Auto Action #1866

EXCLUSIVE WHY SCOTTY MAC TURNED DOWN HRT

AUSTRALIA’S INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MOTORSPORT

SUPERCARS BRICKYARD INVASION

BUT THE YANKS WILL BE READY THIS TIME!

NOT ONE, BUT TWO ...

KOSTECKI AND VAN GISBERGEN!

OSCAR BACKS UP!

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DAN RICCIARDO EXCELS

IN DRAMATIC COMEBACK

''We ALL rely on ACDe/co" Craig Lowndes 7 x Bathurst 1000 Wins

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RICCIARDO’S BACK AND IT’S ALL ALL SMILES IT WAS A WELCOME SIGHT FOR ALL, SEEING THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY ‘HONEY BADGER’ RETURNING TO THE F1 GRID THIS PAST WEEKEND IN HUNGARY. AA’S REESE MAUTONE REPORTS ON HIS RETURN TO F1 ACTION ...

HAVING EXCELLED during Red Bull’s Pirelli test in Silverstone two weeks ago, the call was made for Daniel Ricciardo to replace Nyck de Vries at AlphaTauri, effective immediately.

Coming into the weekend, Ricciardo was understandably beaming to get back behind the wheel as a permanent driver, having worked in a reserve role for Red Bull this past year.

“Just getting an opportunity again inside the Red Bull family is something I’m really appreciative of,” Ricciardo said.

“I’m just going to get out there, not think too much about it, drive, and then go from there and just take some steps forward after that.”

At a track where the eight-time Grand Prix winner has previously claimed victory, Ricciardo spent the weekend exceeding Franz Tost and Helmut Marko’s expectations by out-qualifying and finishing ahead of his teammate in his first race since 2022.

With a potential 2025 Red Bull seat weighing heavily on his mind, Ricciardo’s first session with AlphaTauri proved ironic when his opening run was cut short due to the man occupying his desired seat crashing 5 minutes into FP1.

With the added pressure of a hungry Daniel Ricciardo back on the grid, Sergio Perez made an elementary mistake, clipping the grass which sent his RB19 into the barriers at Turn 5.

Rain ruined the remaining 50 minutes of FP1, stripping Ricciardo of crucial track time and seeing him not set a time in the opening session.

He finished the second practice session in P13 with a time of 1:18.385, less than seventenths from the top.

The Australian stayed within close reach of Yuki Tsunoda, with the AlphaTauri duo sitting in P15 and P16 separated by just 0.066s at the 40-minute mark.

The final practice session put him on the radar of a potential Q2 appearance, seeing him dominate over his teammate across the lap on their Medium and Hard compound runs.

He finished with the 18th quickest time, however, unrepresentative of where he stood in comparison to others due to the team running an adverse FP3 program.

“I think obviously there is a lot of outside attention, but once I put the helmet on and got in the car, it all felt like I never really left.”

“I’m

quite optimistic. It looked like Yuki as well had a pretty good [day]. I think if we put all these things together maybe tomorrow, we can do okay.”

Respective of his machinery, it was a stunning qualifying session from Danny Ric, being the sole AlphaTauri to advance to Q2 for the first time in four races.

His first run in Q2 landed the #3 car just a tenth from a top-10 time but, despite improving to a time of 1:18.002, Ricciardo was eventually bumped down to a final starting position of P13.

Putting the position aside, Ricciardo’s benchmark was his teammate.

“Yuki is a good reference for me and I think just to be there is positive.”

“Tomorrow there’s going to be a lot of things for me to learn in terms of tyre management, but also the car, with fuel, as the tyres go off, I think I’ll start to probably discover about the car.”

“Points will be huge, but it is really just about making sure I am at one with the car.”

His valiant efforts on Saturday were, however, erased by no fault of his own when he was tagged by Zhou Guanyu into Turn 1, sending him tumbling down the order.

Running with a damaged diffuser and uncomfortably in dirty air in last, ulterior strategies made up the remainder of his 70lap race of recovery.

He made his first stop from P11 after managing degradation on his Medium tyres, rejoining the race in P18 on Hard tyres.

It was a short 11-lap hard stint, with AlphaTauri calling the Australian in on Lap 33 to fit Mediums once again.

This boded well for Ricciardo and, despite initially rejoining the race in traffic, he was able to work his way into clear air and back into his starting position of P13 by the chequered flag As an added confidence boost for the Australian, he managed to finish ahead of Tsunoda in his first race with AlphaTauri.

Despite missing out on the very real possibility of a points finish, being back in the cockpit was satisfying enough for Ricciardo, now shifting his sights to the upcoming Belgian Grand Prix.

“Really glad to have, yeah, kind-of being put in this position and coming back feeling everything normal again.”

“The grid, the start, the emotion, adrenaline – I enjoyed it all.”

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KOSTECKI JOINS SVG IN ANTIPODEAN NASCAR ASSAULT

BRODIE KOSTECKI WILL JOIN SHANE VAN GISBERGEN AS A NASCAR CUP SERIES DEBUTANT IN 2023 WHEN HE JOINS THE GIZ ON THE GRID FOR THE INDY ROAD COURSE MEETING NEXT MONTH. ANDREW CLARKE REPORTS. BRODIE KOSTECKI and Shane van Gisbergen will run the Indianapolis road course in the NASCAR Cup Series on 13 August.

Auto Action first heard of the news of Kostecki’s run two weeks ago, and van Gisbergen’s announcement followed days after Kostecki’s drive was officially confirmed last week with the support for the trip coming from Peter Adderton’s MobileX brand in the States and Adelaide 500 sponsor VAILO..

Kostecki was well underway with his plans to run with Richard Childress Racing at the combined NASCAR and IndyCar weekend when van Gisbergen ‘wasted’ the NASCAR field in Chicago earlier this month.

Both Kostecki and van Gisbergen have been open about their desire to race in NASCAR, but Kostecki has also said he is far from finished here, while it appears van Gisbergen will be US-bound at the end of the season.

The Erebus driver, who lost the Supercars championship lead in Townsville, cut his racing teeth in the junior NACSAR classes in the US a decade ago.

“I am thrilled to be making my NASCAR Cup debut at the Brickyard,” Kostecki said.

“It’s an honour to compete at such an iconic venue and against some of the biggest names in motorsport.

“I’m incredibly grateful to RCR for giving me this opportunity, and I’m determined to make the most of it. Racing is at the core of everything I do, and NASCAR has been a lifelong goal of mine after spending years growing up in the sport’s heartland.

“It’s a whole different world over there, and any additional time I can spend racing is only going to help me try and win my first Supercars Championship.”

Adderton said backing the Kostecki NASCAR push was a no-brainer for him.

The recent launch of the MobileX brand fits well with the NASCAR fan, and he likes to back his ambassador athletes and their dreams.

“We’re launching a brand in the US, which is MobileX, and its kind of a wirelessproviding service,” Adderton said. “We’ve taken Brodie from when he was at the Super2 to Supercars and now to see us continue the journey for him through

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NASCAR. It is what we like to do. We’ve done it with all of our athletes – we did it with Chad Reed, and it’s always good to take young Boost ambassadors and see if we can move them through the ranks.

“In the US, we’ve done a lot of NASCAR and IndyCar under the Boost brand for the past 20 years, and it makes sense for us to do something with the MobileX brand.

At the end of the day, it’s just good to get behind brand ambassadors who have supported our brands.”

Adderton has targeted edgier sports for Boost because the larger telcos hold the mainstream, so doing motorsport suits the brand and his likes.

“When you look at Telstra and Optus and even the US Verizon and AT&T do, they’re all about big scale. We’re more about the niche play. We’re more about authentic sports and being part of the grassroots movement as opposed to slapping our logo onto the side of a football.”

The MobileX backing for Kostecki is a one-off, but they’ll monitor its impact and see what they do with it in the future.

“The Boost brand in America is large, with eight or nine million customers. We expect MobileX to do something similar as we grow. We’re also growing it globally. I just got back from London and Europe, and we are expecting to launch the brand there as well, allowing us to go into MotoGP and some other sports.

“From our perspective, we just want to

continue driving the brand. The one-off is for us to try it out, see what it’s like, and see if we want to do more next year. I’d love to see Brodie or some of the other drivers from Supercars over here full-time next year as well.”

He said, depending on the impact of the one-off deal, he was open to backing someone from Australia

Below: Joey Logano, (22 – Team Penske), and #18 Kyle Busch, (Joe Gibbs Racing), are among the top level NASCAR stars waiting for the Aussie duo to arrive in Indianapolis ... Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

Chicago street race winner Shane van Gisbergen will be back for a second, additional, race.

The Australian rivals will still be competitors as they take on the NASCAR hard-heads ... Image: MARK HORSBURGH

or New Zealand into NASCAR full-time but had not yet spoken with van Gisbergen.

“I know Shane said he was looking at 2025, and I think that would be a mistake if he can’t do it next year. One thing about America is that it quickly forgets you when you leave. You want to be here – you’ve got an opportunity, you’ve got a window, and you’ll probably make three times more than he could make running Supercars for the rest of his career.

“Any of the drivers, if given the opportunity to race in America, should pick that up immediately and go for it. I’m talking to a lot of them, and there is a lot of interest. It’s funny because the aspiration was to race Supercars, but that seems to have gone now.

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“The upper aspiration is to race in the US and NASCAR. It’s almost like Supercars has become the stepping stone to something bigger, whereas before, it used to be where we want to end up. It’s almost like it is now the Super2 of NASCAR.” Adderton said the exact look of the car is being fine-tuned but that the merchandise was signed off and ready to go.

“The one thing that I’ve been good at, and I’m not good at everything, is building brands. The Boost brand – and now the Mobile X brand – is something that I love.

We’re going to put a lot of energy and effort behind the black and green.”

As for van Gisbergen, he said he didn’t expect his next outing in NASCAR to be as friendly as his first.

“Knowing how the Americans operate, and I’ve been here for 20 years, I can’t imagine they will make it easy on either of them. I think Shane surprised them the first time out, but they will get attacked hard this time.

“It’s going to be great to watch because Americans don’t like to lose, and they don’t like to be surprised. I think they go, ‘You beat me. I’m going to go out and wreck you.’

That’s their approach.

“You watch how those guys drive, and it’s not like Supercars. Firstly they have plenty of parts, and that car can take a hit. But Americans don’t mind wrecking you, so I think it will be elbows out.

“The great thing is that both Shane and Brodie constantly drive with their elbows out, but I think they’re much more lenient on touching each other in NASCAR than in Australia. The cars are built for it.

“I think they’re in for a pretty hard race, and I think that there’ll be a lot of people out there just making sure they don’t get to the finish line. They don’t talk about beating you, they talk about wrecking you. It is very different to here.

“You don’t surprise the Americans twice.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do.”

Kostecki has so far only expressed a desire for one-off events, but van Gisbergen is expected to leave and race full-time in NASCAR as early as next season.

Van Gisbergen will again be backed by Enhance Health, whose founder, Matt Herman, revealed to Auto Action in Chicago that he intended to bring van Gisbergen back for more races next year. However, he has accelerated his plans to include this extra race this year because of the massive coverage that van Gisbergen brought the brand after winning in Chicago.

It is not clear if Enhance Health will step up for an entire season, which could cost upwards of $9m for one season, or if van Gisbergen will need to be active in the sponsorship market.

The August 12-13 weekend in Indianapolis will see five drivers from Australia and New Zealand, with Scott Dixon, Will Power and Scott McLaughlin running in the Gallagher Grand Prix for IndyCars on Saturday, and Kostecki and van Gisbergen in the Verizon 200 for NASCARs on Sunday. Both races will be run on the Indy road course.

Engineer James Small will also be crew chief for Martin Truex Junior as he hunts down a second NASCAR title.

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GEN3 MASTER OFF TO IMSA...

BUT NOT LEAVING SUPERCARS

Image: PETER NORTON

TRIPLE EIGHT RACING ENGINEERING HAS RESPONDED TO THE RUMOURS THAT JEROMY MOORE IS LEAVING THE TEAM TO RUN SPORTSCARS, TELLING ANDREW CLARKE IT IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT ...

JEREMY MOORE, the lead engineer on the development of the Gen3 car and the technical director at Triple Eight Race Engineering, is preparing to take his skills overseas with some IMSA races later this year. According to both T8 boss Jamie Whincup and Moore, these are just one-off appearances and should be positive for the engineer and the team.

“He wants to do a couple of overseas races, some IMSA races, and we’ve given him the all-clear to do that,” Whincup said.

“They are just one-off events. It is the same with drivers, engineers and any crew – we encourage them to go and experience different things.

“He asked me a couple of months ago if he could do it, and I had no issues with it.”

Moore, better known as JJ, oversees all of the engineering at Triple Eight, including race weekends and looking after the Gen3 development project. He told Auto Action he has no plans to leave Triple Eight, but he is enjoying the expansion of his activities and renewing old acquaintances.

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“Some of the old drivers I worked with reached out to me and asked if I could collaborate with them,” he said of the opportunity. “They are running the WC (World Endurance Championship) and IMSA with Proton Competition.

“I’m helping as much as I can. I am still fulltime here, but I do work with them at night and on some of their race weekends. I’m just trying to help fastrack their knowledge base, it is not a full-time gig, and I have no plans to leave Triple Eight.

“It is good I can still work in other categories with a bit more resources and tech while retaining T8 at the forefront of my work. The Wednesday after SMP, I am off to Road America, and maybe I’ll get three to four events for the rest of the year in the WEC and IMSA. “The tech allows me to do a lot from here – I was doing one of the races overnight with the timing and video feed, and I did a sim session in Detroit recently from here by staying up late one night.”

Moore said he had previously worked with

drivers Neil Jani and Gianmaria Bruni but had not worked with Harry Ticknell. Proton has recently started with a Porsche in the hypercar class and runs a Porsche 911 GT3 R in the GTE Pro class before switching to the new Mustang GT3 for 2024.

“Proton runs two different programs, and I could cross paths with Mark Rushbrook, which could be interesting.”

Back home, he said work was continuing work on the Gen3 cars to make them more reliable and cheaper to build and run. Three points of concern remain since the season’s start: wheel bearings, the steering rack and brakes.

On the wheel bearings and front uprights, which many teams fear will not last 1000km at Bathurst, he said different versions were being tested, including last year’s Triple Eight front upright set-up on the current Triple Eight cars.

“The teams are allowed to run an uprated version without any physical change. We’ve been running them, and Supercars wants to trial an even stronger version while it looks

for the end-goal version. Walkinshaw and someone else are testing that set-up.”

He said the new ones were not $2500 each as rumoured but around $1400 a pair, and the new ones will be even cheaper.

“We’re always looking for what we can do better and cheaper.”

He shared other teams’ concerns about limited spare parts for the steering rack, but he believes Supercars is close to a solution for that.

“Electric assist was originally planned, but there have been many iterations or changes from the original scope, not just from COVID and supply issues. It is borderline on spare parts, but Supercars is trying to source more spares.”

He said Triple Eight was yet to have a steering rack failure, but he knew others have had issues, and some have been damaged in crashes.

The brakes, he said, were having some heat issues, but AP was onto that and he wasn’t concerned about them going forwards.

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SUPERCARS BRINGS IN THE LICENCE FIX

FOLLOWING WEEKS OF CRITICISM OF ITS LICENCING RULES, SUPERCARS RELENTED WITH ‘TARGETTED’ RELAXATION AROUND ITS SUPER2 REQUIREMENTS, AND KAI ALLEN IS ONE OF THE BIG WINNERS ...

SUPERCARS HAS shocked the motorsport industry with a sudden change to its controversial driver eligibility rules, which exceed Motorsport Australia’s (MA) Superlicence points criteria. The changes have, over night, opened up the options for co-drivers looking to crew wildcard entries for Bathurst this year who wouldn’t otherwise qualify.

Supercars has staunchly resisted strong calls to abandon its ‘six Super2 race’ additional, but compulsory, requirement that has prevented top level drivers such as Gold Star Champion Joey Mawson and other highly-qualified drivers from racing a Supercar, despite having the requisite super licence points from MA. The ‘tweak’ by Supercars allows young drivers Kai Allen and Aaron Love to drive upcoming wildcard entries at Bathurst now they are eligible.

At the same time, the barrier to Mawson to drive for PremiAir remained, but his recent supplement test interim suspension has cost him that drive.

Before the change, drivers needed six appearances in Super2 or be an FIA Gold-rated driver or better to be automatically eligible to race a Supercar.

Now drivers who finish in the top three of Carrera Cup or Super3 only need three Super2 weekends to qualify for the requisite Superlicence to run in the main game, which includes the Bathurst 1000.

Allen finished second in the 2022 Super3 Series and has just finished his third weekend in Super2, making him eligible to run the Dick Johnson Racing wildcard if it gets the funding.

“I think it adds a lot more value to Super3 because, before the change, you would only race it to gain experience,” Kai Allen said on hearing the news.

“But now you get three points towards your Superlicence, which allows you to chase a main game co-driver role.

Image: MARK HORSBURGH - EDGE PHOTOGRAPHICS “I definitely think it is great, and hopefully, we can get a few more drivers to come through the category. They [Supercars] have made a smart choice because it helps us young drivers coming through and adds greater value to Super3.

“It is a credit to them for thinking about trying to make the category (Super3) better to help young drivers. Hopefully, a few more young guys can get a crack.”

Debate has surrounded the Super2 requirements, with many believing the requirement was excessive and unnecesary given Motorsport Australia sets the licence requirements and not Supercars. Supercars decision appears to be more commercial than safety and capability based.

With only four rounds of the 2023 Dunlop Super2 before Bathurst,talented young drivers like Allen, who have stepped up from Super3, would have been ineligible for a wildcard run.

Allen said Super3 is a valuable stepping stone for young drivers.

With the huge leap in the funding

requirements from something like the Toyota 86s, he would not have been able to make it to Super2 and he says he is not alone.

Now he can run Bathurst, and his attention has turned to trying to secure one of the two wildcard drives that is available, with his name being linked with the third Dick Johnson Racing car.

“It is now exciting to have a crack and see if we can find something,” he said. “It is a great opportunity for guys in the 86 series and Trans Am to have a crack in a Supercar because it is a big jump not only off the track financially but also on it competition-wise against experienced drivers.

“I know a few guys who have thought about running Super2 but don’t because of the big jump, so I would love to see Super3 expand. It was a great category for me because it helped me find my feet without having the pressure of racing the big boys in Super2.

“A lot of people are not necessarily financially supported like others, so they can do a year of Super3 and then Super2 to go into the main game instead

The Auto Action motorsport podcast The team that’s not trying to make friends or look after sponsors!

of doing multiple years of Super2. It would help a lot of drivers, I would love to see many come from TCR, Trans Am and Toyota 86s and have a crack.

“Cars are an issue, but I am sure we could source some around to get some more drivers.”

The change to Rule A5.1.3.3 of the Supercars Operations Manual is as follows: The following criteria will be permitted to a maximum of three (3) Dunlop Super2 Rounds: (i) A Driver having competed in and be one of the first three (3) of the final classification of that Supercars Australia Super3 Series in the last three (3) years, will be credited with three (3) DS2 Rounds towards the six (6) DS2 Rounds as required by Rule A5.1.3.3. (ii) A Driver having competed in and be one of the first three (3) of the final classification of the Porsche Carrera Cup Australia Series in the last three (3) years, will be credited with three (3) DS2 Rounds towards the six (6) DS2 Rounds as required by Rule A5.1.3.3.

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PARITY TO GET ITS FIRST TEST

McLAUGHLIN WALKED AWAY FROM HRT CONTRACT SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN HAS SPOKEN ABOUT THE TIME HE AGREED TO JOIN HOLDEN RACING TEAM FOR THE 2017 SEASON, BEFORE HE BACKFLIPPED ON HIS DECISION, JOINED DJR TEAM PENSKE, AND WENT ON TWO WIN THREE TITLES IN FOUR SEASONS. MCLAUGHLIN REVEALED to The Athletic earlier this year that the American lure and Penske name was eventually too great to ignore.

“I nearly drove for the Holden Racing Team in Australia. I was speaking to Roger, and I was speaking to the Walkinshaw family with the Holden Racing Team at the time — it’s not there anymore. There were contracts and stuff, but it was just an offer, right?

“But I remember writing down a list of pros and cons for both teams, and I’ve still got that piece of paper today.

It’s actually in a photo frame: Penske and HRT, working out ‘America vs. not America’ and ‘factory team vs not factory team.’

“Ultimately, I wanted to drive for Roger

Penske. That was basically it, whether the American (move) came off or not.

That was pie-in-the-sky stuff at the time. But it did come off in the end.”

McLaughlin is now deeply embedded in Team Penske’s IndyCar operation and has told Andrew Clarke in an exclusive interview on Page 30 that he is so happy with his move to drive IndyCars and life in Charlotte, that he feels like he has found his home and is unlikely to return to Australia.

“I really want to retire here in America.

I’ve done what I wanted to do in Australia.

For me, America is where I’d love to have my children if we’re lucky enough to have them, and they’ll have a US passport and probably a New Zealand passport, which is pretty awesome.

“The opportunity for them here is cool, and I like it here. I don’t know what it is. I miss my family. I miss my friends.

It’s really hard because I was telling my best friend last night, who was the best man at my wedding, there’s the potential for me not to return for Christmas.

“I’ve got testing going on here, and our life’s here. We’ve got to figure out a few things. But if you asked me where I want to be in the 10 or 15 years, it would be here.”

In Part 2 of this story, in the next print edition Auto Action, McLaughlin talks about the politics that drove him out of Australia and the only way he’ll front up for another Bathurst run.

– McLaughlin Interview, page 30

THE RECENT parity adjustments will get their first real test this week at Sydney Motorsport Park. Aero changes to the Mustang leading into Townsville were inconclusive because the Reid Park hybrid circuit has little aerodynamic sensitivity.

However, The Ford teams admitted they needed to rethink the set-up direction they had been heading this year, which indicates some impact on the cars.

Changes to the throttle body on the Coyote engine are also expected this weekend which will hopefully sort out the remaining engine issues in the cars. With more tunability in the modern Ford engine, Ford Performance Engines was trying to adjust the engine’s tune to match the Chev, which raised a few problems along the way.

As reported in previous editions and discussed extensively on The Auto Action RevLimiter Podcast, the rear wing had a small gurney flap added and was moved forward and down, while the bootlid spoiler was extended to try and reduce the Mustang’s pitch sensitivity which was giving the Fords a narrow set-up window.

Even inside that window, the Mustang could have speed but could still not make the tyres last.

With its long load corners, SMP has always been hard on the tyres and is expected to provide a good test of the changes, although history could also skew the results.

Teams like Erebus and Triple Eight have a good track record there, and since they are the two teams that have been dominating the series, the data may be more about sporting parity, even with the new cars.

Walkinshaw Andretti United and Tickford Racing tested Mustangs at Winton last week in the same form they are expected to run this weekend, although rain eventually curtailed the test.

WAU driver Chaz Mostert said the car felt better than before, with a crisper response from the engine and the aero balance being promising.

He did caution, however, that SMP is a high tyre deg track and relies on aerodynamics, meaning it will provide a real test for the changes.

SMP was the venue for the pre-season test, which first highlighted the engine issues for the Fords and will give the teams the first chance to roll back to an old data sheetBruce.

Erebus drivers Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki sit first and second in the series, separated by seven points, with Broc Feeney and Shane van Gisbergen snapping at their heels. With Chaz Mostert, Cam Waters and Will Davison the only Fords in the top 10 and most likely out of championship contention, they are hoping to get the issues sorted before Bathurst.

Anton De Pasquale took Ford’s first chequered flag win for the season at the last round after being able to save tyres from a DNF during the Saturday race giving him an advantage on Sunday, but he has a good record at SMP. Racing begins on Saturday and wraps up on Sunday afternoon.

Anton de Pasquale used a tyre advantage to win in Townsville. Image: MARK HORSBURGH

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CLASSIC TITLE FIGHT IN RARE AIR STRAP YOURSELF IN FOR A DRAMATIC CONCLUSION TO THE 2023 SUPERCARS CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE FIGHT BECAUSE IT SHAPES UP TO BE ONE TO REMEMBER

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

AS THE maiden season of the Gen3 era bridges halfway and enters the second phase at the Sydney SuperNight this weekend, the battle for the prestigious championship trophy is already in rare air.

Currently Erebus Motorsport’s Will Brown leads teammate Brodie Kostecki by just seven points with six of the 12 rounds completed.

This makes 2023 the closest Supercars title fight for six years and second tightest ever at the midway since the current points structure was introduced in 2008.

Only the incredible 2017 season can beat it, when Scott McLaughlin held a slender six-point advantage over Jamie Whincup following a dramatic Townsville 400.

With their fight literally going down to the last lap in Newcastle, we will be very lucky if this year’s follows a similar path.

Although 2017 was a near perfect championship showdown between two titans, 2023 has an added element.

Not only are the top-two separated by the barest of margins, but just 72 points cover the top four with Broc Feeney and Shane van Gisbergen also in the mix, giving the Coke Camaros a run for their money.

This is a notable point of difference, as the halfway mark of the 2017 season was the moment when McLaughlin and Whincup shot clear of the rest.

Fabian Coulthard had led the standings going into Townsville, with the top three covered by just 16 points, but a shocker of a weekend meant he could never fight back.

To put 2023 in even rarer air, the next tightest first half of a season was 2016, but the gap was a much larger 30 points.

The final year of the Car of the Future era saw the newly formed Triple Eight combination of Whincup and van Gisbergen emerge at the head of the pack after there were

10 different winners across the first 12 races.

Despite the entertaining start, it quickly fizzled out as van Gisbergen’s consistency at the back end swiftly turned into an unassailable advantage.

The only other instance in the same ballpark was 2010 when James Courtney and Whincup were in the middle of a classic tug-of-war, with the DJR driver 57 points to the good.

On that occasion, fans were treated to a memorable threeway showdown in Sydney with Mark Winterbottom also in the frame, with all three ending up “in the fence”, to quote Mark Skaife.

But this year, a four-way fight could also go down to the wire.

Brown, Kostecki, van Gisbergen and Feeney are all Last time there was only single points in it at halftime, it involved Whincup (88) and McLaughlin ...

Image: DANIEL KALISZ

consistent podium contenders and show no signs of relenting their hunger for trophies having been fast across all types of tracks.

The next stop at SMP is a happy hunting ground for both teams, with Triple Eight having been a regular front runner since the venue returned in 2012, with van Gisbergen only needing two more wins to match Skaife’s track-record of 10 SMP wins.

However, Erebus also loves the sweeping Sydney circuit as Brown famously held off a pair of charging Red Bulls to claim his first Supercars win in 2021, with Kostecki also showing pace at the front of the field.

After a thrilling first six rounds, who knows where the busy second half of the season could take us with the battle to be crowned the first Gen3 champion closer than ever.

Thomas Miles CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERS AT HALFWAY SINCE 2008 2023 Brown leads Kostecki 7 points 2022 Van Gisbergen led De Pasquale by 262 2021 Van Gisbergen led Whincup by 245 2020 McLaughlin led Whincup by 101 2019 McLaughlin led Coulthard by 244 2018 McLaughlin led van Gisbergen by 131 2017 McLaughlin led Whincup by 6 2016 Whincup led van Gisbergen by 30 2015 Winterbottom led Lowndes by 238 2014 Winterbottom led Whincup by 96 2013 Whincup led Lowndes by 111 2012 Whincup led Winterbottom by 100 2011 Whincup led Lowndes by 186 2010 Courtney led Whincup by 57 2009 Whincup led Davison by 117 2008 Winterbottom led Tander by 122

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S5000 GETS A SHOT OF LOVE THIS WEEKEND’S S5000 round at the Supercars SMP event will get a further injection of quality talent with Super2 racer Aaron Love throwing his hat into the ring for the 88 Racing Team BRM drive.

Love will fill in for two-time Gold Star champion Joey Mawson in Sydney in the ACF Finance car, as well as a likely follow up round at The Bend in August.

After making the switch from GT racing to a Supercar in 2023, Love has focused solely on his Super2 campaign with Blanchard Racing, which has also meant the WA young gun has had far less seat time than he’s been used to in the past.

Of late, Love was a runner-up to Harri Jones in his 2022 Carrera Cup campaign, as well as racing in the prestigious Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, but he hasn’t raced a open wheel car since 2018/2019 when he competed in the now defunct Australian F4 championship and in the WA F1000 championship, which he won in 2018.

“It will be fun for sure, and something a bit different as I haven’t driven a Formula car since my Formula 4 days … anything fast and full on would be beneficial for me.”

Love told Auto Action.

“I had the chance to meet with Mark Rundle the other day [BRM team manager] to discuss the drive, and it works out perfectly in that it fills a bit of a void for me.

“Driving anything is good to keep you sharp, and I’ve seen that in the past,

particularly last year when I had a lot of track time, so I’m just looking forward to going racing more often than not.”

Love has been sharply focused on making a successful switch from GT3 cars to Supercars this year, but he’s looking forward to trying out some of his new knowledge in the powerful S5000 machinery. He’ll also get to hop straight in

with the new and improved tyre compound that will debut at SMP. “From what I understand they’re kind of in-between a Supercar and higher downforce formula car in terms of power, so hopefully I can carry over a few of the traits I’ve been trying to work on and develop in the Supercar … I’ll soon find out come practice on Friday!

“Speaking to the team, they’ve said the new tyre makes it easier to drive, and it’ll make the racing a fair bit better. Mark said the old tyre hindered things at the start of races because it took a while to switch on.

“So a bigger front tyre and softer compound all round, means it’ll get up to temperature quicker and just make for better racing.” TW Neal

MAWSON ON SIDELINES DUE TO SUPPLEMENT INVESTIGATION IT WILL be an race at the front of the S5000 field in Sydney with championship leader Joey Mawson suspended due to an investigation into a fitness supplement.

Mawson has dominated the 2023 S5000 season so far, winning eight of the 10 races and leading the title race by 77 points.

However, the double Gold Star champion will not be seen behind the wheel of the #1 88 Racing Team BRM machine in Sydney.

Following a routine test after the Phillip Island round in May, questions were raised concerning a general fitness supplement Mawson had used for the first time.

It has been suggested Mawson took the supplement for his general running/gym fitness training during the two-month break between the Symmons Plains and Phillip Island races.

As a result Mawson has been provisionally suspended under the investigation by Sports Integrity Australia and Motorsport Australia is completed.

