Motorsports

I've always said he retired way too early.  He still has the ability, the speed, attention to detail and is great with car set-up.  That's why we're pairing up again this year for the enduros. He's comfortable now with his situation and his media career but he still loves driving in good cars, so he has said he will continue to compete in the enduros just so long as it's in a competitive car in a competitive team. He didn't get a drive at Abu Dhabi, but we're hoping he will be at our next test day and that there will be a lot more opportunity for him during the year to get behind the wheel of our car and keep his mind sharp and his skills up. We are in a five-week break between Abu Dhabi and our next race at Adelaide, so there is plenty of time for teams to fix the carnage from Abu Dhabi. My car copped a bit of damage, but not a lot, from when I ran into the back of Russell Ingall's car. It was my fault and I apologised and now our teams need to get in and straighten it all out. This weekend I'm down in Melbourne for the opening round of the World Superbikes at Phillip Island as a guest of Suzuki.  Hopefully veteran Aussie Troy Corser can get up there on the top of the podium for the Aussies and finally do it for the BMW team. They had good bike speed toward the end of last year's season, so let's hope they can continue this season.  I saw Troy and his team at Eastern Creek the day before our V8 Supercar public test day last month. To see him lapping the Creek on that bike was pretty impressive.  It was also interesting to see Troy do some starts and listen to all the electronic aids at work to help launch the bike and control wheelies. It sounded just like an F1 car.  Our next team outing is one of our allocated test days. So we'll be out at Queensland Raceway next Thursday  tinkering around with a few things, but nothing major. It will be good to break up the down time between the first two rounds and keep myself and the car in tune.  Other than that, I've got no major plans for the long break other than catching up with the family, the team and some much-needed farm work after a summer of natural disasters.

MARCOS Ambrose has finished 13th fastest out of 48 for today's (FRIDAY) Daytona 500 qualifying in his first session with his new Richard Petty Motorsports team. The Ford driver will now compete in two 240km NASCAR Sprint Cup Series qualifying races which will set the grid for the Daytona 500 on Monday morning, Australian time. "It's just a real thrill for me and it's just good to get one in the books," the Australian said after pre-qualifying at the weekend. Dale Earnhardt Jnr was the quickest qualifier and will line up alongside teammate Jeff Gordon on the front row. FORD has scooped the podium in the opening round of the World Rally Championship in Sweden at the weekend. Fin Mikko Hirvonen again claimed victory in the only all-snow event on the WRC calendar. The Ford Fiesta driver repeated his 2010 Rally of Sweden win, just 6.5 seconds ahead of Ford drivers Norwegian Mads Ostberg and Fin Jari-Matti. The next round will be held in Mexico on March 6. AUSTRALIA'S all-female rally team has flown to the UK for their debut in the WRC. Sydneysider, Molly Taylor, won her drive in the Pirelli Star Driver Shootout last year. She will compete, with co-driver Rebecca Smart of the Sunshine Coast, in the six-round FIA World Rally Championship Academy. The six-round series will be run at WRC events and is aimed at developing young drivers. TWO-time World Supercross Champion Chad Reed salvaged a top-six result in Houston at the weekend after a 10-rider pile-up on the opening lap of the main race. The Australian was in last position and had to pass 14 riders. His sixth position dropped him to fourth in the standings after five rounds. The 17-rounds series moves to San Diego this weekend.

