Motorsport News Issue 420 - June 2012 by V8 Sleuth

THE National

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il^ TP'o visit to Mount Panorama is complete without a stop at the National Motor Racing Museum,right beside the track at Murray's'-*! Corner.Inside you’ll find a constantly-changing array of vehicle that ha^ made their mark on not only Mount Panorama,but Australian motorspdrfin gefier^ ^^--^The main hall is packed with not just touring cars, but open-wheelers, motorcyci^and airports Tof fascinating memorabilia - trophies, driving suits,leathers, helmets,posters and photographs: Take a break in the 40-seat theathrette and watch the videos covering the glorioiB history ^f racing on Mount Panorama since 1938,and the just-released version on the history'of ^ 1motorcycle racing at the track. Enjoy a coffee and check out the museum shop.It’s packed woth official yearn merchahdfse, books,video and collectables. Naturally, any visit to Mount Panorama is not complete without a spin around the famous circuit itself - just remember to obey the 60 km/h speed limit! Bathurst is just two and a half hour’s drive from Sydney,so there’s no need to wait until the next race meeting - make it a memorable day trip any time.The whole family will love the experience. r-

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Australian

riT»10W>I.Tit THIS MONTH’S FEATURES U news Editorial Group Editor Steve Normoyle 5normoyle@1chevron.com.au Assistant Editor Mitchell Adam mitchell@mnews.com.au At Large Phil Branagan

The Grid

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Contributing Writers

Mark Glendenning, Andrew van Leeuwen, Richard Craill, Lachlan Mansell, Bruce Moxon, Paul Carruthers

Photography

TWENTY-20 2012 is the 20th season of the current V8 Supercar formuia, so we asked our experts - who have been the Top 20 drivers so far?

Sutton Motorsport Images, Dirk Klynsmith, John Morris, Andrew Hall, James Smith, Geoff Grade, Phil Williams, Peter Bury, Michael Vettas, Paris Charles Paul Carruthers, Rob Lang

Art Director Chris Currie

Advertising Advertising Director Chris West cwest@chevron.com.au P 02 9901 6376 M 0416125 252 National Sales Manager Luke Finn ifinn@chevron.com.au P 02 9901 6368 M 0423 665 384

Winless since 2004, Williams returned to the top step ofthe FI podium In Spain. We chat to the man behind the wheel, Pastor Maldonado

Chairman, Chevron: Ray Berghouse Circulation Director: Carole Jones

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UP AND ABOUT it no longer hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix, but Imola remains one ofEurope's most-popular circuits. We checked it out

Chief Executive Officer, David Gardiner Commercial Director, Bruce Duncan Motorsport News is published by nextmedia Pty Ltd ACN: 128 805 970,Level 6.207 Pacific Highway. St Leonards NSW 2065 C 2012. All rights reserved. Motorsport News Is printed by CaxtonWeb, distributed by Network Distribution. No part of this magazine may be reproduced, in whole or In part without the prior permission of the publisher. The publisher will not accept responsibility or any liability for the correctness of Information or opinions expressed in the publication. All material submitted Is at the owner's risk and. while every care will be taken nextmedia does not accept liability for loss or damage. Privacy Policy We value the integrity of your personal Information. If you provide personal information through your participation in any competitions,surveys or offers featured In this Issue of Motorsport News,this will be used to provide the products or services that you have requested and to improve the content of our magazines.Your details may be provided to third parties who assist us in this purpose. In the event of organisations providing prizes or offers to our readers, we may pass your details on to them. From time to time, we may use the information you provide us to inform you of other products,services and events our company has to offer. We may also give your information to other organisations which may use it to inform you about their products,services and events, unless you tell us not to do so. You are welcome to access the information that we hold about you by getting in touch with our privacy officer, who can be contacted at nextmedia. Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590.

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Caterham is the lateststop in Mike Gascoyne's Formula 1 career. MNews had a chat about getting involved on the ground floor

motorsport news

Unusual Suspects —

Young Kiwi Richie Stanaway is making waves on a global stage. We catch up with him

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Be honest now, who thought Pastor Maldonado would win a Formula I Grand Prix this year? \Ne spoke exclusively to the Venezuelan and look at his breakthrough victory

Taking it to the Max In the Elite Class of Carrera Cup Australia, Max Twigg is the man to stop Waltzing on into V8 Utes Former Saloon Car driver Kris Walton has taken to V8 Utes like a duck to water It’s Radical, man MNews chats to the key players behind the growing Radical Australia Cup The six-second man Peter Ridgeway has taken Australian Pro Stock Drag Racing into uncharted territory Going global We check in with the young Aussies set to tackle the Under 18 World Karting Champs

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Most people associate Ferrari with their own circuit at Fiorano, but Enzo Ferrari was instrumental in the formation of another Italian circuit, Imola. Decades later, it's still going strong

REGULARS The Front Row Motor Mouth with Phil Branagan The Scoop with Steve Normoyle On The Limiter with Chris Lambden Box Seat United States of Origin The Second Row

Richard Craill is a busy man, but he took the time to chat with V8 Ute sensation Kris Walton for this edition of MNews. Flere he is in Walton's sunglasses V

Model Behaviour Winding Back Trade Classifieds My Favourite Race Parting Shot www.mnews.com.au

The first man into the 'sevens', it's fitting Peter Ridgeway was the first driver to record a 'six' in a Pro Stock drag racer in Australia. 5

THE FRONT ROW since we last met sort.

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V8 SUPERCARS The last month in V8 Supercars has been about Ford Performance Racing and thrilling finishes. In the final Hamilton street race, FPR continued their strong start to 2012, with Will Davison winning on Saturday and Mark Winterbottom on Sunday. Winterbottom,though, had to hold out a late charge from TeamVodafone's Jamie Whincup, with the pair split by just under a second at the line. A fortnight later at Barbagallo Raceway, Davison won a pair of races but lost the championship lead to Whincup. An opening lap incident in Saturday's race saw him finish 25th as Winterbottom led home Whincup. But Davison recovered on Sunday, winning Races 8 and 9. Whincup was his closest challenger in Race 8, and then again in a thrilling finish to Race 9, in which a host of drivers were hurt by a bungled Safety Car introduction. On aging Sprint Tyres, Davison's mission was to hold out Whincup and Winterbottom, both on the harder tyre.The gap closed rapidly and the three started the final lap nose-to-tail. In the end, Davison did enough, while Winterbottom snuck past Whincup at the final corner to make it an FPR 1 -2. As MNews went to print, Whincup headed to Phillip Island with a 29-point advantage over Davison.

INDYCAR

WORLD RALLY C’SHIP

Will Power leads the IndyCar Series standings heading into its marquee race, the Indy 500. Power's victory in Brazil was his third in as many starts, but this one was different to the previous two - he started from pole, rather than having to fight through the pack. Incidents and Safety Car periods riddled the race, but Power did enough to hold out Ryan Hunter-Reay when it counted to seal the win, while Takuma Sato rounded out the podium. The win saw Power take a 45-point championship lead over Hello Castroneves into the famed Month of May. Penske's other Aussie, Ryan Briscoe crashed out early in Brazil and sits seventh in the standings.

Sebastien Loeb now has three wins from five events in 2012 as he seeks a ninth-straight World Rally Championship. Loeb led home team-mate Mikko Hirvonen in a Citroen 1 -2 to record his 70th WRC victory.The win also boosts his lead at the top of the standings to 18 points over Petter Solberg. Solberg did himself no favours, crashing out of the lead on the first day before eventually recovering to sixth. His Ford team-mate for the weekend, Dani Sordo - in for the injured JariMatti Latvala - was third before retiring on the final stage with mechanical problems. That handed the final podium spot to Portugal victor Mads Ostberg.

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QUICK QUIZ 6

QUIZ QUESTIONS 1. Who won the first full round of what’s now the V8 Supercar Championship Series in 1993?

2. Which manufacturer has won more Bathurst 1000s since 1993- Ford or Holden?

3. Before the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, who had scored more World Championship points for Williams - Pastor

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NEWS OF THE MONTH EASTERN CREEK RETURNS

FORMULA 1 Victories to Sebastian Vettel and Pastor Maldonado have taken the 2012 Formula 1 season to five different winners from the first five events. In Bahrain, Vettel withstood a mid-race challenge from Kimi Raikkonen to score his first win of the year. Remain Grosjean's maiden FI podium made it a Lotus 2-3, with Mark Webber fourth and Daniel Ricciardo 15th after starting sixth. Barcelona was,simply, a big weekend for Williams. Celebrating Sir Frank Williams'70th birthday, Maldonado won his first FI race and the team's first since 2004. A post-race fire in the garage fortunately without serious injury - added to the drama. Maldonado started from pole after Lewis Hamilton qualifying without enough fuel to return to the pits and was sent to the rear of the grid.The Williams team helped Maldonado take the lead mid-race and he held out Fernando Alonso's challenge to eventually win by 3.1s. Raikkonen was third while Webber and Ricciardo could only manage 11 th and 16th. Vettel, sixth in Barcelona,shares the points lead with Alonso.

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4. Who won the last Formula 1 Grand Prix held at Imola?

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SAFETY CARNAGE Roland Dane and Russell Ingall were among those to open fire on V8 stewards on social networking site Twitter, after a bungled Safety Car deployment during Race 9 at Barbagallo Raceway. Instead of picking up race leader Jamie Whincup,the Safety Car started to bunch the field behind Whincup's team-mate Craig Lowndes, who had already completed his pitstop from fifth place. As a result, a host of drivers lost ground. "5 podiums forT8/TeamVodafone this weekend and still unhappy, mostly with ourselves but also with Stevie Wonder in the control tower...." Dane Tweeted. Ingall's ire had already been irked, after he'd been excluded from the race's qualifying session for a minor procedure breech by Walkinshaw Racing, dropping him from fifth on the grid to 28th. On Sunday night. Ingall didn't hold back with a series of Tweets. "Never been as embarrassed to be part of this @v8supercars as I am today. What a Joke with the pace car. How many times has this happened," he led with. "@SCARacing was totally done over today by @v8supercars. About time for a clean out with the powers to be. NOT GOOD ENOUGH. "The race fans and sponsors deserve better than this. I hope @ v8supercars stop sitting on the fence this time and start acting."

TIME TO KLIEN UP?

Reigning World Champion Casey Stoner claimed his maiden victories at Estoril and Jerez to move to the top of the MotoGP standings. After finishing third in the season opener in Qatar, Stoner's Spanish and Portuguese wins came after resisting challenges from Jorge Lorenzo. Three rounds into the 18-event season, Stoner holds a one-point lead over Lorenzo at the top of the standings. Maldonado or Bruno Senna?

V8 Supercars has confirmed a switch to the 2012 calendar that will see the series race at Eastern Creek Raceway for the first time since 2008. The Sydney circuit will host an event on August 24-26, one week before Muscle Car Masters on Fathers'Day.The V8 Supercar round will mark Eastern Creek's relaunch after an $11 million upgrade. The August date on the calendar was originally slated for Winton Motor Raceway, but the Victorian venue has been moved to become the penultimate event of the year on November 16-18 after an international race to partner Abu Dhabi failed to materialise.

5. Including the current 2012 season, how many seasons of Carrera Cup Australia have been contested?

Former FI driver Christian Klien is continuing to pursue a V8 Supercar opportunity, testing with Walkinshaw Racing at Winton in April. The Austrian, who contested 51 GPs with Jaguar, Red Bull and Hispania between 2004and 2010, was an'international'on the Gold Coast last year with Bottle-0 Racing. At Winton he turned over 100 laps in Nick Percat's Dunlop Series Commodore. "Steve Hallam, Managing Director of Walkinshaw Racing, invited me to drive at the team's April test day - it was a great opportunity for me to get back behind the wheel of a V8 Supercar," Klien wrote on his website. "Steve has worked with some of motor racing's biggest names including Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Mika Hakkinen so I was very excited when he contacted me. I really enjoyed the track time - V8 Supercars certainly are a lot of fun to drive."