Mawson was “shattered” when he was advised of the initial test and is

Tim Slade at PremiAir Racing, a seat the S5000 driver had been offered, but Supercars’ Superlicence restriction got in the way.

Racing 88 Team BRM owner Albert Callegher said the team is fully behind Mawson as he spends some time away from the race seat.

“Everyone who knows Joey is as stunned as he is,” he said.

“He’s one of the sport’s good-guys and there’s no way he would ever knowingly be involved in anything of that kind.

“It’s one of those ‘silly mistake’ things that you read about occasionally, certainly with no relevance or benefit to his driving a race car. We hope the various authorities involved in the process do approach it in that light.

“Added to the stress of Supercars’ ongoing refusal to accept his Super Licence status and thus his inability to accept an Image: DANIEL KALISZ offered co-drive this year, it’s a frustrating and difficult time for Joey. is “fully co-operating” with the process.

“We do ask that his privacy be respected while this is resolved.

In a further blow for the former ADAC Formula 4 champion, the news “The team is fully behind and supportive of Joey and we look forward to arrived hours after it was announced Jonathon Webb was to co-drive with him going back to the track and into the car as soon as possible.”

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HAYMAN ON THE CHARGE TO QR FULL-TIME national Trans Am debutant Tom Hayman has been a standout performer in 2023, with the 18-year-old New South Welshman splitting the pack to be third in the standings after three rounds.

Hayman first joined the grid last year at Queensland Raceway where he gradually improved over three races in a 28-car field to record a P13 to round out his weekend, before storming to the podium on a wet Sandown track behind Owen Kelly and Nathan Herne.

Racing under Tom Hayman Motorsport, 2023 has been all about consistency, and keeping it straight on the track has him putting the blow torch on series leaders James Moffat and Lochie Dalton. He sits 60 points in arrears of Dalton, who swept the Winton round, and is also keeping his tail clear of Josh Webster and Owen Kelly by five and six points respectively.

“This season has probably been better than we had first anticipated,” Hayman explained.

“Being third in the series for such a little team going against the big guns is awesome but, all things considered, we just keep our head down, keep the title race out of our minds and take everything as it comes.

“We were able to find ourselves on the podium at Phillip Island which was great, and we also made up 10 places in the final race at Winton – so those two moments are the standouts for me so far.”

“It’s a bit surreal racing against some big names, but I take it as it comes, and I see it as experience.”

His return to QR is a great chance for Hayman to really show the strides that he and his team have put in since going full time in the highly competitive muscle car series.

“It wasn’t a great debut last year, but all things considered, we had fun,” Hayman added.

“Last year was my first time at QR. It is not a track I’m very fond of yet – it’s a bit of a bogey track for me after last year but

hopefully this year’s results change that and we come out of it in a good position.

“It doesn’t sit in the back of my mind; we are looking forward to it.’

For a small family team that’s been running the Di Prinzio Concreting Ford Mustang out of a makeshift racing garage, it’s all about keeping a level head from here on in, and relying on the support that they can get when it’s there to be had.

“We are still running things out of the garage at home at the moment, with a shed still being built on the property,” he continued.

“It’s a bit difficult but we have got a lot of people there to support us.

“The biggest challenge would be getting all the resources and finding the time to prep the car – obviously a lot goes into it, but we get through it.

“Our sponsors help us out by fixing up bodywork, so their support is unmatched.”

The Trans Am field hits the ‘Paperclip’ on August 11-13. TW Neal

Image: SPEED SHOTS PHOTOGRAPHY

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Image: DANIEL KALISZ

GT BATTLE HEADS TO SYDNEY THE NEXT instalment of the competitive fight for the GT World Challenge Australia title will be held at Sydney Motorsport Park this weekend.

There is little separating the fast men at the top with Audi’s Geoff Emery/Maximilian Hofer holding the high ground.

However, just 14 points back is fellow Audi runner Liam Talbot, while reigning champions Yasser Shahin and Garnet Patterson are also within striking distance, 21 points back.

Their back and forth battle has swung like a pendulum across the first three rounds and after three months off, the contenders will be hungry to jump back behind the wheel and resume hostilities.

They will be the stars on show under the Sydney night sky in the 22-car field lined up to take on a pair of 60-minute races.

Emery/Hofer will be looking to build their momentum after their tight 3s win at Phillip Island in the last round.

They held off Talbot and Fraser Ross in the all Audi showdown and the #65 crew will be looking to regain bragging rights having won at Perth together.

Shahin and Patterson were able to get a maiden win on board their new green Porsche 911 GT3R and were around the mark in Phillip Island without having the outright pace.

Returning to the scene are the unmistakeable Triple Eight Race Engineering silver arrows. The #88 and #888 Mercedes were notable omissions from Phillip Island as they were seen in Sepang racing in the opening Asian round.

But they will be back with Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim and Jamie Whincup in car #88 and Prince Jefri Ibrahim and Richie Stanaway in car #888.

The first GT3 round at Sydney begins on Friday. Thomas Miles

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WEBB MAKES SHOCK COMEBACK JONATHON WEBB will return from the Supercars wilderness as a co driver for PremiAir Racing. Webb will co-drive the #23 Chevrolet Camaro alongside Tim Slade at the Sandown and Bathurst enduros. The 2016 Bathurst 1000 winner has not raced a Supercar since 2021 and ironically will make his comeback in the team he sold to current owner Peter Xiberras. Before Xiberras’ takeover, the two-car team was run by Webb under Tekno Autosports and Team Sydney from 2012 to 2021. Webb’s appointment means Todd Hazelwood is the only main game driver without a confirmed codriver..

TICKFORD FINALISES CO DRIVERS FIVE MONTHS after announcing who its co-drivers are, Tickford has revealed who they will be racing with at Sandown and Bathurst. For the third season in a row Cameron Waters will share his Monster Mustang with James Moffat. Zak Best has been retained, but has switched from the #55 to the #5 side of the garage to race with the experienced James Courtney.

Having lost last year’s partner Best, Thomas Randle will now have Garry Jacobson next to him in the Castrol Mustang. The #56 entry will be one of the least experienced on the grid with just four Great Race starts as rookie Declan Fraser welcomes Tyler Everingham.

Image: MARK HORSBURGH

BLANCHARD RACING FORGING FORWARD THE BLANCHARD Racing Team has squashed suggestions of an engineering restructure as it readies itself for Sydney and a potential wildcard entry for Sandown and Bathurst.

Following the Townsville 500 where Todd Hazelwood suffered two mechanical related retirements, it had been suggested that Mirko De Rosa might leave the team.

However, CoolDrive Racing CEO John Blanchard set the record straight in a conversation with Auto Action, stating De Rosa is still at the workshop.

“Mirko is still here … he was in my office 20 minutes ago,” Blanchard told Auto Action at the time of the interview.

De Rosa has been a foundation member of the CoolDrive Racing squad since it became a standalone one-car team in 2021 after stints engineering at Lucas Dumbrell and Erebus Motorsport.

He will miss the Sydney round and potentially The Bend, due to being on

leave for the birth of his first child.

During his time away Sheldon Auhl will skipper car #3 with previous experience at PremiAir Racing.

Blanchard said it will only affect the team temporarily and, De Rosa will remain in contact during his time at home.

“He is on four weeks leave and is having some time off. He is going to become a father for the first time in the next two weeks,” Blanchard said.

“He also has his mum coming, who he has not seen for eight years, so he was always not coming to Sydney and possibly The Bend.

“We have someone to replace him and Mirko will still be available on the phone and working for us.”

It is a busy time behind the four walls of the Blanchard Racing Team, which is also currently preparing a wildcard Mustang.

The team has potentially three drivers on its books with full-time driver Hazelwood, Super2 rookie Aaron Love

ALLEN ON WILDCARD SPECULATION

WOOD HAS ‘EYE POPPING’ GEN3 DRIVE SUPER2 YOUNGSTER Ryan Wood has enjoyed some “eye popping” laps in a Gen3 Supercar.

Wood jumped behind the wheel of a Gen3 Walkinshaw Andretti United Ford Mustang at Winton Motor Raceway. The evaluation day took place 24 hours after WAU completed a “positive” test with both its main game and co-drivers. Having previously raced a ZB Commodore in the first three Super2 rounds, the Kiwi described the experience as “eyepopping”. “It was certainly eye opening at times, but the team was great, and it was a lot of fun to drive,” Wood said.

12 I www.autoaction.com.au

and owner Tim Blanchard if he elects to suit up for a 13th Great Race.

John Blanchard provided a positive update on the build of the new Gen3 Mustang wildcard.

He said progress is coming along nicely with a license hoped to be signed off by the Supercars board soon and a goal of getting it ready early next month.

“We have got three engineers that have put their hands up for those two meetings, so at the moment we have plenty of people to drag in and build the car,” Blanchard said.

“Mirko is also building the Wildcard car. We are trying to get it built in the next two or three weeks, so we can test it before Sandown.

“We will run a wildcard at Sandown and Bathurst, provided we get it built in time and the licence has been signed off by the board ... but hopefully that is just a rubber-stamping exercise.”

Thomas Miles

Image: MARK HORSBURGH ON THE same weekend as his maiden Super2 success, Mount Gambier teenage sensation Kai Allen was linked to a Supercars wildcard with DJR, but made it clear “nothing is concrete”.

Allen, 18, is one of the hottest young talents on the Supercars pathway, having smashed Super3 records and taken just three rounds to score a maiden Super2 win.

Despite admitting the rumours of being the favourite to jump into a third DJR Gen3 Mustang caught him by surprise, the Eggleston Motorsport driver said the prospect of an early Bathurst debut would be a dream.

“When they mentioned that to me I was like ‘are you sure you got the right guy?’,” Allen told Auto Action.

“It is cool seeing these things, but

nothing is concrete yet. It would be awesome to do my first ever Bathurst 1000 though.

“But at this stage it is all media and we will just have to see if something happens.”

In addition to his Dunlop Series experience, Allen has completed separate evaluation days with Erebus Motorsport and Dick Johnson Racing.

A recent tweak in the Super Licence structure to permit half points to Super3 and Carrera Cup participation mean Allen would now be eligible for a Supercars debut.

But Allen reiterated that 2024 was a more realistic target for a co-driving debut, albeit conceding he is keeping a close eye on his phone.

“Because last year I was not eligible for a Super Licence we have just gone hard this year in making sure we learn as much as I can in Super2,” he said.

“This is very much a learning year and then hopefully we can maybe look at next year doing some co driving stuff etc.

“If it changes we will look at it, but I will be checking my phone every five minutes!”

Thomas Miles

TCR WORLD TOUR TO LIGHT UP SMP

Images: ARG/DANIEL KALISZ

FORMER CHAMPS LOOKING FOR RESET BIG NAMES Will Brown and Tony D’Alberto are targeting Queensland Raceway as the place to get their respective TCR campaigns back on track.

For reigning champion D’Alberto the defence of the #1 is looking slightly perilous down in seventh spot.

The Wall Racing Honda driver is 107 points back behind runaway leader Bailey Sweeny after a weekend to forget in Phillip Island.

D’Alberto did bounce back to an extent at Winton where he was a consistent figure finishing sixth in all three races.

But he knows more must be done if he is to become the first person to record back-to-back TCR Australia titles.

There will be no better place to relaunch his title campaign than Queensland Raceway, which was where he put his championship charge to top gear last year with a pair of wins.

With happy memories in the back of

his mind, D’Alberto is confident he can put the recent struggles behind him at the “Paperclip”.

“We have had a bit of a rough run over the last couple of rounds, especially at Phillip Island,” D’Alberto said.

“We need to try and get some momentum back on our side, but we are definitely not out of it just yet.

“Last year, consistency and reliability are what won us the title and Queensland was really kind to us.

“The Honda definitely enjoyed that circuit, so I’m looking forward to getting back there to try and get our title chase back on track.

“In theory, I think we can repeat last year. There are a lot of variables, so you can’t be too confident but not a huge amount has changed on our side since then, so we will try to roll out strongly.”

Although Brown is flying high at the top of the Supercars standings, he finds himself at the opposite end of the spectrum in TCR-land.

With just 62 points next to his name, the inaugural series champion is 15th and last.

Brown has had a nightmare start driving the new Gen2 Audi RS3 LMS TCR, suffering a broken driveshaft at the season opener in Tasmania and a suspension failure put him on the back foot at Phillip Island.

After missing Winton due to a factfinding trip to America, Brown is refreshed and ready to turn the season around.

“It was a little bit disappointing that I had to miss Winton, but with the first couple of rounds being so tough, we were keen to have a reset,” Brown said.

“It will be good to be back (in TCR). I raced at Queensland Raceway in 2019 and we were quite strong, so I don’t see any reason why we can’t be again.”

The fourth round of the TCR Australia season will be held at Queensland Raceway on August 11-13.

Thomas Miles

THE SCHEDULE for the TCR World Tour’s first stop in Australia will include a two-day evening affair at the SMP, with the highlight being a night race on the Saturday.

The November 3-4 event is the first of two events to be held in Australia, with the global tour to then make its way to Bathurst on November 10-12 as part of the Supercheap Auto Bathurst International.

Organisers have decided to run the round on the Friday and Saturday, which gives an extra day for teams to make their way across the Blue Mountains and over to the hallowed ground of Australian motor racing.

The format will allow race fans to attend the event after work on the Friday, with Practice, Qualifying and Race 1 going into the evening.

Saturday then sees a busy evening with a late afternoon race and a night race under the stadium LED lighting, with the racing also live on Stan Sport, with the event also featuring the National Trans Am Series, the Radical Cup Australia, and Hyundai Excels.

Australian Racing Group Chief Operating Officer, Liam Curkpatrick, says that ARG has been working in close ties with the Australian Racing Drivers’ Club to present the best possible format.

“We’ve worked closely with the Australian Racing Drivers’ Club (ARDC) to settle on the best possible format for this event and make it as fan-friendly as possible,” Curkpatrick said.

“The ARSC and WSC, promoters of the TCR World Tour, have been great to work with as we try to make the biggest impact possible for the first TCR World Tour round on Aussie soil. ”Having all the action condensed across two days works perfectly and the ability to use Sydney Motorsport Park’s fantastic lighting means we can run in prime-time both nights, which works brilliantly for spectators and for TV audiences here and around the world.”

TW Neal

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F1 CARS HEADED FOR BATHURST DESPITE S5000 not being allowed to race at the Bathurst International, the category and potentially Formula 1 will form part of an “open-wheel cavalcade” at the event. Due to S5000s being held back from racing around Mount Panorama for a second straight year, the Bathurst International will not have open-wheel racing. In its place is the openwheel cavalcade, where S5000s, Formula 1, IndyCar, Formula Renault 3.5 V8 and other high-performance ‘wings and slicks’ cars will perform two 20-minute open track demonstration runs per day at the November 10-12 event.

JONES TO RETURN WITH NEW CARRERA CUP TEAM

SMASHING SUPPORTS FIELDS FOR SYDNEY THERE WILL be some big support categories joining Supercars under lights at the Sydney SuperNight this weekend. In addition to Supercars making its annual trek to Sydney Motorsport Park, the V8 SuperUtes and Porsche Sprint Challenge categories will also be on show with some big grids. The S5000 Gold Star field and GT World Challenge are also at the event.

For the second round in a row, the V8 SuperUte Series will break the record for the largest amount of cars in the dual-cab era with 21 at Sydney after 19 took on Perth. No less than 31 cars will be racing in the Porsche one-make series with a record 14 Pro

HARRI JONES will return to Australia to compete at the Bathurst and Gold Coast Carrera Cup rounds, debuting his new Porsche team: Jones Motorsport.

The reigning Carrera Cup Australia champion is currently in Europe competing in the world’s premier Porsche one-make series, the Mobil 1 Supercup, as well as racing in the German Carrera Cup. The Rookie has put in strong showings against the two most elite Porsche one-make fields in the world, and just completed his highest outright finish of sixth, to be in the fight for the rookie championship.

With space in his calendar between his Lechner Racing and Scherer Sport duties, Jones will return with long-time major partners Hastings Deering and MacKellar Group backing the youngster’s new team endeavour.

“The Bathurst 1000 and Gold Coast 500 are two events I always look

forward to most on the Carrera Cup Australia Calendar,” Jones says.

“I’m so excited to be returning as the reigning Champion and to expand our team with the support of our amazing major partners.

“My time in Europe has been incredible. I’ve been fortunate enough to join forces with the best teams in Porsche one-make racing worldwide and race in not one, but two incredibly competitive championships.

“I’ve developed so much as a racing driver and have gained so much experience within the sport. I’m confident that we will be able to put that all to good use and showcase our team back on home soil.

As a pivotal part of his success in 2022, helping to give him the launching pad to join BWT Lechner Racing in the Middle East and then in Europe, Jones gave thanks to the partnerships that continue to offer him support and further opportunity.

“This year marks five years with the MacKellar Group and my second year partnering with Hastings Deering. Both companies have really embraced the partnership across their respective teams, which has been brilliant for me to also be a part of personally.

“I’m so excited to be racing again in front of my partners, friends and family. It’s certainly something I’ve missed a lot whilst overseas. And to be coming back to race for my own team adds a whole new level to it – I honestly can’t wait.”

The Bathurst 1000 will be held from October 5-8 followed by the Gold Coast 500 three weeks later from October 27-29.

Jones’ next outings across Europe take him to Spa for the Formula 1 exclusive Mobil 1 series this weekend, whilst his Deutschland duties will take him to the Nurburgring on August 4-6.

TW Neal

RIP DALE BREDE GROVE RACING RAISE BIG FUNDS GROVE RACING has raised more than $30,000 for the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School after a big fundraising effort following the Indigenous Round.

Not only did the team celebrate the occasion by racing specially designed Mustangs at Darwin by MITS educator Lorraine Kabbindi White, but used the opportunity to give back to the community.

After the team auctioned off items such as the race suits worn by David Reynolds and Matt Payne, plus donations by owners the Grove Group and ACL, a total of $30,670 was raised to MITS, which educates Indigenous students from remote parts of Australia.

14 I www.autoaction.com.au

FORMER SUPERCARS driver Dale Brede has tragically passed away at the age of 48.

Brede was a well known figure in the industry, recording 35 Supercars starts, being a regular Formula Holden competitor and involved in Australian Superbikes.

Until this year when Cameron Hill arrived, Brede was the last Canberraborn driver to compete a full Supercars season, with his one and only stint in 2004 with Team Dynamik.

His racing career began quickly, rising from karts in the capital to Formula Holden, which led to a promotion to the Konica V8 Supercar Series where he finished as high as second across four seasons.

In 2002 he made a Supercars debut at Ipswich in the CAT Falcon and finished 19th and 17th at Bathurst.

After doing the enduros in a Holden Young Lions Commodore, Brede did his one and only full time season in 2004 with Team Dynamik.

Driving the #45 Dodo Commodore Brede had a challenging season, finishing 31st in the championship with 12th at Winton his only top 15 result.

For 2005 Brede returned to co-driver duties and shared the #12 BJR BOC BA Falcon with popular Scot John Cleland and climbed from 29th to seventh in the 2005 ‘Great Race’.

This was Brede’s best Supercars finish and only time inside the top 10.

He stayed at BJR for 2006. Tragically,

his Sandown co-driver Mark Porter passed away after a crash on the Friday of the Bathurst 1000 weekend.

Rookie Michael Caruso was the sub but the pair retired after a lap 59 crash at Griffins Bend.

This proved to be Brede’s 35th and final Supercars race, but he remained entrenched in the motor racing community for the following 17 years.

He ran the successful Canberra Motorcycle Centre and the factory Suzuki squad in the Australian Superbike Championship, while he also formed part of the Movie World stunt team with another 2004 Supercars debutante Warren Luff.

AA’s thoughts and condolences are with the Brede family. Thomas Miles

AUDI PULLS THE (FACTORY) PIN

Image: DANIEL KALISZ AUDI HAS announced it will pull the pin on its GT3 and other ‘customer’ racing factory involvements, and will also completely cease its production and sale of race cars in 2024. However, Australian customers shouldl be well supported going forward...

The German manufacturer will continue to provide operational support for current customers and race teams that purchase cars prior to it ending its race car production, as well as fulfilling existing orders, which means that the current Audi Factory teams will be able to continue operations.

With its basic parts and supplies production remaining open until 2032, current teams will continue to be supported until that date, but the lack of a new model in the fast changing GT3 landscape, may make it difficult for teams to remain competitive over the course of that time.

Australia’s biggest Audi Factory team, the Melbourne Performance Centre (MPC), will be the hardest hit on the home-front.

MPC owner Troy Russell told Auto Action that they weren’t hitting the panic buttons as of yet.

“As far as customer racing in regards to the technical support, the engineers in Germany, and the parts supply, nothing changes until 2032,” Russell said.

“The car in its current form has a current homologation until the end of 2025, so it will remain competitive until then, and after that there will still be a current BoP which goes all the way through.

“The big thing that does affect us will be the lack of Audi drivers. In the past we’ve had the factory drivers come and drive for us, and those ‘pool’ drivers won’t be available, but they’ll still need to drive somewhere. It’ll be interesting to see what they do in Europe.

“The thought of switching to other manufacturers has definitely crossed our mind, but we’re not hitting the panic stations just yet. 10 years is a long time and a lot changes in the GT3 racing space ... the cars we have will still be competitive and current for the next few years.”

The decision is by no means a shock given the massive funds needed for its upcoming F1 infrastructure, as well as the brands push toward only producing electric road vehicles by 2030.

The writing was on the wall even in 2020 when it started pulling out the WEC, IMSA, and DTM.

When CEO Markus Duesmann arrived at the company in 2020, he immediately made the call to stop DTM Class 1, which started the flow-on effect.

Audi’s 14 factory drivers will also be let go, which includes the likes of regular Australian GT visitor Christopher Mies, and rally drivers such Mattias Ekstrom and Carlos Sainz sr, as its primary involvements in series’ like the GT World Challenge, and the Dakar Rally come to an end.

The line of Audi racing vehicles such as its GT3, GT4, and TCR cars will end production after the first quarter of 2024 – currently there are over 1000 Audi cars racing across GT3, GT4 and TCR categories.

And it’s flagship road car since 2008, the GT R8 will also be going out of production this year, so there won’t be that tie from road to track.

With its vision to go fully electric by 2030, the continued production of the V10-engined GT3 car does not suit the ethos of the manufacturer going forward, whereas F1’s march toward sustainability does, which was the same thing that lured Honda into staying.

So the move largely revolves around its Formula 1 commitment with Sauber which begins on track in the 2026 season.

Rolf Michl, managing director of Audi Sport, explained that it didn’t mean a stop to Audi’s customer racing team involvement.

“Audi Sport customer racing will not be wound up or closed down, Audi Sport customer racing will still exist,” Michl said.

“We’ve received approval for all scopes, i.e. both technical support, spare parts service also on site, and the entire customer support that has distinguished us for years.

“That is the very clear decision that, with the focus on Formula 1 entry in 2026, there will unfortunately no longer be any financial support for the field teams from our side from 2024. This relates specifically to the support of parts packages and Audi Sport drivers.

“We will ensure that our current vehicles can remain in operation in every respect. But strategic use has not been approved for us from 2024.

“We had to accept the decision from the Audi board with a heavy heart.”

TW Neal

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www.autoaction.com.au I 15

LATEST NEWS

TARGA CANCELS 2023 …

AND SPLITS WITH MA TARGA AUSTRALIA has announced the cancellation of all Targa events in 2023, and that it is parting ways with Motorsport Australia.

A statement on the Targa website said that its future will not be aligned with the sport’s governing body as it seeks to reestablish what its future may look like.

“Due to these unprecedented challenges, TARGA Australia has advised Motorsport Australia that they can no longer align their business with the governing body and will not seek a contract renewal on future events run by TARGA Australia. TARGA will now take the time needed to assess what the future holds for one of the world’s largest motorsport event providers.”

Just days after the new licence regulations were released which saw a massive rise in licence fees and the need to attend a driver course for both driver and co-driver, Targa has also cited a record drop in entry numbers amidst the ongoing process to address the noless than 94 safety recommendations put forth by the Safety Review Panel.

“The safety review process has been going for 15 months, and with many more months ahead before all the details are released and implemented, there is still too

16 I www.autoaction.com.au

much uncertainty for all stakeholders,” the statement read.

“The reduction of the TARGA Tour speed to just 110km/h has seen the withdrawal of over 80% of tour participants in the part of the event which has sustained TARGA’s commercial viability in recent years.”

Targa CEO Mark Perry says that the event cannot go ahead under the current climate that faces competitors.

“Our events can only be run with the support of our loyal participants, and on the whole, they are understandably

disenchanted with the current landscape, and we completely understand why,” Perry said.

“We have waited and been incredibly patient with the process put in place, however this process has now taken a year longer than similar reviews in the past.

“Competitors have little certainty with what the future looks like for them and are rightly holding off on entering our events.

In turn, we have had to make the difficult but necessary decision to cancel our 2023

events and undertake our own review and assessment on the future viability of our iconic rallies.

“While it is another sad day for everyone involved in TARGA, we must now explore every conceivable option available to us to ensure the survival of TARGA and the return of the ultimate tarmac rally, TARGA Tasmania in April 2024”.

In the past, Targa left CAMS (Confederation of Australia Motor Sport) to run its events with the AASA (Australian Auto Sport Alliance), before a new agreement saw it realign with Motorsport Australia.

While Targa Australia events have finished for a yet to be determined time, the Australian Tarmac Rally Championship continues to run events under the sanctioning of the AASA. ATR offer tarmac rally-style competition across a number of events, and although more compact in their nature they still offer a similar level of tarmac rally competition.

ATR events include ‘The Lake Mountain Sprint’ and ‘The Great Tarmac Rally’ – both of these events are based in and around Marysville, as well as the ‘The Baw Baw Sprint’ and the ‘The Snowy River Sprint’.

TW Neal

WTAC SYDNEY ADDS HEAD-TO-HEAD FLYING 500 SEPTEMBER’S WORLD Time Attack Challenge at SMP has added some spice to the Turbosmart Flying 500.

The much loved Flying 500 format which has seen solo WTA challengers take on SMP’s Brabham Straight has been spiced up into a one-on-one duel.

The new side-by-side format will crown a new 2023 champion, which has seen past winners take the crown in machines like twin-turbo Lamborghinis, 1500 horsepower EVOs, and some mean looking GTRs. The drag-off will run in reverse direction, starting on the tarmac strip at Turn 1, with past winning times on the solo runs having been clocked at over 280kph.

The Flying 500 will run at 5pm on Friday and Saturday on September 1-2, with some wildcard slots still available, with entry specifications set for vehicles running between 1500 and 2000 horsepower.

The 2023 WTAC Sydney has also been boosted with yet another world class entry from the shores of Japan, with Japanese racing legend Tarzan Yamada confirming his presence.

Yamada (above) is a back-to-back WTAC Sydney champion, having won at the inaugural 2010 piloting the brutal Cyber EVO, with the Oyodo-born racer having plied his trade around the world since 1981.

He’ll be taking the wheel of a FK8 Type R Endurance racing Honda, built in collaboration between Spoon Sports Japan and Spoon Sports USA to take on the NASA 25

Hours of Thunderhill – the longest closed-course endurance race in North America – placing first in the E0 Class.

Yamada will drive the blue and yellow Type R in some demonstration runs across both days.

Speaking of the WTAC Pro class, the reigning champion in the shape of the Porsche RP968 may have a re-developed challenger: the Tanuki S13.

Formerly known as the MCA Hammerhead, new owner Wayne Lee has brought the Nissan Silvia into the modern era with a 1100hp+ VR38DETT package out of a Nissan GT-R (replacing the SR20 motor), a new AMB Aero design on the outside, plus an Infinity Wing.

Driving the Tanuki S13 (which is named after a Japanese racoon spirit … with large cojones) is Supercars driver Tim Slade, who drove the Hammerhead version to back-to-back Pro class wins in 2016-1.

After recently conducting a couple of practice sessions in the new stead at the Queensland Raceway, Slade simply said, “This car makes my V8 Supercar feel like a taxi!”

TW Neal

JARVIS AWAITS BIG THREE ON HOME TURF AFTER LEAVING Winton Raceway as the Precision National Sports Sedan championship leader, Ashley Jarvis (pictured) is ready to do battle on his home turf at Queensland Raceway.

In his second year of racing in the series, the 2017 National TA2 champion is confident he can keep his 750 horsepower Holden Monaro at the pointy end of the field after two podiums and a fifth place gave him outright victory against the likes of Tony Ricciardello, Jordan Caruso, and Steve Tamasi.

It’s the first time the category has raced at QR since 2019, and Jarvis is excited to have the championship lead to defend against the known heavy hitters.

“We’re feeling pretty confident actually, but at the same time, against the likes of Ricciardello, Caruso, and Tamasi in their big horsepower cars, and with QR being the four drag strips that it is, they’re going to be hard to beat,” Jarvis told Auto Action.

“I feel like we have a great package, and though we mightn’t have the grunt, the

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work that Tony [Gonn – chief engineer], and Warren and Colin [Smith – car owners] have done with tuning the Monaro means we’ll be competitive, and we’re bringing some upgrades.”

After taking a P2 on merit of speed at the final round in Sandown in 2022, Jarvis feels like the tide has turned for himself and the #44 MR Automotive team.

“With the car that we’re in, we know it’s not a top-three contender in outright lap speed, but we do know that it’s a very reliable package.

“If you asked me at the start of the year if I would have expected a round win … absolutely, and although we might not be contending for race wins, we just have to circulate in the top three to five, and we’re in with a big chance to keep it rolling.”

And how does Jarvis rate his round win against his past achievements like a TA2 championship and Bathurst endurance podiums?

“The actual enormity of it didn’t sink in for about a week. When you look back on

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the history of the series going back 30 or 40 years, you get Brock, the Johnson’s, Moffat, Richards … they all won Sports Sedan rounds, so it’s pretty cool to think

of it like that.”

Round two of the National Sports Sedan series heads to QR on August 4-6.

TW Neal

www.autoaction.com.au I 17

LATEST NEWS

WINTON TO BE SHAKEN BY VINTAGE SPEED HISTORIC RACING will be back in focus next weekend when the Winton Festival of Speed fires up at the nation’s “action track”.

The popular event, run by the Victorian Historic Racing Register, has been going for over a decade and will continue its history at Winton on August 4-6 where over 300 classic cars will be racing for glory across eight categories.