It certainly wasn't on the pace at Abu Dhabi last weekend.  It caused a lot of confusion and possibly danger when it dribbled along at 40km/h with the field in disarray behind it and cars flying out of the pits at full bore.There has been a lot of talk in the industry about the speed of the safety car and its procedures. We need more than talk. We need to sort this out.From what I can gather Frosty came out in front of the pace car and could have put the whole field a lap down if he'd continued.  However, I think he was taken a bit by surprise that the safety car was beside him and going so slow.Every now and then we have this problem with the safety car getting out of sync with what's going on in pit lane.  With all the pit stops that go on during a safety period, it's often difficult for race control to figure out who's leading the race.So we ended up with all that soap opera about race order and Steve Johnson not letting Jamie in.  It was just another incident in a surprisingly chaotic race meeting on the Yas Marina Circuit.I was a bit excited when I got pole for the first race. It was my first pole since 2009.  It all sort of unravelled from there when I stalled it on the starting line.The track had cooled off from the afternoon and grip had improved.  I used the normal starting procedure, but the soft tyres had so much grip, when I let go of the brake button, it stalled.I ended up seventh for the race, which was all I could salvage after that start and with a car that wasn't quite balanced right.  Jamie and I swapped places for race 2, but it was still an all-TeamVodafone front row.I had a much better start to race two even though I lost a spot to Frosty.  But then the fun and games began.  We were one of the big incidents in the race when I went in too deep under brakes into turn 10 and locked the rear tyres.I turned myself around, lost control and slid into the back of Russell Ingall's car. Unfortunately, his car sustained much heavier damage than mine.I went over and apologised to Russell after the race. Quite obviously he was not too happy as he was having a great run.  It's a little hard to swallow when a crash is not your fault, but we've both been around this game for a long time and agreed it's one of those things that happen every now and then.I apologised and now we'll move on.  We weren't the only incident. There was more carnage in that second race than I've seen in four races at Abu Dhabi.It is amazing that we have a track so wide and smooth with so much run off yet we have so much contact and damage.  In the end, the second race came down to an economy run.We had the best pace of the field, but Courtney had the better fuel strategy.  You can't discount Courtney in the series, but that win was more about strategy than car and tyres. The real standouts from the weekend for me were Alex Davison and Tim Slade.  Keep an eye on these guys this year.Abu Dhabi was the first event for our new line-up with team principal Roland Dane down the back of the pits and Adrian Burgess up front calling the shots with our race engineers.  The boys have commented that they've now got two voices calling out at them.I think the new line-up went quite well.  Roland is there to see that the team is running at the level he wants and I didn't see him too displeased at the end of the day; bar the race results, of course.He can be quite vocal at times, but I think Adrian took it all in his stride.  Adrian was calm and made good, collective decisions with the engineers. I think he knows just what to do to make it all work.At the end of the weekend, we can come away with a lot of positives.  We had the front row of the grid in both races, had a lot of car speed and had some good strategies.  It was just a shame we couldn't completely capitalise on our strengths.We've now got a five-week break before the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, but I'll be back racing again this weekend.  No, it's not another safari or enduro; I'm racing go-karts in Toowoomba to raise money for flood relief.Like most racers, I started in karts and I always love to get back into them, plus it's for a really good cause.