PHIL

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O, let's rewind 18 months,to November 2010 and the Brazilian Grand Prix. Nico Hulkenberg qualifies on l pole position, having set not one but two laps good enough to push Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber to second and third. It is the first Williams pole in six seasons but in the race,the reality of racing a Cosworth-powered FW32 over 71 laps, notone,against Red - Bull's Renault-powered RB6 sets in.The Seb and Web Show dominates and the young German drives gamely ; l to eighth, a lap behind the raging Bulls. nn A weekTater,the English and . German Formula 1 press corps ^ are in a tanty. Hulkenberg,a Recognised talent who has %een managed to that point by * Michael Schumacher's former : handler Willi Weber,is dropped / from the team.Williams soon ;?confirms his replacement is : ;k -Pastor Maldonado,the freshly, minted GP2 Champion.The .

telling factor is that The Hulk requires to be paid a wage; Maldonado carries with him a massive dowry from Venezuela's energy and tourism authorities, and with it, the imprimatur of President Hugo Chavez himself. The next time a Williams qualifies on pole, it does so with Renault power. From grid two, Fernando Alonso's Ferrari beats it away -just - and leads the first stint of the race.The Williams brains'trust amps up the strategy and that, and flawless driving, gives their man the lead.There is a drama - a tardy pitstop - but the driver stays calm,and in front. Alonso closes in but is never really in a position to mount a serious challenge.The Ferrari loses its edge;the man in the Williams absorbs the pressure, hitting every turn-in and apex, with no locking of brakes, then inches away to what appeared to take an unlikely but well-deserved victory. Maldonado has proven the doubters wrong;

meanwhile Hulkenberg holds out Webber,for 10th. Has Maldonado just changed the face of motor racing? Not really. Look at history; there have been'Pay Drivers' in the sport for almost as long as there has been a sport.The Minardi seats of Alonso and Mark Webber had to be bought, just as the seats that took them on the path to FI were paid for. Ditto for Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Niki Lauda. When Schumacher made his FI debut in 1991,the Tic Tac decals on his Jordan told that his entry in GP racing was bought (Mercedes-Benz assisted as well, but on a Ford-sponsored car, its involvement was below the line). Ninety-one GP victories, all of them well-paid,followed. (By the way, as a comparison; it took Schumacher 18 races - in an era without testing restrictions - to win his first GP and be hailed as the Next Big Thing. It took only six more races than that for'Payboy' Maldonado to win in Spain in an era in which he hardly ever gets to learn about his car in testing.) A few days before Williams confirmed Maldonado in late

2010, V8 Supercars raced at Sandown.Paul Dumbrell took his first win after a decade in the category, with his mirrors filled with Jamie Whincup. On the track, which driver brought sponsorship to his team and which one was getting paid paled into insignificance; ironic then, that they will be team-mates at the same venue this year. Williams made the right call 18 months ago. Someone has to pay for the Renault engines and a vastly improved car and there are reports that the amount Maldonado brings. just from PDVSA,is $47m. Add to that what Bruno Senna contributes from his own group of Brazilian sponsors and it's a ton of money,and the investment appears to be paying off. In an ideal world, it may well be that Williams would run Hulkenberg,a British charger and be backed by a coterie of multi-nationals sourced by its own marketing department. That hasn't happened but it looks like Maldonado, Renault and the hard-working team at Grove gave Sir Frank Williams a happy 70th birthday anyway.

iWilliams made the right call 18 months ago.Someone has to pay for the IP lienault engines and a vastly improved car and there are reports that the arhount Maldonado brings,justfrom PDVSA,is $47m

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NORMOYLE THE SCOOP

T'S been an interesting exercise compiling our top 20 of the first 20 years of V8 Supercars. When asked to reflect on 20 years of V8 Supercars,the first surprise (well, to me,at least) is that 1993 seems like only yesterday.The obvious companion cliche here is'time flies when you're having fun', and while no one can say this has been a boring 20 years of Touring Car racing, I suspect it's just as much a sign that I am getting old. Whatever, it's been a pretty good 20 years in our motor racing history. For one, it's been the longest running Touring Car formula we've ever had, by a mile - it's gone on for almost twice as long as the next lengthiest, which was Group C, but that was really 12 years in two sections, because the regs were dramatically revamped after the first seven years, in 1980. But the stability of the original 1992'5-litre V8'technical rules has been a hugely important factor in the development of V8 Supercars. It provided the platform for the evolution ofthe Australian Touring Car Championship into the fully professional, quasi-international travelling circus that is today's

V8 Supercars Championship. And that's the other surprise: just how unrecognisable the first season of V8 Supercars is when you compare it to the V8 Supercars Championship of today. The only thing that hasn't been the subject of fundamental change is the cars. Sure, a VE Commodore or FG Falcon V8 Supercar looks very different from a '93 model VP Commodore or EB Falcon, and today's cars are packed with complicated electronics gizmos that mostly weren't even thought of in 1993, but under the skin they really aren't all that different. Though separated by an entire generation, at heart they're very close relations. Call me a pessimist, but back in 1993 I wouldn't have thought we'd still be racing large 5.0-litre pushrod V8-powered sedans in 2013. 1 think I remember giving the newV8s about 10 years, |tops, by which time they'd be driven out of existence by rising oil prices. Or that growing environmental concerns would eventually result in some kind of public backlash that would turn the big V8s into a marketing liability, or that at some point Ford would do what it has a history of doing, which is to

suddenly withdraw from the sport, leaving the whole thing to collapse in on itself. Now I've never claimed to be a clairvoyant, but the one thing I could never have foreseen was the sheer scope of the revolution brought to the Championship by sports management company IMG. It's long since departed, but what IMG helped create at the end of 1996 - amid a fair amount of hostility - is what we know today as V8 Supercars Australia. Over the past 15 years V8SA has taken virtually complete control of the Championship. It has re-established it on a franchise basis, creating the framework for a Championship with a n F1 -style fixed set of professional teams(instead of the previous rag-tag mix of amateur and professional teams which changed from race to race) and delivered it to previously unimaginable places and markets. It has negotiated multi-million dollarTV deals where previously none existed (meaning that in 2007 Channel Seven paid something like $80m for the exclusive six-year rights to something it had enjoyed free-of-charge from 1987 up until in the end of 1996). In 1993 things such as an $80mTV deal were unimaginable. In 1993 there were only a handful of proper professional teams,and the whole thing was more or

less run by CAMS,the circuit promoters, Channel Seven and series sponsor. Shell; V8 Supercars Australia existed only as a vague dream in the minds of a handful of team owners. In 1993 I thought it was a bad move by CAMS to create a category that specifically excluded all manufacturers other than Holden and Ford. This was unprecedented in Australian motor racing; it more or less amounted to CAMS telling BMW and Nissan that they were not welcome to compete at the highest level Touring Car series in Australia. Twenty years on and so much has changed.The new rules that will take V8 Supercars into, hopefully, the next 20 years and beyond aren't philosophically all that different from what they're replacing, but they are the result of the most extensive planning and research we've ever seen in Australian motorsport. And they are designed to embrace what the original version ofV8 Supercars shunned: additional manufacturers. It's not a simple case of things having turned full circle, because V8 Supercars today is in a whole different dimension from the scene as it existed in 1993. But the return of Nissan in 2013,20 years after it was shown the door, does have a nice symmetry to it. What's going to happen next year and beyond? I wouldn't have a clue.

Call me a pessimist, but back in 1993 i wouldn't have thought we'd still be racing large 5.0-litre pushrod V8-powered sedans in 2013

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LAMBDEN ON THE LIMITER

EITH Sutton, head of the Sutton-lmages FI photo agency which supplies Motorsport News, was wandering up and down the grid at the Spanish Grand Prix (as you do) when he was accosted by Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle, doing his usual live pre-race grid-walk. Who, Brundle asked, did Keith think was going to win the race? Without hesitating, Keith nominated pole man Pastor Maldonado. For anyone who missed Barcelona, the much-maligned 'pay driver' (he brought many millions in sponsorship from his native Venezuela to Williams) had parked his Williams-Renault on pole after original pole man Lewis Hamilton was pinged for parking his car on the qualifying slow-down lap and sent to the back). Maldonado, whose career to date had included a fair number of incidents, including a last-lap crash in Australia that put paid to an otherwise near-certain sixth place, was surrounded by guns - Alonso, Raikkonen, and so on - and not one other pundit on Brundle's grid walk (which included luminaries such as Jackie Stewart and Bernie himself) would pick him.

Which goes to show what? That motorsport photographers aren't as silly as we think? Maybe. But Maldonado's subsequent win - a smart, controlled, well-judged race - continued what has so far been an amazing start to the 2012 FI season, much of it credited to tyre-supplier Pirelli's ability to supply tyres which 'degrade'on demand. Five races, five different winners in five different cars. More so, it highlighted an amazing turnaround by the once-dominant Williams team, which since the end of 2004 (when Juan-Pablo Montoya won the Brazilian Grand Prix) had been winless, and had spiralled down out of serious contention. There are many theories and reasons thrown around for the team's demise, including a couple of key decisions which, in retrospect, turned out to be less than ideal - the breakdown on the relationship with BMW key among them. That led to a period of financial strain, and a series of what turned out to be short-term engine deals hardly the sort of continuity that breeds success. Over that time, Williams has had engine supply deals with

BMW,Cosworth,Toyota, and then Cosworth again, before re-establishing links this year with Renault, with which it enjoyed enormous success from 1989-1997. This, along with some tough decisions in terms of key technical people, is the ingredient which looks to have turned it around. Chief engineer is now Mike Coughlan (yes he, ex-McLaren, of Ferrari-gate scandal back in 2007), who is and always was a talented FI man, back from a period of F1 penance at Michael Waltrip Racing in the US. The bits of the puzzle are coming back together at Williams - despite the fact that the man who possibly master-minded it(CEO Adam Parr) left the team a couple of months back, reportedly after a disagreement with Sir Frank over the new FI 'Concorde' agreement discussion policy. But with Maldonado, it does look like they've unearthed some talent which,thank you FI Gods says Frank, comes with serious dollars in Venezuelan backing. According to FI colleague and GPWEEK writer Peter Windsor,'Pasta'(as the team calls him) is a super bloke, one of the few (bit like our own Mark Webber) unaffected by the seductions of the FI 'bubble'. He apparently shares a house in Oxford with one of the Williams

team engineers, and simply prepares himself without all the other potential distractions available to the upwardlymobile young FI star of today. He is of course, a former GP2 champion, which does counteract the'pay driver'tag applied to him for using his national sponsors to ease the way into FI. He's no fool and has, spectacularly, added his name to those making the 2012 FI season one of the most intriguing for years. Hands up who even remotely put'Maldonado'in their potential winners list? Who thought 2012 dominators Red Bull would start seventh and 11th - and finish sixth and 12th in Barcelona? Did many of you see Lotus-Renault coming? It sure is a strange, but fascinating, start to a season. Thank goodness - another year of'The Finger'cruising around in front of everyone would have been a bit tiresome! The again, it might just all be an Ecclestone-inspired script. Maybe Bernie's cottoned on to the idea of F1 movies. Really. Unranked Venezuelan Journeyman comes from nowhere to win and save his team's credibility, on his legendary team-owner's 70th birthday ... then rescues his young cousin, who has a broken leg,from a pit garage fireball inferno. Not bad. What next!

Itsure is a strange, butfascinating,start to a season. Thank goodness-another year of'The Finger'cruising around in front ofeveryone would have been a bit tiresome!

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That Hamilton was able to 'do a Button'and make his tyres last longer than anyone expected was a big step in his development

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LIST how well Lewis Hamilton drove at the Spanish Grand Prix will probably never be truly recognised. When Pastor Maldonado took that chequered flag in Catalunya, everything that happened behind him in the race paled into insignificance. It didn't matter who finished second,third,fourth or 19th, because all eyes were on the beaming smile full of braces as Venezuela's new hero emerged from the victorious Williams. Because of that, Harhilton's epic 66-lap journey was,to an extent, confined to the shadows. But it was epic.To clamber his way through the field from dead-last on the grid, and finish eighth on a two-stop strategy, was quite extraordinary. Let's look at Hamilton's Spanish GP weekend as a whole. Realistically, he should have started from pole position at best, and the back of the Top 10 at worst. If his McLaren had been carrying a smidge more juice, and he'd been able to cruise back to pit-lane, it would have undoubtedly been a very different weekend for Hamilton. Now,I'm not saying I disagree with Hamilton and McLaren being penalised for short-filling the car. Barcelona is a fuel-sensitive circuit, so there is no question that there are gains to be made by running less fuel. If you don't follow the rules, whether it be by design or by accident, you > must be penalised. But put to the back of the grid? Seems a little harsh to me. I would say that losing your best lap '- which, after all, is the lap on which Hamilton benefited from running such little fuel - would be a more reasonable : penalty. As everyone does one lap (at the most) in Q3,that would have put Hamilton 10th on the grid.That would have been fair enough. ; The dumb part is that it was totally unnecessary from McLaren's point of view. If, and I really mean if, it was r done on purpose,then it was not a smart move. As it was, : Hamilton's brilliant almost-pole lap put him 0.578s clear of I Maldonado on the grid. Surely the required amount offuel ' to get the car back to pit-lane in rule-abiding condition wouldn't have cost half a second. It was at the point of receiving the penalty that Hamilton showed that he has most definitely matured since last year. How exactly he reacted to the news that he'd be starting at the back of the grid in the privacy of his motor home is unknown, but to the outside worid he looked like a man who accepted his fate and was ready to fight on. And fight on he did. That Hamilton was able to make a two-stop strategy work, while being fast enough to make up so many places, l was quite incredible. Even more incredible was that he did i so on a weekend where Jenson Button really struggled for ‘ pace. For once, it was Hamilton that was the king of tyre management, not Button. The post-race comments from both drivers were telling. While Hamilton said the result was proof of how good the MP4-27 is. Button talked about their being no quick fixes to

its problems. "I think our car will continue to be competitive,"said Hamilton. "Our team has done a great job improving our car and things will come together for us. When they do we will get the results we deserve." "The last few races the pace has been very good in the race but I really struggled with the car itself," was Button's comment from the other side of the garage. "It is not just one end, I felt that I just had very low grip. "I am normally good at looking after tyres and having a good consistency, it is something I always work on but I can't do that at the moment and I don't know why. I am really struggling with the car at the moment. It is not an overnight fix." That Hamilton was able to'do a Button'and make his tyres last longer than anyone expected was a big step in his development. He's so often seen as the over aggressive racer, who lacks the subtle sensitivities required to really succeed in this modern era of fickle Pirelli tyres.That he was able to prove the doubters wrong in Spain was a big thing for Hamilton. "People are always saying how aggressive my driving style is so hopefully this will prove a few people wrong," he said. "It is very easy just to go 100 percent and ruin your tyres and kill your race by making silly mistakes, so today was about being controlled, calm and collected. "I was the only one to do a two-stopper, despite everyone always telling me how aggressive my driving style is and how much better my team-mate is on tyres than me. I think today is a good demonstration that they are perhaps wrong." While the Maldonado Miracle took a lot of people's attention away from Hamilton's drive, it wasn't lost on everybody. McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh was particularly impressed with his driver's Sunday efforts, swiftly praising Hamilton post-race. "Lewis was extraordinary,"said Whitmarsh."After a fantastic qualifying effort, and the undoubted frustration and shock at what happened after that, I am so proud of him. "We knew we had to do something like a two-stop, but we knew how difficult that would be. So,from the get go, Lewis had to look after the tyres. And this is someone who is often criticised and called the racer who cannot think it through and cannot look after his tyres. "He did an extraordinary job.To do 31 laps on a set of tyres, and give it another 100 metres and he would have got past Nico [Rosberg] as well, he had to race, hustle, overtake and be assertive and aggressive at the right moments. He proved he could operate and he got himself in the points." Given just how much Hamilton has achieved in Formula 1, it's very easy to forget that this is only his sixth season as a Grand Prix driver.The lad from Stevenage is still in a phase of his career where he can learn and improve,and the Spanish Grand Prix was proof of exactly that.