Whilst numbers are slightly lower than hoped for, event organiser Ian Ross said there will still be a strong amount of race cars of all eras and shapes putting on a show.

“We have not done too badly and are excited for another big event,” Ross said.

“In a boom time we would usually be around 340, and we are nudging just under 300 which is not too bad considering how things are economically with a lot of shops showing ‘vacant’ signs.

“But everything is ready for a big weekend of racing.”

Producing a lot of the action will be regular favourites such as Holden HQ, MG and Alfa Romeo classes, plus Group S sports cars. The open-wheel fans are covered with Formula Vee and Formula Ford coming along.

A special part of the event will be the Just Cars 50K Cup for Historic Touring Cars.

More than 40 drivers will line up on the grid for the feature race and leading the charge will be none other than two-time Bathurst winner John Bowe, who will steer a 1969 Fastback Ford Mustang.

Another Mustang runner to watch out for will be Brad Tilley, while the Monaro of Nathan Gordon can also not be discounted.

There will also be a field of 20 plus Group C and A replica cars performing a super sprint.

Recognisable liveries such as Allan

in the iconic livery race by Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst.

It was also the car Peter Brock raced at Bathurst in 1988, whilst fellow BMW driver Bill Cutler is steering a World Touring Car Championship winner.

There are all sorts of famous race cars from the era including Falcons, Escort, Alfa Romeos, Mazdas and Commodores.

VHRR organiser and competitor Neville Butler said there are some special cars that Group C and A Touring will be chasing victory.

Cars will feature.

“We are pretty lucky to have a Image: GRANT CAMPBELL good field of Group C and A cars that will race together,” he said.

“One of the earliest we have is a 1977 Moffat’s Coke Mustang, Dick Johnson’s Ford Escort right through to an early 1990s Greens Tuff Falcon, plus the 1987 and BMWs. 1990 Bathurst winners driven by Peter “Tony Sawford has done a beautiful job Brock and Allan Grice will be just some restoring Allan Grice’s A9X Torana from on show.

1978 and 1979, which is still in its Craven Not only will fans get to see replicas of Mild colours and will be very competitive. some of the most famous cars from the “Of the same era Thomas Vondrasek 1970s and 1980s, but they will witness the is bringing his Ford XC Falcon Coupe real thing. which his son will drive who is quite an A healthy field of famous Group C and A accomplished young bloke.” touring cars will shake the surroundings of Entries have officially closed but more are the Benalla Auto Club based circuit. welcomed by contacting the VHRR. One of the most special will be driven by Practice begins on Friday, August 4 David Towe, who will steer the last of the before racing is held over the weekend. five JPS BMWs built in 1987, which is still Thomas Miles

STATE SERIES FIRES BACK TO LIFE AFTER TWO and a half months away, the Victorian State Race Series kicks back into gear at Sandown Raceway.

With the first half of the season complete, the fourth round on August 11-13 represents a chance for drivers to build some momentum at the back end of the year.

There will be all sorts of action for fans to enjoy at the event run by the Australian Sports Sedan Association with seven categories on show including two in the national spotlight.

Leading the way will be the Australian Formula Ford Series, which remains in Victoria for round five of the 2023 season.

After a clean sweep in Winton, Matthew Hillier (pictured) enjoys a 17-point lead over Zak Lobko in the championship standings.

They have been the dominant pair winning nine of the 16 races, but the likes of Xavier Kokai and Jake Santalucia will be looking to make more moves.

A strong field of around 40 cars is anticipated to chase the Australian Saloon Car Racing title.

Last year’s title was taken out by West Australian Grant Johnson over Brandon Madden at Sydney Motorsport Park.

In addition to the leading national categories, there is still plenty on the line in the Victorian State Championship rounds.

Reef McCarthy will be looking to continue his dominance in the Victorian Formula Vee series having won every race since the season opener.

Chris Lewis-Williams is looking to enhance his advantage in the Porsche 944 Challenge standings over Cameron Teller and Adam Brewer.

The BMW E30s started their season at Phillip Island where Royce Lyne recorded a clean sweep and hostilities will resume.

The Victorian V8s and Prototypes will also bring some muscle to the high-speed venue for their first hit out of 2023.

In addition to the racing action, there are hopes to arrange a sprint style event where drivers are welcome to test their cars in a non-championship capacity within the schedule. Entries are still open for those interested to take part, while spectators can watch the action from the Sandown grandstand with tickets available on the VSRS and ASSA websites.

Thomas Miles

WHATS ON AT WINTON THE NATION’S ACTION TRACK! TEST AND TUNE DAYS - Dedicated test and tune days for the preparation and setup of race cars.

Test days may be broken into sessions (if applicable) which allow for sedans and open wheelers to share the track independently, this ensures the Racecar Test Day is perfect for any race car from Production Specification to V8 Supercar to S5000 and everything in between.

30th July

Winton Fun Day

21st August

Winton Track Day

4th/5th/6th August Winton Festival Of Speed

22 August

Winton Race Car Test Day

18th August

Winton Test & Tune

25th August

Winton Test & Tune

19th August

Winton Porsche Club Victoria Sprints

26th August

Winton Jaguar Car Club of Victoria

20th August

Winton MSCA Sprints

29th August

Winton Trackschool open Pit Lane

BOOKINGS ARE ESSENTIAL. FREE PIT GARAGE SLOTS ARE INCLUDED WITH ENTRY. Contact mail to: reception@eintonraceway.com.au or call the events hotline on 03 5760 7100 For more information go to: www.wintonraceway.com.au/drive/racecar-test-days 18 I www.autoaction.com.au

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

HOMEWORK HELPS MANSELL RISE BOOSTED BY a maiden podium and consistent streak of points, Christian Mansell is resetting his ambitions for the back end of the FIA Formula 3 World Championship.

At Silverstone, Mansell overcame wild weather and racing to score his first F3 podium and carried on that form to Hungary by finishing sixth in the Sprint.

Having scored points in just three of the first nine races, the Newcastle 18-year-old hit his stride, finishing in the top 10 four times on the bounce with his third place the highlight.

Mansell described the feeling of crossing the line as “pure happiness” and whilst the result was created through a mix of a strong qualifying, luck, smart strategy and

“intense” racing, it was also formed by hard work.

Whilst the Campos Racing driver believed he was never far away from consistent points, he admitted lots of work behind the scenes made the step up possible.

“In the grand scheme of things I have never been that far off because there have always been such fine margins,” Mansell told Auto Action.

“One tenth could get me pole in Silverstone, but one tenth backwards in Austria could have put me 20th.

“At the start of the season it was what it was; (teammate) Pepe (Marti) has got better and better, but I have made a big leap.

“If you look at it as a trajectory, we have

just kept going up and up and up.

“To get to that point it was a combined effort between Campos and I, the car has been really good and I have made steps in my driving, so to get results is really satisfying.

“I had to sit down and ask ‘how am I going to breach that gap’ so I looked at the data and how he (Pepe) drives the car how aggressive or smooth he is or how he prioritises corner entry and exit, which was different to mine.

“Some things I needed to change and keep the same and the team has done a stellar job.”

Just two more rounds remain in the 2023 season at famous European tracks; Spa is next (this weekend), with Mansell now up

to 13th in the standings.

As a consequence of his recent surge in form, Mansell admitted the “goalposts” have shifted, with a solid top 10 championship finish within sight.

“To be honest the goalposts do change; originally it was top 15 by getting consistent results and score points when you can,” he said.

“But now there are points finishes and a podium on the board, the goalposts have changed, but it is important to keep sight of the original goal and not be blurred by the new one.”

Mansell, plus the other Aussies Hugh Barter and Tommy Smith will be back in action at Spa this weekend.

Thomas Miles

THE VICTORIAN STATE RACE SERIES

ROUND 4 - SANDOWN AUGUST 11-13

Presented by the Australian Sports Sedans Association

Always great racing and fantastic entries across many categories.

Presenting the Saloon Car Nationals, with cars and drivers from across Australia and Round 5 of the Australian Formula Ford Series • Formula Ford 1600 • Formula Vee • Improved Production

• BMW E30 • Porsche 944 Challenge

• Round 5 - Phillip Island/VMC September 22-24 • Round 6 - Calder/Combined October 27-29 TBC

Spectators are always well catered for with full access to the paddock and the racers.

Images: REBECCA HIND-REVVED PHOTOGRAPHY

For further information visit www.VSRS.com.au autoactionmag

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www.autoaction.com.au I 19

LATEST NEWS

DE SILVESTRO AND ALLEN TO RACE DJR WILDCARD FEMALE STAR Simona De Silvestro and teenage talent Kai Allen have been confirmed to race a Dick Johnson Racing wildcard at Bathurst.

The pair will steer a #98 Shell backed Ford Mustang and expand the field for the 60th anniversary Bathurst 1000 to 27.

Dick Johnson Racing’s new driver pairing covers both ends of the experience spectrum with De Silvestro 34 and Allen almost half her age just 18.

Whilst the drive has been rumoured for a while, it represents an unlikely Supercars return for De Silvestro, who has not raced in the category since her last full time season with Kelly Racing in 2019.

Since then she has been Porsche’s Formula E test driver and made four IndyCar starts last year with Paretta Autosport.

De Silvestro has made 91 Supercars starts with a best result of seventh at Pukekohe in 2019 and is no stranger to wildcards having raced in 2015 in a Prodrive Ford and 2016 in a Nissan.

After returning to the Supercars paddock at the recent Darwin Triple Crown as a fan, she will now be in the DJR garage as a driver at Mount Panorama.

“I am thrilled to race back at the iconic track in Bathurst and want to thank DJR and Shell V-Power for this amazing opportunity,” De Silvestro said.

“Four years has been too long but who would have

thought in 2019 that I would not be able to travel to Australia for such a long time.

“I am looking forward to teaming up with young talent Kai and I am sure we will make a great team.

“Of course, I also want to thank Harvey Norman and Katie Page who have been supporting me all my career in Australia.

“I can’t wait to be back in Australia in September to start testing the new Gen3 car.”

Sharing the Mustang will be one of the hottest young talents in Super2, Kai Allen.

The teen hailing from the home of the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier only arrived on the car racing scene two years ago, but has made a big impression.

Allen made his Toyota 86 Series debut at Townsville in 2021 and immediately scored a podium.

After a handful of Toyota rounds, he stepped up to Super3 with Eggleston Motorsport last year and went on a recordbreaking rampage.

Allen scored the most amount of poles ever in a single season, but a costly mistake at Adelaide’s infamous turn eight meant he fell second best to Brad Vaughan in a thrilling title fight.

He stepped up to Super2 this year and has taken to the elevation like a duck to water, leading in Perth and breaking through for a maiden win in just his third round and fifth race at Townsville; he currently sits second in the

championship.

To complete a whirlwind couple of years, come October Allen will be living a boyhood dream and driving in the “Great Race”.

“I’m so proud and excited to be joining DJR as part of their first Bathurst wildcard, representing the Shell V-Power brand,” he said.

“I’m really looking forward to working with such a knowledgeable and wellrespected team who have seen so much success over the years.

“Co-driving with Simona will no doubt be a highlight of the year and I can’t wait to learn from her, as she is such an experienced driver.”

Allen’s drive has been made possible after a recent tweak to the Super Licence requirements which now permits a top three championship finish in Super3 or Carrera Cup, plus three Super2 rounds as enough - rather than the previous six Super2 rounds that were required.

It is understood Allen has also collected 14 Super Licence points, one more than the threshold.

DJR team principal Ben Croke revealed Allen is a talent the team has its eyes on for the future.

“Kai Allen is a young talent we have had an eye on for over a year now,” he said.

“He drove the (Gen2) Mustang last year on an evaluation day and I was impressed with his speed, maturity, and work ethic.

Simona brings a wealth of experience to the team.

“She will be a fantastic mentor for Kai through his first Bathurst 1000, as she continues to be an inspiration for aspiring female drivers.”

DJR CEO David Noble believes the #98 Mustang has the “perfect combination” behind the wheel.

“This wildcard entry has been a long time coming for DJR and we are extremely excited about it,” he said. ”To have the enthusiasm and talent of Kai mixed with the experience of Simona is the perfect combination.

“As an organisation, we are driven to succeed and aim to prepare and deliver the car to a competitive level for Bathurst.”

De Silvestro and Allen will race at Bathurst on October 5-8.

Thomas Miles

SUPERCARS REVEAL LATEST PARITY CHANGE FORD WILL receive an engine tweak at this weekend’s Sydney SuperNight in the latest chapter in the search for parity.

All 11 Ford Mustangs will take on Sydney Motorsport Park with a new 80mm throttle body.

This was tested by Ford’s Gen3 homologation team Dick Johnson Racing at Queensland Raceway in the aftermath of the Townsville 500, where separate aero changes were rolled out.

After the testing was complete, the results were verified and the change to the Ford Engine Specification Document (ESD) was approved for the seventh round of the 2023 season.

A Supercars spokesperson confirmed the news.

“Supercars can confirm that the Ford Homologation Team requested an Engine Specification Document (ESD) change to use an 80mm throttle body,” a Supercars spokesperson said.

“This has now been tested and verified, both on and off track, and is now approved for introduction for the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight.”

The throttle body change is the latest tweak in the constant search for Gen3 parity.

It will be staged where the hot topic kicked into overdrive at Sydney Motorsport Park, which hosted the pre-season test in February - the first official on-track session of the season.

With 10 of the top 11 fastest times from the preseason test proving to be Chevrolet Camaros, it did not take long for the first questions of parity to surface from the Ford camp.

Since then the discussion has not stopped with it being a hot topic of debate at all six rounds so far.

An official Supercars parity review was conduced after the Darwin Triple Crown where the parity trigger was hit after Team 18, Triple Eight Race Engineering

and Matt Stone Racing swept up the wins.

This saw some aero changes made to the Mustang prior to Townsville including the rear wing moving forward by about 20mm and lowered by a similar amount.

A small Gurney flap was added to the trailing edge, while the boot-mounted spoiler was also extended and raised, meaning the gap between the lower edge of the wing and the upper edge of the boot lid surface has been closed.

Despite Anton De Pasquale and DJR driving Ford to its first on-track win of the Gen3 era in race 17, some Ford team owners were still frustrated by the parity situation.

Time will tell if the latest change will have an impact at the aero-heavy track SMP this weekend, with the action to begin on Saturday.

Thomas Miles

MCLAREN INSISTS NO FAVOURITISM MCLAREN HAS insisted the undercut which allowed Lando Norris to steal second away from Oscar Piastri in the opening stages of the Hungarian Grand Prix was not a result of favouritism.

Starting from the second row, Piastri enjoyed a solid getaway and slotted in behind Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, who went three wide into turn one.

But as the established stars squabbled, the rookie pounced and flew up the inside underneath both Norris and Hamilton to surge into second place.

Piastri suddenly found himself hounding the back of Verstappen for the lead before eventually settling into a commanding gap from the third placed Norris.

The rookie consolidated the spot across a solid first stint on the medium tyre and built a +2s advantage on his teammate.

This generated belief Piastri was on the verge of becoming the first ever Australian to score a podium in his rookie season, but it was not to be.

Despite Norris enjoying a +4s advantage

over Hamilton before the stops and Piastri earning pit priority, McLaren serviced the Brit before the Aussie in a bid to cover the Mercedes.

As a result, car #4 maximised the undercut and not only rejoined a comfortable five seconds ahead of Hamilton, but also flew past Piastri when the Aussie emerged from the pits on lap 19.

After losing second place through no

fault of his own, Piastri struggled to find the same speed on the hard tyre and battled degradation.

When the chequered flag was waved, he had dropped to fifth, +23.438s behind Hamilton.

That is why Piastri said the strategy call “did not change my race” with “tyre degradation the killer”.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has spoken out on the reasoning behind

the Norris undercut, insisting it was not a case of favouritism.

“In terms of the undercut that we had at the first stop, you just go with the sequence that is natural because you cover with the car that is more at risk, and then you cover with the other car,” he said.

“Lando’s out lap was just super, super quick, which meant Oscar lost the position. To be honest, our approach to these situations is to think about the team first.

“We think as a team, and then we deal with the internal situation.”

Stella also revealed Piastri suffered floor damage after running over a kerb, which greatly impacted his pace late in the race.

“Oscar had damage on his car, and this meant that he lost some time from a performance point of view,” he said.

“I think this caused extra degradation of the tyres and was part of the reason why he struggled to keep up with Lando, and also with the other cars coming behind him.”

Thomas Miles

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HILL BRACED FOR ANOTHER TYRE BATTLE

RED BULL EMOTIONAL ABOUT RECORD WIN RED BULL team principal Christian Horner has lauded his “incredible” team after it broke a record that stood for more than a quarter of a century.

The 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix will forever be an historic occasion as Red Bull secured a 12th straight victory, having not lost since the 2022 closer at Abu Dhabi.

This ensured Red Bull broke the streak record previously held by McLaren and its iconic MP4/4.

In 1988 Aryton Senna and Alain Prost drove Ron Dennis’ team to 11 wins on the bounce at the start of the season from Brazil to Belgium.

McLaren’s streak ended at Monza when Prost suffered an engine failure, and Senna crashed into the lapped Williams driven by Jean-Louis Schlesser - laps from the finish and in the lead - as Ferrari’s Gerhard Berger streaked past to deliver a famous win just weeks after the passing of Enzo Ferrari.

Despite similarly dominant spells

by Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes in the years since, no one

has been able to come close.

The RB19 has been an unstoppable force with Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen behind the wheel this year, cruising to 11 wins this season.

The team’s only major scare was in Australian when a late Safety Car and a red flag threatened to disrupt Verstappen’s rhythm, but he held his nerve.

Fittingly, Red Bull broke McLaren’s record by scoring its biggest win of the year at Hungary to the tune of 33.731s seconds.

Reflecting on the achievement, Horner was emotional, as recalled watching the MP4/4 in action as a youngster.

“As a young kid I remember watching the McLarens of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna achieving that incredible feat. They were an incredible team and Ron Dennis was an incredible Team Principal,” Horner said.

“To think that we’ve now bettered that, it’s something the whole team here in Budapest, in Milton Keynes, and everybody behind the scenes

has worked so hard for...it means so, so much.”

Verstappen also joined an exclusive club with Hungary being his seventh straight win.

Only Alberto Ascari (1952-53) Michael Schumacher (2004), Sebastian Vettel (2013) and Nico Rosberg (2015-16) have achieved the same feat.

Reflecting on the team’s new record, Verstappen made it clear how much hard work has gone into the mighty operation.

“For the team, 12 wins in a row is just incredible,” he said.

“What we’ve been going through these last three years is just unbelievable.

“I think people probably forget how tough it is to win 12 in a row.

“Even when you have the fastest car. It’s easy to make mistakes or have an off weekend but I think so far we have always had really good pace.

“Hopefully we can keep this momentum going for a long time.”

Thomas Miles

TYRES WERE a hot talking point at the Townsville 500 and Matt Stone Racing’s Cameron Hill is bracing himself for a similar struggle in Sydney.

The seventh round of the Supercars season takes teams to Sydney Motorsport Park, which features numerous medium speed and high load corners at the flowing 3.9km circuit.

These will place a large amount of stress on the working right hand side tyres with eight of the 11 turns going left.

One of the biggest challenges at Townsville was making the tyres last around Townsville’s hybrid street track.

Enjoying an extra set played a big role in Anton De Pasquale’s special win, while Chaz Mostert believed rear tyre wear cost him a shot at victory on the Saturday.

Hill said managing rubber will be a big challenge across the Sydney SuperNight, which is headlined by Saturday night’s longer 51-lap race where strategy will be a big factor.

“It is a track I’m familiar with and the circuit has been notoriously bad for tyre degradation,” he said.

“But there have been a few sections resurfaced so it’s going to be interesting to see if that helps, along with the cool temperatures.

“I think it will be similar to Townsville, how you manage your tyres and strategy will be key.

“Sunday’s event might be a sprint, but it’s still quite long so it will be something different for the engineers to analyse the strategy to find the quickest way home.

“I think one thing that we’ve seen this year is that clean air is super powerful, so the engineers will have to weigh up the ideal strategy versus being stuck behind a rival.”

Hill arrives at Sydney Motorsport Park 22nd in the championship and within touching distance of Macauley Jones.

He recorded 17th and 22nd place finishes across the two street races, with the disappointing Sunday result his first outside the top 20 in nine races.

Hill said he was actually really encouraged by his output at Reid Park and has identified qualifying as his major area of improvement at Eastern Creek.

“Although we didn’t get the results we wanted in Townsville, it was still a real positive weekend,” he said.

“Saturday was tough with a bad qualifying position, which made the race a long one.

“Qualifying stronger was the focus on Sunday and we did that. I managed the tyres a lot better as well and we were running at the front thanks to a safety car.

“The race pace was really strong and I was really happy after Sunday, all we need now is just that little more in qualifying to give us a boost at the beginning of the races.”

The Supercars first hit the track at the Sydney SuperNight on Saturday, July 29.

Thomas Miles

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LATEST NEWS

LOVE AT-THE -READY FOR POTENTIAL BRT WILDCARD THE NEW Super Licence alterations that have seen Kai Allen promoted into a Bathurst wildcard seat are also a huge benefit for fellow Super2 driver Aaron Love.

The WA talent made the switch from GT racing into Supercars prior to the 2023 season with the Blanchard Racing Team as they entered the Super2 fold, with Love given a clear pathway toward achieving a main game drive.

With Blanchard currently building its wildcard entry after having it approved in early July, Love is now eligible having collected more than enough points for a Super Licence through his Carrera Cup successes, coupled with the additional three rounds of Super2 which are enough to see him qualify for a main game drive.

Love has been adapting to the challenges of a new racing style after moving on from the GT3 scene, and feels that six races on in the Petronas Mustang, he’s now prepared should the opportunity arise through either the wildcard, or a direct co-drive with Todd Hazelwood.

“It’s been a bit of an up-and-down year, obviously being a one car team it can be a bit of a struggle sometimes in not having the technical support where you can get data from another driver,” Love told AUTO ACTION. “But working with the team throughout the year I feel more comfortable in the car, and if the opportunity arose through BRT to do a wildcard, whether that’s at Bathurst or Sandown, or if it’s with Todd, I would definitely grasp that chance.

“If it was to come, I feel ready to make the jump and to put everything into it. The conversation with Tim [Blanchard] has been more around a wildcard than with joining Todd, and the build has been moving along, so we’ll find out pretty soon if that’s going to become part of my program or BRTs program.

“There’s obviously a lot of things that need to fall into place and be finalised, but we’re working together to try and get that happening, and I’m sure in the very near future we can announce if that’s happening or not happening.”

In terms of the new licence alterations announced

by Supercars last week - aside from it benefiting Love ahead of schedule - he feels it’s an important move to open up the gates for other young drivers.

“For me personally I’m excited that it’s opened up the opportunity to get a Super Licence, and to potentially move forward within BRT. “But for the sport, it’s a good thing in that it helps to open up the pool for younger drivers, because prior to that the number was a bit smaller in terms of how many drivers were available. You saw that teams were having to rely on ex-Supercar drivers that were only doing one or two races a year.

“Even the European market was very closed off, and it still is, but I think it’s good for Supercars that it’s a lot more open and there’s going to be more opportunities to elevate local young drivers into a wildcard, or more.”

Whichever way the cards fall, Love will be at the Sandown 500 regardless as it’s also the next Super2 round, but before that, he’ll be taking on S5000 duties for the first time with BRM at the Sydney SuperNight this weekend, July 28-30.

TW Neal

MCRAE RALLIES FOR ETERNAL CITY MAX MCRAE will take on the ERC Rally di Roma Capitale in Italy this weekend, making the switch to asphalt with an alternate Rally4 car.

McRae has displayed plenty of promise across his three European Rally Championship starts this year in Poland, Latvia and Sweden, but a mix of mechanical and driver error has brought him undone, with a costly penalty in Latvia dropping him from the lead.

His tarmac adventure into the Italian capital this weekend with co-driver Mac Kierans will also see him switch into Peugeot 208 Rally4, with his usual Opel Corsa unavailable due to a schedule clash for The Racing Factory team.

McRae previously competed in the 208 prior to Poland at the Rali Terras d’Aboboreira, and feels comfortable in the comparable Rally4 machinery.

“I’m happy with the Peugeot, and to be honest, the two cars are really quite similar. We drove a 208 Rally4 at the start of the season in Portugal and got on well with it there.

“The priority for this week is to show

McRae will switch into a Peugeot 208 Rally4 for the Rome rally

some more pace and put some good points down on our first asphalt event at this level.

“There’s something special about rallying in Italy. There so much passion for motorsport and for rallying in particular. It’s going to be a very cool event.”

McRae has driven previously on tarmac in Europe, but the scorching

temperatures in Italy will be far from cool with the continent in the grip of a heatwave that will make it a challenging weekend.

“The temperatures have been scorching in mainland Europe. I think it’s due to get a little bit cooler in time for the event, but we’re still looking at mid-30s or more.

“It’s going to be a warm one, but that’s fine, we’ve put the training in for this.

“If there is a concern from the heat then it’s maybe for the tyres. It’s going to be hard work from that side.

“I guess the stand-out stages are going to be the long ones on both days.

Saturday we’re running a 32km test, and Sunday it’s the 29km Santopadre stage.

From every aspect, they’re going to be interesting!”

Rally di Roma Capitale gets going with a ceremonial start and spectator stage in and around the city’s world-famous colosseum on Friday evening. Saturday and Sunday bring 13 stages and 189 kilometres of competition.

TW Neal

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INTERNATIONAL AUSSIES

ALLEN ALL CLASS IN FRANCE JAMES ALLEN has backed up his Le Mans 24 class win with an outright victory for Algarve Pro Racing in the European Le Mans Series.

Alongside teammates Alex Lynn and Kyffin Simpson, the trio moved to second in the Pro standings after taking the 4 Hours of Le Castellet at Paul Ricard by 1.078s from the #30 Duqueine Team.

Allen was at the helm of the #25 ORECA 07 LMP2 machine over the critical final stint after the team started the race on the third row and, with under 10 minutes to run, the meticulous Aussie made the winning move on the leading #34 Racing Team Turkey.

Allen was running in fourth place into the final hour of the race but, as the front-runners struggled with heavy tyre deg, Allen rapidly shut the gap.

With eight minutes remaining, he was fighting side-by-side with the leading ORECA, making his move into Turn 1 after playing the patient game with his Goodyears.

The win puts them just 8 points from the Duqueine Team for the championship lead with four rounds remaining.

“I was told from the start to manage the tyre as best I could, because we knew that

but that’s the way it goes and everyone had to deal with it, not just us.

“I had to do a late move around the outside of the #34, which was an aggressive move but I just got in there. I had to really shove my nose in there and again into Turn 1 to keep the position, which helped to create a buffer between us.

“Everyone enjoys winning obviously, and It feels really good to get two race wins in a row now.”

It’s been a great year for the Melbournian after he started the season off with a thrilling photofinish victory at the Daytona 24, albeit against the APR team that he currently races for.

He then took a victory on his return to the APR team at the Asian Le Mans Series, before Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES winning his second Le Mans 24 in a row with the Portuguese the problem was going to come up,” Allen based team. said.

Their next outing is on August 26 when “They lasted quite well, but there were they head to the north east of Spain for the unfortunately issues toward the end of 4 Hours of Aragon at the MotorLand Aragon the stint and I had to be gentle on them, track near the town of Alcaniz. TW Neal

LOVE’S MISANO MAIDEN

AMG JUNIOR Factory driver Jordan Love broke his GT World Challenge Europe Sprint duck at Misano, claiming a Silver Cup victory for Haupt Racing.

Alongside British teammate Frank Bird (above) the pair started on pole for Race 1 after the WA racer got it done in qualifying, starting the race in P14 in the outright field.

The win was a commanding one in the 38 lap opener, as they elevated themselves into 12th outright to ensure a 20 second class win.

“Pole position to race win! Really happy to get my first class pole position and victory in the series,” said a proud Love.

“It was a mega job by the team and my teammate Frank all weekend so a big thank you to them for their efforts.

“Sunday’s race didn’t go as we had wished but we are still in a great place in the championship. We know there are still a few things to improve and I’m really looking forward to going again at Hockenheim.”

With the pair starting third in class in Race 2 and P20 outright, Bird took on damage in the heavy traffic, and they were forced to nurse the #77 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO in fourth place.

The successful weekend will see the pair head to the Hockenheimring on September 2-3 just three points off the championship lead.

TW Neal

20 I www.autoaction.com.au

WILLIAMS’ GRAND TOUR KEEPS ROLLING CALAN WILLIAMS has had another busy weekend on the GT World Challenge Europe in Misano for WRT, taking a victory and a second place to go top of the overall Gold class standings The young Aussie has barely left the podium since making the switch from Formula 2 to GT racing, as he and his #30 BMW M4 GT3 teammate Niklas Krutten continue to impress in both the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint and Endurance Cup. After the success of their Spa 24 Hour podium, a point focused Williams was delighted to take his second Sprint Cup win.

“After qualifying, it looked as if it was

going to be a difficult weekend, but we kept working and pushing hard … second and first in the class were very good results,” Williams said.

“We are now leading the championship in the Gold Cup. On my side, there are still things I need to work on – the pace was good but I made a mistake during the driver change.

“I take responsibility and it’s a pity because we could have finished in the top 10 and maybe top five overall.”

A Gold class second place in Race 1 had them in 11th outright in a grid that had 15 Pro class entries after starting in P25 and fourth in class.

Race 2 had the pair with a more

advantageous starting position of P13, with Williams putting the #30 BMW into the class lead.

After going for an overcut whilst retaining the class lead, Williams’ seat belt then got stuck on the driver change, with the pair dropping down into P16.

Although they retained the class lead, Krutten then charged back up the pack to give them a P12 finish, and a comfortable class victory.

The next outing for Williams and Krutten will be a return to the GT WCE Endurance Cup, where they will take on the Green Hell, with a trip to the Nurburgring on July 29-30.

TW Neal

DOOHAN FINDS HOPE AHEAD OF SPA JACK DOOHAN’S stuttering FIA Formula 2 season suddenly looks a bit brighter after taking his first feature win of the year at the Hungaroring.

It was his first Feature win since Spa Francorchamps in 2022, the track he now heads to next weekend after his engineers finally unlocked the capable pace in his #14 Invictus-Virtuosi car, which included a late dash to secure pole.