CRAIG Lowndes went within a second of clinching his sixth title at Mt Panorama in the Bathurst 12-Hour race at the weekend. The V8 Supercar driver had a 30-second lead in his Team Joest Audi R8 LMS GT3 when was forced to make an unexpected pitstop in the last half hour of the endurance race. The late stop handed victory to teammates, Germans Marc Basseng, Christopher Mies and Chinese driver Darryl O'Young. It was an Audi 1-2 finish with Lowndes, Mark Eddy and Warren Luff less than a second behind. As a consolation, Lowndes broke the GT lap record. The Audis completed 292 laps or 1814.19km which is also a record for the event. Queenslanders Tony Quinn, Klark Quinn and Craig Baird finished third in their Porsche GT3 R, one lap behind.FOUR-time Asia Pacific and three-time Australian rally champion Cody Crocker will return to the International Rally of Queensland in May as the star of a three-car team from Japan. Crocker, with champion co-driver Ben Atkinson, will drive a Subaru Impreza WRX for Cusco Racing after spending the past year out of regular competition. They will race against Atkinson's brother and former WRC competitor, Chris, in a factory-backed Proton Satria Neo S2000.RECENT floods have prevented Queensland Raceway from having vital re-surfacing work done this year, but the V8 Supercar round in August will still go ahead. Resurfacing the track was one of the conditions for the return of the V8 series to Ipswich. However, V8 Supercar spokesman Cole Hitchcock said the delay on the work was "totally understandable". QR owner John Tetley said resurfacing had been delayed four times over summer because of weather and the priority need for bitumen to fix flood-damaged roads. "With the track booked for 90 per cent of the year, resurfacing has been rescheduled for December 18," Tetley said.YOUNG drivers will get a chance to mix it with the pros in the Junior Australia Rally Challenge run across four rounds of the 2011 Australian Rally Championship. The Rallyschool.com.au series is for drivers under 28 years in two wheel drive and four wheel drive cars. They will compete in the opening ARC round in WA on April 16-17, the International Rally of Queensland in May and the Rally of South Australia in July. A final shootout will be run in the ARC category of this year's World Championship Rally Australia event in September at Coffs Harbour.CHAD Reed has scored back-to-back podiums in the American Supercross series. The Australian star's third position in LA at the weekend behind Americans James Stewart and Ryan Villopoto has hurtled Reed from fifth in the standings to third behind the same two riders. The sixth round of the 17-round series is in Texas this weekend.FIVE Aussies will line up on the World Superbike starting grid in the opening round of the series at Philip Island on February 27. Mark Aitchison, of Gosford, has scored a last-minute series ride with Team Pedercini Kawasaki. He joins countrymen Troy Corser (BMW), Chris Vermeulen (Kawasaki) and Josh Waters (Suzuki) in the series. Meanwhile, Bryan Staring, of Perth, has gained a wild card entry for the Australian event before heading overseas to race in the World Superstock 1000cc FIM Cup for the same Italian-based team as Aitchison.  

Audi Australia boss Uwe Hagen is delighted with the one-two finish in the endurance race last weekend. He is vowing to return to the mountain in 2012 even though he didn't know where Bathurst was when the plan to compete was hatched back in November."The Audi motorsport committee in Germany approached me on the phone," he says.   "They were looking worldwide at endurance races to compete in and Bathurst was well known."I gave them an instant answer on the phone even though I didn't know where Bathurst was.  But I know this market is really interested in competition and car races, so I say yes."Audi Team Joest entered two R8 LMS race cars, one driven by an international crew and the other by Australians Craig Lowndes, Mark Eddy and Warren Luff.  The Aussies qualified first and the international crew won by less than a second."The international team knew the car and the local drivers knew the track. In the rain the Aussies were quicker," Hagen says.  "I've already talked to HQ about doing it again next year.  Hopefully other manufacturers will participate because endurance races are good for the product."Hagen says he can't quantify the sales effect of the enduro win, but says they have already sold one LMS race car and GT Production racer Eddy is keen to buy a new model."We never talk about figures but we invited all R8 owners and dealer principals to attend the race and had about 80 guests," he says.  "We do this to increase awareness of our brand."Audi has already run press ads featuring the race win and has videos of the race on its You Tube site.  The $5000 prize money for pole position has been donated by the Aussie drivers to the Queensland flood appeal and matched by Audi Australia.  The Audi donation rocketed to $35,000 with pledges from Audi dealerships.