/ have no idea what Lotus's plan is or what they are doing. They are talking to the team, l/l/e drivers don't know. We're in the dark Now former Lotus-powered driver Tagliani

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HE most expensive divorce in history was that of Adnan Khashoggi, businessman, arms dealer, and former Time magazine cover star, from his wife Soraya. Their split cost him in the region of US $874 million, or about US $120 million more than number two on the list - a Mr BC Ecclestone. Put into those sorts of terms, the US$4.6m that IndyCar team Dragon Racing is suing engine supplier Lotus for over what it claims were numerous breaches of contract seems small-fry, but it could potentially be an expensive break-up on all sorts of fronts. If you haven't been paying attention to the intrigues of this year's IndyCar engine war, here's a quick summary: Chevrolet and Honda's programmes have been rolled out perfectly on schedule, and the pair supply the lion's share of the grid. Lotus's effort was, for various reasons, very late - they were roughly six weeks behind their rivals - and they started the season with just five cars in their stable. Given the lack of development of Lotus' unit relative to the other two, it won't surprise you to discover that it has had significant shortcomings on both the performance and the reliability fronts. Five cars became three when the Dreyer & Reinbold and Bryan Herta Autosport single-car teams defected last month (to Chevrolet and Honda respectively), and three became one when two-car Dragon issued its lawsuit and sent its engines back to the factory. Aside from Indianapolis, where Jean Aiesi will race a Lotus-powered entry on a one-off basis, HVM's Simona de Silvestro is left flying the flag alone. Lotus's entire development programme now rests in the hands of a capable, but small, team, and an equally capable, but inexperienced, driver. And even if it wins its legal battle with Dragon (at time of writing Lotus had not made a public response, so we've only heard Dragon's side of the story), it still faces a huge battle to regain

the confidence of teams looking for engine deals in the future. But should anyone be surprised that things have panned out as they have? I was playing around online the other day when I found a list of the '10 Biggest Signs of a Bad Relationship', put together by someone who may or may not have some sort of qualifications relevant to this sort of thing. Apply it to Lotus' plight, and it's clear that if anyone at the company was blindsided by what has happened, they need to waste more time on Google. 1. YOU KEEP YOUR PARTNER'S ACTIONS AND WORDS A SECRET Dragon's list of accusations against Lotus is long, but one of its complaints is that it believes that Lotus was not transparent about the implications of the sale of its parent company in January, which resulted in the company's accounts being temporarily frozen (which I understand is a standard practice in Malaysia), and led to a severe cash flow problem that had all sorts of nasty knock-on effects for the team such as not being able to test during the pre-season. 2. YOUR PARTNER WANTS YOU TO CHANGE Here's Herta's Alex Tagliani, talking to this Journalist after engine problems ruined his Long Beach race. (The team's split from Lotus was announced a week or so later): "The problem in the first race [St Petersburg] was that the pit limiter was not even reaching 60mph - it was stuck on 48mph, so I was running P9, and then every time I came into the pits I was losing seven or eight spots, because the pitlane was so long. Then we go to Barber and the engine blows up at the start. We come here, I start 10th, and I can't even start the race [due to an engine probiem]. it's a fucking disaster. I have no idea what Lotus's plan is or what they are doing. They are talking to the team. We drivers don't know. We're in the dark." 3. YOUR PARTNER DOESN'T TRUST YOU

MARK

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UNITED STATES OF ORIGIN

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Another complaint in Dragon's lawsuit stems from a commitment that it claims Lotus made to provide the team with two chassis. Its financial straightjacket meant that it couldn't afford to do so,forcing Dragon to shell out US$800,000 for them itself-and it then asked Dragon to hand over even more money before it would release any engines. 4.YOUR PARTNER PUTS YOU DOWN,IN PRIVATE OR IN FRONT OF OTHERS During the first few races, Lotus-powered teams tried to put an optimistic spin on their predicament, although in Sao Paolo at least one driver's patience was wearing thin."I wish they'd give us more power,"the driver said."The engine is going to blow up anyway; we might as well look good before it does." 5.YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE AN EQUAL PARTNER IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP Officially, HVM is the'works'Lotus team, although during the season there has never been any complaints from other Lotus squads about the arrangement. HVM and de Silvestro conducted the initial pre-season shakedown, but after that the testing load was shared with Dreyer & Reinbold and Bryan Herta Autosport. Why those teams did not encounter the same problems as Dragon, which only took delivery of Sebastien Bourdais'engine on the week of the opening race, is not immediately clear. 6.YOU AND YOUR PARTNER DON'T HAVE THE SAME LONG OR SHORT-TERM GOALS Lotus insists that it will make up the deficit to Honda and Chevrolet and turn its twin-turbo unit into a competitive proposition,and there's no reason to doubt it. But teams sign up for racing programmes, not development programmes.Try explaining to a sponsor who has just seen their car fail to make the start because of an engine glitch that

'improvements are in the pipeline; and see how far that goes toward cheering them up.(Hint: Not far). 7.YOUR PARTNER SAYS THEY LOVE YOU,BUT DOESN'T ACT LIKE THEY LOVEYOU Bourdais at Barber: "Lotus is aware of what we need. I'm not going to be, like,'come on, come on'.They're doing everything they can. Also,the same guys that are doing the development are also on track,so it slows everything down.They can only do so much,and you can only blame them so much for what is happening. We're all in this together." 8.YOU FEEL BAD,GUILT, UNHAPPY, DEPRESSED OR SAD ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP Refer back toTagliani in Point 2. 9.YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY ARE SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP More than one driver who is aligned with another manufacturer has mentioned how grateful they are that Bourdais has had to work with the Lotus during the opening races.Their logic: If he's that quick with a less-than-optimal engine, what the hell could he do with a good one? 10 YOU'RE WONDERING ABOUT THE WARNING SIGNS OF A BAD RELATIONSHIP The original'10 Biggest Signs...'list used this section to talk about gut feeling, although the discontent within the Lotus camp has been simmering for a couple of months,at least. Lotus didn't need to look for hidden warning signs on that front. The upside to all bad relationships is that escaping them opens up doors to develop new, happier ones. Lotus has the potential to develop into a significant part of the IndyCar landscape. Let's just hope that it gets the chance.

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HAT'S now the V8 Supercar Championship Series and Motorsport News have one big thing in common - 1993. That year was the first of the full Holden Commodore vs Ford Falcon era in Australian Touring Car racing, and the year the very first edition of MNews was published. We're now in the 20th season of each, and there was debate around the office - who had been the best driver in the top level of Australian motorsport in that time? It's a tough question. How do you compare the smash-and-grab of Marcos Ambrose to the sustained excellence of Mark Skaife and Craig Lowndes? Where does Jamie Whincup's ever-growing list of accolades place him? And how to the early titlists compare to the likes of Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom, who are entering their prime in a more competitive era? We set out to find out, and come up with a list of the Top 20 drivers from the first 20 seasons. An expert panel was assembled, with a mix of ages but all with vast knowledge of the sport. Each panelist was asked to submit an ordered list of theirTop 20 drivers, based on how they rated drivers' performances and achievements in the series between 1993 and today. Peter Brock's nine Bathurst wins weren't to be considered, for instance, ditto Ambrose's NASCAR exploits. "This one of those almost impossible tasks - how do you, for example, compare John Bowe and Glenn Seton as champions early in the era, with those winning in the current era, in which the intensity and pressure has ramped up enormously?" MNews founding publisher Chris Lambden mused. "Would many of these match Jamie [Whincup] if, figuratively, they were dropped into his Triple Eight seat? Maybe - but they aren't and he is. I guess it boils down to who you'd prefer to take into a motorsport'war'with you. Who'd get through against the toughest odds..." Unsurprisingly, no two lists were the same, with each panelist having their own take on the task and the drivers involved. "This is such a hard list to compile. You can't base it just on results," Network Ten's Greg Rust said. "For me star quality and personality are major factors and so is raw speed!" What follows are the results of the poll, based on the votes of our panelists. We know you'll have your own view on the final list. Did we get it right? Who's too high in the order? Who's not high enough? We'd love to hear your feedback - let us know through Facebook and Twitter. Let the debate begin.

Greg Rust

Andrew van Leeuwen

DICK JOHNSON RACING

FIFTH IN 1993 ●7‘ 5C2XSANDOWN500) Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000 - Johnson's third Mountain victory with the pair winning again at Sandown in 1995, Throughout the latter stages of Johnson's career, he remained an uncompromising competitor - always there or thereabouts - who relished a battle. Off-track, his personality and profile helped the early stages of the growth of the championship. He remains at the helm of Dick Johnson Racing, the series' longest-running team, and was inducted into the V8 Supercar Hall of Fame in 2001.

'HE bulk of Dick Johnson's achievements came during the Group C and A eras, but that doesn't mean he a spent force during the formative days of the V8 Supercar era. Fifth in the maiden year of the formula, 1993, was his best championship result, but Johnson didn't finish outside of theTop 10 in the championship during his days as a full-timer. Even in 1999, aged 54, he finished 10th in the championship in the unloved AU Falcon, despite missing a round. That year, he finished fourth in what would be his 26th and final start in the Bathurst 1000 with son Steven, the first Ford home. His last V8 Supercar outing came as Steven's co-driver in the 2000 Queensland 500. In 1994, Johnson and long-time team-mate John Bowe won the

Lphil BRANAGANI If I had a DeLorean with a Flux Capacitor, I would take a 30-year-old Dick Johnson forward 30 years to race one of his own Jim Beam Falcons, to take on James Courtney. His style was perfectly suited to a 600-horsepower, V8-powered, RWD racer.

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PETER BROCK

YEARS/! 1993-2004 STARTS 52 TEAMS:] HOLDEN RACING TEAM,

TEAM BROCK

..BEST RESULT THIRD IN 1994 AND'95

T'S not often you see the name Peter Brock rank second last in a driver poll. Nor, for that matter, the name Dick Johnson as the only driver behind Brock. But the fact that these two heaviest of Australian Touring Car racing heavyweights are at the rear of theTop 20 grid isn't a slight upon Brock or Johnson so much as it is simply a reflection of the times - and their place in it. The fact is that best periods of the careers of these two superstars were over before the V8 Supercars era. None of Brock's nine Bathurst wins or his nine Sandown enduro triumphs were won during this time; his last Championship win came 13 years before the first season of V8 Supercars. Peter Brock had, let's remind ourselves, just turned 48 when season 1993 kicked into gear. 20

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But, even in those twilight years, when he had the right equipment beneath him, the old master was capable of matching it with the best. The last of his five race wins in V8 Supercars was achieved as late as 1997. But there was one profound achievement during this era, and that was the role Brock performed as mentor to Craig Lowndes. As team-mates in 1996, the older man gave the rookie the benefit of his experience - and there's no doubt that Lowndes is a far better driver for it than he'd otherwise have been. . DAVID GREENHALGHI ^ ^ Only occasional echoes of the glory years, but on his ^y^- like 1994 Eastern Creek - he could still dominate the field. motorsport news

1999-PRESENT 171 HOLDEN YOUNG LIONS. KMART RACING, HOLDEN RACING TEAM.

PERKINS ENGINEERING KELLY RACING TEAM ‘M .BEST RESULT OF FOURTH IN 2005

ODD Kelly is one of those quiet achievers in V8 Supercars. Never makes much of a fuss and never really makes the headlines, but he's always there - and often wracking up some decent results. Todd was a bit of a slow burner, despite being the first of the really super-young drivers in V8 Supercars, having made his debut at the age ofjust 19 in 1999. Some pretty handy results in Formula Ford and Flolden suggested he might be a real star in the making, but in his subsequent career in V8 Supercars Todd has never been able to breakthrough for sustained success - and ultimately has been somewhat overshadowed by younger brother, Rick, coming through after him. Still, that's not to say that he hasn't enjoyed success in V8 Supercars, or that he's not some kind of driver.The stats don't lie, and his 19 career wins(and six pole positions) include some pretty handy

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TODD KELLY

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enduro results, among them that Bathurst win he shared with Mark Skaife in 2005 - which was a nice way for Todd to celebrate his 26th birthday. Some might argue that Todd ought to have done better than a highest of fourth place in the Championship during his five years as a Holden Racing Team driver. On the other hand, consider this statistic: in those five years with the Holden Racing Team, only once did Todd finish behind his team-mate in the Championship. And his team-mate for each and every one of those years was one M Skaife. IfiS'.v

PHIL'BRANAGAN; _ [; Underrated talent behind the wheel because, perhaps, of the amount of work he does with the teams for which he has raced. Very successful and on his day, a match for anyone.