The Alpine F1 Reserve Driver has cut a frustrated figure around the pits or over the team radio this season, but his Hungary win puts some added spice into a run of eight straight top-10s. It also moves him into fifth in the championship, just 53 points shy of leader Frederik Vesti with four Sprints and four Features remaining.

Although he bemoaned the fact that it took until round nine to really get the gas cooking, it gives him hope

ahead of the super-fast Spa. Remarkably he’s not out of contention, and now finds himself in direct competition with fellow Alpine Junior Victor Martins, who he stands to run down at Spa with a five point deficit.

“It’s what I’ve wanted to do since the start of the year, and what I believe I’ve been capable of doing,” Doohan said.

“Coming into this weekend nothing has really changed in my approach, I’m just getting more and more resilient. The team did an awesome job, the car was on rails and we made good steps forward. To finish off with mega pace on both tyres was awesome.”

Tyres was the key word in this scenario, with the Aussie having struggled all year with the car’s performance, particularly on the Softs. And despite the highdeg Hungaroring, Doohan was

able to find some big pace on a set of Softs that looked completely shot, staying out until lap 25 of 38.

“I think it was just good comms between me and the team, really making sure that we didn’t box any earlier than we needed to. For the first eight to 10 laps I was in a very safe window. “… it was about managing the deg from the rear to the front. When I started to lose the rear I pushed the front a little bit more to equal out the balance.”

On heading back to Spa, a place he’s won in F3 and F2, he just wants to keep it rolling.

“I’m confident that I can maintain this level of performance, but winning there last year honestly means nothing. I love the place, we had a great car, but things evolve, times change and we need to push even harder.”

TW Neal After a win drought, Doohan’s return to the top step was emphatic.

Image: Facebook

JONES CLOSING IN ON ROOKIE SUPERCUP WIN AUSTRALIA’S 2022 Carrera Cup champion Harri Jones has continued his rise up the field in the world’s premier one-make Porsche series, the Mobil 1 Supercup.

Jones took out another rookie podium at the Hungaroring, his third for the year, finished just 0.441s seconds behind the winning rookie, Belgian driver Benjamin Paque.

It was also the Aussie’s highest finish of the year in the outright stakes, finishing in sixth after qualifying in fifth, beating his previous effort of seventh at Silverstone.

Aside from a DNF at Austria, he’s finished inside the top-10 in his three race finishes at Monaco, Silverstone, and Hungary.

As well as closing in on the top-10, he’s also effectively equal second in the rookie standings, three points off the mark, with the two leaders tied on 30.

“Overall it was a great weekend here in Hungary”, Jones said.

“I scored my best finish so far with P6 and I’m happy with the result. But a part of me is disappointed that I couldn’t get the rookie win. Still, in the big picture it’s great for our championship and now full focus is on Spa next weekend.”

BWT Lechner Racing Team Principal and CEO Robert Lechner was pleased with the weekend, as Harri’s teammate, Harry King, also came away with the outright.

“Harri made it to the second spot on the podium for the rookie championship again, so the atmosphere in the team is great – I hope we can take this momentum over to Spa in one week’s time.”

The next round for the F1 exclusive Mobile 1 Supercup is at Spa Francorchamps this weekend.

TW Neal

POWER LEAVES IOWA WITH 70 POLES WILL POWER has finally started building on his all-time IndyCar pole record that he claimed at Monterey last year, leaving the Iowa Speedway with 70 pole positions to his name after claiming a double.

His teammate Josef Newgarden would overpower the 2022 Astor Cup champion in both races at Iowa, with the Aussie managing to fight back for a podium in Race 2 after having led for 120 laps in the opener.

On extending his mammoth pole haul however, Power said he’d like to transform it into a win for the year, but that he never imagined he’d ever achieve such a thing.

“It’s fantastic to get another couple of poles, That number, 70, is pretty nuts,” Power said. “It’s something I never would

autoactionmag

Auto_Action

Pole man Power leads away from the start. Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES have imagined when I started in 2006.

“I’m lucky to be with such a great team

autoactionmag

autoactionmag

that gives you that equipment to do so.

Hopefully I can back it up with a win in

one of these two races.”

The win didn’t come, but a late restart in Race 2 saw him climb the podium with a flying sprint, finishing just 0.705s behind Newgarden.

“We struggled massively at the beginning and my engineer made a really good change to the wing.

“It’s the best car that I have had here, and I was really happy with it and enjoyed the race. Not the first stint though. Man, I was white knuckling it the whole time, so I am stoked to get the Chevy to P2. It’s pretty tough to beat Josef here, but we will do it one day.”

Power sits seventh in the championship with five races remaining, and faces the first winless year of his IndyCar career since his 2006 rookie campaign.

TW Neal

www.autoaction.com.au I 21

LATEST NEWS

LAMBORGHINI’S HYPERCAR BULL

LAMBORGHINI SQUADRA Corse has launched its SC63 LMDh Hypercar that will compete in the 2024 WEC and IMSA Sports Car Championships.

The Italian brand will compete against its illustrious manufacturer rivals in the revamped LMH and LMDh ruleset at the top level of world endurance racing, taking on the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, Toyota, BMW, Cadillac, Alpine, Peugeot and Honda Acura – adding to the exciting new era of WEC and IMSA competition, which has more than met up to its hype following a thrilling 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Behind the wheel of the two single entries in both series’ will be former F1 drivers Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat, and Italian endurance pair Mirko Bortolotti and Andrea Caldarelli, with Iron Lynx racing team – who run the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 in IMSA and GTWC – to take the helm.

And whilst the expected debut of the SC63 would at first glance be the 24 Hours of Daytona, the director of the sports section of Lamborghini, Giorgio Sanna, said that an IMSA Daytona debut may not be realistic, and that the 2024 WEC season opener in Doha is more likely.

“The dream of participating in Daytona is still present; however we must also be consistent. This new project represents a real challenge with the time we have ahead of us. So we’ll see how the development will unfold.”

That would likely place the SC63’s IMSA debut at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Launched at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, the SC63 takes it name from Lamborghini’s foundation year, whilst it will carry a livery familiar to the new Huracan GT3 cars – Verde Mantis green, and is hailed as the manufacturer’s most advanced piece of racing machinery it has ever built.

It features an in-house developed 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8, with the turbos mounted on the outside of the engine for better cooling, lower weight distribution

22 I www.autoaction.com.au

and better grip. The engine’s total output hasn’t yet been released with its testing still being undergone, but the maximum horsepower allowed under the new ruleset is 671hp.

It features eight radiators, one for the gearbox, condenser for the air-con, one each for the energy recovery and storage systems, two water radiators and two intercoolers.

Its bellhousing is where its electric motor lives, which is placed between the engine and transmission, which improves the SC63’s torsional stiffness.

Ligier was selected as its LMDh chassis choice, making it the first LMDh Hypercar to partner with the famous French brand.

As permitted under the LMDh ruleset, the bodywork designed by Lamborghini’s Centro Stile design department allows for the brand’s iconic Y-shaped lights at the front and rear.

Also in keeping with the LMDh guidelines, the SC63 features a XTRAC transverse gearbox with 7 speeds, with Lamborghini also able to apply its own adjusted gear ratios to suit, and a Bosch controlled ECU to go with its Hybrid components.

“The SC63 is the most advanced racing car ever produced by

Lamborghini and it follows our roadmap ‘Direzione Cor Tauri’ laid out by the brand for the electrification of our product range,” said Lamborghini CEO, Stephan Winkelmann.

“The opportunity to compete in some of the biggest endurance races in the world with a hybrid prototype fits with our vision for the future of high-performance mobility, as demonstrated for road legal cars with the launch of the Revuelto.

“The SC63 LMDh is the step into the highest echelons and into the future of motorsports for our Squadra Corse.”

Frederic Lequien, CEO of the WEC, was thrilled to welcome the iconic brand into the expanding field.

“Congratulations to both Lamborghini and Iron Lynx for working so hard to build the new SC63 – a truly beautiful machine which I am sure will be a firm

favourite with our fans too,” Lequien said.

“We are extremely honoured to have such a prestigious brand as Lamborghini join the WEC.” TW Neal

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

LAWSON TAKES SECOND FUJI WIN LIAM LAWSON is closing in on the Japanese Super Formula lead with his second win of the season, at Mount Fuji Speedway.

The Team Mugen racer has taken three wins in his debut year to be one point from Vantelin Team racer Ritomo Miyata at the top of the standings with three races remaining.

The Red Bull Junior F1 driver hunted down pole sitter Tadasuke Makino to take victory by over four seconds.

With the 21-year-old Kiwi starting on the front row, the decisive move came after an out lap when he was able to blow past Makino.

“Before the stop I didn’t have a way to get past. I could hold onto him but getting in a position to make a pass … I was struggling to do that,” Lawson said.

“We decided to stop and they followed but my out-lap was really quick so when he came out on cold tyres I was right there and in a couple of corners I had him.”

“We were quick all weekend and obviously it helped that we had already been to Fuji.

The next race is Motegi and that is new to me, I’ve got to learn it quickly.”

In the same week which saw Red Bull overlook Lawson in favour of Daniel Ricciardo for the vacant AlphaTauri F1 seat, Lawson sees the JSF as his way in.

“This is what I am focused on. Any shot I have at F1 rides on how I do here. I have to complete the year in the best way possible, and try to win this championship, which is what will give me the chance.

“Then, if it doesn’t happen, I can’t say there’s nothing more I could have done.”

Lawson’s next JSF assignment with Team Mugen is at the Mobility Resort Motegi – or the Twin Ring Motegi as it used to be more commonly known – situated north east of Tokyo in the Tochigi prefecture.

TW Neal

GLICKENHAUS WEC SURVIVAL ON THE ROPES

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES THE NEW era of hypercar racing across the WEC and IMSA has seen the heavyhitting giants throw their challengers into the ring, leaving privateers like Jim Glickenhaus in danger of going by the wayside.

Glickenhaus is the owner of boutique maker Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, and the owner of the SCG 007 non-hybrid Hypercar isn’t even sure they’ll finish the season at Fuji and Bahrain, as was the case last year.

But with the SCG 007 being three years old – with its WRC rally-based Pipo Moteurs V8 twin-turbo – the popular team’s WEC continuation depends on the sponsorship to build an EVO type.

“A lot of that’s going to depend on exactly what our program would be with a sponsor,” Glickenhaus said.

“This car is three years old. To be

competitive it would need a serious upgrade. It would need a lot of testing, and a substantial budget.

“We feel that if we had that we could be very competitive. It’s amazing our threeyear-old car, up against the best and the brightest is still in the ballpark.

“The idea that, at Le Mans, we beat Porsche is incredible. To beat Peugeot is also incredible ... we certainly weren’t a joke.”

Whilst Glickenhaus says that the WEC has been supportive of having them there, he also says he’s got no interest in being “cannon fodder” for the manufacturing giants.

“We have no desire to come up and be cannon fodder. Here’s the thing: racing does sell cars, but the economics of WEC versus the size of our company and the number of cars that we would be capable

ROSSI TAKES FIRST GTWC VICTORY VALENTINO ROSSI (pictured) has claimed his first GT World Challenge Europe victory for WRT on his home turf at the Misano World Circuit.

The seven-time MotoGP champion took his first GTWC win in the BMW M4 GT3 as an M Works driver, with the manufacturer also taking its first topclass GT WC Sprint Cup win in eight years.

The Italian MC legend got it done in Race 2 alongside his Belgian teammate Maxime Martin.

It’s Rossi’s biggest success in an automobile thus far in front of an appreciative home crowd.

‘The Doctor’ grew up just 15km from the track in the Emilia-Romagna region,

24 I www.autoaction.com.au

with the track also named after his late friend, officially known as: Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.

Rossi claimed the top step for the first time in the Road to Le Mans series during the Le Mans 24, but this effort against the world’s best GT drivers was a cut-above “I cannot be happier. To win here at Misano is very special. We knew we could be strong, but winning is another story!” Rossi stated.

“I won my first GT race at Road to Le Mans, but this is different, as this is our main championship, the level is so high and there are so many fast drivers.

“Everybody did a mega job, Maxime, the boys, and I thank everybody and

BMW. I’m enjoying the moment and let’s continue like this.”

After Martin qualified the M4 GT3 in third place and took the opening stint, Rossi took the reins to bring it home, putting in a blistering performance to win by 4.243s over the #11 Audi R8 and the #31 sister BMW. “Congratulations to Valentino Rossi on his very first victory in the GT World Challenge Europe!” BMW head of Motorsport, Andreas Roos said. “… and at his home race in Misano!

A fantastic script like this is almost too good to be true. This win is confirmation of the fantastic development he has shown in recent months.”

TW Neal

of producing makes absolutely no sense.

“It makes sense for the big manufacturers who are selling millions of cars a year. In the case of Ferrari, 13,00020,000 cars a year.

“Or Lamborghini. But I don’t think that for a small private team, it makes any economic sense.”

This means that if the team doesn’t go to Fuji of Bahrain to finish the season, fans may have seen the last of Glickenhaus if sponsorship doesn’t come.

The team that so nearly upset the giants at Monza last year, leading comfortably until its turbo blew, may well have just said goodbye at Monza with a P8.

The new era of LMH and LMDh is sensational, but it would be a shame to see Glickenhaus go under.

TW Neal

REINVENTING HISTORY WHY THE STORY OFTEN GETS MASSAGED TO SUIT THE SITUATION ...

I READ somewhere, just recently, that Scott McLaughlin had left Australia because of the politics in Supercars. The same source said Marcos Ambrose, too, was a political refugee when he left for the USA. What bollocks.

Ambrose left because of his towering ambition and McLaughlin got a ‘money-can’tbuy’ offer from Roger Penske.

Now I’m being told Shane van Gisbergen is teed off about politics in Supercars.

Pitlane chatter also says Cam Waters and Chaz Mostert will walk away from Supercars if things don’t improve for the Mustang squads and the parity situation is not settled soon.

More bollocks.

It’s easy to apply the

with Paul Gover

THE PG PERSPECTIVE etrospectacles to anything in motorsport, from the behaviour of Michael Schumacher to the failure of a string of overseas Supercars races.

But sometimes people put them on backwards – and the view becomes horribly distorted.

Far better, then, to talk to someone who was on the scene at the time. Which would be me.

It’s true that ScottyMac had some unhappiness in his Supercars’ career, mostly spinning around the arrival of the ‘Frankenstein’ Ford Mustang but also including the debacle at Bathurst in 2019.

Were things so bad he decided to flee?

Actually, things were so good

he got an IndyCar test offer from ’The Captain’ and, soon after, the chance to race full-time in the USA. What else was left to achieve in Supercars, after winning the championship and Bathurst? Ah ... nothing.

What was left to achieve in IndyCar? Race wins, a championship, the Indy 500, and a giant bank balance.

Not forgetting that his lovely wife, Karly, is a native New Yorker with her family in the ’States.

Ambrose?

Years before he headed to NASCAR-land, he was watching every race on television. I know because I saw it at his home in

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

the Gold Coast hinterland. He was studying the drivers, the teams, the tracks and the tactics.

He had ticked almost all the boxes in Supercars – Bathurst eluded him – but had Australian sponsorship to launch him in the truck series in NASCAR, and Ford Australia also kept paying him even when he crossed the Pacific.

He returned home after winning races in NASCAR and building an estimated nest egg of $33 million – more than enough for his share of an eco-tourism project in Tasmania.

Now we come to Shane van Gisbergen, and reports that he will head to the USA because of Supercars’ politics.

Really? SVG has never been happy about doing anything beyond driving a fast car. And winning.

Just ask any journalist who has tried to have a conversion with the expectation of anything beyond a string of “Yes-no” answers.

It’s not about the politics, despite

the rocky road through the first half of season 2023.

For SVG, it’s a new challenge, the chance to win and make a bucket of money. It adds up to a 100 per cent certainty that he will be racing NASCAR, not Supercars, in 2024.

As for Waters and Mostert, they are obviously good enough to find a drive overseas, with Mostert best placed to do something in the world of GT3 after a string of starring guest roles at the Daytona 24-Hour and – most recently – with Kenny Habul’s hotrod MercedesAMG at the Spa 24.

But would Mostert or Waters find a drive that pays better than Supercars? Or one that gives them the certainty and fan following they have at home?

Unlikely.

So it’s true there are unhappy people up and down the Supercars’ pitlane, but if you dive beneath the surface there is usually more – sometimes much more – to the story.

SVEN BURCHARTZ LIVES MOTORSPORTS LAWYER AND PARTNER

Know your position.

sburchartz@kkilawyers.com.au • Teams • Series owners • Manufacturers

T +613 8825 4800 kkilawyers.com.au

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PUBLISHER

Bruce Williams bruce@autoaction.com.au 0418 349 555 EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Bruce Williams STAFF JOURNALIST Timothy W. Neal STAFF JOURNALIST Thomas Miles NEWS EDITOR Andrew Clarke FEATURES WRITER Paul Gover SENIOR ART DIRECTOR/PRODUCTION Caroline Garde SENIOR DESIGNER Neville Wilkinson NATIONAL EDITOR Thomas Miles HISTORICS EDITOR Mark Bisset SPEEDWAY REPORTER Paris Charles ONLINE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS AUSTRALIA Josh Nevett, Dan McCarthy, Bruce Newton, Mark Bisset, Geoffrey Harris, Bruce Moxon, Gary Hill, Craig O’Brien, Ray Oliver, Martin Agatyn, Reese Mautone.

FORMULA 1 Luis Vasconelos US CORRESPONDENT Mike Brudenell PHOTOGRAPHERS AUSTRALIA Mark Horsburgh-Edge Photography, Peter Norton-Epic Sports Photography, Ross Gibb Photography, Daniel Kalisz, Mick Oliver-MTR Images, Rebecca Hind-REVVED, David Batchelor, Randall Kilner, Richard Hathaway, Bruce Moxon, Ray Ritter, Ray Oliver, autopics.com. au Geoff Coulson Photography, Roy Meuronen Photography, Angryman Photography, Riccardo Benvenuti, Matthew Bissett-MJB Photography, Phil Wisewould Photography.

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ADVERTISING MANAGER Bruce Williams All Advertising inquiries bruce@autoaction.com.au 0418 349 555 Editorial contributions may be sent to Auto Action. No responsibility will be accepted for their safety. If you require the return of any sent item or items, please attach a separate, stamped and fully addressed envelope.

Auto Action is published by Action Media Partners ABN number 62976094459 Suite 4/156 Drummond Street Oakleigh Victoria 3166 Phone: 03 9563 2107 The trademark Auto Action is the sole property of Action Media Partners The website www.autoaction.com.au and associated social media platforms are wholly owned by Action Media Partners.

All rights reserved No part of this magazine’s content may be reproduced, retransmitted or rebroadcast without the express written permission of the Publisher and Action Media Partners.

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For more of the latest motorsport news, reviews and features, PLUS additional breaking news.

Go to autoaction.com.au or scan below

email: letters@autoaction.com.au Postal: Suite 4/156 Drummond Street.

Oakleigh Victoria 3166

DELAYS THAT HALTED TARGA TASMANIA A GROSS BETRAYAL WHAT A gross betrayal of an overseeing body elected by the motorsport community to represent their interests like Targa Tasmania.

Without motorsport they (Motorsport Australia) would not have a job!

To take 12 months to adjudicate over the sad incident involving deaths in a dangerous sport is ludicrous, causing cancellation.

I played a small part in administration for 20 years, since the inception of Targa, and, without fear of contradiction, I was proud of the safety procedures put in place.

I was involved in covering every metre of the road prior to the event, checking for danger spots or unsatisfactory roads.

All competing vehicles must have roll cages fitted and go through a stringent mechanical check.

I was also charged with the responsibility of looking after overseas drivers and attended a two-hour safety meeting prior to every Targa, which was compulsory for all drivers and each driver signed off that they had a full understanding of the event ahead.

Each driver was fully aware of the dangers of driving their vehicle at its fullest capacity.

CEO Mark Perry did everything possible to ensure the safest of events.

But all vehicles driven to capacity are dangerous. What about the V8 racing, motorbikes, stock cars? Even horse racing? Anything involving speed is dangerous.

It is a sheer shame that an event that had so much support by all is forced to cancel, caused by faceless administrators.

Peter Doddy, Launceston, Tasmania

SUPERCARS NEEDS A DRAFT FOR PICKING NEW DRIVERS

I’M WHAT Mark Skaife and Neil Crompton would call ‘a hardcore fan’, and – amid all the talk of how to improve the competitiveness of drivers and teams – I’ve got an idea about how to select future Supercar drivers.

There should be a rookie/draft system that eliminates young drivers with financial backing but questionable talent hurting the Supercar brand. Those youngsters don’t improve the fortunes of the teams that struggle financially and who make compromised driver decisions.

Here’s my concept: A team can bid every two years via a draft for a rookie as a test driver.

The draft be based on AFL/NFL lines.

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All future drivers must enter Supercars via the draft.

The first draft pick would go to the lowest-placed team in the previous year’s championship, with following choices in ascending order.

A rookie could test a designated team’s race car at team-arranged test days and practice sessions at race meetings. This would foster the lost art of car set-up and tyre testing. The team’s car could not be raced at the meeting the rookie practised at or at any other track until it has held its series round.

The team would be required to guarantee its rookie an endurance series drive.

This system would address the common complaint that a better driver is missing out to a lesser driver with a bigger budget.

All drafted drivers would be equally engaged at a fixed reasonable salary for two years.

The draft would be a great marketing tool for the teams, their sponsors and the Supercar business.

The draft could be held either on Bathurst weekend, at the Adelaide round or the Supercar gala awards night, with the draw carried out by Hall of Famers, fan prize winners or industry figureheads.

A rookie would be defined as someone under 25, born in Australia, New Zealand or Asia-Pacific, have not driven more than 10 races in the Super 2 series or 20 races in Super 3 (or a combined 25 in those series), have never won a championship in any other pre-determined class of racing (it would look silly a world champion as a rookie!), and not have driven a Supercar in a ‘main-game’ race or practice session.

Hope that stimulates some thought and consideration.

S. Ashbee Blue Mountains, NSW

TIME TO REVIVE GRAND PLAN FOR VICTORIA’S HAUNTED HILLS? IN 1997 plans were released for a Bathurst-style motor racing circuit in the Haunted Hills area at Yallourn North in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

This proposed circuit had similarities to Bathurst’s Mount Panorama and it was planned to be used to host numerous major motorsport events, including a 1000km Supercars race as a ‘sister event’ to the Bathurst 1000.

With the exception of the Bryant Park Hillclimb venue, the proposed Bathurst-style Haunted Hills didn’t get the go-ahead because of a lack of funding.

As the Victorian government is keen for regional Victoria to host sporting events, why not finally build the proposed Haunted Hills motor racing circuit?

It is an existing road, so there won’t be a need to build it from scratch

or lay new road foundations – just upgrade what is there to FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile) regulations.

There will need to be pit garage facilities built and concrete barriers installed around the circuit. Maybe this could be done co-operatively and be co-funded by the Victorian government and businesses in the Gippsland region?

If the Haunted Hills circuit was developed and used to host major motorsport events it would be a significant economic boost for the Latrobe Valley and be great for Australian motorsport overall.

As Haunted Hills is closer to Melbourne than Bathurst is to Sydney, about a 1¾-hour drive versus at least 2½ hours, an ‘Australian 1000’ Supercars race there could attract even more people than the Bathurst 1000.

Of course, it would never be the end of the Bathurst 1000 as it is a great Australian traditional sporting event like the AFL and NRL grand finals, but an Australian 1000 at Haunted Hills could become a new annual, traditional sporting event.

Malcolm Webster Boronia, Victoria Editor’s note: Thanks Malcolm. You’re full of ideas, which Auto Action is delighted to hear and happy to give an airing. Other readers please note, this letter was received before the July 18 cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in regional Victoria, a decision which may not bode well for Motorsport Australia’s dream of a $250 million ‘Home of Motorsport’ at Avalon beside the airport near Geelong.

WHOLE LOTTA LOVE WITH A DAGGER THROWN IN I LOVE Auto Action; been reading every issue for years and like that you allow readers to write in with their opinions. It’s great, but do you really have to publish the stupid opinions of everyone who wants to have a vent?

That Steve bloke from NZ’s letter (AA#1865) was just a space filler.

Who cares that he claims that SVG is a Kiwi and not an Aussie? We know that!

You run a lot of letters from Malcolm in Boronia.

Anyway, love the magazine. It keeps me informed and entertained.

N. Watchorn Ballarat Vic Editor’s note: Great to receive your feedback, N. Watchorn. Maybe not everyone shares your sentiments.

We provide a platform for the varying views of our readers. Yes, Malcolm writes regularly and we publish a lot of his letters. Not all, but we appreciate that he is so engaged with the magazine, like you.

SOCIAL DISCOURSE THERE WAS PLENTY OF NEWS ON AND OFF THE TRACK OVER THE LAST TWO WEEKS AND THE FANS WERE NOT AFRAID TO EXPRESS THEIR EMOTIONS ON AUTO ACTION’S SOCIAL CHANNELS…

RICCIARDO IS BACK

Dale Evans Well I guess that beats sitting on the bench for Daniel, but the comments on Nicky are not very kind though.

Adam Thornton Nyck was a rookie in F1, and yes it’s true he didn’t have the measure of his team-mate but that being said, it was unrealistic for RBR/ AT to think he would do anything great in a Honda Civic ...

Kylie Anne Armstrong It was so gorgeous to see the joy on DR’s face at the warm welcome from AlphaTauri.

Jim Byrne Just imagine the smile if he qualifies in the top 10 or finishes in the points – but he has to beat his teammate Yuki, end of story. Go Dan!

TARGA CANCELS EVENTS, SPLITS WITH MA Brock Gane Should we ban all forms of Motorsport then or people driving cars on public roads altogether? The forms we fill in to compete and officiate as well as the tickets we purchase as spectators say “Motorsport is dangerous” for a reason. The risk will always be there.

Peter Howard This is exactly what Motorsport Australia wanted with the new licence structure announced last week – to wash their hands of Targa events and then get to blame Targa Australia for it all.

SVG V KOSTECKI NASCAR BATTLE Charmaine Eagle It will be interesting to see Shane race against Brodie Kostecki in NASCAR, especially with them being close in the Supercars Championship.

Daz Wiese A return was to be expected after SVG’s win. They would have been trying to throw everything at him, to get him back for another test/run.

Tony Neal Heeb There is now more pressure for whoever follows SVG’s debut win because I am sure the NASCAR drivers won’t want their pants pulled down again. Brodie may get punched out of the race early, but good luck. I hope he sticks it up them.

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Max no longer has a Dutch mate in F1 ...

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

“THAT’S HOW RED BULL WORKS” IT’S OBVIOUSLY great to have Daniel Ricciardo back on the grid after half a season away and the Australian was clearly delighted to be back racing, admitting he’s “back in love with Formula 1”.

Honestly, his beaming smile was a joy to see in a paddock where there’s no lack of long faces, the stress and intensity of the work taking its toll in a July that features four races in five weekends.

While the man from Perth was very welcomed back by his peers and everyone else in the paddock, there was a lot of commiseration for Nyck de Vries’ fate, the Dutchman being dumped by Red Bull after just nine races with AlphaTauri.

From his friend Max Verstappen, to his team mate Yuki Tsunoda, everyone admitted the decision to sack the Dutch was “harsh” or even “brutal”, the Japanese being particularly vocal on how much he had learned from his elder teammate in the eight months they worked together and praising the depth of his technical feedback as something akin to what he had seen the character depicting Niki

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with Luis Vasconcelos

F1 INSIDER Lauda in the Rush movie do.

For someone who spent two years alongside the experienced Pierre Gasly, that’s real praise for the now unemployed driver.

However, it was Lewis Hamilton who better summarised the feeling in the paddock when he said, “that’s how Red Bull works.”

The Brit was never a fan of the Red Bull Young Drivers’ program in general and of Helmut Marko in particular, and he does have a point. The Austrian takes almost all of his decisions on the spur of the moment, with no in-depth analysis of any kind. And he doesn’t even hide it, because he openly stated that, “we hired Nyck because he’d done a great race for Williams in Monza last year.” Never mind the 16 years the Dutchman had done of international racing, the

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fact he needed three years to win the Formula Renault European Championship, three years to win the Formula 2 Championship and so on ... No – he did a great race in his Formula 1 debut in Monza, so Red Bull hired him almost on the spot.

While the question doing the rounds in the Hungaroring was “why was de Vries sacked?”, the real and crucial question is, “why was he hired in the first place?”

I mean no disrespect for the Dutchman – he clearly has enough quality to be a Formula 1 driver. He’s quick enough, intelligent enough and has the technical background to help a team sort out its cars. But he’s not the new Verstappen, the new Hamilton or the new Alonso, I think we can all agree.

Therefore, to expect him to get into AlphaTauri and blow Yuki Tsunoda off from the word go was never a realistic prospect, was it?

So, why hire him if you have six drivers competing in Formula 2 and have had to divert Liam Lawson to Super Formula to keep him race fit? Red Bull has seven drivers knocking at Formula One’s door yet decided to go for a 28-years old with a record of needing years to become competitive in any category, based on one really good performance? If you think that makes sense, explain it to me.

Slowly, please…

There is, however, an ulterior motive for this sudden sacking of a driver who was still getting up to speed in Formula One. I’m reliably told that Max Verstappen has told Horner and Marko he doesn’t want Sérgio Pérez in the team next year, regardless of the fact he’s under contract with Red Bull for 2024.

The clash in the opening lap of the sprint race in Austria was the last straw for the Dutchman and, given his position inside the team,

what he wants will be done – and you can take that thought to the bank!

So, clearly, de Vries was not an alternative to Pérez and Marko doesn’t rate Tsunoda highly enough to promote him.

Verstappen wanted Ricciardo back as team-mate, now certain he’s the undisputed number one driver at Red Bull, so the Australian has been given 12 races to prove he deserves the promotion.

If he does a reasonably good job at AlphaTauri, Ricciardo is likely to be back at Red Bull next year.

If he doesn’t, Marko will have to find another solution, again outside his useless Young Drivers’ program and seems to have targeted Lando Norris as the man he wants.

The fact he’s under contract with McLaren for another two years and has Mercedes knocking on the door for the future doesn’t deter the Austrian, who doesn’t seem to see contracts as meaningful documents. After all, there are very few things money cannot buy in Formula One ...

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FORMULA 1 NEWS – LUIS VASCONCELOS

RICCIARDO’S TRIPLE MISSION!