But the whole Bathurst 12-Hour experience was fantastic and I'm now even more hopeful about my prospects of driving in the Le Mans 24-Hour race.  It would be great to take an Aussie team to France for the race and I'd be more than happy to go with my teammates from the weekend, Warren Luff and Mark Eddy.We had a great Audi team result with a 1-2 finish less than a second part. Our car was right on the pace and set a new GT Production lap record of 2:09 which is a second faster than Tony Quinn in the Porsche GT3 R last year.And we could easily have won the race except for some of the tactical calls our crew made during safety car periods.  It was mainly because of a lack of communication back and forth between the drivers and the German crew who were just getting to know each other, but we also had some bad luck.In one case I was just coming through the Chase when the safety car came out and it was too late to slip down pit lane.  We may not have come first, but I still had a few personal firsts in the race like the first time I'd driven a race car with ABS and stability control and my first rolling start in 20 years.The Audi R8 LMS GT3 race car was great to drive.  It is about 25km/h slower in terminal speed than the V8, but it is the quickest I've ever been across the top of the mountain.  The car is really well balanced with great aero and I held it almost flat across the top.  We dialled out the ABS and stability control at first as a caution, but as the tyres wore down we dialled it back in.With stability control on you could come out of the Cutting and basically just put your foot hard on the throttle and let it do its job.I wouldn't mind if they introduced electronic driver aids like this in V8s. It would make the car easier to drive because it does a lot of the work for you.  The next time I'm at Bathurst could be in an F1 car.Team Vodafone is trying to stitch together a deal where I drive Jenson Button's F1 car and he drives my race car at Bathurst in the lead-up to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne next month.  I'm not sure yet if it's 100 per cent confirmed, but it would be a great opportunity.I have never driven an F1 car before. The closest I got was racing Formula 3000 in Europe.  Jamie Whincup drove an F1 at Albert Park in Melbourne last year and has been raving about it ever since.I'd be delighted with the opportunity, but I have concerns about taking it around Bathurst.  There are safer paces to drive an F1 car.Bathurst is a circuit we drivers hold in high respect and I'd be concerned about damaging the car; even just clipping a wing would be quite expensive.Speaking of F1, I'm in Abu Dhabi for the first round of the V8 Supercar season this weekend and by the time you read this we should have visited Ferrari World.It wasn't finished when we were here last year and I want to ride the roller coaster that goes from 0-250km/h in five seconds. It's supposed to be the same acceleration as an F1.Team Vodafone blitzed the field here last year with a brand new car and we're keen to do it again, but there will be one major difference. This time the whole event is being run on soft tyres.That's practice, qualifying and two races on softs.  It's an unbelievable smooth, fast and flowing circuit but the sand drifts across and acts like sandpaper rubbing the tyres away quickly.It will be a real challenge to get the tyres to last and extract the best out of them.  Tactics will be important because of the big speed differential between worn and fresh rubber.That should lead to lots of passing opportunities, plus the fact that the extra grip of a new soft tyre means you can dive in under brakes and carry more corner speed to pass.Interestingly we qualify in the heat of the day and race at night, so the race pace will potentially be the same as, or faster than, qualifying.  Lap records should tumble.My race engineer, Jeromy Moore, was at the Bathurst 12-Hour and he saw the way they stiffened that car up; we might do the same on our car for this circuit with the combination of soft tyres and a smooth track.

CRAIG Lowndes started the 2011 V8 Supercar season with an emphatic lap record at the Eastern Creek test day at the weekend. The five-time Bathurst winner and three-time series champion set a lap of 1m30.1877s on fresh, soft tyres, beating Mark Skaife's 1999 pole position lap by half a second. Commodores took the top seven positions, while current champion James Courtney was 16th in his HRT Holden. The series begins next weekend in Abu Dhabi.THE Daytona 24-Hour came down to a one-lap sprint to the flag after a late restart at the weekend. Defending Grand-Am Series champion Scott Pruett held off his teammate, Kiwi Scott Dixon, by 2.42 seconds in the one-lap dash to take out the title at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. It was team owner Chip Ganassi's fourth win.GT vehicles will join with production cars for the first time in the Bathurst 12-Hour this weekend. There are entries from Audi, BMW, Corvette, Ferrari, Ford, Holden, Lotus, Mitsubishi, Mosler, Nissan, Porsche and Subaru. However, outright honours are expected to be fought out between Porsche teams and the 11-time Le Mans winners, Audi Sport Team Joest, with Craig Lowndes as the lead driver in an R8.FORMER F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen and World Rally Champion Petter Solberg have been confirmed to contest Rally Australia at Coffs Coast, New South Wales, in September. They will drive works-built Citroen DS3 WRC rally cars. Raikkonen's ICE1 Racing team will contest 10 of the 13 WRC rounds this year, while Solberg finished third last year and will compete in the full season.TASMANIAN Jason White has moved to the top of the Australian Targa Championship points table with a dominant performance at the second round of the series, Targa Wrest Point, out of Hobart. The reigning