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of the criteria - but for his two weekends PAIR of Kiwis head the list of drivers aged just 35. But between making his debut with Team Kiwi at Bathurst in 2001 and his aboard a V8 Supercar. who'd have earned a start if the Top 20 Bourdais has clearly been THE form final hitouts with Brad Jones Racing, his raw wasjust a little bigger. 'international'to join the V8 Supercar field talent attracted plenty of admirers. Shane van Gisbergen and Jason Richards on the Gold Coast for the last two years, "Jason was probably the'Gilles Villeneuve' both ended voting tied on points as the showing up many of the full-timers. Not only next drivers in line to enter the Top 20. of V8 Supercars - at, near,or over the limit all the time!That's Why his fans loved him,"Chris that, but the very different perspective the van Gisbergen attracted votes from three Lambden surmised. Frenchman brought to driving a V8 Supercar panelists; Richards two. gaveTriple Eight with some insights into Since he was signed by Stone Brothers Greg Rust also found a place for'JR'on his list. making the cars(even)faster that Lowndes Racing as a teen, van Gisbergen has and Whincup had not detected themselves. been destined for a big career. Andrew "Based purely on stats it's hard to find the van Leeuwen was on hand for his first V8 right place for the late Jas Richards," he wrote. What could Bourdais do if he ever decided to "I included him because he had the right give the series a crack fulltime? Supercar meeting,at a wet Oran Park in 2007. "A cheat,this, in a sense but look at it this stuff to be a winner and the podiums he "Very few young guys have been able to way:from the moment V8 Supercars opened earned were against the odds." burst into the sport and have the sort of the Gold Coast race to international stars, Bathurst winner Jason Bargwanna is next impact that SVG has so quickly," he said. Bourdais made his mark," Addison wrote. on the list, followed by Paul Radisich. While "I'll never forget watching him,as a "He shone in the unfashionable 'The Rat'doesn't have a lot to show for his 17-year-old,set the third fastest lap, in the rain, on his first race weekend at Oran Park. Mother Energy Falcon and was mega at time in V8 Supercars, he was blindingly fast, even in the AU Falcon.Tomas Mezera also That was the moment where I realised he TeamVodafone.Where as some of the guests took the money and farted around, Bourdais polled for his efforts during the formative was a bit special." did the Job properly: he listened, learned, days of the formula. Barely 21 years of age,van Gisbergen won understood and delivered. The most left-field vote came from his first races last year and will no doubt "He is, argue with me,one of the world's Europe,for a European. David Addison attract plenty of votes in similar lists in the future. top drivers and has raced a V8 Supercar. gave Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais a Therefore, he should get on the list. Merci Sadly, Richards'career is set in stone, after vote. Obviously not for his dominance of beaucoup." Champ Car, rise to FI or subsequent efforts tragically losing his life to a battle with -MITCHELL ADAM adrenal cortical carcinoma last December, in sportscars or IndyCar - as they're all out www.mnews.com.au

STEVEN RICHARDS

1996-PRESENT 184 ISSGARRY ROGERS MOTORSPORT, STONE BROTHERS RACING.

GIBSON MOTORSPORT. FORD TICKFORD RACING, PERKINS ENGINEERING, FORD PERFORMANCE RACING

HE son of Jim Richards, it was no surprise to see Steven Richards carve a long and successful career in motorsport. Since he was transplanted from Garry Rogers'Super Touring program to theVS Supercar program in 1996,the junior'Richo'has been a mainstay of the championship. In 1998 and 1999, he won back-to-back Bathurst 1000s. And, with the first alongside Jason Bright in a Stone Brothers Racing Falcon and the second with Greg Murphy in a Gibson Motorsport Commodore, he became the first man to win the race with both Ford and Holden. Some would argue Richards'strength has always been the endurance races, as a consistent and reliable hand rather than a driver with over a . And while he was

GARRY ROGERS MOTORSPORT, STONE BROTHERS RACING.

2-1998 AND 1999

always a threat in those races, he still won a total of six solo rounds with three different teams - Gibson, Perkins and Ford Performance Racing - along with plenty of round podiums, particularly during the Perkins years. He bowed out of fulltime driving at the end of the 2010 season with FPR,finishing second at Homebush in his final start. He remains contracted to the team as an endurance driver. DAVID ADDISONi What he lacked in wins he made up for in being a great team player; solid, safe, fast,just what a team needs.

RACING TEAM,PWR RACING,FORD PERFORMANCE RACING, BRITEK MOTORSPORT,BRAD JONES RACII

WHEN it concludes, one key point and onecareer. key question will emerge from Jason Bright's V8 Supercar The point is as follows. You see that list of teams he's raced for? Bright has won races with most of them - Stone Brothers Racing, Holden Racing Team,PWR Racing, Ford Performance Racing and Brad Jones Racing. He almost even won one in his sole start with Dick Johnson Racing,finishing second at Bathurst in 2000 with Paul Radisich, having spent the year racing Indy Lights in America. Clearly, the man knows what he's doing. The question is also linked with the list of teams. At the end of the 2006 season, Bright elected to leave FPR and join his own operation, Britek, established two years earlier. It was a nice idea, but three long, hard years followed. In 2006, he won two rounds and finished 22

SSNIL BEST RESULT OF

NIL BEST RESULT OF THIRD IN 2001 AND 2004 18 It 1998

second in two others.The Britek era brought him just one podium, at Homebush in 2009,the year he ran as a satellite SBR Falcon. What would have happened had he stayed with FPR? Even so, Bright has a CV many drivers would gladly trade theirs for. In 1998, he tasted glory at Bathurst, winning the 1000 with Steven Richards from 15th on the grid. It remains the only Bathurst win for Ross and Jim Stone's outfit.

t PHIL BRANAGAN: A veteran with a record of wins with different teams. His strength is, he is a born racer, and does not over complicate the process. motorsport news

2004-PRESENT

WILL DAVISON

PERFORMANCE RACING NIL, BEST RESULT TSES^TEAM DYNAMIK. dick JOHNSON SECOND IN 2009 RACING,HOLDEN RACING TEAM,FORD^JJ^jggll^

N a year or two.Will Davison quite likely would figure a fair way further up the order in a list like this. Right now, after a false start or two, he appears set for sustained success - right now he's arguably the form driver of the competition; right now he really does look on the verge of greatness. Whether he's properly placed in this list right now is for that matter a moot point, though, because our panel, in its wisdom, has adjudged Will's 10 victories plus one Bathurst crown to be not as worthy as the 19 wins for team-mate Mark Winterbottom which aren't accompanied by a Bathurst success.Then again, Jason Bargwanna has a Bathurst win and nearly twice as many championship race wins as Davo, but Bargs doesn't even make the top 20. But let's not get ourselves bogged down by such details. One thing that is for sure is that Davison looked like a contender from

the moment he took the wheel of a V8 Supercar. He delivered DJR its first success in eons before taking what reasonably looked like a step forward into a Holden Racing Team drive. It was,for the first year at least, and after a disastrous 2010, only now, at FPR, is Davison once more delivering the kinds of performances that made him such a sensation in 2008-09. And the thing about that is that he now also has the requisite experience. As long as FPR continues to provide front running equipment,then that is where Will Davison will be. MITCHELL ADAMi Davo has now won races JLith each team he's driven for fulltime and HRT's ongoing struggles show that the aberration that was 2010 was hardly down to the pilot. Vv'ith everything clicking and race wins now flowing at FPR,that must seem like a lifetime ago.

THE CARS ROUND VICTORIES FROM 1993 TO 2008 INCLUSIVE: Falcon EB Commodore VP Commodore VR Falcon EF Falcon EL Commodore VS Commodore VT

11 8 11 9 4 15 26

Falcon AU Commodore VX

Falcon BA

Commodore VY Commodore VZ Falcon BF Commodore VE

12 11 16 12

Seton 7,Jones 3, Bowe 1 Skaife 4, Richards 2,Perkins 1, Brock 1 Lowndes 6, Perkins 2, Skaife 1, Ingall 1, Brock 1 Bowe 5,Seton 4 Seton 2, Bowe 2 (Lowndes 5, Ingall 4, Murphy 3, Gardner 1, Brock 1,Tander 1 Skaife 10, Lowndes 5, Richards 2, Bargwanna 2,Tander 1, Ingall 1, Perkins/Ingall 1, Richards/Murphy 1, Skaife/Lowndes 1,Tander/Bargwanna 1, Morris 1 Radisich 2, Ambrose 2, Bright 1,Johnson 1,Johnson/Radisich 1, Besnard/Wills 1 Skaife 9, Bright 3, Murphy 2, Ingall 1, Skaife/Longhurst 1,T. Kelly 1,Skaife/Richards 1, Bargwanna 1, Skaife/T. Kelly 1,Skaife 1, Richards 1 Ambrose 12, Lowndes8,Ingall 4, Ambrose/Ritter l,Whincup 1, Lowndes/Whincup 1, Bright/Winterbottom 1, Bright 1 Bright 2, Murphy/R. Kelly 2, Murphy 2,Skaife 1,Skaife/T. Kelly 1, R. Kelly l,T.Kelly 1, McConville 1, Richards 1 T. Kelly 4,Tander 3, Murphy 1, Skaife/T. Kelly 1,Skaife 1, Richards 1 Whincup 7,Winterbottom 3, Lowndes/Whincup 3, Lowndes 1, Davison 1, Richards 1 Tander 7, R.Kelly 2, Skaife 1, Holdsyvorth l,Tander/Skaife 1

RACE VICTORIES FROM 2009 TO 2012(UP TO BARBAGALLO): Commodore VE

Whincup 19,Tander 11, Lowndes 7,W Davison 4,Skaife 2, R Kelly 2, Bright 2, Holdworth, Caruso, Percat, Bourdais, Owen, McConville 1

Falcon FG

Whincup 11, Courtney, Winterbottom 7, W Davison 5, Lowndes 3, van Gisbergen 2, Dumbrell,Webb,Lyon 1

www.mnews.com.au

MARK WINTERBOTTOM

2003-PRESENT 120 OmSSSTONE BROTHERS RACING. LARKHAMMOTORSPORT, 'll* iR

FORD PERFORMANCE RACING iSNIL BEST RESULT OF SECOND IN 2008 *7i 19

ISTORY suggests a young driver picked up by Stone Brothers Racing will go on to enjoy a successful career. Between Marcos Ambrose and Shane van Gisbergen,there was Mark Winterbottom. Armed with an SBR Falcon, Winterbottom dominated the Development Series in 2003 and impressed in his enduro debut later In the season.That earnt him a gig with Larkham Motorsport in the Main Game, but while those two years were trying, FPR saw enough to sign the youngster for 2006. That year, he finished third in the Championship and won his first round alongside Jason Bright at the Sandown 500. Fle's added to that regularly since and while his fortunes have followed FPR's ups and downs, his worst Championship result with the team is a pair of fifths.

NIL BEST RESULT OF FOURTH IN 2008 AND 2011

so this could be his chance to grab a title. But to do so, he'll need to beat his team-mate Will Davison, who has presented a much sterner challenge than Steven Richards in the latter stages of his time as a full-timer. The other box he's yet to tick is Bathurst. Speed's been no drama, taking pole in 2007 and 2010, but spearing off from the lead at The Chase after the final restart in 2007, a fire in 2009 and a puncture in 2010 have all been costly. I,PHIL BRANAGAII When he gets the car right, he can be untouchable. One of the few men in V8 Supercar racing he has shown he can simply drive away from the field.

NIL BEST RESULT OF

OF all theland bright youngtimes, drivers toone haveupon emerged wide brown in recent the whichfrom the this highest expectations were placed was James Courtney. From karting wunderkind to Jaguar FI test driver at the age of 21, he looked surely set for international stardom. But everything changed after that 300km/h FI testing crash at Monza. Flis recovery took more than a year, and thereafter his career veered away from FI, initially to Japan but later to V8 Supercars when Stone Brothers Racing needed a replacement for Marcos Ambrose. You could say it's some endorsement of the V8 Supercar category that a driver of Courtney's international stature found it so difficult to break through for any early successes. SBR had won the previous three Championships, but it took until his third season before James 24

had won a single race. Things improved with a shift to Dick Johnson Racing, a relationship which culminated (and concluded) with a fairytale Championship win against the better resourced TeamVodafone. It might have been reasonably expected that Courtney would really kick on with a move from DJR to the HRT, but thus far it has proven a disaster. A miserable 10th last year, in 2012 Courtney is looking better, but not nearly by enough. DAVID ADDISONti^he V8 enigma? Fast, yes. Promotable, yes. Well paid,YES. Commitment? Still not sure, Fle's not a battler like many are and that is why he doesn't get higher up my list, but he can still deliver - when he wants to. motorsport news

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Early in 1972 Ford released the XA GT Falcon in sedan and hardtop versions. It was the first Falcon to be totally designed by Australians, as production of the Falcon in the USA had ceased some 18 months earlier. The XA was the biggest Falcon yet, w'ith the boldest styling, designed for wider appeal with its less aggressive look and creature comforts. Ford bui lt 891 hardtops between july 1972 and September 1973, including the construction of 129 RP083 coupes. The CT Specials - that's their official title - were Regular Production Option 83 on Ford's options list for Falcon GTs.