DANIEL RICCIARDO’S move to race for AlphaTauri means a lot more than the end of Nyck de Vries’ short-lived Formula 1 career, because by putting the veteran Australian in its junior team, Red Bull is hoping to answer a few questions that will determine the future of all its current drivers, with the obvious exception of Max Verstappen, who has a rock-solid position at Red Bull Racing.

First of all, seeing Ricciardo back with the Faenza-based team when it is having its least competitive season ever, sitting dead last in the Constructors Championship, means the Australian has changed his tune in a very significant way after being dumped by McLaren last year, with one season to go on his contract.

Red Bull engineering team’s feedback on his work in the simulator and also on him being quickly on the pace as he started testing for Pirelli in Silverstone on Tuesday, has convinced Messrs Marko and Horner that the Australian is back on the pace and can be instantly competitive on his return to racing.

By putting Ricciardo alongside Tsunoda, Red Bull will find out exactly how competitive the man from Perth still is, while at the same time evaluating the Japanese driver’s progression.

In reality the arrival of Ricciardo back in Faenza is a blow for Liam Lawson, as Marko’s previous indications were that the Kiwi would be the man he’d call if he needed to fill a seat at short notice – but that’s not to say the veteran Austrian won’t give him a chance in the future, as Marko is famous for having very strong beliefs at all times but changing them amazingly quickly!

Ricciardo’s return to the grid is also a warning sign for Sérgio Pérez. The Mexican is on his worst phase since he joined Red Bull Racing at the start of 2021, unable to qualify inside the top 10 in the last five Grand Prix pre-Hungary and, even though he’s under contract for next year, with his sponsors being generous to the team’s coffers, he may be dumped and replaced by the Australian if he continues to underperform and Ricciardo shows his former speed is intac.

Prove he deserves to stay in Formula 1 for 2024; be a benchmark for Tsunoda in this second part of the season; and serve as a threat to Sérgio Pérez are Daniel Ricciardo’s three missions starting from last weekend, so there’s a lot hanging on this popular return to Grand Prix racing.

HORNER ADMITS “DANIEL WANTS CHECO’S SEAT!” DANIEL RICCIARDO’S ultimate goal is to return to Red Bull Racing, Team Principal Christian Horner admitted during a podcast he took part in late last week.

Nearly five years after opting against continuing as Max Verstappen’s team mate and signing with Renault, the Australian has accepted to return to Formula 1 mid-season with AlphaTauri, the team that lies last in the championship having scored just two points since the start of the year – but his goal is to go back to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull, from 2025, according to Horner.

The British manager explained that, “at the moment, there’s only something in place with Daniel until the end of the season, so there are no thoughts or expectations beyond that. We’ve loaned him to Alpha Tauri to the end of the year.

Obviously, our drivers are going to be Max and Checo again next year, but it’s always good to have talent in reserve.”

Making his beliefs very clear, Horner explained that, “Daniel firmly wants to be pitching for that 2025 Red Bull seat. That’s his golden objective, and by going to AlphaTauri he sees that as his best route of stating his case.”

But the man who has run Red Bull Racing since the start also explained he knows driving a RB19 quick in a test is one thing but competing with the least competitive car in the field at the moment is another, so there were some answers he wanted to Ricciardo before the deal was done. As Horner said: “First of all, it had to be clear, did he want to do it? Because stepping into an Alpha Tauri is very different to driving a Red Bull car, and it will certainly have its challenges. The thing that we needed to be sure of is was he up for that challenge, scrapping to get out of Q1? But he seemed more than happy to go back into that situation to get back on the

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES grid and be a Formula 1 driver again.”

Horner was at Silverstone for the Pirelli test that proved crucial for Ricciardo’s return and admitted that, “what impressed me the most when I went up to have a look at the test was, bearing in mind he hasn’t been in a car for seven months, within his third or fourth lap, he was down to a time that was within a second of what our drivers were achieving. And then, in his first proper run, on tyres that were comparable, you could see his confidence was growing and growing, Then, on probably what was his seventh lap on the day, the lap time he did would have put him on the front row of the grid, so that was hugely impressive.

I was just pleased to see that he was still able to operate at that level.”

In conclusion, Horner also revealed that, “when I mentioned to him ‘that would have put you on the front row of the grid’, you could see almost the relief in his eyes. It almost was like the pressure released off his shoulders, that he could still do it, that he wasn’t going mad, and the old Daniel was still there. Then his long runs were very impressive and the work that he did

for Pirelli was absolutely on the money.”

But, as Horner said, driving a phenomenal car that is perfectly set-up is one thing, jumping into a car that is not competitive and seems difficult to drive, as the AlphaTauri AT04 seems to be, is another, so the way Ricciardo will fare against Yuki Tsunoda in the final 12 races of the season will determine his future in Formula 1.

Confronted with his boss’ words, Sérgio Pérez reacted coldly to the hint he could be replaced by the Australian, saying that: “I’ve been in Formula 1 for 13 years … My future is in my hands and that’s why I’m focused. I’m a winner, I don’t like having bad weekends – it’s not what I’m here for. I’d rather be at home doing something else. I’m here because I know that I can do it and I’ve done it before. People on the sofa forget how much in the spotlight we are. You’ve seen it with other drivers, other teams, they’ve had difficult periods. But then they don’t have 20 replacements after each session like they do with the Red Bull drivers.”

IS RED BULL TRYING TO DELAY THE NEW RULES? CHRISTIAN HORNER and Max Verstappen’s catastrophic predictions about the way the proposed 2026 technical regulations will affect the cars will race each other, hasn’t been met with any sympathy by their fellow competitors with Toto Wolff openly mocking Red Bull’s fears, insisting that “Horner is obviously frightened because he’s probably been told by his people on the PU department that they are way behind schedule with their 2026 engines and he’s trying to change the rules to try and put us all in the same boat. But that won’t happen, I can assure you.”

The Red Bull leader and driver spoke of their worries in Austria and, Wolff apart, it took the other teams a few days to react, with both Ferrari and Alpine siding with Mercedes to guarantee there’s absolutely no need to make any major changes to the proposed 2026 Technical Regulations.

Even before the cars took to the track at Silverstone, Ferrari’s Frédéric Vasseur told us that, “it’s not possible to draw any conclusions about the effect the new rules will have on racing and safety, for the simple reason the rules have not been defined. We don’t know the side of the tyres, which is a very important factor in terms of grip and also aerodynamics, of course; we don’t know the weight of the cars; we don’t know what the aerodynamic platform will be; so, without knowing all this, you can do all the

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simulations you want but you’re based on very loose estimations you’re doing by yourself, without any hard facts to back them up.”

The Frenchman admitted, however, that, “what we can seriously talk about is about a margin of a maximum of five per cent either way, so instead of getting 50/50 power distribution between the ICE and the hybrid, we’d get 55/45 either way. We’re certainly not talking about big numbers, like going 70/30 or anything like that, so

what’s lacking is the fine-tunning of the regulations and the definition of the final touches, but we’re not talking of any fundamental changes, just small details that won’t really affect the way the cars will perform and race from 2026.”

And Alpine’s Otmar Szafnaeur concurred with Vasseur and Wolff, showing how isolated Christian Horner and Red Bull Racing are on this matter. The American made it clear that, “speaking with our Powertrain guys, we want

Is Red Bull falling behind in the 2026 engine design race?

to keep it as is. I don’t deeply follow it; I wasn’t involved in the negotiations and the reasons why, but I asked them those questions and they said we’re happy to keep it as is. So I would imagine it’s going to be unlikely that it’s changed.” And making a reference to Horner’s catastrophic predictions, Szafnauer joked that, “we haven’t determined how the cars will race yet. I hope it isn’t a Frankenstein package.”

Making the most of his vast experience in the sport, the former Honda man pointed out that, “I remember being in all the meetings to determine what the regulations are now, and everybody, including me, said all the racing is going to be horrible, all the cars are going to look the same, it’s not going to be Formula 1 anymore, and all that.

That really didn’t happen. So it’s hard to predict the future, especially when the chassis regulations haven’t been determined. So hopefully, we’ll get there.”

The general consensus in the paddock is that, without a close link with a car manufacturer, Red Bull has realised it needs one or two more years in the design and development program of its new Power Unit to be competitive and has opted to launch a public campaign to gather support for the rules being delayed, something the other manufacturers, clearly, aren’t going to agree with.

SCAN HERE TO ACCESS OUR COMPREHENSIVE FORMULA1 EVENT PREVIEW

BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF FORMULA 1 INTENSIFIES ANDRETTI FRUSTRATED: “NO TEAM IS WILLING TO SELL!” MICHAEL ANDRETTI and his partners cannot hide their frustration at eight of the 10 existing teams’ opposition to their entry to Formula 1 from 2025 or 2026 and his frustration seems to have boiled over after being told that Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff had advised that, “the way to go is not to add an 11th team into the group, because that will just be taking almost 10 per cent of each one’s individual value, unless you’re really bringing a lot to the table; so I would say the most sensible and likely to succeed way to enter Formula 1 these days is to buy an existing team.”

The American explained that, “we have contacted all the teams, but no-one is interested. They keep saying ‘buy a team’, but no one wants to sell! They are not even interested in discussion. Everyone has their own reasons – they try to protect their own interests above all, which I can’t blame them for. If I was in their situation, I would probably do the same.”

The former Champcars champion expressed, nevertheless, confidence his company’s bid will be successful, because, “in the end, they are not the ones who will make the decision. It will be up to Formula 1 as well as the FIA to decide if they think our arrival is a good thing. On our side, I think we have everything it takes to be competitive, respectful and bring something extra to the series. I am calm, but feelings and reality are still very different.”

One of the main criticism Andretti has come in for recently is that while Cadillac has been listed as a partner of his team, the deal seems to be just a branding exercise, similar to the one Alfa Romeo has had with Sauber for the last few years. As Ferrari’s Frederic Vasseur openly told AA: “I mean, Cadillac is a big name, for sure, but what are they going to do for Andretti? They’ll be buying Power Units from an existing manufacturer and badging them, so they won’t have any technical involvement, contrary to Audi, Mercedes, us, Alpine or Honda. So, you cannot compare a badging exercise with a sponsorship deal.”

Andretti, however, insists Cadillac is seriously involved in his project even from a technical point of view: “General Motors is very involved in this project. People try to say ‘they’re just putting their name on it’, but they’re not. They are an integral part of the team. When what we have submitted is made public, you will see the extent of their involvement”, the American insisted. With the submissions to become Formula 1’s next team are expected to be made public shortly, it won’t be long before we know who’s right and who’s wrong.

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Mohammed Ben Sulayem (left) and Stefano Domenicali – at odds over control.

THE POWER battle between the FIA and Formula 1 for control of the sport is not close to an end, as a discussion about the future of the regulations recently clearly demonstrated.

In the aftermath of a lengthy interview given by Formula 1’s CEO Stefano Domenicali in which the Italian outlined his and the commercial rights holder’s view of where the sport should head to, the FIA issued a strong statement to make it clear that such matters are its own responsibility.

Domenicali indicated the current hybrid power units are not his favored solution for the sport, pushing for a return to fullyaspirated engines that, with the advent of

e-fuels, will be, in his opinion, more relevant for the future of the car industry. The Italian said that, “with e-fuels, we can consider simpler and lighter single-seaters equipped with naturally aspirated engines without hybrids, capable of reproducing that sound we were accustomed to. We do not want to engage in technological wars against full electric mobility. It is a technology that will have its market, but we believe that Formula 1 can accelerate the possibility of having sustainable fuels at the right price.”

To reinforce his point, Domenicali added that, “Formula 1 has in its DNA the culture of lightening every component of the singleseater as much as possible. I am certain

that there will be research and studies to address this problem, but it will be the next step that will primarily resolve it. If we can be effective in studying and developing sustainable fuels, we can consider the next generation of power units focusing on lightness. We want a competitive engine with a significant horsepower and a more important sound. 99.9% of people want to hear the Formula 1 sound on the track again, and it is a demand that we have put on the table.”

A couple of days later the FIA reacted with a short statement in which the Federation said that, it “notes that comments regarding changes to the framing of current and future Formula 1 regulations have recently appeared in the media. The FIA stresses that, while it welcomes opinions from stakeholders, the regulatory powers over all FIA Championships – including the FIA Formula 1 World Championship – are vested in the FIA. Any technical, sporting or financial sanctions and/or amendments to such regulations will follow due process.”

The battle between FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and Stefano Domenicali started almost as soon as the Emirati took the presidency of the Federation and realised his predecessor, Jean Todt, had effectively given up control of Formula 1 and handed it to the commercial rights holder, so much so that the baselines for the current technical regulations were written by Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds, who were working for the company owned

by Liberty Media.

For the last 20 months, Ben Sulayem has been fighting to get back control of the sport to the FIA and this latest exchange of statements was just another stage of what promises to be a long and potentially damaging war for Formula 1.

SINGAPORE GP PROMOTER ARRESTED ONG BENG Seng, the man who brought Formula 1 to Singapore and remains the owner of the rights for the Marina Bay Grand Prix, has been arrested on suspicion of corruption, a situation that may compromise the future of the night race, in spite of the contract with Formula 1 running until the end of 2029, as a new, seven-year contract was signed during last year’s Grand Prix.

Together with Ong Ben Seng, Singapore’s Minister of Transport, S. Iswaran, was also arrested in connection with the same investigation and the fact that the two man have close links when it comes to the funding of the Singapore Grand Prix has led local analysts to believe the way the deal with Formula 1 is done is part of the probe currently investigated by the country’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau.

While Mr. Iswaran was arrested and then released on bail, but surrendering his passport, Ong Beng Seng was allowed to briefly leave the country, after posting a bail of Singapore$100.000, as he had business appointments to attend – but with the guarantee of surrendering his passport to the CPIB on his return.

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Ong is the founder and owner of Hotel Properties Limited, owning 38 hotels in 15 different countries, from Italy to Vanuatu, as well as being the biggest property developer in Singapore, with similar businesses in Thailand and in the UK. To develop tourism in Singapore he convinced the government, back in 2008, to facilitate the organisation of the first Grand Prix in the country, put up the promoter’s fee by himself, but got the government to pay for all the work required to put together and then dismantle the street circuit.

From the second deal onwards, Ong Beng Seng managed to convince the government to pay part of the promoter’s fee and that has been the trend, as well, in the last two deals with Formula 1 – but he has remained the Singapore Grand Prix Chairman and the owner of the rights to the race.

While preparations for this year’s Grand Prix are up and running, with the race not in danger of cancellation, as we’re just two months away from the night race, the contract signed with Formula 1 last year will be reviewed by the CPIB and, in a country with a record of very low corruption, if it’s found Ong Beng Seng and Minister Iswaran

Bernie Ecclestone and Ong Beng Seng. broke the law to gain an advantage with the deal, then there’s the risk the race will be taken out of the 2024 calendar and beyond by the local authorities.

For now, Formula 1 hasn’t commented on the matter, and won’t do so until it’s clear the Grand Prix contract is under investigation, but the sport is keeping a close eye on the situation as Stefano Domenicali is determined to get 24 races done next year and will have to work fast to replace Singapore should the contract be cancelled by the country’s government.

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MCLAUGHLIN: SETTLED IN CHARLOTTE WHEN SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN ARRIVED IN INDYCAR TWO YEARS AGO, IT WAS A BIG DEAL FOR US, BUT FOR AMERICAN RACE FANS, IT WAS JUST ANOTHER INTERNATIONAL PLAYING IN THEIR SANDPIT. NOW HE IS A RACE WINNER AND IS BUILDING A FAN BASE THROUGH HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL, BUS BROS. AUTO ACTION’S ANDREW CLARKE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM IN CHARLOTTE ...

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN feels at home in Charlotte, North Carolina. With his wife Karly, he’s bought a family home there and says he can’t ever see himself leaving. This means the Kiwi who thinks of himself as an Aussie, except for when the All Blacks are playing, may eventually think of himself as American with some kind of mixed-up accent.

He is a race winner in the IndyCar Series and a series contender against some of the best open-wheeler pilots on the planet in only his third full-time season. Not bad for a bloke from Down Under with more than a decade of running touring cars.

The transition from tin-tops to openwheelers is massive on its own. Add in the move to the USA in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and you have a complex set of changes to manage. He was isolated from some of the most important people in his life, although he does have a wife who was brought up in New York City.

The move went well, and he was focused on his learning tasks. A short period of unrest settled well, and now he is stable. A lot of planning went into the move, with the idea of switching him from DJR Team Penske to

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Team Penske’s IndyCar team started in early 2019 and started to manifest after the Indy 500 of that year.

I was talking with Roger Penske on the grid of the 2019 Indy 500, and he mused with me about bringing McLaughlin to the States while talking about his dissatisfaction with what was going on inside Supercars. This was at the height of the parity battle with the 6th Generation Mustang.

But even then, he wasn’t thinking NASCAR, which, given his previous racing and Penske’s four-car Ford team, was logical, but to run McLaughlin in an IndyCar. I hadn’t thought much about it, obviously, but as we talked, it became clear he had.

The Captain then started the conversation with McLaughlin while planning his exit from Australia. At the end of the 2020 season, he sold his shares to Ryan Story and left

Australia with three titles on the trot, the 2019 Bathurst and our champion.

“It wasn’t much longer after May (2019) that I first got talking to Tim (Cindric) about doing something. And then he’s like, ‘Hey, I thought NASCAR was going to be it.’ And from what I’ve done, that seemed right. But then he said, ‘But I think you would really like IndyCar. It’s a very similar schedule to Supercars.

You race on street circuits. You also get to race the biggest race in the world in Indy.’

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d love to try something completely different.’ And ever since that point when he spoke to me about it in Darwin, I was like, ‘Wow, I want to do it really bad’.”

From there, he did a Sim run, which impressed enough people to organise a test run at Sebring, and then he stayed in the States and did another test at COTA. Then COVID hit, and it wasn’t easy to get to the States. It wasn’t even that easy to travel between our own states.

: Above, Scott arrived in the US to start his IndyCar program in the middle of COVID, it was a big move...

Above right and below: McLaughlin drove for DJR when Roger Penske was part-owner. When Roger left, he went with him ... Left: Scott’s wife Karly, who he met on a 2016 trip to the Las Vegas Karting Nationals (really!), is a New Yorker, but the pair has settled in Mooresville, North Carolina. Bottom: Scott’s world is now 100% IndyCar, and he’s there, in the US, for the forseeable ...

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It wasn’t much longer after May (2019) that I first got talking to Tim (Cindric) about doing something...

“We were scheduled to race that year. I was probably going to do a road course race and an oval just to get two or three races under my belt. But then COVID killed all that. But for them to still have the guts and allow me to come over without even having a race under my belt and being able to do it with the same people was great too.”

A cameo in the

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COVID-delayed St Petersburg IndyCar Grand in October of 2020 gave McLaughin a taste and let Penske’s IndyCar people look at the Kiwi in the competition sense. They liked what they saw. He liked what he did, and the move was now fully confirmed.

In 2021 he was on a steep learning curve, but a second place at Texas Motor Speedway – a 2.4 km 20-degree banked oval – proved the promise. It was an oval, and that is where many expected him to fail.

That was his best finish in 2021.

His challenge was learning the intricacies of IndyCar and driving a car reliant on downforce rather than mechanical grip. Qualifying tyres and carbon-ceramic brakes that could lose temperature quickly made qualifying a challenge. He had to work that out first; how to get everything into the operating window quickly, and it took time. But then, midseason, it clicked.

He won the opening round of

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2022, twice more during the season, and finished the season in fourth, ready to attack 2023 as a contender. Then, when he started Bus Bros on YouTube with his mate and fellow Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden in May 2022, he was also on his way to being a superstar. Bus Bros has more than 2.31m views on YouTube.

He was settling into the US lifestyle.

“I miss Australia a lot, just from a personal point of view,” he said from Team Penske’s headquarters in Mooresville, just north of Charlotte.

“It’s funny, I count Australia as much as my home, except when we’re playing rugby – then I’m an All Blacks fan.

“I think coming here initially ... I came in peak COVID, the elections (Trump v Biden) were happening, all that sort of jazz. So I was like, ‘Wow, this is a pretty crazy life over here.’ But then, once everything settled down after COVID and it was back into normal American life, it’s been awesome.

“I’ve had a massive learning curve with the car, the open-wheeler, and to trust in the aerodynamics more than ever before.

Even just learning the proximity of the race car was big as well. How close can I go to the walls?

“It took me six months, eight months, 10 months to get right, and then all of a sudden, it clicked, and ever since, probably the end of 2021, I’ve felt really comfortable in the race car.

“I think that showed last year with three wins and running top five in the championship. And then this year, I think we’ve had the pace to be in the top three in the championship. We just haven’t executed the way we want as a team and myself. But I think our pace has been strong, and I’ve enjoyed getting to this point.

“I’d say this team and my teammates, Will and Josef, have accelerated that process.

So I’m so thankful for that. We have a really good, respectful, business-type relationship.

I think we all do our separate things. I think it’s a very different dynamic here because you have your own teams in the pit stop, so there’s no double stacking. You’re competing against them. As soon as you put the helmet on and go out on track, it’s legit.

They’re another competitor.

“They’re teammates, and you’re careful, but you want to beat them as much as anyone because you are your own separate teams in that spot. But when we get back to the truck, I’ve never enjoyed working with a

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Alex Palou and McLaughlin (left) lead into Turn 1 at the start of the Detroit street race earlier this year. group like this before. We talk about, “Okay, did that roll centre help? Did those tyre pressures help? Did that shock help?” And by qualifying, hopefully, we’ve all got it right in our own simple ways, and we’re in the fast six – that’s been so enjoyable.

“Then we go out to beat them.”

He was also mentally challenged by his expectations. He was a front-runner in Supercars for many years, and certainly, with DJR Team Penske, he was a contender.

He finished second in the championship in his first season with the team and then won the next three.

IndyCars was a big reset. Even the best aren’t always at the front. In his 2022 IndyCar Series win, Will Power had four out of 17 races outside the top 10 and had only one win. McLaughlin won more races with three, and the third Team Penske driver, Newgarden, won five.

For the biggest race of the year, the Indy 500, McLaughlin started 26th. That would be last grid spot at Bathurst.

“It definitely took a bit because I went from Supercars, where I had to be top three, top four every round, and if I wasn’t, it would piss me off. You can’t do that in an IndyCar. “Honestly, what Alex Palou is doing right now is very impressive (four wins from 10 races so far and a worst finish of eighth), but he’s bound to have a bad race at some point. It’s so hard to do what he’s doing by being in the top six every qualifying, being on the podium every race. It’s incredible.

“It took me a bit to understand that and figure out that you can’t do what we were doing in Supercars, where we won 19 races a year. It’s just not going to happen in IndyCars – it’s too close. And that’s the nature of having such a controlled racing car. Everyone’s got mostly the same equipment to a point, but you can definitely execute consistently and make the most of a bad day.

“What I enjoy now is the mentality of it. If an eighth is what it is, take the eighth, don’t try and make it a third, which is what I used to do. In the end, it’s about maximising the opportunities and being consistent.

“Here, it’s just very tough.”

It’s a bit of a reset of your mind?

“That’s just part of it. I was in my seventh or eighth year in Supercars, so I was locked in, half a veteran for my age, and in a car that was the best apart from Triple Eight. It was expected.

“Now we’re here, and even though we’re in a Penske car, everyone understands how hard it is in terms of just how close it is. I qualified second at Detroit; the next week, I was 18th at Road America. That’s just how it is. It’s just crazy.”

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Charlotte is more than just a motorsport Mecca. It is a metropolis of just under three million people with a well-developed banking and finance industry, the second largest in the US. Just about every NASCAR team is also based there or thereabouts, and the Haas F1 team is there too. There’s even a wind tunnel in the back blocks of Mooresville near Team Penske.

Brisbane is about the same size and shares a sub-tropical climate, although it doesn’t have quite the same motorsporting gravitas. The similarities in size and climate,

There’s a lot of race people around there, and you’re not far from the shop, so you sort of feel like you should go to the shop.

“When I’m in South End, if I come up and see you, I go and train and make it count.

If I need to come to the shop, I’m here, and I’m here for a couple of hours, and I’m here not just to be here. That’s how I’ve sort-of always worked, even at DJR. I was in Brisbane when I could have been on the Gold Coast.

“But I’ve enjoyed figuring out where we want to be, buying a house, making it

join Holden Racing Team and DJR Team Penske, and he approached the decision very logically with a pros and cons list, as he explained to The Athletic earlier this year.

“I nearly drove for the Holden Racing Team in Australia. I was speaking to Roger, and I was speaking to the Walkinshaw family at the Holden Racing Team at the time. though, helped the transition. As did having an American wife, Carly.

“The climate is a little bit different, but it’s been fun, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

I’ve had a simpler transition to most people, probably because my wife Karly’s American, so I sort of understood things like celebrating Thanksgiving, which wasn’t new to me. I think just being here and experiencing different seasons and stuff like that is interesting.

“I’m trying to slow down how I talk because we do speak a little bit faster in Australia. You’ve really got to slow down ...

“I feel like we’ve settled into life here.

We’ve got a lot of friends, play a lot of golf, and the team has been great too. We have a great relationship with all our team.

“You could live out here in Mooresville on a bit of an acre or a bit bigger block, or you could live downtown. Having a house was a little different for us because we lived in Brisbane for so long in an apartment.

“We’ve just moved into a house now in the South End. But I sort of like getting away. It is very race-driven when you’re up here in Mooresville and Cornelius (a good halfhour’s drive), which is north of Charlotte.

happen, and just living the American dream a bit.

“I really want to retire here in America. I’ve done what I wanted to do in Australia. For me, America is where I’d love to have my children if we’re lucky enough to have them, and they’ll have a US passport and probably a New Zealand passport, which is pretty awesome.

“The opportunity for them here is cool, and I like it here. I don’t know what it is. I miss my family. I miss my friends. It’s really hard because I was telling my best friend last night, who was the best man at my wedding, there’s the potential for me not to return for Christmas.

“I’ve got testing going on here, and our life’s here. We’ve got to figure out a few things. But if you asked me where I want to be in the 10 or 15 years, it would be here.”

In a sliding doors moment back in 2016, he was weighing up an offer to

Leading Romain Grosjean at St Petersburg – before their controversial crash ...

Right: Penske Racing, in Mooresville, is massive, impressive ... all that and more.

Note Penske’s restored old (blue) transporter! Images: ANDREW CLARKE

“ ”

“I’d say this team and my teammates, Will and Josef, have accelerated that process.

So I’m so thankful for that ...

“It’s not there anymore. There were contracts and stuff, but it was just an offer, right?

“But I remember writing down a list of pros and cons for both teams, and I’ve still got that piece of paper today. It’s actually in a photo frame: Penske and HRT, working out ‘America vs Not America’ and ‘Factory team vs Not Factory team.’

“Ultimately, I wanted to drive for Roger Penske. That was basically it, whether the American (move) came off or not. That was pie-in-the-sky stuff at the time. But it did come off in the end.”

You get the feeling when you talk to him at Team Penske that he made the right decision, not just because he won three titles but because of where he is today.

Physically and mentally. He is relaxed and at home. When you walk around the massive Team Penske complex with him as your tour guide, you understand why he feels that way.

The complex is vast and, well, complex.

He doesn’t dwell much in the vast NASCAR

area that once housed 80 cars but now has, by the regulations, just 28. This is Ford territory, and he’s Chev now. There’s also a heap of space for Team Penske to build a wall and start something else under the same roof.

We pause to watch pit-stop practice as an electric NASCAR drives into the pitbox and a crew of former athletes, mostly American football, fly into action. There is an electric IndyCar for the same practice.

Then it is his area, with the IndyCars sitting in a much smaller but similar area as the NASCARs. The walls are decorated with the wins and history that make Team Penske the leading team in the States. He paused briefly at Josef Newgarden’s nearly fully restored Indy 500 winner from May, he says his car will be there one day.

There’s plenty of talk with people as you go, they uncreatively call him Kiwi, but he is settled. We go over his race car and he explains a few of the things he had to learn.

We don’t visit the IMSA team, but we do see the first motorsport transporter that was used in the States. It was a barn find that Penske himself had no interest in, but others inside the Penske organisation did and fully restored the truck. Then there’s the Indy winners’ helmets where he wants his

to sit. These are ‘as-worn’, bugs and all.

He looks well and truly settled and comfortable in his new life. He has built relationships much the same way as he did in Australia. He looks a long way from the young adult that fled Australia to embrace new challenges and to escape the politics of the sport he loved.

Join us for Part 2 in the next issue of AA as we explore the reasons for his move.

En route to a big win at Barber Park. Far left above: Roger Penske congratulates his latest young star.

Above left: With Penske Team President Tim Cindric and Josef Newgarden. Above right: With his US fans at the Detroit street race.

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GOODWOOD SHINES IN MILESTONE FESTIVAL EVENT WEATHER THREATENED TO DAMPEN THE OCCASION, BUT THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED WAS AS SPECTACULAR AS EVER, WITH SOME OF THE RAREST AND FASTEST CARS FROM THE PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE ...

John Goss and Armin Hahne jumped back behind the wheel of their 1985 Bathurst 1000 winning Jaguar XJS.

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McLaren’s 60th anniversary celebrations formed a big part of the festival with cars such as the McLaren Chevrolet M8F on show.

Eight time 500cc world champion Giacomo Agostini jumped back into the leathers at Goodwood.

The Sunbeam V12 Tiger fired up at 98 years young.

Right: Sebastian Vettel talks with Karun Chandhock in front of a sea of people.

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

WHILST GLOBAL names such as Sebastian Vettel and Rowan Atkinson were just some of the stars entertaining the crowd, the Australian presence at the 2023 Goodwood Festival event was unmistakable.

A “very nervous” Oscar Piastri was a big part of McLaren’s 60th anniversary celebrations driving James Hunt’s #1 M26 from 1977.

Piastri’s manager Mark Webber also jumped behind the wheel, for a leisurely drive of the Porsche 356 'No 1 Roadster'.

This was one part of the Porsche themed festival celebrating 75 years since its first sports car.

Another Aussie world beater, but on two wheels, Casey Stoner, was reunited with two of his most successful Ducatis including his 2007 title-winner.

He and fellow Australian 500cc world champions Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner, plus Italian motorcycling racing

MotoGP world championship leader Francesco Bagnaia performs a burnout on his Ducati.

Aussie young gun Oscar Piastri puts the foot down in James Hunt’s #1 1977 McLaren M26.

