see him annoying Mark Skaife and Neil Crompton in the media centre.  

He has a healthy 298-point lead over Frosty and just needs a consistent run at Winton this weekend to seal the deal. Seeing how competitive everyone is this season, it is really difficult to peg back points.Even if Jamie has a DNF (did not finish) at any stage in the next four races all it will do is give Frosty and me a false glimmer of hope. There are not many times he’s had two bad races in the one weekend.For me, it’s all about getting second place back from Frosty so the team can claim consecutive one-two finishes for the season. I’m pretty confident of being able to peg back the points at Winton this weekend. It’s always been a good hunting ground for me as it’s my old stomping ground.I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve raced and tested there in all sorts of race cars. Hopefully that means I have some sort of home ground advantage. It’s another circuit that I enjoy. You don’t hit the high speeds of most other circuits and don’t even use top gear, but it’s a track I know extremely well in different categories so I’m hoping it will be a good round.The format for this weekend is back to a mixed tyre round. We have to use hards and softs during both races - a  140km race on the Saturday and a 200km race on the Sunday. Hopefully we can get back on form after a couple of substandard rounds that have sabotaged our championship aspirations. It would be good to finish the year with some good results.Then it’s on to Homebush where we had a fantastic round last year and almost got the championship. I’ve already got my eyes on the prize next year with the new race cars and the introduction of Nissan and Mercedes to the category. We tested our 2013 Car of the Future last week at Queensland Raceway and we’re well on track. I only did the first half of the day as I had to shoot off to Adelaide for a Clipsal promotion while Jamie did the rest. It was quite hot out there so the times weren’t fantastic but we made some progress with lots of things on the car. That was our second and last “manufacturers test day”. The next time we take it out it will be as part of our test bank for the 2013 season, so things are getting serious. 

During a 40th anniversary celebration at the Nürburgring last week, BMW showed its upcoming M6 Gran Coupe to a select group. Now, it has released teaser images of the car from that event online.The images don't tell the whole story, but they tell most of it. As we've already gleaned in our spy shots and spy video, the M6 Gran Coupe will not vary too terribly much from the look of the standard Gran Coupe--and where it does, it will closely resemble the standard M6 coupe.The looks are largely unchanged but the stylish four-door picks up the twin-turbo V8 mechanical package from the latest M5 sedan and M6 coupe and convertible twins. The force-fed V8 is lifted straight from the M5, complete with 412 kiloWatts of power and 680 Newton-metres of torque  from 4.4 litres.There is no such thing as a manual M6, but the seven-speed double-clutch manumatic is driver adjustable between slur and speed shift and the car will thump to 100 in 4.2 seconds with a top speed in the M6 Carsguide tested last week - if you're prepared to pay a little extra on tyres and things.Tie that in with a promise from BMW that "more details on the all-new M Automobile will be available in December," and you have what's shaping up to be a Detroit Auto Show debut for North America.As always, stay tuned for more details as they emerge, and look forward to our live coverage of the Detroit Auto Show in January.www.motorauthority.com 

...and make the racing a little more interesting next year. The problem is that we share with Formula One over the weekend and are constrained in the number of practice and qualifying sessions. But we’re the only support category over the whole weekend and there is a lot of dead track time so surely they can find some more track time for us in 2013.The three 12-lap sprint races were also too short. Our fans are used to longer and more strategic racing. Longer races also would have introduced the factor of tyre degradation which throws up some interesting racing.And while I loved finally getting a chance to drive the full-length F1 circuit, I could see even from where I sat that it was boring for the fans. With the long straight and fast-flowing corners the field very quickly gets spread out.Perhaps we should mix it up with some racing on the long circuit and some on the truncated track. We struggled with car set-up early and ran out of time in the practice sessions to make inroads. And with limited qualifying we were stuck back in the grid where it’s difficult to make up ground on such short races.We actually improved the car after the first race, but there was nothing we could do from that far back in the grid. The good news for us over the weekend was my starts. We had three great starts thanks to a new format we’ve been working on.Our starting sequence is now a lot more familiar and repeatable, so that’s something that will help us for the rest of the season and next year. I hopped on a plane straight after the F1 race and was in Melbourne for the Cup. I’m not really into horse racing and didn’t have a bet. But if I had, I would have gone for one of the favourites and done my money, so just as well I didn’t. If I were a betting man, though, I’d put my money on Casey Stoner driving in the development series next year.He’s not yet signed anything with anyone, but from his bitter Twitter exchange with Frosty over the weekend, I can see he’s getting really passionate about this sport. I think he said something about some amateur driving by Frosty and Mark bit back. That should fuel some competitive racing in the future between the two if they ever get on track together. 