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Irl

JIM RICHARDS

1993-2006

MOTORSPORT.FORD TICKFORD RACING, HOLDEN RACING TEAM, .44 PERKINS ENGINEERING SmGIBSON MOTORSPORT,GARRY IB NIL - BEST RESULT ROGERS MOTORSPORT,JOHN BRIGG^^.^ IM Richards only contested the first three seasons of theVS Supercar era as a full-timer,finishing fourth in 1993. But such is the esteem in which he's held for his subsequent endurance efforts, he's right up there. After winning back-to-back Bathursts in 1991 and'92, Richards and Mark Skaife finished second there in the first year of the V8 Supercar formula. When his time at Gibson ended, be became a hotly soughtafter enduro driver. Initially, he joined GRM,finishing second in 1997 with son Steven and third in 1998 with Jason Bargwanna. He then teamed up with John Bowe for two luckless campaigns in 1999 and 2000, before grabbing fifth with Dean Canto in 2001. Then, 10 years after their last Bathurst win together, his old mate

FOURTH IN 1993 2002

Skaife called. Richards joined him at the HRT and the pair claimed a dramatic victory, his seventh overall, at 55 years of age. He then rejoined Castrol Perkins for two years,finishing fifth with Tony Longhurst in 2003 before famously hitting a kangaroo in another crack with son Steven in 2004. In 2005 and '06, he was tasked by HRT with the responsibility of partnering James Courtney and Ryan Briscoe, turning back time to make the shootout in 2005. STEVE NORMOYLEl He is not called'Gentleman Jim'for nothing although there are plenty of drivers who reckon he's anything but! V8 Supercars probably wasn't his best era but his 2002 Bathurst win with Skaife - 23 years after his first Bathurst win - was pure class.

'A l

12001-PRESENT

YOUNG LIONS, KMART RACING,HSV 147J DEALER TEAM, KELLY RACING -2006 HOLDEN RACING TEAM, HOLDEN^[^|JWSjBP'

TRYING to isrank Rick Kellytalent. with any surety is not Yes, he a prodigious Anyone who saweasy. him as a 19-year-old at Bathurst in 2002 battling against the established stars on the way to finishing fourth would have found it hard not to conclude that here was the next Peter Brock. But a decade on and we are yet to see that Brock-like - or more to the point, Lowndes or Whincup-like - run of victories. Two Bathursts and one Championship is certainly not to be sneezed at, but a total of 13 wins is short of initial expectation. One thing you can be sure about with Rick is that he drives with the maturity of a veteran - and he isn't one to get much involved in on-track fracas. His Championship win is a classic case in point. The points system 26

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was blatantly weighted towards consistent results, so that's what he did. When he wasn't able to win, which was often - he won only one of the 34 races, and none of the 13 rounds (back in the days when there were actual rounds, not'events') - he made sure he bagged some points. That was six years ago. The next few years, as Kelly Racing shifts to Nissan, will be critical in terms of just how far up the all-time Australian Touring Car racing pecking order Rick rises. PHIL BRANAGANi A massive and precocious talent, whose maturity

beyond his youth brought much early success. His challenge now is to take that talent back to the podium on a more regular basis.

motorsport news

KUMHO TYRES Motorsports Motorsport Stocktake Sale Sale Pattern

1993-2003 111 PERKINS ENGINEERING i S^NIL, BEST RESULTS OF

FOURTH IN 1994.95 AND 98 ●7*1 4 3-1993,95 AND 97

T'S hard to really know exactly where Larry Perkins slots into this line up. That itself is somehow appropriate for this maverick racer/engineer - but just how do you rate Larry's efforts, which don't amount to a whole lot when it comes to the regular sprint rounds, but which, on the enduro front, are pretty much second to none? One thing we can say with certainty is that Larry Perkins is one of the most gifted individuals Australian motor racing has ever seen. Good enough probably to have gone on to a successful Formula 1 career in the late 1970s, had he not been thwarted by, among several factors, a lack of cash, and with team owner Bernie Ecclestone's need to attract a pay driver. Back home, Larry drifted into Touring Car racing gradually, eventually building his engineering business around it (after helping Peter Brock to three Bathurst wins in the'80s). As late as 1992 Larry the engineer/driver was still transporting his racecar on an open top trailer, but the addition of Castrol support in the first year ofV8 Supercars set him up as a major player. Still, you always had the sense that Larry wasn't all that fussed about the sprints.That compared with his earlier openwheeler career in Europe, a local Touring Car Championship was maybe not enough of a challenge to really inspire him. But Bathurst, that was a different matter entirely. When it came to Bathurst, Larry was always ready, always hard to beat. His three wins in the V8 Supercars era were all special for different reasons, and he could easily have made it four A in 2001 but for that unfortunate pitlane sand trap incident. Yet it wasn't as though he was asleep at the wheel in the sprint events - Larry was fourth in the Championship on three occasions. But a total of only three sprint race wins is nearly half as many as the endurance races he won (he also 1 won the 98 Sandown 500 and 99 Queensland 500).

MARKGLENDENNINGi Great career as a 'driver and team owner, but you could also make a case that the series benefited from his engineering operations. www.mnews.com.au

Size

Compound Price

R700 175/65 R14 R700 185/70 R13 R800 185/60 R15 R800 195/65 R15 R800 195/70 R15 R800 205/65 R15 R900 195/70 R15 S700 280/650 R18 TW01 180/580 R15 TW02 210/645 R17 V70A 215/50VR13 V70A 235/45VR13 V70A 185/55VR14 V70A 185/55VR15 V70A 195/50 R15 V70A 205/50ZR15 V70A 225/50ZR'l5 V70A 205/50ZR16 V70A 225/45 R16 V70A 225/50ZR16 V70A 205/40ZR17 V70A 235/40ZR17 V70A 275/40ZR17 V70A 225/40ZR18 V70A 265/35ZR18 V70A 285/30ZR18 V70A 305/30 R18 V70A 335/30ZR18 V710 195/55 R14 V710 205/50 R15 V710 225/45 R17 V710 225/50 R15 V710 245/40 R17 V710 245/45 R17 ■V710 265/45R16 ■ V710 285/30 R18 V710 295/40 R17

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35 35 13 30 30 30 30 70 75 126 45 50 25 69 42 36 21 19 54 76 55 62 70 131 66 90 144 153 80 75 131 111 151 161 201 184 165

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27,

2-1995.1997

ITH his take-no-prisoners driving style and 'Enforcer' nickname, Russell Ingall is to some a kind of latter-day Allan Grice. In reality, though, there are closer parallels between Ingall and the man who brought him to V8 Supercars, Larry Perkins. Indeed, Ingall's background as a street-smart Aussie of limited means struggling to make his way in European openwheeler racing. and hopefully Formula 1, pretty much mirrored that of Perkins from two decades earlier, except that Larry actually did for a brief period become a Grand Prix driver. When Perkins expanded his Castrol-backed team to include a second car, Ingall was the man for the job. He'd been British Formula Ford Champ in 1993, but opportunities (and money) in Europe had since dried up. The dream of international stardom had gone; It was the right time to come home and race touring cars. Had it not been for the 1996 phenomenon that was Craig Lowndes, Ingall might have attracted a lot of attention for what was an excellent debut season. While he didn't find it easy to adjust his openwheeler driving style to the slow, heavy reactions of a Touring Car, he'd managed well enough to win the previous year's Bathurst co-driving with Larry as well as scoring a round win, at Calder, in his first championship year. From there Ingall looked like he might emulate Grice's 'bridesmaid championship record with a number of narrow series defeats. Ingall was perhaps unlucky to hit his peak as a V8 Supercar driver just when the Holden Racing Team entered its own glory period, because. frustratingly, in 1998 and '99 he was runner up to HRT's Lowndes, and then in 2001 runner up also to the HRT's Skaife. These were years when the HRT was pretty much unstoppable. Shifting to Ford for the following year initially didn't deliver very much, and Ingall found himself outpaced at Stone Brothers Racing by Marcos Ambrose. But the Enforcer was not done, and he would finally take the title for himself in 2005 utilising consistency rather than blinding speed to take the crown with a single round win to his name. Qualifying hasn't been Ingall's strong suit - he has just one career pole - though he's continued to race well in the subsequent years with Paul Morris Motorsport and, now, Walkinshaw Racing. 28

DAVID GREENHALGHi _ His consistent run to the 2005 title makes

it easy to forget how fast he had been when chasing the HRT for Perkins. So many near misses in the title and two agonising Bathurst defeats beyond his control (2001 and 2002) show just how close Ingall came to accumulating a truly fantastic record. motorsport news

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^RA\E ^ams

JOHN BOWE

""YEARS; 1993-2007 START! 175 t TEAMS: DICK JOHNSON RACING,PAE

MOTORSPORT,BRIGGS MOTORSPORT. CHAMPIONSHIPS:H1995 BRAD JONES RACING,PAUL -RACE WINS:© I CRUICKSHANK RACING BATHURST WINS:il-1994

The sight of John hustling ayears Shellof Falcon is Supercar an imageera. synonymous withBowe the formative the V8 The Tasmanian was, arguably, at the peak of his powers in the early days of the championship. He finished third in the 1993 season, won it in 1995 with a dominant season and finished second in 1996 and 1997,the latter after a tight title fight with Glenn Seton. Between 1993 and 1998, he was always a contender with Dick Johnson Racing,forming a formidable partnership with team-mate and team owner Dick Johnson, who once,famously, dubbed him 'harder to pass than a kidney stone".Together,they also won Bathurst in 1994, with Bowe seeing off a late challenge from upstart Craig Lowndes. The decision to leave DJR after a decade at the end of 1998 brought with it three tough seasons as a single car for, initially, PAE Motorsport, which was later purchased by John Briggs.{Later, Briggs would sell to Roland Dane, who built it into the biggest team in the land...) Bowe's time with Briggs ended on a sour note, parting company after a troubled run in the 2001 Bathurst 1000, a race they had the speed to win. But the sport's most-famous beard wasn't done with yet. He joined the expanding Brad Jones Racing for the 2002 season and again became a regularTop 10 contender. At Bathurst, the partnership of Bowe and Jones could never be discounted.

In 2002, Bowe put the team's AU Falcon on provisional pole and on the front row of the grid in the shootout.They led early, before a suspension failure cost them any chance of victory. Up there again in 2003, run-ins with Garth Tander and Steven Richards proved costly. In 2004,they finally got a result to go with their promise, although second became third with a late-race pitstop. Bowe remained one of the fastest men around the Mountain along with one of the hardest to pass anywhere - and, in different circumstances, could have easily added another Bathurst win or two to his CV between 2001 and 2004. But it wasn't to be. BJR's fortunes started to slide and in 2007 Bowe moved to single-car operation Paul Cruickshank Racing for a farewell tour. During the year, Bowe broke the record for most ATCC starts, a record he still holds.

ISTEVE NORMOYLIIThe hardest competitor imaginable on the track (but a reflective f^d intelligent middle-aged gent off it), Bowe's success in V8 Supercars follow on from whole separate successful careers in openwheelers and sportscars.

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1995-PRESENT 184 HOLDEN RACING TEAM. GIBSON MOTORSPORT.KMART RACING,PWR

RACING,TASMAN MOTORSPORT.PAUL MORRIS MOTORSPORT.KELLY RACING .BEST RESULT OF SECOND IN 2002 AND 2003

REG Murphy ended voting as the highest-placed driver without a V8 Supercar Championship to his name and comfortably so. But many in the sport regard Murphy as a big game player and one of the best-ever around the biggest stage of them all - Mount Panorama. In 1996, Murphy teamed up with Craig Lowndes to take victory and complete a Triple Crown, with the pair earlier winning the Sandown 500 and Lowndes the championship for the Holden Racing Team. With Gibson Motorsport, Murphy added a second in 1999 with Steven Richards, the pair finishing on the podium again with third in 2000. After another team switch, Murphy grabbed another thirdplace finish alongside Todd Kelly for HRT's sister outfit, branded as K-Mart Racing the following year. Murphy and Kelly were dealt a cruel hand in 2002,a controversial five-minute penalty following a pitlane fuel spill rubbing them out of contention. Murphy's furious reaction - it's on YouTube-is part of Bathurst folklore. But while you're looking that up, have another watch of a

happier Murphy Moment from the very next year. In the pressurecooker of the Top 10 Shootout, Murphy produced the lap. His 2:06.8594 was the first time a V8 Supercar had lapped the 6.2km road in the 'sixes'. Second on the grid, John Bowe, was barely in the then mythical'sevens'... Murphy's 2:06 was special and the entire V8 Supercar community knew it, leaving their pit bunkers to give Murphy a standing ovation as he idled back down pitlane. It was one of the great moments of the last 20 years.The laptime went on to stand for seven years. Now running with Todd's younger brother Rick, Murphy made amends for the nightmare of 2002, winning the race in 2003 and 2004. Regardless of where he was in the championship or how his year was going over the following seasons, Murphy was always a darkhorse at worst. In 2007, he and Jason Richards just missed the podium for Tasman Motorsport.The following year, they made it, finishing second, before Murphy and Skaife narrowly missed out again in 2009. Last year, he delivered again in a Shootout, putting his Kelly Racing Commodore on pole, before finishing third in the race with Allan Simonsen. While he's got an incredible Bathurst record, it wasn't his only playground. Remember his domination at Pukekohe, winning four out of the championship's first five visits in the early 2000s in-front of his adoring Kiwi fans? While a championship win is the main omission from his CV, Murphy doesn't exactly have a bad record. Between 1997 and 2004, his worst result was a pair of sixth, while he finished second twice in 2002 and 2003. Plenty of drivers would take that...