The Sauber-Mercedes C9 raced by Elliot Cole and Karl Wendlinger with lights on. legend Giacomo Agostini were part of the special MotoGP demonstration with bikes from 1949-2022.

The event was the scene of a special reunion for 1985 Bathurst 1000 winners John Goss and Armin Hahne.

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Piastri’s manager Mark Webber also jumped behind the wheel for a leisurely drive of the Porsche 356 ...

Current owner Mike Roddy sent the Melbourne based Jaguar XJ-S to England which meant Hahne saw the green machine for the first time since that special day in October 28 years ago.

Another car familiar to Australians was Garth Tander’s 2010 HRT VE Commodore, which wowed the fans with some V8 muscle.

There were plenty of Formula 1 cars charging up the hill including the 2018

Ferrari, 2021 Mercedes and notably Nigel Mansell’s 1992 Williams FW14B driven by Vettel – with sustainable fuels.

But one of the most emotional moments was produced by Mick Schumacher, who steered the Mercedes W02 his father Michael raced in 2011.

For the record, the F1 inspired McLaren Solus GT was the fastest, completing the 1.89km course in 45.3s at a top speed of 240kph. Thomas Miles

Mark Stewart driving the Tyrrell-Cosworth 006 his father Jackie raced in 1972 and 1973.

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DUALING AUSSIES: AN F1 HISTORY

WHEN OSCAR PIASTRI AND DANIEL RICCIARDO TOOK TO THE GRID TOGETHER IN HUNGARY, IT WAS THE 88TH TIME THAT TWO OR MORE AUSTRALIANS HAVE DONE BATTLE ON A FORMULA 1 TRACK

By Timothy W Neal THE LAST time two Australians lined up on an F1 grid before Piastri and Ricciardo was in 2013 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, when Mark Webber bade farewell with a podium at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.

That race was the 50th time that he and Ricciardo had shared a track together, adding to the 87 times that two or more Australians had done so since the first occasion in 1957.

Three years after Melbournian Tony Gaze was the first Aussie to take to an F1 grid, the first such occasion of a down-under duel was between the

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legendary Jack Brabham, our first F1 champion, and Paul England.

That took place on August 4 of 1957 at the Nurburgring, with England having to retire after four laps when his privateer Cooper T41 suffered distributor issues, with Brabham doing the same after 6 laps with transmission issues.

England wouldn’t race in F1 again, but did win three Australian Hill Climb championships in the 70's.

The following year, Melbourne-born motorcycle racer Ken Kavanagh failed to make the starting grid in two races, at Monaco (DNQ) and Spa (DNS) in a Maserati 250F, with a blown engine

Main: Two Aussies, Brabham and Paul England, first raced together at the 1957 German Grand Prix.

Left: Hawkins heads Brabham at Monaco.

Above: Sir Jack Brabham at Brands Hatch (1964). Top: Frank Gardner pilots a Brabham at Monza in '65.

Right: The current duo ... Centre: Tim Schenken heads Brian Redman (BRM) and Dave Walker at Watkins Glen. Bottom: Walker, Lotus-mounted, at Brand Hatch.

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

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The next occasion came in 1964 when Frank Gardener started his first F1 race in a Brabham-Ford BT10 ...

in pre-race practice derailing his effort at Spa when he would have started with Brabham after qualifying.

(Kavanagh was also the first Australian to win a Motorcycle Grand Prix, in 1952, at the 350cc Ulster GP).

Kavanagh’s failure to make the grid means that the effort isn’t counted amongst the 88 occasions of Aussies meeting on track.

The next occasion came in 1964 when

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Frank Gardener started his first F1 race in a Brabham-Ford BT10, also against Brabham at the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, where he had an accident on the opening lap.

The following year would see that pair race together four more times, with the Richmondborn Paul Hawkins also joining the party in 1965.

Alongside Brabham and Gardner, that would be the first occasion that three

Australians would race together, which occurred on three occasions that year: Round 1 in South Africa at the Prince George Circuit; Round 2 at Monaco; and Round 7 at the Green Hell (all three drove Brabham-made cars after Hawkins switched from a Lotus 33 to a Brabham BT11 after Round 1).

The South Africa round would also be the only race in which all three would make the finish line.

In Brabham’s last F1 season, in 1970, he would contest four races against Tim Schenken, who raced for Frank Williams in a De Tomaso-Ford 505/38 in his first F1 season.

Schenken had won the British and French F3 championships prior to 1970, and would also go on to have success for Ferrari racing Sports Cars.

Neither Brabham nor Schenken would finish a race together at Austria, Italy, Canada, and Watkins Glen, with Schenken not finishing any, thanks to mechanical issues.

In 1971, Formula 3 gun Dave Walker participated in his first F1 race for Round 4 at the then notorious Zandvoort circuit in a Lotus 56B – Walker spun out and crashed on lap 5, and Schenken retired after 38 laps with suspension issues.

They in fact would have had a prior chance to race together at Spa, but the circuit was deemed unusable due to safety standards – Spa wouldn’t host another F1 race until 1983.

Walker instead drove in a nonchampionship race at Hockenheim called the Rhein-Pokalrennen where he finished ninth.

James Hunt – whom Walker demolished in F3 that year to win the championship – later said that the Australian's failure in F1 was simply “inexplicable”.

The following year saw Walker and Schenken share the track 10 times, with Schenken taking on a full season in a Surtees-Ford, and Walker racing rounds 1-9, and 12.

Vern Schuppan was also meant to start his first race in 1972 at the Nivelles circuit in Belgium in Round 5, but his BRM P153B was commandeered by the Austrian Helmut Marko in Qualifying after a BRM seat shuffle, when fellow teammate Peter Gethin crashed out.

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Schuppan got his chance in 1974, when he contested rounds 5-11, with both Schenken and Schuppan only qualifying for Races 5 and 6 together, in Belgium (Nivelles) and Monaco, whilst Larry Perkins' attempted F1 debut in Round 11 ended in a DNQ at the Nurburgring after crashing in practice.

1975 saw Alan Jones – the Aussie who would claim the fourth and last F1 title by an Australian, in 1980 – make his F1 debut in a Hesketh-Ford 308B at the Montjuic street circuit in Spain during Round 4 (DNF). At Sweden’s Scandinavian Raceway he shared the track with Schuppan in Round 7, whilst Walker wouldn’t make the qualifying grid in his second attempt of the season.

Jones and Perkins would then add eight more Aussie double entries to the record in 1976 when Perkins made his F1 debut in a Boro-Ford 001 at the Montjuic Circuit in Madrid for the first European race of the year.

It was a horror debut year for Perkins, who would only finish three of the races, and in that same year, it was also the last occasion where three Australians would share a track together.

The penultimate round of the season at Watkins Glen in the US saw Warwick Brown contest his one and only F1 race, in a Wolf– Williams Racing FW05 – a race in which he

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1975 saw Alan Jones - the Aussie that would claim the fourth and last F1 title by an Australian in 1980... Make his debut.

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Larry Perkins (in plain white helmet) hustles the difficult Boro Ensign around Monaco ('76).

Far left top: Alan Jones drove for Durex Team Surtees in '76, here in Japan. Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo – at the Melbourne GP. Warwick Brown's sole F1 start was at Watkins Glen in the #21 Wolf.

Left: Vern Schuppan , Theodore Racing Ensign, Monaco, 1974 ... Lower opposite: LP, in the Brabham Alfa, heads AJ in the Surtees – Watkins Glen, 1976. Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

stuttered to the finish line with gearing and brake issues, five laps down. With Perkins breaking his suspension on lap 30, 1965 in South Africa would still remain as the only F1 outing in which three Aussies would actually finish a race together.

In 1977 Jones and Perkins raced together one last time at Circuit Zolder in Belgium, and after Perkins failed to qualify in Rounds 8 and 9, he was replaced by Frenchman Patrick Tambay at Surtees Ford. Schuppan then raced for the British Surtees team between rounds 10-12, sharing the track with Jones three more times, at Osterreichring, Zandvoort (career best P7), and then Monza.

Also in that year, at the Round 10 Silverstone GP on July 16, Melbournian Brian McGuire made his F1 debut, but failed to qualify, in a Williams FW04 – which could have made it another occasion with three Aussies.

Tragically, McGuire never got the chance again after being killed in the same car whilst practicing at Brands Hatch the following month.

The September 11 race at Monza in 1977 would also be the last time two Australians would share an F1 track until Webber and Ricciardo in 2011, on July 8-10 at Silverstone, where the Honey Badger would make his debut for Toro Rosso in the STR6.

In their 50 races together, Webber was also the only Aussie to win an F1 race whilst competing on the same track with a compatriot, winning at Brazil in 2011, then Monaco and SIlverstone in 2012.

The Brabham boys briefly flirted with the possibility of contesting race together in 1990, but when Gary quit the awful Italian Life Racing team in disgust after two DNQs, he almost joined the MRD Productions team driving a Brabham-Judd BT59, but an issue over his prior contract with the Italian team meant the seat went to his brother David.

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AUSSIES TO HAVE SHARED AN F1 TRACK 1957 Jack Brabham/Paul England – 1 Race 1964 Jack Brabham/Frank Gardner – 1 Race 1965 Jack Brabham/Frank/Gardner/Paul Hawkins – 4 races. (Hawkins started in three of those races) 1970 Jack Brabham/Tim Schenken – 4 Races 1971 Tim Schenken/David Walker – 1 Race 1972 Tim Schenken/David Walker – 10 Races 1974 Tim Schenken/Vern Schuppan – 2 Races 1975 Vern Schuppan/Alan Jones – 1 Race 1976 Alan Jones/Larry Perkins/Warwick Brown – 8 Races. (Brown started in one race) 1977 Alan Jones/Larry Perkins/Vern Schuppan – 4 Races (Perkins started in 1 Race) 2011 Mark Webber/Daniel Ricciardo – 11 Races 2012 Mark Webber/Daniel Ricciardo – 20 Races 2013 Mark Webber/Daniel Ricciardo – 19 Races 2023 Oscar Piastri/Daniel Ricciardo – 1 and counting

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RaceFuels is Australia’s leading fuel supplier to the motorsport industry. Established in 2003 this Family run grass roots operation acts as a conduit between the major oil companies and motor racing throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

RaceFuels imports and distributes Elf Racing fuel which is supplied as a control fuel to the Bathurst 12 Hour, GT World Challenge, Carrera Cup, TCM, TCR, and S5000.

In addition, they are engaged by BP to produce and distribute the E75 racing fuel for all Supercars events.

Fuel supply service, fuel logistics and compliance for major events and championships has become RaceFuels skillset servicing over 1.5 millions into over 50 race events per year.

RaceFuels has a circuit racing focus with bowsers and tanks at SMSP, Sandown, Phillip Island and now a new facility at Queensland Raceway-having just installed a purpose-built facility with self-serve bowsers and storage tank installation.

“Setting up a bowser for E85 and Elf Race 102 in Queensland is an important step to offer the motorsport community high-quality fuels at the best possible price and filling via the bowser there are no drum or freight costs – as well as the obvious safety improvements for the competitors not having to transport fuel to the track in their own vehicles.” Said Mark Tierney-CEO of RaceFuels.

Using the experience of their self-services gained at Phillip Island and Sydney Motorsport Park, RaceFuels

offers QR an asset which benefits a club day user, a weeklong corporate booking, a drift festival and a state or historic race meeting.

Three fuels are available at the new Queensland Raceway RaceFuels site – 98 RON, E85 and Elf Race 102 fuel bowser, with an easy payment terminal option which takes credit card, RaceFuels account cards and tap and go paywave.

A canopy protects the pumps from both the extreme sun and extreme rainfall; it’s lit for night events and there is a large concrete access driveway so you can drive a race car from pit lane to the bowsers without driving on a public road.

Major off-street events have already praised RaceFuels for solving the problem of unregistered cars getting access to fuel.

“The tanks are above ground and concrete-lined which is excellent for fuel quality, and the system is designed to handle major events with extra-large E85 and 98 tanks.

“The pumps have been open for a couple of weeks, with a formal launch planned for the SpeedSeries round.

“The system has already seen several hundred transactions and the historic round last weekend went well.” Tierney confirmed.

RaceFuels has invested to improve QR’s fuel area for when we attend a national race meeting and has just purchased a fresh tanker to keep up with demand.

For further information visit www.racefuels.com.au

NATIONALS WRAP

BENSON BLITZES BASKY HILLCLIMB

By Martin Agatyn STUART BENSON has capped off a stellar month and a half by winning his first outright Tasmanian Hillclimb Championship at Baskerville Raceway on July 8.

Benson’s hillclimb title followed on from a winning drive in the Sports GTA category of Tassie Tin Tops Supercars support class at Symmons Plains.

A total of 31 starters completed six runs of a 1.6km journey locally referred to as the Long Basky Hillclimb.

Despite wet and slippery conditions being on offer across the first three runs, it was clear Benson was the driver to beat from the outset.

After setting the fastest time in his Subaru STi S202 in the first run, he went three seconds faster on his second attempt. A minor off circuit excursion cost valuable seconds on the third run.

Defending Tasmanian champion Rod Bender (Volkswagen Golf-R) then posted the fastest time of the day by almost a second in drying conditions in his fourth run.

Bender still held the time to beat after the fifth run, but Benson pulled out all the stops in his sixth and final outing to set a new time to beat on softer tyres.

Unfortunately for Bender, he was unable to better the mark, falling short of back to back titles by just 0.09s.

Leigh Ford easily won Class B while (below) Stuart Benson took the outright victory.

Images: GVS MEDIA David Michaelson (Nissan Skyline GTR), was also on the pace for most of the day, to finish third and just 0.04s behind Bender in an extremely competitive battle.

The first three outright drivers also claimed podium honours in Class F for allwheel-drives.

The best of the non-all-wheel-drives was Geoff Stevens (Ferrari F430 Challenge), who was fifth outright, also winning Class D (engine sizes between 3.0 and 4.5 litres).

Leigh Ford (Honda Integra Type R) was at his usual giant-killing best, posting the eighth-fastest time to easily win Class B (1.6-2.0 litre).

The only other non-all-wheel-drive to finish in the top 10 was former Tasmanian sports sedan champion Michael Elliott (Mazda RX-7), who also finished second in Class D.

Further down the field, Class E (over 4.5 litres) was won by Andrew Hayhurst (Holden Commodore), in 17th outright, with Wayne Monson (Ford Escort) taking out Class C (2.0-3.0 litre) and finishing 14th outright.

Class A (under 1.6 litres) was the second-most popular class on the day, with a competitive field, seeing Ashley Bell topping the timesheet in a Hyundai Excel.

HAMLETT AND MORLEY SET THE PACE AT COLLIE TOM HAMLETT and Peter Morley were on the pace as more than 120 competitors took on back-to-back rounds of the WA State Speed Event Series in Collie Burn recently.

The seventh and eight rounds of the 2023 WA State Speed Event Series were both held at Collie Motorplex across the July 8-9 weekend.

A strong field of 76 drivers hunted for the perfect lap time on the long course at the Collie Burn based circuit.

Despite many putting up their best shot throughout the 38-minute session, one driver appeared destined to get their hands on the trophy, Hamlett raced out of the blocks in his Dallara F3 with some fast times, kicking things off with the strong time of 1:07.2246, Morley took out the second day’s win. Image: CAMERON McLAREN

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which would have been enough to beat the rest.

He would eventually record a blistering 1:06.4791 with his ninth and final lap of the day to take the trophy.

It proved to be almost two seconds too much for the rest of the field with Peter Morley the next best recording a 1:08.4547.

Whilst the gap between first and second was distant, the wrestle for the minor positions was much tighter.

Morley edged out John Webb by half a second, while Robin Mullett, Bradley Scrivener and Justin O’Hehir were more than six seconds off the pace.

After missing out on Saturday, Morley hit back on Sunday by taking out the eighth round of the WA State Speed Event Series.

With Hamlett not backing up for a second day in a row, Morely took the limelight to be the dominant figure on the short course.

His 40.4734s lap time in the OMS CF 10 destroyed Cosi Sorgiovanni’s previous lap record that stood since 2019 by over two seconds.

Webb was the runner-up 2.5s off Morley’s top time with Scrivener’s salvaging third after a tight multi-car battle.

Morley’s success elevates him to third in the 2023 WA State Speed Event Series championship standings, which are fronted

by Scrivener, who holds a 16-point lead over Andy Thomas.

The ninth round will be held at Wanneroo Raceway on Saturday, August 5.

Thomas Miles

Image: DAVID BATCHELOR

HARBY AND ROEHR OFF TO A FLYING START

CARL HABY and Chloe Roehr (above) is the combination to beat after winning the opening round of the 2023 AORRA South Australian Off Road Championships began at New Well.

Haby and Roehr overcame the loose dusty conditions in their Element Prodigy Toyota to win the Ramco Earthworx Riverland Enduro at New Well on July 15/16.

Whilst competitors were excited for the season ahead, there was a tinge of sadness as the event was dedicated to the memory of much liked local racer Toby Francombe, who passed away earlier in the year.

As Haby and Roehr proved too tough to stop, Brenton Forsyth (Southern Cross/ Nissan) followed up his recent win at Port Germein with a strong second.

This meant Adam Bierl and Nyree Burmingham had to settle for third, but it is a result they would have been pleased with in their Jimco Chevrolet after a less than ideal run in qualifying.

Fletcher and Andrew Murdock looked half a chance to win on day one in their Element Prodigy Chev.

However, a slow start on Sunday’s long course section dropped them back to fourth at the flag.

Peter and Sophie Tamblyn enjoyed a steady run to fifth in their Taber S1 Honda, well clear of Toby Reimann and Craig Redding (Scorpion/Volvo).

The Volvo runners had to fend off Brenton and Matthew Gallasch for sixth, Nick Burt/ Alex Burt, Stephen Brown/Jack Brown and Tim Davey/Duncan McKay completed the top 10.

Evan Lampard and Josh Gaskin in the Southern Cross/Nissan had been in touch with the front runners on Saturday, but their promising run was cut short on Day 2 by a fuel leak.

Brett Plant driving a Jimco Chevrolet also showed some pace in the opening section until a power steering failure occurred on Sunday morning.

Another promising run that ran out of puff on Sunday was Dean Carter and Brad Jacob, who battled electrical problems.

In addition to their overall success, Haby and Forsyth took the top two spots in the SAORRA Multi Club series section of the race.

They finished ahead of Reimann and Gallasch in that particular battle.

Class winners were Haby/Roehr (Unlimited), Brown/Brown (Class 1), Taylor/Taylor (Class 2, Burt/Burt (Class 4), Davey/McKay (Class 6), Tamblyn/Tamblyn (Class 10) and Murdock/ Murdock (Class 11).

The second round of the 2023 AORRA South Australian Off Road Championships will be the iconic Pines Enduro at Millicent on September 22-24, while a non championship David Larter Memorial Day Night Enduro will be held on August 18-20.

David Batchelor

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Images: SEVEN70 PHOTOGRAPHY

MAHON SNEAKS AHEAD IN ROB ROY NAIL-BITER THE RESCHEDULED EZI Up and Go Victorian Hill Climb Championship round at Rob Roy was worth the wait as David Mahon (above) and Patrick Malanaphy (far right) chased glory.

What was originally scheduled to be the opening round of the season in January, the event was held six months later on an overcast and damp July day.

But the pace on the track was hot as Mahon and Malanaphy traded fastest times.

Mahon impressed in his Dallala Hayabusa F394, but it was Malanaphy showing the early pace.

Spectacularly sliding in his Yacar Crosskart, Malanaphy held the upper hand across the first three runs with a

best time of 28.19s.

But after Malanaphy was hurt by late penalties, Mahon capitalised on the opportunity to snatch the win with a 26.78s run at the death.

Whilst it was a disappointing end, it was an impressive effort to push the reigning back to back state champion all the way.

They were the pace setters in a 50-car field which took on a refurbished Rob Roy circuit for the first time.

A large number of Subaru WRXs benefited from all wheel drive and also lapped some impressive times.

However, it was Mitsubishi EVO 4 runner Jordan James (above left), who beat them all to snag third with a 28.86. David Bell was the best of the Subaru runners in fourth.

Warren Heath pushed his Ford Laser S IPRA to a class win for Improved Production up to 1600cc with a time of 31.73s over Rhys Yeomans’ Honda Civic.

The Production Sports Car up to 2000cc class went to Brody Goossens in his Toyota MR2 after posting a time of 32.56s to win bragging rights over father Mick,

who fell 0.03s short.

Emma Collier was the fastest female after finishing ninth outright in her Subaru WRX. The seventh and final round of the EZI UP and GO Victorian Hill Climb championship will be held at Bryant Park on Sunday, August 27.

Thomas Miles

COTTON JOINS WINNER’S LIST

Image: JILLIAN GRAHAM

BROWN OUTSTANDING AT OAKBURN PETER BROWN (above) has thrown a curveball in the fight for second in the New South Wales Hillclimb Championship after winning the penultimate round at Tamworth.

A total of 27 cars took on a revamped Oakburn Park Raceway for the sixth round of the season and none could stop Brown from taking a maiden win of 2023.

His 1:07.5230 was more than 2s clear of runner-up Mattew Brown after a commanding performance.

Whilst Dean Tighe appears safe at the top of the standings, the results from Tamworth have thrown the fate of second spot into the air with just one point separating second and third.

At Oakburn Park Raceway, Peter Brown was the early pacesetter and never looked back.

He nailed a 1:07.5230 with his second attempt, which proved to be enough to get the job done comfortably.

His fastest time in his #146 ProSport Mulsanne was 2.3s faster than next best Mattew Brown.

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Audi RS4 competitor Mattew Brown was the only driver to be within two and a half seconds from the outright pace.

Whilst the fight for first was settled quickly, the fight for the minor positions was much more fiercely fought.

Cox held off Brian Cox and Paul Finch, who were within two-tenths of each other.

Wayne Penrose rounded out the top five as positions two to six were separated by just 1.2s.

Now attention turns to Ringwood where Tighe will be crowned champion, but it is anyone’s guess for second.

Only one point separates Peter and Matthew Brown in that race for second, whilst a host of other drivers are also in contention including round five winner Amos, who hopes to fire back after missing the penultimate event.

With such a tight fight for second in the championship, an intriguing finale awaits at the season finale, which will be staged on Sunday, August 13.

Thomas Miles

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STUART COTTON became the third winner in as many rounds of the South Australian Motorkhana Championship after prevailing in Mallala.

Cotton joins Craig Michelmore and Tony Wallis on the winner’s list of the 2023 season.

The Mini driver set two new Class A records to take out the winner’s trophy on the Mallala Motorsport Park Skidpan.

Results were awarded on the Driver Performance Index system, which sees competitors chasing target times which are the class records for each test.

Cotton’s DPI was 96.41%, which was just 0.32s ahead of Michelmore.

Opening round winner Michelmore turned heads sporting a spectacularly-displayed XR6 AU Falcon, which sported a tribute livery to Glenn Seton’s 2000 Ford Tickford Racing livery.

The man who won round two, Wallis, continued his consistent form to complete the podium with 92.67s.

After winning the second round in a Mini Cooper S, Wallis switched to a Volkswagen Golf diesel for the third round of the season.

In winning outright, Stuart Cotton set two new class records. Images JOHN LEMM Despite missing out on victory, both Michelmore and Wallis each set one new Class D record.

Fourth was Wayne Casey’s Mazda MX-5, ahead of Ian Folger’s Subaru WRX. Russell Marker (Mazda MX-5), Dave Beames (Delta S), Kym Miller (Peugeot 307), Josh Axford (Ford Fiesta ST) and Phil Wilson (EA Falcon) completing the top 10.

The overall fastest time went to Beames, who stopped the clock at 189.80 seconds from Craig Williams (Manta MS2D) on 194.97.

The victorious Cotton recorded a 197.70s time.

Round 4 of the 2023 South Australian Motorkhana Championship will be in Mount Gambier on Sunday, September 17.

John Lemm Round 1 winner Craig Michelmore was as spectacular as ever in his Falcon.

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NATIONALS WRAP

Images: ANDY STOTT

MARTIN STRIKES BACK REIGNING ARB AUSTRALIAN OFF ROAD RACING CHAMPIONS BRENT MARTIN AND ANDRE DE SIMONE HAVE RETURNED TO WINNING WAYS BY SECURING THE ARB TYREPOWER GRIFFITH-THE GAP 440 ...

AFTER MISSING out in the season opener to South Australians Greg Gartner and Jamie Jennings, Martin and de Simone (above) hit back in Round 2 by recording a crushing win.

As the track dried out, Martin came into his own on Sunday, extending a small lead into a six minute victory and a seventh consecutive outright podium in his Class 1 Jimco.

This left Gartner and Jennings to settle for second in the #410 Class 4 Geiser Bros TT and consolidate top spot alongside Martin in the ARB Australian Off Road Racing standings.

Two-time champions Danny Brown and George Apted (right) were in contention at the service break, being 18s off the pace, but a late belt change proved costly, seeing them lose almost 12 minutes and drop to third.

Another frontrunner to suffer heartbreak was Dale Martin and co-driver Adrian Rowe.

They led the eventual winners by one and half minutes after blitzing the opening section on Saturday.

However, their campaign was cut short on the second section on Sunday by a

broken torque converter.

It was a taxing weekend of racing as just 18 of the large 66-car field finished.

Andy and Fletcher Murdock crossed the line fourth, which was their highest ever outright result at ARB Australian

championship level. To make the feat even more impressive they did it by starting Sunday down in 10th.

Steven and Ella Graham performed on home soil in their Class 10 winning Alumi Craft; backing up their fifth place finish from their season opener at Rainbow.

Another local combination Dean Meginley and Dean Demarco crossed the line seventh, sandwiched between Andy Brown/Danny Hardman and Dean Meginley and Michael Marson/Chris Colborne, who both had tyre dramas.

David and Alice Middlemiss plus Craig

Krog and Dean Searle completed the top 10 with the Queenslanders roaring through the field on Sunday after a broken steering hose hampered their first section.

Locals Rhett Standen and Josh Lyell (left) broke through for a maiden Class 2 victory on home soil, ahead of Russell and Judy Hartnett, who completed just two laps due to an engine failure.

Matt Hummer and Aaron Lukschanderl claimed the Class 6 silverware on debut, while Graeme Hicks and Karl Quast outlasted Queenslanders Hank Parker and Mark Robertson in Class 8.

Matt Lavis and Andrew Dance claimed consecutive Class 66 crowns, whilst H drove their Patrol to Class 7 success.

Jason and Charlotte Richards were rewarded for their Sunday heroics to finish third in Class 1 even after breaking an axle on the start line, while Karl Power and daughter Tess suffered a heavy second lap smash.

Round three of the 2023 ARB Australian Off Road Racing Championship will be the Goondiwindi 400 on August 11-13. Toby Cooper

TASSIN SHINES AT DALBY RICHARD TASSIN and Darlene Blake (right) came from behind to win the Speciality Services QLD Dalby Short Course event last week.

The fifth round of the 2023 ARB Mickey Thompson Tyres QLD Off Road Championship looked to be going the way of Stuart Chapman, who led at the halfway mark.

However, the #17 encountered issues on Sunday morning, which left the door ajar for the rest of the field, and it was Tassin who took full advantage on the technical Weranga circuit and claimed a memorable one minute victory in his Class 6 Can Am. Tassin, who finished fifth at the

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corresponding event last year, held off fellow Class 6 campaigner Tyson Howard #6168 who rose from seventh on the final day.

Howard edged out Christian Trusz by just six seconds in the fight for second.

Current ARB Queensland champion Brice Derrick could only manage fourth in his first championship appearance of 2023.

Meanwhile, Luke Brandon made it consecutive Class 6S titles and fifth outright finishes in his Drells Run Racing Polaris.

This means the Junior champion now sits atop the ARB Queensland championship.

Aaron Phillis #44 claimed the Ultimate Class silverware crossing in sixth, while the first female across the line was Kate Swinglehurst rounding out the top ten.

Only 26 of the 44 crews completed the Dalby, with notables led by Chapman.

The 2023 ARB Mickey Thompson Tires Queensland Off Road Racing Championship now turns its attention to the ARB Goondiwindi 400 on August 11-13.

Toby Cooper

Image: CAPTURE THE DOG PHOTOGRAPHY

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SLIPPERY MALLALA CATCHES DRIVERS OUT THERE WERE a few surprises at a slippery and cold Mallala on July 8-9, for the third and penultimate round of the 2023 South Australian Motor Racing Championships. Auto Action’s David Batchelor braved the conditions to cover the event.

after an evenly fought weekend where race wins fell to Smith (two), Jenkins (two) and Roberts (one).

FORMULA VEE

CIRCUIT EXCELS

ONE OF the big surprises of the weekend was Victorian Joel Johnson not having everything his own way in the Circuit Excels category.

A poor start saw Johnson slip to fifth in Race 3, but victories in the remaining sprints meant he still did enough to claim the overall win. Riley Matheson was best of the rest having taken the Race 3 win after an epic battle Adam Currie, while Nick Scaife picked up the third-place trophy after a solid weekend.

Misch Nowickyj took the narrowest of wins in Excel Masters with Brain Roberts pressuring him all the way, while Kim Anderson was a very distant third.

IMPROVED PRODUCTION

ANDY SARANDIS (Evo 8 Lancer) was unstoppable in Improved Production adding the Michael Rooke Memorial to his trophy collection.

James Sutton (R100 Mazda) making a welcome return to racing to collect second.

A DNF in Race 1 upset a good performance by Anthony Norris (1200 Datsun coupe) who still managed to get on the bottom step of the podium.

SPORTS SEDANS

MYLES BOND (Mazda RX8) took the Sports Sedan honours on debut despite some teething problems with the new car.

Blake Millar shows the way in Historics. Below right: Riley Matheson (21) and Joel Johnson lead the Excel field. Images: DAVID BATCHELOR. Below left: Myles Bond won Sports Sedans ... Matt Longhurst’s Integra blew its engine ... Image: JOHN LEMM

DESPITE THE challenging conditions Daniel Westcott (Jacer F2K5) won all five Formula Vee 1600 races. New South Welshman Hayden Slattery was next best in his Perkins ahead of Rhys Rollond’s BeeCee. Matthew Bialek and his Spectre was equally dominant in the 1200 Formula Vees despite the racing being closer. In the battle for second place, Frank Chessell (Elfin Crusader) edged out Jay Thompson (Spectre).