  

   

Four wheels good, two wheels ... Well, not "bad". Never bad. Not when they're the rear wheels of a 911. The triumphal and still fairly new 991 generation of the perennial sports car has been launched in its all-wheel-drive versions - Carrera 4, 4S and the equivalent Cabrios. Driven this week in the Austrian Alps, it was never going to be a question of these being better than the solely rear driven 911s.Rather it's down to your definition of "better". Is making the already incredibly adept 911 that bit more clinical and über capable is really such a good idea - especially in a car that is already too good to be used in Austria and leagues of magnitude too good for Australia?When asked what Carrera would do for him, Herr 911 himself - the model's project leader August  Achleitner - tells Carsguide: "I would be satisfied with the C2 S. If  you do not live among snow, the grip is massive."Indeed he says, when properly shod with Pirelli summer rubber and driven in optimum conditions, the ostensibly lesser 911 provides some 90 per cent of the C4's immense capability. "But," Achleitner says, "you feel better when you hand the keys to your wife." Or the likes of me.VALUEIf measured literally by metal for the money, there's no argument. The extent to which the wide bodied C4s are bigger than the C2s appears incremental on paper, but hugely imposing in physical appearance. More on that in a minute ...In showrooms by March (those that haven't been pre-bought) - the 3.4-litre 911 Carrera 4 Coupe is priced at $255,400 plus on-roads - the price of a VW Up over the previous model.  The Carrera 4 Cabriolet is a base Polo dearer than its predecessor at $280,900. At $289,400 the stove hot 3.8-litre Carrera S 4S represents a rise of a Polo with DSG. The  range topping $315,000 Carrera Cabriolet is getting into Golf country over the car that preceded it.Yet even without options (but always including the $5400 PDF twin clutch auto) the full panoply of which could equally be a Scirocco S over the previous car, the new Carrera 4s  represents at least that great an advance. It's a tech tour de force.Realise also that more than $100,000 of each car's purchase price goes to Wayne Swan, who of course spends it on everyone's behalf, so don't go calling 911 drivers "bankers". They're contributing to the common good.TECHNOLOGYTo extol the Carrera 4's array of tech would not only be superfluous - you've read it all recently - but to risk being cast adrift in an ocean of acronyms. This time, we need discuss only Porsche Traction Management system, the slick electronic mechanism that shares the driving force around all four wheels, distributing power between the permanently driven rear axle and the front. It allows no more torque to be transmitted to the wheels than can be done without slip, reacting quicker than a mere human could hope.It's as active or passive as you yourself are behind the wheel, continuously monitoring including the rotational speed of all four wheels, the lateral and longitudinal acceleration of the car and the steering angle to send drive to where it will do most good. Blast off the mark hard enough to disturb traction and the multi-plate electronic clutch thrusts power aft. To cement the relationship of "proof" with "fool", another program prevents wheel spin by adapting the engine’s power output. During cornering, the optimal level of drive power is distributed to the front wheels to ensure excellent lateral stability.And if not for the event busy dashboard indicator that shows which end is doing how much  work, you might never know what's the go. PTM might as well be a short form for "seamless". Or "flattering". Sorry but you alone are just not that good.Present and correct are the two tunes of Porsche's water-cooled flat six, with direct injection, variable valve timing, an aluminium block and every refinement to ensure that in 3.4 or 3.8 form, the C4 911s run barely an eyeblink behind the C2s.The Carrera 4 Coupe does the 0-100kmh run in 4.5 seconds, the Cabriolet in 4.7 - all of one tenth behind the rear wheel drive cars. The blazing S versions match their lighter siblings at 4.1 seconds in the Coupe and 4.3 in the drop top.DESIGNOn paper 44mm of extra width over the regular 911 looks very little. In practice, on narrow alpine roads crusted by frost with vertiginous drops, it feels like an extra metre. If unkind to driver's view (shrouded is too kind a word for the coupe's rear three quarter aspect) visibility is very much the point of the flared rear arches and wider wheels."This is why we have the wide body," Achleitner says. "People wish to show they can afford the most expensive model."Certainly the 911's cockpit no longer leaves you wondering where your quarter of a million bucks went. Indeed, Porsche appears to be over eager to demonstrate it. No less than 60 buttons festoon the centre console and mirror controls.While the wheel is free of these, its column spouts four wands and two gear shifting levers. There's a tonne of function, but form? Not so much.If being the 911's exterior designer is the equivalent to being Tony Abbott's speechwriter - give them more of the same then repeat endlessly - incremental changes become all the more impactful. The widened C4 looks weapons grade.SAFETYNo one's crash tested this and no one's going to. At any rate, the C4 sheer dynamic ability, underwritten by an exceptional array of  active and passive electronic measures, means the human factor needs to be especially egregious if all is to end in road toll stats.So clinically, incredibly adept is the C4, I asked Achleitner if perhaps some of the sport had been removed from this classic sports car."To  use an example from my own experience, I am a very enthusiastic manual transmission driver. But when you drive PDK, which can manage so wide a breadth of tasks, you can even as a lover of manual transmissions want to change to PDK," he says."All these systems and all-wheel-drive too - at Porsche we ask the question do we need these? They are not essential, but they improve the car. It makes its ability, its limits, higher. And the car never gets boring."DRIVINGCertainly the car - especially the full throated S - never sounds dull. When you've tired of the aural frenzy bought on by even a half enthusiastic throttle opening,  you have tired of life.Even with its dynamic edge blunted by winter tyres, it is impossible not to be awestruck by this phenomenally sophisticated device for getting around corners quickly. You cannot reasonably complain about the feelful electric steering.You cannot but be delighted by the throttle blipping down changes of the PDK, transmission so adept, so incredibly intuitive that imposing your own will via manual changes is like pouring salt into an exquisite sauce or improving a Shakespearean tragedy with a happy ending. Your intervention is not only superfluous, but undesirable.Maybe that's a good thing.VERDICTFor when only the very best will do, even if the best is a bit too much.