STEVE NORMOYLEi I sometimes wonder what might have happened had Murph been on the right end of crucial personnel decisions that were made at the HRT in the late'90s. Still, four Bathurst wins is handy haul by any standard. 30

motorsport news

1993-2010 157 QSmGLENN SETON RACING.FORD TICKFORD RACING.

FORD PERFORMANCE RACING. DICK JOHNSON RACING.STONE BROTHERS RACING. HOLDEN RACING TEAM

Glenn Seton's breakout year in Touring Car racing coincided with the first season of V8 Supercars. After debuting for Nissan in the late'80s(almost winning the Championship in 1987 as a green 22-year-old against wily veteran Jim Richards), Glenn went off to form his own team in '89 running Ford Sierras. Fie never quite hit the heights in the turbo Fords, but then these were not only difficult cars to drive, but also a real challenge on the technical front for the engineers when it came to coaxing performance out of them that didn't fry the rear tyres. Flowever, the arrival of V8 Supercars solved the problem of running Sierras, by which time the man dubbed 'Young Glenn'(and also the'Baby Faced Assassin' by Channel Seven's Mike Raymond) was a 27-year-old with a fair amount of top-level experience to match the raw talent that had always been there. He was clearly the class of the first season ofV8 Supercars, winning seven of the 16 races on the way to claiming his first Championship crown. A Bathurst win would have been the icing on the cake, but it was not to be that year - and sadly it never would be. Some of his early battles with former Nissan team-mate Mark Skaife are legendary - and reminiscent, as Skaife himself said during the Barbagallo coverage last month, of those today between Will Davison and Jamie Whincup - again, a case of the respect that is there between a pair of good mates who literally grew up racing together. But the key to Seton's place in history was not Just the fact that he was a great driver. The things is that he was also a racer of impeccable manners - in an era before on-track fisticuffs were punished in the way they are now,Seton got the better of his rivals with skill rather than physicality. In this sense there were parallels between Seton and Peter Brock. And while Glenn was never the gregarious man-of-the-people that

Brock was, he did embody the kind of grace and sportsmanship that was always associated with Brock. Consider what happened to Seton at Bathurst in 1995. Leading with nine laps to go, his engine failed and the dream of a Bathurst win was over once more, almost within sight of the flag. It must have been utterly devastating, but in a situation in which many drivers would compeltely lost the plot, Glenn somehow found the composure to talk to the Channel Seven commentators on Racecam just moments after the car ground to a halt out of the Cutting, and Larry Perkins steamed on by and onwards to victory. A pair of second place results was the best he was able to manage at Bathurst, but his record everywhere else in the'90s was top shelf. A force right through that decade, he scored a second crown in 1997 in the absence of defending champ Craig Lowndes during the latter's ill-fated season in European Formula 3000. Importantly, Seton's team managed to survive the loss of tobacco sponsorship, so that by the time Ford decided to get serious and try to build for itself something akin to what Flolden had been enjoying, Seton's team formed the ideal platform for this new factory team.This would eventually evolve into what we know today as FPR.

i^DAVID GREENHALGF^Seton was a descendant of Brock on the driving front: very smooth,fast and fair, never a man to get into a needless fracas. Notably more at home in the Falcons than he had been in the Sierras. Never had the luck that Brock had. www.mnews.com.au

iS2-1993.1997 34 NIL BEST RESULT OF SECOND PLACE. TWICE IN 03 AND 04 .7*'

GARRY ROGERS MOTORSPORT,

IiSl-2007

E was the wild-child when plucked from the sidelines by Garry Rogers, but Garth Tander has developed into one of the best in the business. Tender's speed could have never been questioned,showing plenty of promise throughout his partial first season with GRM,in 1998.That, though, also included its fair share of incidents. It didn't take him long to sort it out. In his first full season, he won a round and in 2000, he almost snatched a championship from the dominant Holden Racing Team. The crowning moment of 2000 came in November, when,along with Jason Bargwanna, he claimed his maiden Bathurst 1000 in treacherous conditions. GRM failed to challenge in the following years and in 2005,and Tander moved to the HSV DealerTeam, alongside Rick Kelly.The team had a disastrous start to the season, but Tander helped reshape it and won his first event in nearly five years late ^ V in the season. T ;)■ A decision at Clayton to shuffle drivers within the HSV Dealer Team and HRT for the

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endurance races, in ail likelihood, cost Tander the 2006 title. Kelly remained with HSVDT,joined by brotherTodd, whileTander was drafted into HRT to partner Mark Skaife. While the Kelly brothers banked 620 points from the two events with second at Sandown and Bathurst, it was a disaster forTander.They controlled Sandown before encountering steering problems and Bathurst was even worse. Skaife was slow away with a slipping clutch and eventually collected heading up Mountain Straight. Total points for the two events? 70, 550 down on the Kellys. Tender's final championship deficit to Rick Kelly? 343. The following year, though, he did get a championship to call his own,sealing the title with victory when it counted, in the Phillip Island season finale.That prompted Clayton to extract Tander from the Dealer Team to the red of the factory team, along with a number of key personnel. WhileTander's time with HRT hasn't coincided with their strongest era, his stocks have continued to rise, particularly since James Courtney's arrival as reigning champion in 2011. When the car hasn't been there - which has been often - Tander has been the king of dragging every possible thousandth out of it and fashioning a result. Case in point? Bathurst 2011. Even as a faster Craig Lowndes began to close in during the final stages of the race, there was always a sense that the race would still be played on Tender's terms.There'd be absolutely no way he'd wilt under the pressure, that the onus was on Lowndes to somehow find a stunning pass somewhere. How many other drivers would you honestly say that about?

■■r-J

ANDREW VAN LEEUWENi If there was a list called 'Guys I would trust to drive for me lifel Tander STEVE NORMOYLE He made such an immediate impact in his first season - even if half the rest of the field thought he was a mad man. He matured quickly, but in 10 years that fierce, dare I say, Skaife-like determination never left him. If there's a race to be won and a car under him, no matter how good or bad, he'll always give it everything.

a fwould be a clear #1 ft:

motorsport news

YEARS)

start;

lARCOS AMBROSE 2001-2005

TEAMS^.STONE BROTHERS RACING

CHAMPIONS 1^2-2003,2004 RACE WINS: BATHURST

LIST where - and how - do you rate Marcos Ambrose? His presence in Australian Touring Car racing, compared with the other heavy hitters in our top 20, has been so fleeting that it's hard to be definitive. Think of it another way: Marcos is already more experienced as a Stock Car driver than as a V8 Supercar driver - by almost two years. He is one of our most versatile drivers ever - because before NASCAR and V8 Supercars came Ambrose's openwheeler career. In European Formula Ford and F3 he'd raced against the likes of Jenson Button and Takuma Sato. But Marcos never got the big break, and once the money ran out he came home to give Touring Cars a go. Ross and Jim Stone know a good driver when they see one.They'd been watching Ambrose in Europe, they understood how good he was and had no qualms about signing him for 2001 despite his lack of tin top experience. In Ambrose's first day on the job in V8 Supercars it was a case of experience-not-required - he claimed pole on debut. It only took four rounds for Ambrose to score his first victory. He went on to finish eighth overall. The sudden impact Ambrose made in V8 Supercars would also prove a pivotal moment on the Championship's history - because at the same time as the Ambrose trajectory rose, Mark Skaife's stocks were heading in the opposite direction.The decline of Skaife coincided almost directly with the rise of Ambrose. Skaife would win a third consecutive title in 2002, but Ambrose had been third - in only his second season. In 2003 Ambrose took charge. In a barnstorming run reminiscent

of Lowndes in 1996, Ambrose won six of the 13 rounds.The Skaife hegemony had been broken - and Ambrose backed up in 2004 to claim consecutive titles. Things then got harder. Ambrose was a title contender almost till the end in 2005, but at times his frustrations got the better of him. The low point was the outburst following an on-track clash with Skaife at Barbagallo, in which Ambrose inferred on national TV that the officials were conspiring to ensure he didn't win ar.other title. Perhaps by then his mind was focused on fresh challenges, because before the year was out came the shock news that Ambrose was off to the States to race in NASCAR. With that he was gone from Australia. But what a legacy he's left. In five years he was Champion twice, was third twice, and eighth once. He won 28 races, took 18 poles, and is the only driver to have won a Championship race in every season he's contested. The only missing piece is Bathursthow much higher up the list would he have been with a Bathurst win or two?

CHRIS LAMBDEN; How many walk away when they are, literally, on top? In Marcos'case, it was for an even bigger challenge. But while he was here, with Stone Brothers(who developed him in a V8 sense), he was indisputably the one to beat.

DAVID ADDISON;fTook a team that wasn't the best to stellar results.The only sadness is that he moved on as it would have been great to see howTander or Whincup compare against him now. www.mnews.com.au

2006,2007

INCE he burst onto the scene in 1994, Craig Lowndes has gone from'The Kid'to the silverfox of the V8 Supercar Championship Series. But he's still yet to show any real signs of slowing down. Given a crack by the Holden Racing Team in the 1994 enduros after their Plan A fell through, Lowndes put a bold pass on John Bowe for the lead at Bathurst late in the piece, eventually finishing second at 20 years of age. He returned for the enduros in 1995, before rewriting the record books in 1996 in his maiden fulltime season with HRT. He became the then youngest-ever series champion at 22 years of age, before teaming up with Greg Murphy to complete the triple - with wins in the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000, setting another 'youngest'milestone. After a trying tilt in Europe in 1997, he returned home and picked up where he left off, winning the 1998 and 1999 championships. His bid for a fourth title from four attempts in 200'0 was played out with what would become his departure from HRT in the background. Lowndes'controversial move to Ford wouldn't deliver the same level of success, eventually spending nine years in Falcons without a championship. Had he been transplanted into Stone Brothers Racing rather than Gibson/00 Motorsport and Ford Performance Racing, though, things could have been different T n in the first four of those years at least. Lowndes and Marcos Ambrose in the same team would've been fascinating. He had opportunities with Triple Eight,

narrowly missing out in 2005 and 2006. By now, he had Jamie Whincup in the other side of the garage. Having aided Whincup in his development as Peter Brock had aided his a decade earlier, Lowndes now faced a real challenge. While together they won Bathurst three years in a row between 2006 and 2008, Whincup was now leading the way in the championship, winning titles in 2008 and 2009. Some questioned whether it was the start of Lowndes'gradual slide towards retirement, but - in perhaps his biggest achievement - he's been able to fight back. He'd always raced well, but qualifying was a weakness he's addressed over the last 12 months in particular. Lowndes also found a friend in the Sprint Tyre, becoming the master at getting the most out of the softer rubber the longest. Last year, he almost snatched one from his younger team-mate, falling just 35 points short of a fourth title, 12 seasons after his third. The season finale at Homebush was vintage Lowndes. While he only qualified 10th for Saturday's race, he played the situation beautifully to take one of the most important wins of his career. Despite another top-shelf drive to second on Sunday, it wasn't enough but he could leave with his head held high after a fine season. In 2010, he produced one of the great Bathurst stints, doing the last 80 laps and claiming a fifth Bathurst victory. In covering the race, the MNews team led with the headline'The Craig Lowndes 500'.Two days earlier, he'd set the fastest-ever V8 Supercar lap around the circuit, eclipsing Greg Murphy's famous 2003 benchmark. Lowndes has done all of this while managing the off-track demands being the biggest name in the sport - comfortably - brings. He'll turn 38 this year and based purely on his profile could continue to command a seat on the grid well into the future. But the thing is, that's not the case.The speed and racecraft are still there, as ever accompanied by the laconic, Brock-esque nature in the car. He's just signed an extension with Triple Eight and desperately wants another title. You'd be a brave judge to write him off just yet.

STEVE NORMOYLEI He changed the game, winning in his Championship debut and shattering the myth that'good young guys just didn't have the experience to beat the established stars. With his youthful exuberance and infection enthusiasm, Lowndes brought a whole new generation of fans to the sport in 1996, and 16 years later he's no less popular - and still on top.