HISTORICS

Daniel Wallis (Nissan 180SX) kept himself at the top of the Tuff Mounts point score with second place ahead of the unlucky Matt Longhurst (Honda Integra) who exploded an engine in the final race after looking certain to take the overall win.

Josh Pickert showed what the Monaro might do if he can get it to keep going all day in Race 2, but a damaged control arm ended his weekend on Saturday.

SPORTS CARS

IAN WILSON (TVR Tuscan) had no challengers in Sports Cars with Julian Mazzone (Ferrari F430) outlasting everyone else to slot into second. Brett Sundstrom (Porsche 911 RSR) completed the podium despite a DNF in Race 2.

SALOON CARS

SAM MILTON (Commodore VT) looked like he was going to make a Saloon Cars clean sweep but David Lines (Commodore VT) broke away to win the final race.

However, failing to start Race 3 meant he only got enough points for third with the pair split by Jayden Jamieson (Commodore VT). Victorian Keven Stoopman (Falcon AU) was looking good for a top three finish but broke the car on the final day.

BLAKE MILLER (Elfin 630B) had to fight hard for the Historic win but it was made easier when Jim Doig (Motorlab Asp 340) failed to make the chequered flag in Race 4.

Melissa Ford (Mallock U2) kept out of trouble and stayed in the top three all weekend to finish second with Bob Collinson (Asp 340C) picking up third.

The 2023 SA State Motor Racing Championships conclude at The Bend Motorsport Park on September 16-17.

HQ HOLDENS

LEE SMITH won a really tight battle for Holden HQ honours with Nathan Roberts just squeezing into second. It was somewhat of a surprise result with the usual winner Darren Jenkins only managing third

Lee Smith (54) and Darren Jenkins go at it in the HQ contest. Far right: Daniel Westacott dominated the Vees.

Images: DAVID BATCHELOR

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NATIONALS WRAP TIGHT RACING AT MORGAN PARK

WINTER SPRINTS AT THE ISLAND

WINTER RACING descended on the island for the third round of the 2023 Phillip Island Auto Racing Club’s Supersprint Series.

Aside from the single day timed sprint format, the event featured three different categories conducting club championship rounds across the chilly weekend of July 8-9. Auto Action’s Steven Devries reported on the action.

HYUNDAI EXCELS

DALE CARPENTER and Toby Waghorn took the honours in the high field of Hyundai Excels at Phillip Island.

A field of over 40 cars was split into the Masters and Trophy classes contesting three races each.

In Masters, Carpenter secured pole position by an enormous three-second margin over Adam Bywater on a greasy track.

The two front row starters split the first two races one-a-piece, with the third and final race to decide overall honours.

Carpenter rose to the occasion to secure the round win, with Bywater second

overall, followed by Glenn Mackenzie and David Musgrave.

The youngsters in Trophy Class had to compete against Matt Stone Racing Supercars co-driver Jaylyn Robotham.

Despite featuring on the podium three times, Robotham could not nab the top spot in any race.

Toby Waghorn’s two wins to Ashton Cattach’s one was enough to earn top honours for the round.

FORMULA VEE

REEF MCCARTHY bounced back from his accident in May with three comfortable wins in three different sets of weather conditions.

It was greasy track but sunny skies for Race 1, completely dry for Race 2, before the rain arrived prior to the start of the finale.

But none of these challenges proved too steep for McCarthy as Nick Jones and Lee Partridge traded second and third places.

But they both had their turn of bad luck when the rain arrived for Race 3.

As Jones spun out of contention in the

While Reef McCarthy (Main image) was dominant in the Formula Vee races, Nick Jones (leading) and Lee Partridge traded second and third places over the weekend. Images: REBECCA HIND-REVVED PHOTOGRAPHY

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wet, Partridge couldn’t resist a storming drive from Brandon Taylor who recovered after an incident of his own to claim second place.

VICTORIAN SUPERKARTS

THE VICTORIAN Superkarts put on a show with four races scheduled for combined 29 drivers across six classes.

The closest action was the 125 Max Light class, with Russ Occhipinti fighting hard to secure three of the four wins on offer with the winning margin on each occasion no more than two-tenths of a second.

In the other classes, Geoffrey Lawrence secured three wins from four starts in 125 Gearbox with Colin McIntyre doing likewise in 125 Max Heavy.

Joe Brancati and Martin Golledge secured two wins each in Super Heavy, Gary Pegoraro was the overall victor in 250 International, while Oliver Bonaccorso was the only runner in Stock Honda for the weekend.

The fourth round of the Phillip Island Auto Racing Club Supersprint Series is on November 11-12. Steven Devries

THE QUEENSLAND Circuit Racing State Championships made its second visit to Morgan Park for Round 3 of the 2023 season. At one stage the event looked unlikely to proceed, when original promoter Aus Timing pulled out. However, the Warwick District Sporting Car Club came to the rescue and over 90 cars took part across seven categories throughout the weekend.

Tyler Collins dominated the Excel racing on offer winning three of the four races, but slipped to third in Race 2, won by round runner-up Zane Rinaldi.

It was a similar story in the HQ Holden and Germini category where Justin van Twest was in a league of his own for the majority of on-track action.

The first race was far from a simple affair however, as van Twest found himself in a battle with Joseph Andriske.

But it came to an abrupt end on the final lap when Andriske slumped from the front to seventh.

Despite the tough start Andriske fought back to surge to second within three laps in Race 2, where van Twest led every lap.

However, the biggest comeback drive was

by Jake Madden, who flew from last to first in Race 3 and sealed the special result with a final-lap pass on van Twest.

The Super Mini Challenge put on a show, with four winners from four different races.

Trent Spencer, Anthony Elliott, Brayden Larkin and James Cambell shared the wins, but the most consistent was Spencer, who was the only one to crack 100 points.

Grant Green was a class of his own in Formula Ford, storming to all four wins.

Jamieson Davies was next best who was in a fight with Christopher Farrell, but he had to settle for fifth after failing to finish the final race.

Formula Vee was a much tighter affair with three drivers in the mix for round honours. Alex Macdonald started fast, winning the first two races, but a DNF in Race 3 hurt his chances.

This left a duel down to Alexander Hedemann and Matthew Dicinoski.

Despite Dicinoski winning the finale, Hedemann edged to round honours by five points. Alexander Hamilton had a great battle battle with Edward Lawrence (pictured above).

Sports Sedans was a one-sided affair with Phillip Sutcliffe leading Anthony Saint in all four races.

Improved Production was a much tighter affair with the wins evenly split between Paul Spiteri and John Gilbert.

Round honours went to Gilbert, who never finished any lower than second all weekend.

Thomas Miles. Image: PETE TRAPNELLTRAPNELL CREATIONS

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TRAN TROUNCES SYDNEY ENDURO THE MOTOR Racing Australia-run Sydney 300 is a premier event for club-level racers, and this year’s edition was won the hard way by Benny Tran in his very fast Honda Accord. The race, held at Sydney Motorsport Park on July 15 ,will go down as a classic race. Auto Action’s Bruce Moxon reports.

SYDNEY 300

Benny Tran headed home a field of 48 cars to take out the Sydney 300. Driving his Honda Accord, Tran fought back from an early tyre failure to win. From the start, Todd Herring’s MX-5 went to the lead from the Adrian Wilson/Josh Buchan/Lloyd Godfrey BMW M4. Wilson moved into the lead on lap 5, Herring got back to the front a lap later.

Tran pitted on lap 10 with a front tyre having delaminated, dropping him well down the order. Herring held the lead until making his first Compulsory Pit Stop on lap 20.

On lap 27 Parry Anastakis had a massive engine failure in his Peugeot 205, bringing out the Safety Car. Virtually everyone pitted, with all cars (depending on class) having to complete at least one 5-minute CPS. Faster cars would have either another 5-minute stop or a 2.5 minute one.

Cleanup took some time, with the restart on lap 32. Leigh Burgess (Evo 9) held sway, not having stopped, with the Anthony Soole / Adam Burgess M4 next, then Jett Herring’s MX-5. Herring would suffer an electrical problem and stop on the track on lap 45, bringing out the second Safety Car. Burgess pitted on lap 45, swapping over to Gerry Burgess and

would go on to be eighth at the end.

Burgess was now leading, from Cem Yucel/Iain Salteri (VW Scirocco) and Brad and Will Harris (RX-8). By now Todd Herring was out of contention with a fuel supply problem. Tran was flying, making his way to second by lap 61 behind Burgess, who still had a stop to make. Tran had made both his stops under the first Safety car, on consecutive laps.

Burgess pitted on lap 68 and rejoined right in front of Tran (albeit now nearly a lap behind.) Tran was able to ease off and win by 50s from Soole/Burgess with Yucel/Saltieri next. Buchan was flying at the end, making up several spots in the last few laps, but was penalised five laps for a pit stop infringement.

MX-5 / CLUBMANS

COMBINING THE two sports car classes made for some interesting racing. Allan Bugh (PRB) won both races pretty much as he pleased while those behind scrapped. Russel Butler (Arrow) was second in both races with Richard and Tim Herring taking a win and a second each in their MX-5s. Race 3 was marred by a red flag after two cars failed at the start, then a crash late in the event caused it to be declared.

EXCELS

RACE 1 went to Queenslanders Jack Wood, Tyler Collins and George Wood.

Biggest moment of the meeting was the synchronised spinning in Turn 1 of James Lodge, then Gavin Faulkner, who did a 360, plucked a gear and kept going to finish 11th.

The second race was cancelled after a crash on the opening lap. The final race, with a reversed top 10, was an epic.

Faulkner led the first lap before sliding back down the field to be 13th. George and Jack Wood contested the lead until lap 7 of 8, when Collins moved past. In the run to the line, the Woods and Lodge were 3-abreast, with Jack Wood in front,

by 0.04s to Lodge, then Collins and George Wood.

ALFA ROMEO / BMW E36

ANOTHER COMBINED class, the moremodified Alfas were well ahead. All three races went to the Mito of David Capraro after battles with the Alfa GT of Michael Musumeci. Best of the BMWs all day was Rob Boaden.

PULSARS

JOSH CRAIG took three from three.

Dan Smith was second in the opener, retired after a clash in the second and came from rear of grid to be second in the final race.

Benny Tran heads for victory in the Sydney 300.

Above (left) Allen Bugh heads for a Clubman win, tailed by MX5 winner Tim Herring. Above top right: The DNA BMW M4 heads the 300 start.

Above left: Busy opening lap for Excels! Above right: David Capraro dominated the Alfas.

Images: RICCARDO BENVENUTI-PRICELESS IMAGES

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NATIONALS WRAP

Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening ... The Supertrucks thunder into Turn 1 Below left: Nikolaos French heads the Hypers. Right: Brent Edwards leads Super TT. Images: COLSON’S PHOTOGRAPHY

BIG BOYS COME OUT TO PLAY DESPITE BEING IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER AT WINTON, THE SUN CAME OUT TO PLAY FOR A GLORIOUS SECOND ROUND OF THE VICTORIAN MOTOR RACING CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND! SUPER TRUCKS

THE AUSTRALIAN Super Trucks returned to Winton Motor Raceway with a vengeance, pre-event championship leader Barry Butwell showing just how hard his weekend would be, qualifying second place to Steven Zammit who took pole by over 1.7 seconds! Zammit went on to win all four races in his Kenworth 401 ahead of Butwell and Shannon Smith who shared the podium for all four races.

The Super Trucks Team Races told a very different story with Mark Noonan and Lachlan Fern taking the race wins respectively. Congratulations to Steven Zammit and the Direct power Steering entry on taking the round victory in quite convincing fashion.

HYPER RACERS

THE GROWING field of multi-coloured Hyper Racer X1s returned to the Victorian Formula Racing Series bigger and better than ever, sporting 12 entries, five of which were newcomers to the championship.

One of those new-comers was Super2 and Bathurst 1000 driver Zak Best, here to experience the X1 for the first time and get a feel for the growing level of competition inside the Vic Formula Racing Series.

Championship leader Luke Klaver met stiff competition from Damon Sterling, sharing two race wins each and tying for points after Sterling crashed out of qualifying and put on a display of dominance in Race 1 to fight from the back of the grid to second place to keep his hopes for the round win alive. Coming in third was Hamish Leighton with an incredibly consistent weekend taking P3 in all races except the final where

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he was caught and overtaken by Zak Best.

Having tied for points, the final race result determined the overall winner for the round, giving the honours to Sterling. Luke Klaver still retains the overall championship lead.

VIC V8S

THE VIC V8s put on a good show and were a blast from the past and a sight for sore eyes, with an incredibly diverse 17 entries spanning Australia’s motorsport history from XBs to VEs and everything in between.

The VT HSV GTS of Gregory Lynch saw a race win and a P2 finish, but sufferend engine problems and DNFs for the remaining races, leaving the door open for round winner Brian Finn and his VS Commodore to take the top step of the podium for all three remaining races.

Proving age is just a number, the two following podium places for the weekend were secured by the XE Falcon of Allan

Argento and the XY Falcon GT of David Hender respectively. Amazing work by these two fantastic drivers.

The final results, however, only tell half the story. With inconsistent and varied results across the board and such small gaps in points from the top all the way to the bottom of the grid, including a tie for seventh overall between Gary Finemore and Mathew Horne, the racing was as competitive, and action packed as ever.

VICTORIAN SUPER TT CHAMPIONSHIP

CONSISTENCY APPEARED to be key for this round of the Victorian Super TT Championship, with a storm of DNFs across the board radically changing the outcomes for the weekend. None more crucial than Brent Edwards who, in Race 2, suffered clutch failure resulting in a DNF. Despite Edwards winning all three of the remaining races, the round win went to

the Lotus Elise of David Buntin, who kept consistently reeling in points to secure P1 for the weekend.

Coming in third was the N14 Nissan Pulsar of Daniel Devenish who brought home two third place finishes, a fourth and a fifth. Special mention must be given to the Mitsubishi 380s of Neil Byers and Paul Leabeater who both also scored well with podium finishes but were plagued with issues or DNF’s hampering the final result for the weekend. TW Neal The next round of the Victorian Motor Racing Championship is a special one: The return to Calder Park Raceway! The first sanctioned circuit racing event to be held at the venue since the VMRC in June of 2008. The brutal NASCARs and Stock Cars will be doing demonstration laps on the iconic Thunderdome, a spectacle that can’t be missed!

The VMRC will return to the improved Calder Park circuit on the August 12 and 13 2023. Tickets available through: https://www.eventbrite. com.au/e/victorian-motor-racingchampionship-round-3-tickets680658446737?aff=oddtdtcreator

Want to see your category event or news story included in the Auto Action Nationals Wrap.

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Brian Henderson and Adam Workman fight it out in Heritage Touring cars ...

A FEAST OF CLASSIC METAL AT THE HRCC FESTIVAL

Near miss! Douglas Barbour (Porsche) Michael McKelliget (Nissan 260Z) ...

THE HISTORIC Racing and Classic Car Festival run by the Historic Car Club of Queensland (HRCC) was held over July 14 to 16 at Queensland Raceway. It was a great event with some wonderful machinery racing and on display.

Auto Action’s Pete Trapnell was on hand to cover the event as well as supply the wonderful images.

THIS WAS the first time in 16 years the HRCC have held an event at Queensland Raceway with it being their first time around the circuit for many competitors.

The races were held over the weekend on both the National Circuit as well as the Clubman Circuit.

Some Competitors came as far away as New Zealand and Western Australia.

The Oldest car running was an Austin Healey 100 driven by Christopher Komor and the youngest being a Nissan R32 GTR driven by Brian Wood in Regularity.

Unfortunately, the much-anticipated 1984 Kaditcha Cosworth of Bap Ramano suffered mechanical problems during

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Friday’s practice, forcing it to withdraw from the weekend’s events.

Saturday morning started with a thick fog. The lack of visibility meant delaying the first group on track. Due to a small field of Heritage Touring Cars Group C & A (some withdrawing due to mechanical failures on Friday’s session) and running behind time due to fog, it was decided to combine the group with the Sports Sedans Grp U and Invited. This in turn made for one of the most spectacular groups over the weekend. Amongst this group was the 1987 IMSA Mazda RX7, a 450hp 20B Peripheral Port NA Tripple Rotor driven perfectly by owner Glenn Gertstel. Aarron Hodges held the lead all weekend in his Beautiful Ford Sierra Cosworth RS 500.

The other favourite Group of the weekend was the ever-popular crowdpleasing Group N Historic Touring Cars with their races combing both Nc and Nb cars. Ian Mewett in his Ford Mustang came home with the most points followed

by Graeme Wakefield (The HRCC

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Grp Q7R winner Christopher Farrell.

Bap Romano’s legendary Kaditcha Cosworth ... president) and in third was Jamie Tilley.

There was a great range of historic cars over the weekend with the other racing categories being Historic Formula Ford, Racing Q&R, Production Sports S/T and invited and the Regularity Group. Sunday saw a Show and Shine in the paddock followed by some parade laps at lunch giving the owners a chance to show off their machines.

All in all it was a great event that proved popular with both fans and competitors alike.

Group N winner, Ian Mewett leads the field.

The HRCC have scheduled another Historic motorsport festival event to be held at Queensland Raceway on the 27th ,28th, and 29th of October.

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NATIONALS WRAP

Harry Bates dominated the round.

Below left: Eddie Maguire recorded a career-best second place, while Bodie Reading (right) took out the Production category and fourth outright.Images: MTR IMAGES

BATES SNAPS ARC DROUGHT HARRY BATES has won his first Australian Rally Championship round in over a year at Rally Queensland to move into second in the championship.

Alongside co-driver Coral Taylor, the pair took their first ARC rally win together by winning both heats at the Gympie based rally in their #2 Toyota GR Yaris.

Following the heartache of losing the WA Forest Rally after a late penalty stripped them of the lead, there were no such issues in Round 3 as they emphatically took six stages in Heat 2, including the bonus point Power Stage.

The Skoda Fabia R5 pairing of Eddie Maguire and Zak Brakey finished a career best second place, with Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin maintaining their championship lead by rounding out the podium.

For Harry Bates, it was the first time the 2019 champion has stood on the top step since Launceston in June of 2022.

“It’s been a long time; it’s been a tough year without a win – 13 months since Coral and I last won,” Bates said after taking the Power Stage.

“Right now, it’s mixed feelings of relief and total gratitude for our team and everyone who has helped us get back to the top step.

“It actually took a smart strategy from the start. It’s a tough rally, a real war of attrition out there and we saw so many people with issues, yesterday in particular.

“I think our strategy of taking it easy paid off. It was a total sprint between Lewis and I for the Heat win for much of the today, so

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to have both heat wins and my first Power Stage win in a while is cool.

“It’s been a great weekend for Coral and I. Coral has done a great job on some really tough roads – the notes are very busy here.”

It was an unfortunate rally for championship contender Nathan Quinn, as he and his co-driver Steve Winwood-Smith were forced to retire before the opening stage on Sunday after also having issues in Heat 1. The retirement now sees him drop behind Harry Bates into third in the championship.

It was another solid outing for Tasmanian pair Bodie Reading and Mark Young who took outright fourth as well as taking out the Production Cup victory, with Peter Rullo and Ben Searcy finishing behind them, taking out their first ARC top-five finish.

It was a dramatic opening day as the Queensland Rally returned for the first time since 2019 after last year was cancelled due to floods in the area.

30 ARC crews entered into battle for Heat 1 for eight planned stages.

Bates was simply dominant over the opening day, topping Maguire by over two minutes by winning six of the eventual seven stages, as both the championship contenders in Lewis Bates and Nathan Quinn would suffer from mechanical issues.

The only crew that could snatch a stage win on Saturday was Luke Anear and Malcolm Read in SS2, but their campaign ended on the following Kandanga stage with a huge roll at speed, with both crew members thankfully emerging without injury.

Troy Dowel and Bernie Webb also went off the road on Stage 5, which then resulted in a small grass fire which led to the stage being cancelled.

Heat 2 saw less drama, but the attrition rate still claimed two crews which included Quinn’s unfortunate retirement, with Dowel also forced back into the service park with

a broken steering rack in his new Mitsubishi Mirage G4.

After Reading was awarded the Production Cup after his second top-five ARC finish for the year.

The Queensland crews of Ryan Williams/ Brad Jones and Glenn Brinkman/Steve Richardson rounded out the class podium, as well as claiming sixth and seventh in the outright standings.

Victorians Ben Hayes and Cathy Hayes made it three wins from three rounds to snatch another ARC 2WD Cup victory, whilst the ARC Junior Cup win went to Josh Wiedman and Nick Reid.

Rounding out the ARC class trophies was Ian Griffin and Liam Bainton, who took out the ARC Classic Cup. The next rally sees a return to Victoria’s Gippsland area on August 25-27, where last year, Lewis Bates took his first ever ARC win which kicked off his relentless march to the title. TW Neal

INTERNATIONAL

WRC ROUND 8 • ASTONIA

KALLE’S BALTIC SPEED CLINIC

Images: REDBULL CONTENT POOL DEFENDING WORLD Rally champion Kalle Rovanpera and his co-driver Jonne Halttunen have put on an elite display of pace at Rally Estonia to take a significant step towards back-to-back titles.

What was initially looking like a tight championship year in the WRC now looks like the start of a potentially ominous dynasty from the Toyota star.

At the age of 22, his 10 WRC victories already have him among some of the rally greats, with his winning record already comparable to the likes of Ari Vatanen and Richard Burns.

After taking the lead on Stage 6, Rovanpera never looked back to take his third straight Estonia win.

He took an astounding 13 straight stage wins to win by 52.7 seconds over Hyundai i20N drivers Thierry Neuville, and Esapekka Lappi, who continues to shine in his full-time debut for the Korean manufacturer, taking a fourth podium in five rallies.

After entering the rally with a 42 point buffer from his teammate Elfyn Evans, Rovanpera left Estonia with a 55 point lead, with Neuville retaking third owing to an unfortunate hometown outing from Ott Tanak.

“A really important effort this one, for the championship it’s a really important place to get good points,” said a beaming Rovanpera.

“It’s my favourite event on the calendar, and I knew we had to push so a big thanks to the team, they had the car working as great as always.

“It was a shame that we couldn’t fight with Ott this weekend, and I’m sure he will show the speed in Finland.

A big thanks to all the fans, the Estonians have always supported me a lot. It’s such a shame the Rally won’t be here next year, I really love it here,” he concluded, in reference to Latvia taking its place in 2024.

His nod to Ford driver Ott Tanak surrounded the fact that the Estonian started the race with a five minute penalty after having to change his engine after shakedown, which put a huge dent in his championship push, and may have effectively ended it.

Tanak was the only other driver to take stage wins, winning the opening four, and stages seven and eight, and would have led Day 2 if it weren’t for the penalty.

“I would say that the more I have to go through the day,

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the more it hurts,” Tanak said on Saturday.

“Our chances for the championship were quite tight considering our performances this year and we were working hard for these next two rallies. This was a proper kick in the balls.”

An eight car Rally1 field took to the ultra fast and smooth gravel roads around the city of Tartu, and over the course of 300.42km and 21 Stages, it was a rare occasion in which all cars made it through without any real technical issues or major incidents.

The twisty 3.35km opener at Raadi Manor saw Evans lead the way despite Tanak being the quickest, as Lappi and Rovanpera made up the top three heading into the longest day of the weekend, with seven stages covering 133.38km around the north and south of Tartu.

Lappi took another podium for Hyundai, but (below and top) Rovanpera and Halttunen raced to another imperious victory. Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

Despite dominating the opening stages, Tanak had a battle on his hands to rejoin the top ten from P48, as Neuville and Rovanpera could afford to run behind the Estonian as they battled it out at the top.

The Belgian had the edge until Stage 6, with the Finn overturning a nine-second deficit to end the day with a three second lead.

Lappi ended the day in third after dropping behind early with power unit issues, but he fought back to top Evans, whilst in his first rally for Hyundai in place of the late Craig Breen, Teemu Suninen was fifth, 33.8s off the leader.

Rovanpera was devastating on Day 3, sweeping nine stages to head into Sunday with a 30 second advantage.

Evans briefly challenged Lappi for third, but the Finn was able to pick up the pace to create 7.3s split.

Tanak crawled onto the back of the Rally 1 field by stage 11, but was a distant 3:22.7 back from Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta in seventh.

The closing day contained a final 61.08 kilometres, and it was more of the same from the leader, and for the entire field – yet another clean day of faultless driving.

Only Neuville had issues with his hybrid unit, which forced him to slow on the final Power Stage, but P2 was in the bag.

Ford driver Pierre Louis-Loubet was 48.8 behind him, with Katsuta having an uneventful outing to finish seventh over Tanak.

Suninen was impressive in his first WRC rally with Hyundai, taking fifth by 2:21.1s behind Evans, as well as ensuring all three Hyundais were in the top five.

Rounding out the top-10 was WRC2 winner Andreas Mikkelsen, topping fellow Skoda Fabia driver Sami Pajari, with Emil Lindholm completing the second tier podium.

The speed of Estonia will translate nicely into Rally Finland on August 3-6 as one of three remaining gravel events left on the 2023 calendar. TW Neal WRC STANDINGS AFTER 8 ROUNDS 1.

Rovanpera/Halttunen 170 2. Evans/Martin 115 3. Neuville/Wydaeghe 112 4. Tanak/Jarveoja 104 5. Ogier/Landais 98

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INTERNATIONAL

KING DONNY RISES AT ELDORA TEN-TIME WORLD of Outlaws champion Donny Schatz has capped off a huge week at Eldora Speedway by claiming the Kings Royal for the sixth time in 28 KR starts.

At 46-years-old, Schatz also claimed the equal biggest payday of his career, taking home $175,000 – the 13th six-figure prize of the North Dakotans imposing time in Sprintcar.

The 40-lap race for the 40th Kings Royal edition was led from flag to flag by the Tony Stewart/Curb Agajanian racer, leading home last year’s crowntaker Brent Marks by 3.972s, with current WoO championship leader David Gravel rounding out the podium.

Two Aussies also made it through to one of the most coveted races on the WoO calendar, with James McFadden finishing in seventh (continuing his run of top-10 form), and veteran Kerry Madsen (who took out Heat 1 for the 192nd Heat Race win of career) who would unfortunately register a DNF. Although Schatz sits sixth in the standings this season, a recent dip in form made this win all the more emotional.

“I think it’s the adversity lately,” Schatz replied when confronted in Victory lane.

“We’re not performing the way we want, and tonight we did.

“These guys brought a car down from upstairs with a two-year-old motor there … obviously, it runs pretty damn good!

“We tried a lot of different stuff this week.

We came here in May, and we were really good, but the racetrack is different.

“It just takes everything you can get, and these guys just kept digging.

“There isn’t anybody in this pit area that

Schatz (above and right) took out the ‘Royal’ in a field which included current NASCAR star Kyle Larson (far right). Images: RICHARD HATHAWAY wants to run seventh, eighth, 12th, 16th, but we’ve done that. Tonight, I don’t know what you say.

“I guess the stars lined up.”

After securing pole in Heat 6 after executing a pivotal pass on Aaron Reutzel, elevating him from a possible P12 start to P1, the stars certainly were aligned for Schatz.

The Fargo-born #15 racer controlled the entire 40 laps from green, surviving several restarts and early challenges from Gravel on a surface that was lighting fast after early morning rain changed the expected nature of the Eldora track.

For runner-up Marks, it was a resounding

effort to come from 11th, as his valiant charge for back-to-back crowns was thwarted by the only other driver that can lay claim to that feat.

Gravel equalled his best finish at the

Kings Royal, beating home Sheldon Haudenschild and the Knight Before the Kings Royal winner, NASCAR superstar Kyle Larson.

TW Neal

SCHUCHART BANKS THE ELDORA MILLION LOGAN SCHUCHART took home the historic Eldora Million Sprintcar race in Ohio, taking the biggest financial award ever seen in the sport.

The Pennsylvania native (pictured) took home the huge jackpot for Shark Racing from pole position, leading from the outset, surviving a yellow and a red flag to take the chequered over Carson Macedo by 2.706s.

Macedo took home his biggest ever Sprintcar payday, pocketing $100,000, with Brad Sweet rounding out the podium and the $50,000 thirdplace money.

“A million baby!” screamed Schuchart in victory lane, who was clearly jacked up with his efforts – and for what his bank account was going to look like.

Two of the seven contending Aussies made it through to the A-Feature final, with World of Outlaws star James McFadden finishing in 10th after starting in P16.

Fellow Aussie Lachlan McHugh started 22nd in the 24 car field, and was an unfortunate recipient of a top-

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end pile up which brought out a red flag with 30 laps remaining.

The red flag was brought about when five of the million dollar contenders got caught up in what the commentators described as a “ball of chaos” when Aaron Reutzel’s rear end got away from him after brushing the wall, turning into Kyle Larson, with Spencer

Bayston and Giovanni Scelzi also involved.

McHugh then caught the pile and flipped over. He limped in for P24 by race end, with McFadden promoted into P10 when the race went green again.

The 50-lap race also kicked off with a yellow flag after Cole Duncan spun on the opening lap.

Sweet briefly challenged on the inside at the restart, with Macedo then blasting past him to settle into second.

The 30 lap break caution came out with teams able to make on track adjustments, and after that restart came the five car snarl-up that claimed some of the race favourites.

Schuchart simply skipped away after the long pause in proceedings with the front three holding up in the 20 lap sprint to the chequered flag.

The eventual winner had a brief scare when he clipped the wall prior to the final lap, but was unfazed to become Sprintcars first instant millionaire.

TW Neal

SPRINTCARS • ELDORA I NASCAR NEW HAPSHARE • POCONO

HAMLIN TAKES TENSE POCONO TRUEX JR TAKES THE LOBSTER VETERAN NASCAR racer Martin Truex Jr. (leading, above) is continuing on his merry way in 2023, taking his third Cup Series win of the season at New Hampshire in the Crayon 301.

The Joe Gibbs Toyota racer not only got to lift the 22 pound (9.9kg) live lobster trophy for the first time in 29 attempts at the 1.7km oval track, but elevated himself to the top the standings by 17 points from Williams Byron.

It was a dominant performance from the New Jersey native, leading 254 of 301 laps, as well as taking all three stage victories in a 0.394s win over Joey Logano and Kyle Larson, making it a three-make, ToyotaFord-Chevrolet podium.

He had to survive a nervous run home however, navigating three restarts across the final 24 laps in which he held off the charging local driver.

For much of the race he led the field by over a second, at a track where he has led over 100 laps in a race five times without breaking through.