Wrest Point champion drove his Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera to a 29-second lead from South Australian Steve Glenney in a Mazda RX8 SP and Queenslander Tony Quinn third in his Nissan GT-R. The final round is the Targa Tasmania from April 5 to 10.EASTERN Creek International Raceway in Sydney will get a $9 million circuit upgrade. Work will include increasing the circuit's capacity and track configurations to four layouts with two circuits able to operate independently. The upgrade follows the recent closure of Oran Park.CHAD Reed has claimed his first podium with his own team, TwoTwo Motorsports, at in the fourth round of the AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, at the weekend in Oakland, California. The Australian finished second n the slick surface behind James Stewart and remains in fifth position in the titles while Stewart moves to the top. The next event is in LA this weekend.FLOOD damage has forced the third and fourth rounds of the Australian Off Road Championship to be moved from Queensland to Victoria. The March round at Goomburra will now be held on May 28-29 at Hedley in Victoria. Motorcycling Queensland has cancelled the Queensland 2 Day Enduro to the floods, but the national CIK Stars of Karting Series will go ahead as scheduled on February 26/27 in Ipswich. The International Karting Committee decision has come after consultation with the local council. The five-round series is conducted in four states up to September.TWO-time World Superbike champion Troy Corser has admitted he doesn't have many years left at the top level. The 39-year-old BMW rider from Wollongong missed the first test day in Portugal to test on his own at Eastern Creek and start his physical training earlier than usual. "I know I haven't got too many seasons left at the highest level, so I am really motivated to make the most of the next few years," he said. The season starts at Philip island on February 27.

Obviously I was very happy beating Skaifey's 1999 record by about half a second and coming out first thing with a car that still has plenty of speed from last year. But that was Eastern Creek and we don't race there, so a lot of the set-up work could be wasted and things we learnt may not be able to be applied to other tracks.We believed a base set-up in the car would work, which proved to be 95 per cent right, but there are always areas you can improve.My race engineer, Jeromy Moore, and I are working as good as ever and it looks like the changes of personnel in the team such as my new number one mechanic, Nick from DJR, are also working well.On the other side of the garage, Jamie (Whincup) was a bit disappointed with his car speed, finishing up 12th in the times. Even further back was James Courtney but that's no surprise. It'll take time for him and Will Davison to settle into their new teams, but they will still be forces to reckon with this year.The new concept of a mandatory pre-season test day was an outstanding success with a big crowd turning out. Not sure of the crowd numbers, but it's a lot more than footy teams get along for practice.We've struggled in recent years to get a fan base for Eastern Creek race meetings. While it doesn't look like we'll be returning for races anytime in the future, it was still good to hear that millions of dollars is being invested into the Sydney circuit.Most people know I am a big supporter of circuits for a multitude of uses, especially driver training. Eastern Creek is going to get a lot more facilities as well as four different tracks on two independent circuits. That's fantastic news for driver education and road safety.Eastern Creek is a fantastic facility and it's in the right place, especially since Sydney lost Oran Park.I hear that the boss of Subaru in Australia has claimed motorsport in Australia is irrelevant to our market and of no interest to youth. While there's always room for new motorsport categories, I disagree that V8s are irrelevant. The category has established itself over many years as an iconic series, not just something representative of what motorists are driving.You can invent a new category but you can't invent history and that's what V8s has in spades. And if you look at our fan base our demographic covers a huge age range. I'm sure Subaru would be happy to be a part of it if the company can come up with a vehicle to race when we introduce the car of the future.My immediate future is driving the Audi R8 in the Bathurst 12-Hour this weekend. I'm not nervous about it, even though it's a completely new team and the first time I've driven a race car with paddle shifts, ABS, stability control, left-hand drive and indicators.I had Audi Sport Team Joest email me the cockpit layout, switches and controls and I've been studying them. The first thing I have to do is learn the car, the team and most importantly figure out what I'll do about ABS and stability control. I'll have to get my head around how they work and how sensitive they are, but I'll probably start by turning them off.Some people have asked how I'm able to drive an Audi, but they don't realise I'm not contracted to Holden. I'm contracted to Triple 8, so there are no issues. It's actually the first time in my career I've had no direct connection with a manufacturer.I don't know whether this will lead to anything with Audi, but I do hope it leads to competing in the Le Mans 24-Hour race. The June race doesn't clash with any V8 round, so there's always a chance for this year. I'd love to think that if not this year then definitely next year.There has been a lot of talk about selling off half of the V8 Supercars Australia. It's an interesting move and I'll keep a close eye on how it develops. While there is a real danger of it being sold to foreign interests, HRT, FPR and Triple 8 are all foreign owned and that hasn't done any damage to the series.