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PHIL BRANAGANI A towering natural talent, built into an everyman with the common touch.The closest thing V8 Supercars has ever had to Gilles Villeneuve. motorsport news

JAMIE WHINCUP 2002-PRESENT

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MOTORSPORT, TRIPLE EIGHT RACE ENGINEERING 153-2008,2009,2011 55

THREE a champion, times a winner at Bathurst, Jamietimes Whincup has been three the benchmark performer consistently for at least the past three seasons in V8 Supercars. Already widely rated as one of our best drivers ever, Whincup second in our list only to Skaife. And the way things are going, it might only be Jamie's desire to seek new challenges that stops him from ultimateiy eclipsing Skaife's record, because at only 29 years-of-age, the thing about Jamie Whincup is that time is most assuredly on his side. Yet for all Whincup's achievements, he was not what you'd call an overnight sensation. In fact, his early efforts in V8 Supercars provided little glimpse of what was to come. Whincup went straight into V8 Supercars from Formula Ford in 2003. Perhaps he made the transition before too early - he was only 20, and by comparison Marcos Ambrose had had his skills sharpened by three character-buildings seasons in European openwheeler racing before he made his first V8 Supercars start - because Whincup's first season, 2003, with Garry Rogers Motorsport, was frankly a disappointment. So much so, in fact, that he was dumped by Rogers (a decision which Garry probably still rues to this day), leaving Whincup out of a drive and, so it looked at the time, more than likely out of the sport altogether. Certainly the pragmatic Whincup was himself prepared to walk away altogether, and was realistic enough to accept that the drive with Rogers might have been his one and only chance in V8 Supercars. A season on the sidelines seem to suggest that the dream might indeed be over, but another opportunity would come his way. This was towards the end of 2004, when Tasman Motorsport was looking for an extra driver for its planned expansion to a second car. After a special test day, Whincup got the nod ahead of several other young hopefuls, nm^

3- 2006.2007,

The '05 season with Tasman Motorsport was solid, and culminated in third place at Sandown for Whincup and Jason Richards, followed by a fighting second at Bathurst. That was enough forTriple Eight Race Engineering boss Roland Dane - he signed Whincup to accompany Craig Lowndes into 2006 and, as they say, the rest is history. Whincup and his new team clicked right from the start. Jamie won on debut at the Clipsal 500, arguably the toughest event on the calendar outside of Bathurst. He's been winning on a reguair basis pretty much ever since then. Three Bathurst victories, three Championship titles, more than 50 race wins, all achieved in only the space of the past six seasons - the statistics point to a driver that is the complete package. Yet it could have all amounted to nothing after that tough first season with Garry Rogers Motorsport. But Whincup was handed a rare second crack at the big time and he took it with both hands. In his time with Triple Eight, he's been the class of the field, even over-shadowing his initial mentor Lowndes. Every now and then, talk has emerged that Whincup's focus could shift to international competition, maybe NASCAR, but he's yet to pack the bags. Earlier this year, he signed on until at least the end of 2015 with Triple Eight. By then, he could own the record book.

.MITCHELL ADAM When Jamie's on song, it often looks terrifyingly easy. And that's no fluke, he's massively talented and works incredibly hard. Off track, has a V8 Supercar driver ever built a better relationship with their engineer than Whincup has with Mark Dutton? Irf^DREWVAN LEEUWEN When you are putting together lists like this, it's actually easy to overlooklhe modern drivers and let your sense of nostalgia take over, but Jamie Whincup i deserves to be right near the top. There's something about driving a V8 Supercar that he knows n and others don't - although I'm not sure exactly what that is. www.mnews.com.au

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TRIPLE EIGHT RACE ENGINEERING

HE most decorated driver of the V8 Supercar era is also the best, according to our panelists, in reality, Mark Skaife benefits from his career being almost perfectly timed to the first 20 seasons of V8 Supercars. Coming off back-to-back Bathurst wins in a Skyline and the 1992 Australian Touring Car Championship, Skaife turned 26 during the first year of the formula and his most-recent start came just last year, in the endurance races withTeamVodafone. But to pin his top spot to timing would be a massive injustice. Skaife was the consummate professional, everything a driver should be-fast, competitive and hard working. Four members of the panel had him on top, and his lowest rank was a sole fourth. Whenever he was racing, Skaife loomed large as a threat. When things were right, as they were during the Holden Racing Team's golden years, he dominated. When they weren't, he found a way. Having already won two titles - in 1994 with Gibson Motorsport and 2000 with HRT - there was no stopping a rampant Skaife in 2001 and 2002. He won 11 of the 26 rounds in those two seasons including five-straight to start the 2002 season to demoralise the competition - and visited the podium in six of the others. Such was his dominance of the 2002 season that his nearest rival, Greg Murphy ended the year with 70% of the points Skaife accumulated. The same two years brought a pair of Bathurst 1000 victories, almost 10 years after his last, in 1992. He'd been close in the years between, namely 1998 and 2000, and he ticked all of the boxes when enlisted by HRT to attempt to give Peter Brock the perfect Bathurst farewell in 1997. But even those Bathurst wins weren't straight-forward. In 2001, he had to save fuel and withstand pressure from a closing Brad Jones. The following year, it was rapidly rising engine temperatures, after a plastic bag got caught in the radiator intake, as Steven Richards sought victory. Both times, he got the job done. Another Bathurst win came in 2005, alongside Todd Kelly, with Skaife sealing the deal again in the final stint. Of his 15 fulltime seasons, he only went winless in five, and 36 A

2010

4-1994,2000,2001,2002 80 between 1999 and 2006, he claimed the award for most pole positions in the season on five occasions. Even in the final years of his fulltime career - under the added duress and demands of owning HRT - he managed to add to his tally amid often-bleak campaigns. In 2007, he eclipsed Brock's record for the most'round'wins. But the team he'd played such a big part in building would eventually take so much out of him.The global demise of Tom Walkinshaw Racing coincided with Stone Brothers Racing's burst with Marcos Ambrose and Russell Ingall, and the subsequent challenges first relating to the actual ownership of the team and then having to run the team itself When he announced his retirement at the end of the 2008 season, the final round at Oran Park almost became a Skaife benefit. Not to the point of Brock's 1997 farewell at the same venue, butV8 Supercars and the circuit acknowledged the significance of the day, with a pre-race presentation on the grid and a parade lap on the back of a specially-liveried Ute with his family. Visibly emotional pre-race, Skaife put it all to the side to charge from 26th to 12th in a typically determined drive. Since then, Skaife has added to his record in the endurance races. In 2010, he played the perfect supporting role to former team-mate Craig Lowndes in the enduros, the pair winning at Phillip Island and Bathurst. He may not have been the quickest co-driver, but he was never going to put a foot wrong. With his new role on the V8 Supercar Commission, 2011 was his last crack,for the time being, at least. And he went out in style. At Phillip Island, Lowndes and Skaife made it three wins from three starts in their reunion, and they finished second at Bathurst. With V8 Supercars'new format of counting races as'rounds', many of Skaife's records will soon be eclipsed, and it's feasible that, for instance, Jamie Whincup will end up with more titles. But,for the moment, he stands out as the top performer from the first 20 seasons of the V8 Supercar formula.

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MITCHELL ADAMj It's hardly a surprise to see M Skaife end this poll on top. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he set a standard of domination for everyone else to try and match. And while records are made to be broken, 5kaife's legacy remains unmatched.

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HE clue was in the post-race radio message. Having just won his first Grand Prix, and the first for the historic Williams team since 2004, Pastor Maldonado was unusually calm as he radioed back to base on the cool down lap at the end of the Spanish GP.There was no screaming, shouting or tears.There were no expletives and no enthusiastic babbling in Spanish. Maldonado quietly thanked the team, and that was that. It seemed like an odd reaction. For a young guy, who had Just taken his first ever victory in Formula 1 - in an unfancied car you'd expect something a little more over the top. As if to illustrate my point, a day after the race someone posted a video of the cool down lap on YouTube, to which another user replied'When the McDonalds cashier asks me if I want fries with my burger, there is more emotion'. But think about it this way; while this'shock'win took us all by surprise (including, I would imagine,the head honchos at teams like Red Bull Racing and McLaren), maybe it wasn't a big surprise for the guys and girls at Williams. Maybe they have known all along that as soon as Maldonado could string a qualifying performance together,the race pace would look after itself. The subdued radio transmission may well have been because deep down, Maldonado has been expecting this to happen. I've come to this conclusion because at the pre-Barcelona test at Mugello in Italy, I asked Maldonado if he thought, based on FW34's promising race pace in the first four races,that Williams could win a race. Here was his response: "It's always difficult to predict[when you will win]. With the Pirelli tyres, it's difficult to understand what the tyres were doing. When the conditions are changing, it's difficult for the drivers to understand what we want, and what we should change with the car. "But I think that as a team, we are in this moment understanding the tyres well.The tyre management is very good in the race. We need to understand more what to do with the tyres and the car in qualifying. I think, as a driver, we're a great team together. At the moment we are one of the best with managing the tyres." While he was never going to come straight out and predict race wins,the message was clear - in a year where tyre management is as important as ever, Williams was in the game. Fast forward a couple of weeks and Maldonado is Formula 1's latest first-time race winner. After a stunning display in Spain, where Maldonado not only looked after his tyres superbly but also out-raced Fernando Alonso,the'pay-driver'from Venezuela has officially arrived in Grand Prix racing. The term 'pay-driver'is an interesting one. As Phil Branagan points out in his column earlier in this very magazine, how do you actually define what a pay-driver is? Yes, Maldonado brings money to Williams each season, and yes, it is a hefty sum of money. But it's not family money, it's genuine sponsorship. Why would the benefactors concerned throw money behind Maldonado's career if they didn't think he could deliver? And let's not forget that he was pretty bloody quick in GP2 as well. In that respect, it is more incredible that Williams was able to give Maldonado a car capable of winning a race than it was that Maldonado was able to get the Job done. After its worst season in history last year, the once mighty team has turned it around. And it's not Just the Spanish win; the FW34 has looked impressively quick, particularly on long runs, since the season kicked off. "We've not been surprised [with our own speed], but we've been surprised with some of the other teams that are not that 1111^ quick,"says Maldonado. iHawitg.fcKtnyiiiii

VENEZUELA IN FORMULA 1 V

ENEZUELA isn't exactly considered a hot-bed of motor racing talent, but since the World Championship was formed more than 60 years ago it has produced four Formula 1 race drivers. The first was Ettore Chimeri. Born in Italy, Chimeri's family immigrated to Venezuela when he was young, which means he technically raced as a Venezuelan. Chimeri started one race, the 1960 Argentine Grand Prix, racing an ex-Fangio Maserati 250F. Later that year Piero Drogo made his first Grand Prix start. Like Chimeri, Drogo was actually born in Italy, and it is believed he also competed as an Italian. He too made Just one start, driving a Formula 2-spec Cooper-Climax at the 1960 Italian Grand Prix. The next is a name that has some significance in Australia. Johnny Cecotto, above, made 18 Grand Prix starts in 1983 and 1984, driving forTheodore andToleman. Hailing from Caracas, Cecotto was also a Grand Prix motorcycle racer, and went on to finish seventh at the 1987 Bathurst 1000 after switching to Touring Cars post-Fl. In the modern era. Pastor Maldonado is the lone representative for the country in terms of race starts. However, Ernesto Viso did drive a Spyker in free practice for the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix, below. With that never turning into a race seat, Viso switched his focus to the United States, and now drives for KV Racing in the IndyCar Series. -ANDREWVAN LEEUWEN

working so hard since iast year because the car was not competitive enough.We were studying where we couid improve, and we know where to go now.We know where to improve.This year's car is competitive in aii situations. We need to stiii improve a bit in qualifying, but it's not that far. It's a couple of tenths.' , While the 2012 Formula 1 field is wide open, qualifying is still important. Before Spain, it was an area where Williams was struggling. On the Saturday night, after Maldonado's stunning display through all three segments of qualifying, the team's chief operations engineer Mark Gillan admitted that the key was getting through Q1 and Q2 without having to use the option tyre. He revealed that up until that session,the team hadn't had the confidence to even try doing so. While that pole position in Spain is proof that Williams is making in-roads on its qualifying speed, Maldonado says it's an ongoing area of improvement. "I think our worst point at the beginning of the season of qualifying," he says. "It's something we are [still] working very hard on trying to improve. As you see, the car is very strong in terms of race pace, we Just need to be starting a little bit further forward. We are getting every time close and closer to the top teams. "This year is very tight. We need to put everything together. I've had some problems with the KERS,and it's so close that if you have problems like that, you will be penalised. We still need a couple of €i

now lb constitutes a top team in hard to pick. From the first five races of the season we've had five different winners from five different teams. At times, McLaren, Red Buii Racing and Mercedes have iooked unstoppabie... but two weeks iater it changes again. However, it's the iikes of these teams that you know are capable of big results. And when the win isn't achievable, points will be. According to Maldonado, Williams is oh-so-close to joining that group of'top teams'on a regular basis. It's difficult to know for the next races, because everyone will keep putting new parts on their cars," he says. We need to see Monaco,and then Montreal.These are very important races.These are difficult tracks where the drivers work very hard, but you need a great car.That's a part of the season we're looking forward to. "Now,the season starts again. It's like a restart.There are a lot of new parts for all of the teams and we are going to tracks that the drivers know very well. "We can get there. We have all the tools to get there. We have a great factory, great engineers, great mechanics, great drivers - we have everything we need to be a strong team. And I am pushing so hard every day to get close. We have great targets. We're optimistic. As you saw in the first part of the season, we have improved a lot since last year. We still need to continue like that." While the win will go a long way to helping Maldonado shrug off the pay-driver tag, it takes more than one good Sunday III! to become a superstar. Even this season the 27-year-old

A VERY LONG TiME BETWEEN DRINKS

ASTOR Maldonado's Spanish Grand Prix victory broke an extremely long drought for the Williams FI Team. Betw/een Juan Pablo Montoya's victory in the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix, below, and Maldonado's at Barcelona, the proud team had endured 2758 days without a win. During their era of dominance in the 1990s, very rarely did they go 27 days without a win ... But times have changed.The conclusion of their partnership with engine supplier Renault - which yielded four Drivers'and five Constructors'titles - at the end of the 1997 season instigated what could become a gradual slide down the order. An alliance with BMW brought plenty of expectation, but other than a handful of race wins, things really didn't gel in the EnglishGerman alliance between 2001 and 2005. The departure of BMW coincided with the departure of several of the team's blue-chip sponsors and the following years were a slog. Even with drivers such as Mark Webber, Nico Rosberg and Rubens Barrichello, results were hard to come by as the team had stints with Cosworth,Toyota and, again, Cosworth powerplants. Last year, the team hit rock bottom.They didn't score a point until the sixth race and by the end of the season, Barrichello and Maldonado had collected just four and two respectively, leaving Williams ninth in the Constructors'title - only ahead of the new-for-2010 teams. Behind the scenes, a number of changes were underway, most notably the departure of Sam Michael and Patrick Head stepping down from the Board of Directors, while Chairman Adam Parr also left in early 2012.