“What we’ve been able to do here over the years was pretty remarkable, and to not win was really getting frustrating,” Truex said.

“James Small and I [crew chief ] have talked about it many times and talked with teammate Christopher Bell before the race, and he said, ‘You’ve led more laps here than I’ve ever run here in the Cup Series’.

“We had some challenges throughout the race, and the car was a handful at times, but we put our heads down and just kept digging.”

The new championship leader led 163 of the opening 185 laps to take the first two stages, and he had to fend off the advances of Williams Byron to open Stage 3.

It was a nightmare weekend for Kyle Busch who crashed in qualifying, with the Richard Childress racer then putting his Camaro into the wall in Stage 1, slipping from third to fifth in the standings with a last place finish.

And although Chase Elliot rallied to finish P12, he is still a surprising omission from the top 16, 60 points short of making the playoffs in 23rd with six rounds left. TW Neal

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Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES A TENSE outing at the Pocono Raceway has ended with Denny Hamlin the victor for his second NASCAR Cup series win of the year, with the crowd jeering the Joe Gibbs Toyota racer after an incident with Kyle Larson.

His 50th career win saw him lead home a Toyota podium sweep with Hamlin taking a stoppage-time 1.238s win over 23X1 racer Tyler Reddick, and his teammate Martin Truex Jr, who maintains the overall championship lead.

The Tampa native only led nine of the 160 laps at Pocono, and he had to defend himself against the displeased crowd after making contact with Larson with 10 laps to go after a restart, making the pass after the Hendrick driver hit the wall at the exit of Turn 1.

“There was a lane, he missed the corner first and evidently he didn’t have his right-side tyres clean and when he gassed it up he kept going again,” Hamlin said in defence against the mob.

“You have an option in those positions to either hold it wide open and hit the

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fence or lift and race it out. But those are choices they made. I didn’t hit either one of them.”

The “them” was also referring to Alex Bowman, who spun in front of Hamlin prior to the caution that set up his winning restart, but a replay showed he had nothing to do with Bowman spin.

It wasn’t the only moment of angst at Pennsylvania’s ‘tricky triangle’ as an earlier incident involving Austin Dillon and Reddick saw the Richard Childress Chev driver hurl his helmet at the Toyota after an a crash on lap 105, which on replay embarrassingly turned out to be Dillon’s fault as he moved in off the wall and into the #45.

As for Larson, he certainly didn’t view the incident as fair game.

“I’ve been cost a lot of good finishes by him throughout my career and I know he says I race a certain way but I don’t think I’ve ever had to apologise to him about anything,” Larson said.

“So, not that I’m sure he’s going to say sorry after this, but it is what it is.

Whatever ... just move on.

“He’s always right. All the buddies know, Denny’s always right. I’m sure he was in the right there as well,” Larson added sarcastically.

Larson was in control earlier in the race, but contact with Christopher Bell on lap 24 saw him lose plenty of track position, but he took back the lead after a long run of green time after Truex and Hamlin pitted from the front.

He maintained his lead on older tyres, but with 20 laps remaining, contact between Chase Briscoe and Ty Dillon brought the Toyota’s into play, with Hamlin running him down at the restart in the lead up to the defining incident.

With the Cup Series Playoffs fast approaching, the next outing is the 400 lapper at Richmond Raceway in Virginia on July 30, with four races remaining after that at Michigan, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen, and Daytona.

The Indianapolis Road Course will also feature Aussie Supercars leader Brodie Kostecki, as well as Chicago Street race winner, Shane van Gisbergen. TW Neal

Hamlin battled Harvick for the lead.

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INTERNATIONAL DANE MAKES HIS MARK CHRISTIAN LUNDGAARD broke through in Toronto for his first IndyCar victory in his 28th race for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

In taking the Round 10 chequered flag, the 21-year-old became the first Danish racer to win an IndyCar race, and the first Rahal Letterman driver to win a race since Takuma Sato at the Indy 500 in 2000.

It was a dominant drive for Lundgaard, leading 54 of 85 laps from pole to win by 11.789s from championship leader Alex Palou, who came from 15th with a broken nose cone to make it nine straight races inside the top-five.

Coming third and finally breaking his podium duck since Toronto last year was Colton Herta after a string a bad luck with strategy.

An ecstatic Lundgaard spoke from victory lane after shaving his moustache off – as promised if he took a win!

“I’m pretty drained of energy right now.

The car has been fast all weekend, and I said before the race that we had a car that was fast enough,” the Dane said.

“The team deserves this. If you look where we were earlier this season and even last year, we were nowhere near this.”

After first combating Scott McLaughlin who shared the front row and gambled on tyres, a duel with Palou followed, with Lundgaard pulling away on lap 61, running a different fuel strategy to the series leader to put it beyond doubt after refuelling under caution on lap 50, with the final 36 laps staying green.

Will Power battled Herta closely for third, but was forced into the pits on the final lap due to low fuel, ending in a distant P14, whilst NZ rookie Marcus Armstrong had his best finish in seventh.

Scott Dixon would take fourth to retain second in the championship over Joseph Newgarden who took fifth. TW Neal Lundgaard leads – heading to his first IndyCar win. Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

Double-winner Newgarden shares the podium with championship leader Alex Palou. Images: MOTOSPORT IMAGES

INDYCAR OVAL KING SWEEPS IOWA PENSKE RACER Josef Newgarden has swept up the double header at the Iowa Speedway, overcoming challenges from his Antipodean teammates in both outings.

The “Thirsty Three” Penske Chevrolet drivers finished first and second in both 250 lap races at the 1.4km Tri-Oval commonly known as “The World’s Fastest Short Track” - as well as topping every session across the weekend.

The dominant weekend from the Nashville native has also seen him complete the sweep of all the oval races in 2023, including his Indy 500 victory and the Texas outing earlier in the season.

Newgarden has also won six of the last seven IndyCar oval events and can complete the season romp when the field heads to the World Wide Technology Raceway on August 27.

His Aussie teammate Will Power dominated qualifying for both races on the Friday, adding to his all-time pole record of 64, as well as taking two topfives with a fifth and second in Race 2.

Kiwi Scott McLaughlin charged at Newgarden late in Race 1 to take second, with Mexican driver Pato O’ward taking third in the same race, whilst Will Power qualified well, but his team-mate ran him down in both races.

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championship leader Alex Palou mitigated some of the damage to his large points buffer by taking third in Race 2.

Newgarden’s weekend has given him renewed hope of running down the Spaniard with five races remaining in the season, leapfrogging Scott Dixon into second, and cutting Palou’s lead down to a possible 80 points.

“We knew we had a great car, and the pressure was there because I think we wanted to execute on it and make sure it was a great weekend,” Newgarden said.

“I’m happy now. When you finish the first race, it’s great to have a doubleheader, but you just feel incomplete until you get through today.

To be able to come back and do it again, I’m so proud of the team.”

Race 1 saw five cars finish on the lead lap, with Power having led 119 of first 120 laps, only for his teammate to mow him down after starting third on the grid, catching him on lap 121, with the #2 Chev then staying there for the next 129 laps.

A caution gave some hope to the chasing field after Graham Rahal hit the Turn 4 wall, but the hop was fleeting as he powered away again, with McLaughlin managing to pull back the lead to three

seconds by race end after the leaders hit lapped traffic.

It didn’t take so long for Newgarden to catch Power in Race 2, taking control on lap 31, and only losing his lead under the pit cycle.

After lapping the field down to sixth place, it was looking like another cruise until Ryan Hunter-Reay hit the Turn 4 safety barrier on lap 240, which unlapped the field behind Newgarden.

A three lap dash to the chequered flag, saw Power take Felix Rosenqvist for second, with Palou ending McLaughlin’s hope of a Penske sweep by taking third, whilst Newgarden got the jump to cross the line 0.705s over his Aussie teammate.

The next outing is on August 6 on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, for the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.

TW Neal INDYCAR STANDINGS AFTER 12 ROUNDS 1.

Palou 477 2. Newgarden 397 3. Dixon 357 4. Ericsson 330 5. McLaughlin 229

INDYCAR • TORONTO • IOWA I FIA FORMULA 2/3 • HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX

DOOHAN GETS

FIRING

Image: F2 FOR THE first time in 2023, Aussie Jack Doohan (above) finally found himself on the top step of the FIA Formula 2 podium, at the Hungarian Grand Prix, after taking a dominant Feature race win from pole position.

The Alpine F1 reserve driver elevated himself into fifth in the championship with his eighth consecutive top-ten finish and his fourth career F2 win (second Feature), 48 points off championship leader Frederik Vesti with eight races remaining.

On the high-deg Hungaroring surface, the Virtuosi driver got it done through a strong opening stint on the soft Pirelli, to win by 9.110s over Vesti with Victor Martins taking third.

Vesti’s second place has seen him maintain the championship lead by 11 points over

Theo Pourchaire, who fell from fourth to finish six with passing at a premium.

After Ayumi Iwasa topped the opening practice, Doohan stole a dramatic qualifying with a late 1:27.676, denying Martins his third straight pole by 0.052.

“It’s been quite a while. It’s definitely not been as easy, even today it wasn’t easy at all.

Not as easy as I would have liked to have it.

Happy to be back,” a relieved Doohan said after taking the pole.

The reverse grid Sprint Race was claimed

by MP Motorsport’s Dennis Hauger, with the Norse driver taking his second Sprint win of the year.

He led the 28 lap opener from lights to flag to top Iwasa by 4.230s, with Prema’s Oliver Bearman in third.

Bearman took third with a late pass on Pourchaire, whose fourth place saw him close the championship lead to one point behind Vesti.

The Feature race would be a battle of the Soft tyre, and it was something that Doohan handled beautifully after getting a great launch at the green light.

Vesti essentially sealed second place with an overtake on Martins at Turn 2, with the front three all able to extend their soft tyre stints as the chasing traffic was held up from some of the early pitter’s on the slower mediums.

Doohan’s tyres looked shot but he wasn’t losing any pace, staying out until lap 25 of 37, rejoining with a comfortable 8.7s lead over Vesti.

“The Soft tyre stint was awesome. The car was on rails and I could just do exactly what I wanted,” Doohan stated.

“When I went onto the Medium tyre the car was even better. I’m just super happy for all the team at Virtuosi, because we all worked hard for this.”

The next round is one that holds happy memories for Doohan, as he heads to the scene of his first ever F2 Feature win at Spa Francorchamps this weekend. TW Neal F2 STANDINGS AFTER 9 ROUNDS 1.

Vesti 153 2. Pourchaire 142 3. Iwasa 132 4. Martins 105 5. Doohan 100

O’SULLIVAN ON FIRE AMID TYRE DRAMA’S NOT EVEN severe tyre wear or the searing Budapest sun could stop Zak O’Sullivan (pictured) from making a statement in the FIA Formula 3 World Championship round at Hungary.

A crushing lights-to-flag win in the Feature Race has valued O’Sullivan up to second in the standings, but Gabriel Bortoleto still enjoys a 43-point advantage with two rounds to go.

Sprint race honours went to Gabriele Mini, as Christian Mansell kept up his points scoring streak with a sixth place in that race.

Hugh Barter’s best finish was 13th in the Feature, whilst Tommy Smith had a troubled weekend and was caught up in an incident at the chicane.

O’Sullivan’s weekend started strongly by taking a commanding pole position on Friday.

The Williams Academy driver delivered PREMA its first pole of 2023 by finishing four-tenths ahead of Dino Beganovic in a tricky session featuring mixed conditions.

Due to the inverted top 10, Mini started the Sprint from pole and the record books will show he dominated.

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Image: F3 But he had to fight for it initially with Nikita Bedrin snatching the lead off the line as Mansell settled into third behind them.

By lap eight Mini made his move and with the help of DRS he regained control and never let it go.

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After a mid race Safety Car for the stranded Sebastian Montoya after contact with Smith, Mini cruised home.

But behind the fight for second livened up with Bortoleto snatching the position from Bedrin on the

final lap as Mansell lost out in a tight multi-car battle for fourth.

Post-race it became clear drivers experienced excessive tyre wear and, as a result Pirelli shortened the Feature Race from 24 laps to 19 due to “safety reasons”.

But there were no concerns for O’Sullivan, who cruised to a 2.3s win over Beganovic.

The shortened race was a rather sedate affair with Leonardo Fornaroli dropping from third to ninth the only major change as Franco Colapinto took the final podium place.

Formula 3 continues at Spa this weekend.

Thomas Miles FIA FORMULA 3 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS AFTER ROUND 7 1 Gabriel Bortoleto 144 2 Zak O’Sullivan 101 3 Pepe Marti 100 4 Paul Aron 94 5 Dino Beganovic 94

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INTERNATIONAL

GETTING THE PRIORITIES RIGHT Report: LUIS VASCONCELOS Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES MAX VERSTAPPEN was a bit grumpy at the end of qualifying, after being beaten to pole position by his old nemesis Lewis Hamilton by just 0,003s. “The car felt terrible in qualifying, with all the compounds. It was inconsistent, nervous and I couldn’t push it to the limit”, he said, but given he’d been so close to being the fastest yet again, the RB19 couldn’t have been that bad ...

In fact, it wasn’t and in the race it was demonstrated that the massive upgraded aerodynamic and cooling package the team introduced at the Hungaroring had made the gap to the rest of the field even bigger, as, on average, the Dutchman was half a second per lap faster than anyone else after grabbing the lead with a forceful move right after the start.

The whole year the RB19 has been stronger on race pace than in qualifying but, having said that, only in Baku (Leclerc) and Budapest (Hamilton) had another team managed to get the pole, which just goes to show how much better than all other cars the Red Bull is. The new package seems to have exacerbated the characteristics of the RB19, the car becoming more difficult to drive on single lap pace but then coming alive as soon as full tanks are in use and tyre management becomes the key to winning.

Obviously the fact Red Bull only had two practice sessions to understand the new package – FP1 was a washout – didn’t help to iron out the issues for qualifying, but, in a much better mood at the end of the race, Verstappen acknowledged the troubles from Saturday had probably been the baseline for a magnificent Sunday afternoon: “We tried a few different things with the car in terms

It was probably Red Bull’s easiest win of the year – the new upgrades extending the gap to the field ...

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of set-up in qualifying, which probably worked very well for today. We tried so many things throughout the whole weekend, and it never worked on one-lap pace. It might also just have been we didn’t make our tyres work well over one lap, because in the race everything heats up and it runs hotter for a long period of time. So you probably need a very different balance for that, and, basically, yesterday was understeering a lot. Today the track was warmer, so the balance came to me anyway. And that’s why I probably had such a nice balance today.”

Sérgio Pérez’s recovery from ninth on the grid to third place at the end of the race just proved how efficient the RB19 is in race condition and, with Spa-Francorchamps being a track that seems designed to suit Adrian Newey’s latest creation, the coming weekend promises to be even better for the Milton Keynes-based team.

The Mexican had made life harder by shunting hard in Turn 5 on what was his first timed lap of the weekend (!) and his confidence never seemed the same after that. He eventually scraped into Q3 for the first time since the Miami Grand Prix, but was only ninth on the grid. Starting on the Hard compound tyre, he still managed to make progress during the first stint as those ahead started to struggle with tyre degradation, got a number of good, forceful moves, done into the first two corners and actually looked on course to catch Norris in the final laps, “but by then my tyres were a bit too worn out; he looked like he had something in reserve, so third was the maximum today, which is not bad after starting from P9”, he admitted.

PIASTRI DESERVED BETTER

As at Silverstone, two weeks before, McLaren was able to battle it out with Verstappen in qualifying and then be in a position to fight with the best Mercedes driver for second place, the Dutchman proving uncatchable on Sundays.

Starting from fourth on the grid Oscar Piastri jumped

ahead of Hamilton and Norris in Turn 1, after having a perfect read of what was happening ahead of him: “I think the launch was pretty solid, not maybe the best.

But with the long run into Turn 1, I just tucked into the tow, and I knew that there’ll probably be some some big moves, which there were. I chose the inside and tried to tuck in, have a good corner and get a good exit, which I managed to do, and it pay dividends in the end.”

For McLaren things got even better when Norris, boxed behind Verstappen and Hamilton into Turn 1, got a much better exit than the seven-times World Champion out of the corner and, “did a great move into Turn 2, as I braked as hard as I dared and managed to get around Lewis.”

The Mercedes driver’s gamble to go for the undercut on lap 16 didn’t gain him any position but ended up costing Piastri the place to Norris. As the more experienced McLaren driver pitted one lap after Hamilton to protect his position, he eventually got ahead of the Australian who pitted one lap later.

As Piastri admitted, “I think maybe the undercut was a lot bigger than we expected”, but he didn’t make a big thing out of it. More of a concern for him was the fact that, “I clearly didn’t have the pace to stay with Lando or challenge him. I think for myself, the biggest takeaway is to look into the tyre degradation and tyre management. You can do the best starts and first stints in the world, but if you can’t hang on for the next two, then it doesn’t matter.”

Having been pushed off the track by Pérez when the Mexican forced his way through on lap 47 certainly didn’t help, the floor of the MCL60 taking a nasty hit, but before that, on the Hard tyre, his pace hadn’t been great, so while he showed great speed the Australian driver has homework to do before the next race.

Formula 1 Round 12 HUNGARIAN Grand Prix - Race report ,

RICCIARDO DELIGHTED WITH RETURN DRIVE

Verstappen led into Turn 1 and, somehow, Piastri (81) emerged in second place ... Above right: Undercut by his own team, Piastri couldn’t quite maintain his early pace – undertray damage the culprit. Top left: Lando ‘the clown’ Norris accidentally broke Max’s winner’s trophy while (on Saturday, Hamilton pulled a great pole lap from nowehere ...

Fortunately for McLaren, Lando Norris had enough experience to get both the Medium and Hard tyres to work properly and, after jumping his team-mate, his concern was to keep Hamilton at bay while keeping his Pirelli in good enough nick to resist the inevitable late charge from Pérez, getting annoyed when his engineer asked him to up the pace: “I don’t know what else the team wanted me to do. I couldn’t cook the tyres by pushing too hard but I was doing enough to keep P2. It’s a very fine balance, to go quick and keep the tyres alive, but I think we did a great job today.”

SO MANY LONG FACES

Probably the only man who believed he could beat Verstappen for the win in Hungary was Lewis Hamilton, elated by his return to a pole positions more than 20 months after being fastest in qualifying for the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix.

But the start and the first couple of corners just threw it all away: “The initial getaway wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had, but it obviously wasn’t as good as Max’s. I had a bit of wheelspin and then Max was on the inside, he ran me wide and I got done by the two McLarens. So, definitely not a great start and then, after that, I just didn’t have the pace to keep up with the guys.

The balance of the car was pretty awful on that first stint, a lot of understeer to snap oversteer through corner balance and I just couldn’t keep up with them.”

Team mate George Russell was, with Norris, the only non-Red Bull driver with a smile on his face at the end of the race, having recovered from P18 on the grid to finish sixth: “Yesterday we made a bad mistake in qualifying but today the car was flying, literally. A shame I couldn’t have started up there with Lewis, because that

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would have given us other options as a team but it’s a mistake we won’t do again”, he assured.

For Ferrari the weekend was a bit of a calvary, with mistakes made by the team in qualifying and the race, including a botched pit stop for Leclerc when a wheel gun seized, before the Monegasque got caught speeding in the pit lane as he entered it for his second stop, the inevitable five seconds penalty costing him P6 to Russell. Sainz, starting 11th, gambled on Soft tyres and made up five places in the first lap, “but then I had to do two long stints on the Hard, which was the worst tyre for us”, ending up in a disappointing P8.

Aston Martin got the last two pointsQUALIFYING RACE 12

scoring positions, with Alonso comfortably ahead of Stroll, the Spaniard admitting that, “it’s up to us to understand a little better what the car is doing now, compared to the beginning of the season. How many upgrades we brought compared to our main competitors, understanding the new tyres the best, because it’s the same for everybody and we need to do abetter job.”

And that’s how a race that promised so much, after the top three in qualifying were separated by less than one tenth of a second, turned out to be a demonstration run for Max Verstappen and Red Bull, much to the disappointment of the many fans that were hoping to get a serious three-way battle for the win.

RESULTS RACE 12 70 LAPS HUNGARIAN GP

CHAMPIONSHIP AFTER RACE 12 Pos Driver Points 1 Max Verstappen 281 2 Sergio Perez 171 3 Fernando Alonso 139 4 Lewis Hamilton 133 5 George Russell 90 s1 6 Carlos Sainz 87 t1 7 Charles Leclerc 80 8 Lando Norris 60 s1 9 Lance Stroll 45 t1 10 Esteban Ocon 31 11 Oscar Piastri 27 12 Pierre Gasly 16 13 Alex Albon 11 14 Nico Hulkenberg 9 15 Valtteri Bottas 5 16 Zhou Guanyu 4 17 Yuki Tsunoda 2 18 Kevin Magnussen 2 19 Logan Sargeant 0 20 Nyck de Vries 0 21 Daniel Ricciardo 0 -

Pos Driver

Time

Pos Drivers

Make

Laps

Margin

1

Lewis Hamilton

1:16.609

1

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

70

1:38.08.634 s1

2

Max Verstappen

+0.003

2

Lando Norris

McLaren

70

+33.731 s1

3

Lando Norris

+0.085

3

Sergio Perez

Red Bull

70

+37.603 s6

4

Oscar Piastri

+0.296

4

Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes

70

+39.143 t4

5

Zhou Guanyu

+0.362

5 Oscar Piastri

McLaren

70

+1:02.572 t1

6

Charles Leclerc

+0.383

6 George Russell

Mercedes

70

+1:05.825 s12

7

Valtteri Bottas

+0.425

7

Ferrari

70

+1:10.317 t1

8

Fernando Alonso

+0.426

8 Carlos Sainz

Ferrari

70

+1:11.073 s3

9

Sergio Perez

+0.436

9

Aston Martin

70

+1:15.709 t1

10 Nico Hulkenberg

+0.577

10 Lance Stroll

Aston Martin

70

+1 Lap s4

11

Carlos Sainz

+1.094

11 Alex Albon

Williams

69

+1 Lap s5

12 Esteban Ocon

+1.232

12 Valtteri Bottas

Alfa Romeo

69

+1 Lap t5

13 Daniel Ricciardo

+1.393

13 Daniel Ricciardo

AlphaTauri

69

+1 Lap -

14 Lance Stroll

+1.535

14 Nico Hulkenberg

Haas

69

+1 Lap t4

15 Pierre Gasly

+1.608

15 Yuki Tsunoda

AlphaTauri

69

+1 Lap s2

16 Alex Albon

+2.308

16 Zhou Guanyu

Alfa Romeo

69

+1 Lap t11

17 Yuki Tsunoda

+2.310

17 Kevin Magnussen Haas

69

+1 Lap s2

18 George Russell

+2.418

NC Logan Sargeant

Williams

67

+3 Laps s2

19 Kevin Magnussen

+2.597

NC Esteban Ocon

Alpine

2

+68 Laps t7

20 Logan Sargeant

+2.639

NC Pierre Gasly

Alpine

1

+69 Laps t5

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Charles Leclerc Fernando Alonso

NO ONE could reasonably expect Daniel Ricciardo to set the world alight on his return to Grand Prix racing, mostly because the AlphaTauri AT04 is one of the slowest cars of the field but because eight months out of the cockpit should come with a toll.

But the Australian took to it like he’d never left, outqualified Yuki Tsunoda and put the uncompetitive car in P13 on the grid, so there was no rustiness visible.

Alas, in the first corner Ricciardo was the innocent victim of a mistake from Zhou Guanyu, got hit from behind and careered into the Alpine duo, dropping to P18 while the two French drivers retired. Ricciardo quickly caught up with the group but was unable to get past those ahead. Only when he was in free air the Australian could exploit the pace he had in hand, eventually getting ahead of both Haas, both Williams, Tsunoda and Zhou to complete the race in an encouraging P13.

No wonder, then, he was in great mood at the end of the race: “I really feel thatt having this half year off, certainly just kind of allowed me to reset myself and I feel energized again. Today the first corner was a big shame, because I was basically down to last and stuck in traffic, so the team did a good job getting me out of traffic and those laps in clear air, “were really important.

I think it would have been a much more discouraging race if I’d been stuck in traffic.

Of course there’s still a lot of questions to be answered, but just having the pace, having the clear air and, making a few mistakes, learning from those, knowing what the car likes, what it doesn’t, means I learned a lot from the race.”

On a very hot day when several younger drivers were clearly exhausted at the end of the race, Ricciardo surprised himself by being almost as fresh as a cucumber after 70 grueling laps: “I actually felt a lot better than I thought. I thought I’d get to probably like mid race, like lap 30-35 and I’d be starting to really feel it. But actually, I remember looking at L35, and I was ‘oh, well’, I felt really encouraged. So, it was all pretty good. I felt like I probably didn’t have enough drink in the car. So, other than being a little bit thirsty at the end, it was all good.”

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MID-SEASON SUPERCARS CROSSWORD ACROSS

DOWN

5 Of the three Supercars rookies, who sits highest in the championship? (surname)

1 How many races has Ford won?

7 Who scored seven successive podiums over the rounds at Albert Park and Wanneroo Raceway? (surname)

championship, but was disqualified several hours

9 Will Brown and Broc Feeney have taken the joint most race wins this season, how many have they both scored?

2 Who crossed the line first in Race 1 of the 2023 later? (surname) 3 How many times has Cameron Waters finished on the podium?

10 Andre Heimgartner is yet to score a race win in 2023, but how many times has he finished on the podium?

4 In Townsville Declan Fraser changed his number

11 Who is the highest placed driver in the championship yet to record a race win? (surname)

6 Who is the highest placed driver yet to score a

12 How many times have Tickford finished on the podium this season?

14 Who scored his first win since 2016? (surname)

to #777, what number did he race with prior? podium this season? (surname) 8 How many drivers have finished on the podium in the season so far?

13 Who won the Larry Perkins

15 How many races victories has Chevrolet scored?

Trophy by winning the Round

19 Who is the highest placed Kiwi in the Supercars Championship? (surname)

16 How many races remain in

20 Who leads the Supercars Championship after the Townsville round? (surname) 21 How many race wins has SVG taken in 2023?

22 How many race wins has Erebus Motorsport collected this year in the Supercars Championship?

23 Who is the only driver to make a Wildcard appearance so far this season? (surname) 27 How many races wins has Chaz Mostert scored this season?

at Albert Park? this year’s Supercars Championship?

17 At what track did Todd Hazelwood score his best finishing position of fourth?

18 Who scored the first race win for Matt Stone Racing? (surname) 24 Who currently leads the Super3 Series?

28 Who is the highest placed Ford Mustang driver in the championship? (surname)

(surname)

29 How many drivers have scored race wins so far this season?

streets of Newcastle? (surname)

30 Which teams sits at the top of the Supercars Teams’ Championship?

25 Who won the first race of the Gen3 era on the 26 At the halfway stage, who leads the Super2 Series? (surname)

1 down – Alonso, 2 down – Bezzecchi, 3 down – Oran Park, 4 across – eleven, 5 across – McLaren, 6 down – Chevrolet, 7 across – nine, 8 down – Katsuta, 9 across – seventh, 10 across – two, 11 down – McLaughlin, 12 down – Binder, 13 across – Schumacher, 14 across – one, 15 across – Ogier, 16 across – Bruce Stewart, 17 down – Whincup, 18 down – Panis, 19 down – Binotto, 20 across – Alfa Romeo, 21 down – Raikkonen, 22 across – ninety-one, 23 down – four, 24 down – France, 25 across – zero, 26 across – Norris, 27 down – third, 28 across – Chicago, 29 across – zero, 30 across – Neuville

We take a look back at what was making news in Auto Action 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago

1973 COLIN BOND went head-to-head with a young Dick Johnson at a Queensland Touring Car Championship round at Lakeside.

Johnson won the first race, but Bond hit back in the second race despite Johnson setting a new lap record. The Holden Dealer Team took its disqualification from a recent ATCC race at Oran Park to the stewards and got a result.

CAMS decided the sentence would be suspended on the condition there are no further offences over the following 12 months. It left Auto Action surprisingly a little lost for words with the small five-par story ending with ‘no further comment is, we feel, necessary!’

1983 THERE WAS plenty of controversy at Lakeside where no less than three drivers were all disqualified after the Australian Formula One Series and Sports Car Championship round.

Reigning champion Alf Costanzo, Peter Hopwood and Bap Romano were all excluded after they were involved in separate incidents across the weekend. Another week and another call for more technical changes to the Australian Touring Car Championship regulations. The ‘big three’ – Ford, Nissan and Holden – all requested further ‘concessions’ prior to Bathurst. Turbos dominated the British Grand Prix with Renault’s Alain Prost being well clear of Nelson Piquet and Patrick Tambay.

58 I www.autoaction.com.au

1993 THE FUTURE of the Surfers Paradise IndyCar GP was uncertain after a sudden glitch in funding left organisers struggling to find a further $1.5 million.

The gap was created due to the proposed IndyCar race in Hawaii not going ahead.

At Hockenheim Damon Hill appeared certain to win a Formula 1 Grand Prix for the first time. But the gods did not as Hill’s tyre blew on the penultimate which gave Prost his 51st and final win, while the rookie finished 15th and said “the only thing you can do is have a cold beer and keep trying.”

2003 STONE BROTHERS Racing had HRT on the run after a fourth straight round win at Queensland Raceway. This time it was Russell Ingall on the top step after he led home Marcos Ambrose in SBR’s first ever one-two finish.

Holden suffered pain on and off the track with Mark Skaife’s promising race ended by engine issues, while the brand itself faced a sticky $300,000 situation over a logo fiasco also involving John Faulkner.

Mark Webber also had lots to deal with, having experienced a scary encounter with a track invader, who was “trying to commit suicide” at the British Grand Prix won by Rubens Barrichello.

2013 BOTH CHAZ Mostert and Scott McLaughlin were hailed as the next Brock and Johnson by the man himself, Dick Johnson after the pair beat the established stars in Ipswich. Although Jamie Whincup claimed a tight Saturday win, the department of youth starred on Sunday with Mostert giving a struggling Dick Johnson Racing a surprise triumph and McLaughlin getting his second win of the year. Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes scored the first of an eventual 82 wins together at Hungary. Off the track James Courtney signed on with the Holden Racing Team for another three seasons, while Andy Priaulx was revealed as Triple Eight’s lead wildcard driver.

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