Called the F150 to celebrate this year's 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, the new Ferrari Formula 1 car was launched by drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in Italy yesterday. To comply with the new 2011 F1 regulations, the double diffuser and the blown rear wing are gone, as is the use of apertures in the front part of the floor.  Instead, an hydraulically controlled adjustable rear wing has been added, and Pirelli tyres have replaced the old Bridgestones. The first F1 race of 2011 is in Bahrain on March 13.  Lotus-Renault teams (Renault F1) are set to unveil their car on January 31, 2011, followed by Red Bull, Mercedes GP, Toro Rosso and Williams on February 1, 2011, McLaren on Feb. 4th and Virgin on Feb. 7th.      

Mr Ecclestone has said he could scrap the contract on the Grand Prix, which runs until 2015.  "If the mayor thinks I’m cranky, I can probably be able to help him by proving it. If he’s not happy with the event in Australia, if he wants to cancel the contract, we’d be happy to talk to him about that," Mr Ecclestone said on radio station 3AW this morning."If he wishes to cease having the event in Melbourne, I am happy to discuss that with him."Mr Ecclestone said there were “quite a few countries that are waiting'' for a Grand Prix, but he has no plans to pull the plug on the Melbourne event before the current deal expires in 2015.He said he would consider its future in 2013 unless the city wants to take action sooner.“We have a contract - we don't break contracts," Mr Ecclestone said.Mr Ecclestone said he would be happy to discuss tearing up the contract with Cr Doyle as soon as tomorrow morning if that was his wish, but he had never had any dealings with the Mayor and had no idea what his authority or motivation was.Mr Ecclestone's threats come after Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle last week suggested it could be time for Melbourne to give up hosting the March event, citing growing losses and waning public interest. He concurred the event had been in Melbourne a long time."I wouldn’t say (the race would stay) indefinitely. We’ve stayed an awful long time. There is no reason why we should leave. It’s up to him, if he wants to talk about terminating the contract… he should talk to someone in our organisation if he thinks I’m cranky and see what he can come up with.""I bet I should be dealing with these things longer than he is going to be Mayor in Melbourne."The F1 boss said he did not know what the cost of the event was and would not speculate how much should be spent on it, but that he would definitely not tolerate a business of his losing $70 million a year.“I have no control over what people spend," he said.Following the debate over the race's future in Melbourne launched by an article Cr Doyle wrote for the Sunday Herald Sun, Mr Ecclestone said he would liked to have known about the anti-Grad Prix sentiment before renewing the event's contract.“We have always been happy because I’ve always thought we had big big support in Melbourne.  The only thing is the Mayor doubts it."In its 15-year lifespan, taxpayers have poured more that $249 million to top up operating losses.  The first race lost $1.5 million. Last year's losses almost cracked $50 million.Crowd numbers are down from a peak of 401,000 in 1996 to a low of 286,000 in 2009.