I’m third and 245 points behind Jamie Whincup so mathematically it is still possible, but realistically it’s over for 2012. The problem for me is the consistency of Jamie and the reliability of today’s race cars. Back in the third round in April in Tassie, I had my incident with Will Davison that put us out of the points. Because of the other drivers’ consistency and car reliability, it’s taken me all year to claw my way back into contention.Now with just three rounds to go, there is simply not enough time left. But as I said before, so long as I have a wheel in my hands and four on the ground, I will keep fighting. For me, the fight is for second place with Frosty.Last weekend’s round at Surfers Paradise was plagued by the starting line crashes on Saturday. They marred an otherwise perfect weekend of spectacular racing for the fans. As I’ve said before, these cars are really difficult to get off the line and most of the international drivers have no experience at all in stationary starts.They are very experienced and highly skilled drivers, but this type of start is completely foreign to them. However, some of the drivers are so talented they overcame their lack of experience with stationary starts to do really well.For example, my co-driver, Richard Lyons, performed four starts over the weekend and on each one he made up positions. Maybe it’s time we caught up with the rest of the world and had rolling starts; at least at street circuits where the track is really narrow and there is no run-off.Rolling starts are just as exciting as stationary starts and they have their own difficulties and techniques. I did a rolling start at Phillip Island with the Audi this year and it took me back to my go-kart days. I wasn’t surprised that there were more stalled cars on the second and third starts because the clutch heats up and makes it even more difficult to get it off the line.Apart from annoying the fans with delays over the two red-flagged starts, it also spelt disaster for Garry Rogers Motorsport with both of their cars out for the day. This highlights the problem with Abu Dhabi as the next round because the cars have to be on the transport plane so soon.Often teams have major repairs after a street circuit so it is a nightmare if the next round is overseas. Next year it’s an even tighter turnaround as the Surfers Paradise event has been moved back and we have to be in Abu Dhabi the following weekend.That’s if the Queensland Government doesn’t pull out its support for the race altogether. I’m going to the MotoGP this weekend to see Casey Stoner race in his last two-wheeled event on Phillip Island. Hopefully he can finish with a win and the next time he’s back there he has four wheels under him.