"2011 has been a difficult, character building season for the team," Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer, surmised. It wasn't all doom and gloom,though. In July, the team signed a deal to re-engage Renault as engine supplier for the 2012 season. "Our previous relationship with Renault was one of the most successful in Williams' history but we will not allow ourselves to dwell too much on the past,"Sir Frank Williams said at the time. "We must look to the future and continue to re-build our on-track reputation, which I am hopeful that today's announcement will help us to do." In the FW34,the team has taken a step in the right direction and the switch from Cosworth to Renault has undoubtedly helped. Last year, Williams arrived at Barcelona without a single point on the board. In 2012, Maldonado and new team-mate Bruno Senna had both scored points. On the weekend the team celebrated Sir Frank's 70th birthday, it all clicked. Maldonado topped the first two phases of qualifying and ended the session second.That became pole when Lewis Hamilton was excluded and Sunday, as they say, is history. The last time Williams and Renault had won a Grand Prix together? October 26 way back in 1997, with Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez-5315 days earlier. Formula 1 in 2012 has thrown up plenty of surprises. Among them, realistically, was a Williams victory. But if they can keep up with the development race, you'd hardly be surprised if they added to their tally again later in the year. -MITCHELL ADAM

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has copped some criticism, particularly in the aftermath of his crash at the Australian Grand Prix. in case you missed it, Maldonado was chasing down fifth-placed Fernando Alonso in the latter stages of the race. On the final lap, with Alonso almost in striking distance, Maldonado lost control of the FW34 and fired into the wall. It lead to suggestions that he lacked the focus 'required to concentrate for a full GP,and fuelled the ongoing chatter that he was too reckless to ever become a standout Formula 1 driver. But Maldonado makes no apologies for his natural flair and aggressive style. And nor should he. "Maybe...there have been some mistakes from my side, because we've been pushing so hard," he admits. "I don't know if you know me very well, but I'm always trying my best - until the chequered flag. Sure I was faster than Alonso that time [in Australia], and I wanted to be ahead of him. We missed out on that race. "But I'm not looking to be fifth. I'm looking to win races, every time I'm at the track.The way the season is going so far, I had some problems, but the important thing is that we have the pace. We have the chance.The season is very long. I want to be at the top. I want to keep improving every race, with the car, the team and myself." The way in which Maldonado won the Spanish Grand Prix flew in the face of those who said he lacked the focus to last out a GP

atthefront of the field. It was in the dying laps at Barcelona where Maldonado really showed what he is made of, ignoring the Ferrari red in his mirrors, concentrating on tyre degradation, and then stepping up the pace to gap Alonso at exactly the right moment. In other words, despite the incident at Albert Park, Maldonado is a much better driver than he was 12 months ago, when he joined the FI grid as a rookie with next to no pre-season testing under his belt. "Yeah,for sure," he agrees. "I'm more confident. Obviously the first season is difficult. If you look a my pre-season last year it wasn't very good; I did nearly no running, then I went straight to the first race. It was difficult to manage that, because I was learning, and at the same time we had a lot of problems with the car. . "This year we have less problems in the car, I know the tracks, and I can focus on my performance. It's much easier." What happens next is the big question. With the current season so up-and-down, it's impossible to say whether Maldonado will be in a position to win any more races this year. It might have been a one-off like Mercedes in China, Maldonado may well win from pole in Monaco in a few days time. But it doesn't really matter. He's not at the same level as the Alonsos, Vettels and Hamiltons of the world just yet, but he's already proven one thing-give him a car capable of winning a Grand Prix, and Maldonado can win you a Grand Prix.

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'VE always been fascinated with Imola. I can honestly say I'm not sure why. For some reason, the San Msrino Grand Prix was, during its time in Formula 1, a race I looked forward to watching as much as Monaco or Spa.There was something about watching modern FI cars dance over the huge kerbs that I always found fascinating. I even remember the last two F1 races held at the circuit vividly; the first(2005) was when Fernando Alonso and his Renault held off a fierce attack from Ferrari's Michae: Schumacher to win by just two-tenths of a second, while a yea r later Schumacher led home Alonso - by a comparatively whopp ng two seconds. Most people remember the 2005 Japanese Grand Frix as the best race of the mid-2000s, but for some reason, those San Marino races are the ones that stick in my mind. The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola is somewhat of a hidden gem. It's not a hidden gem because it's a secret - anyone with haf an interest in motorsport has heard of Imola. It's a hidden gem because it's not widely known as one of the most beautiful circuits in the world. But it should be. The whole town of Imola is beautiful. Located on the Santerno River, a half-hour train ride from Bologna, Imola is overflowing with leafy green streets and heartbreakingly pretty hills and valleys. During a recent stay, an American colleague of mine described the view from our hotel's dining room as being exactly like an old painting you'd see on the wall of an Italian restaurant. The circuit's proximity to the town itself is an obvious clue to its origins. Mestled hard up against Imola's old town,the circuit was quite clearly once public roads.Thanks to the vision of Enzo Ferrari, the 4-9km of road were turned into a world-class racing circuit. "My first contact with Imola dates back to the spring of 1948," wrote

Ferrari in a book published back in 1980. "From the very first moment I considered the possibility to turn that hilly area into a small Nurburgring, due to the natural difficulties condensed into the circuit that was going to be built. Imola race track's proponents felt reassured by my opinion. "In May 1950 the work started. 1 attended the ceremony in which the first stone was laid by Lawyer Onesti under the aegis of CONI (Italian National Olympic Committee)that granted 40 million Lire - I believe this was the first contribution the committee made to motor racing. A small Nurburgring - I was saying to myself that day looking around me - a small Nurburgring, with equal technical and spectacular resources and an ideal track length. My idea became a reality over the decades that have elapsed since then." During those decades that Enzo Ferrari speaks of, things changed at imola.The circuit layout was altered following the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna in 1994, with the addition of chicanes atTamburello and Villeneuve, as well as a straighter entry into the ultra-fast Acqua Minerale complex.The changes stand as a constant reminder to when this beautiful circuit was the scene of Formula 1 's ugliest weekend. More changes came in 2006. Having been dropped from the Formula 1 schedule thanks to deteriorating facilities, the old pit building was demolished and replaced by a bigger, better version. What's amazing is that throughout all of these changes, the circuit hasn't lost any of its magic or mystique. It is still a hugely technical piece of tarmac that winds its way up and down the beautiful countryside. It is still a place that oozes history. It is still a circuit that looks and feels like it has a place of significance in the world iiii of motor racing.

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FIVE FAMOUS MOMENTS AT IMOLA

1. The disaster of 1994 - Imola will always be famous for being the place where Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna lost his life. Embroiled in a straight fight with Michael Schumacher's Benetton, something broke in Senna's Williams as he threw the car into Tamburello, sending the Brazilian into the wall.The impact proved to be fatal. The devastating crash occurred just 24 hours after Austrian Roland Ratzenberger lost his life in a head-on crash at the Villeneuve corner. It was a tragic weekend for Formula 1, but there were some positives to come out of it. Thanks largely to the work of Professor Sid Watkins, nobody has been killed in a Formula 1 car since. 2. Nelson Piquet's crash in 1987 - Tamburello was the site of many Grand Prix crashes before it was altered in 1995, and one of the more famous was Nelson Piquet's tyre failure from 1987. The Brazilian crashed heavily during qualifying, the impact leaving him unconscious. In a recent feature story published in AUTOSPORT magazine. Piquet admitted that the accident had a big effect on him, both physically and mentally. 3. Ducati's legendary win - In 1972, Ducati took a famous 1 -2 in the Imola 200. Despite the Ducati 750 being an untried and basically untested beast, Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari finished first and second respectively, having completed most of the final lap side-by-side. In several interviews regarding that race. Smart says he could hear thcj massive crowd cheering over the sound of the bike on the last lap. 4. Alonso V Schumacher... twice - If you counted the 2005 and 2006 San Marino Grands Prix as a single race, staged over 611.218 kilometres, Michael Schumacher would have beaten Fernando Alonso by less than two seconds. In '05, Alonso (Renault) held off Schumacher (Ferrari) by a slender 0.215s, the nature of the circuit allowing the Spaniard to hold off the clearly faster Ferrari. In '06, Schumacher had his revenge, acting as a road block to lead Alonso home by two seconds.

SPEAKING of significance, Imola is a particularly special place for former FIA World GT Champion Thomas Biagi. Having grown up in Bologna, it was at this very circuit that Biagi developed his love for motor racing, a love that would drive him to turn the sport into his lifelong profession. "My first visit was 1988," Biagi tells MNews. "I was here watching Formula 1, and I was just a kid sitting in the grandstand. After that, I made a lot of visits here when I was young. It took me about an hour on my motorbike, and I always came here to watch Ferrari, even when they were testing here on their own. I still feel those memories every time I come here." Biagi even recalls sneaking into the paddock as a kid ... on more than one occasion. "I remember I wasn't allowed in the paddock when I was young, so one time I came into the circuit at six o'clock in the morning with the crew from Ferrari FI. 1 was hiding in the backof their van to get in, which was easier back in those days. Once I was inside, I jumped out and I stayed here all day. "Another time, I came into the track with the marshals. One of them gave me his overalls, and I was standing at Rivazzo corner. When the first red flag came out for the Formula 1 cars, I walked here [to the paddock], and went inside Minardi's toilet and took off the overalls. Then I could walk around and see everything that was going on.They were special days.They are great memories." For Biagi, it's not just the layout or the green parklands that make Imola such a special circuit. It's all to do with the local population, and their love of this sport. "The track is the place where, in Italy, there is a lot of tradition and history," he adds. "This country, the people here, they are born with a love for motorsport.They really do have motorbikes and Formula 1 in their hearts. So it's a great shame that Formula 1 isn't racing here anymore, because in the blood of the people there is a lot of passion for Formula 1, Okay,they may love Formula 1 in somewhere like Bahrain, but it can't be the same as here. "There is a certain spark here. It's the same at somewhere like Paul Ricard - there is real Formula 1 history there. Here, there is also a lot of history." So what does it take to be fast around Imola? According to Biagi it requires some insider knowledge,some bravery across the kerbs, and some big-time commitment through Acqua Minerale. "Acqua Minerale is very fast and very technical. Variante Alta is also tough, because you have to use so much of the kerbs. To be honest, the whole circuit is hugely challenging and very technical. It's not

5. Blowing up the pits - In 2006, having been booted from the Formula 1 calendar for having sub-standard facilities, Imola was in need of a facelift. So, thanks to 700 sticks of dynamite, the old pit building was blown up. Just to show how motor racing mad the locals are, more than 3000 people crowded on the Rivazza hill to see the explosion. With a helping hand from circuit designer Hermann Tilke, a whole new pit complex was built, increasing the pit box capacity from 18 to 32. Thankfully, Tilke wasn't given the opportunity to tinker with the circuit's actual layout...

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easy to be fast here. I even know the old Imola, with Tamborello. It was really fast, really nice to drive." Former Grand Prix driver Tonio Liuzzi is another driver for which Imola holds a special place in his heart. Mot only is Liuzzi Italian, but he also made his Formula 1 debut herein 2005 with Red Bull Racing, where he finished eighth. Fie even goes as far as to compare Imola with Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. This is a crazy circuit. It's the sort of place where anything can happen,"says Liuzzi. 1 love Imola. For me,Imola is one of the nicest circuits in the world. Everyone loves Spa, but Imola is just as good. 'In Formula 1, this place was just amazing. I have good memories here, because this is where I scored my first points on debut with Red Bull in 2005. With the memories, and the,circuit, it's always such a great feeling to come here. 'All of this circuit was amazing in a Formula 1 car. From the first two chicanes where you are right on the kerbs,to Acqua Minerale, where the car is at maximum compression as yo u come down the hill. This is a circuit that shows exactly what a Formiula 1 car is capable of It's quite amazing the speed that you can take through the corners, the compression that you have in the ups-ancd-downs, and the way you can ride those kerbs. Everything here is unbelievable - even braking into Rivazzo. It's such a shame that this circuit isn'ton the Formula 1 calendar anymore, but you never know what will h appen in the future." Despite Liuzzi's optimism,the chances of Imola ever returning to the Formula 1 World Championship are si im to none. With money speaking louder than ever, and a distinct focus on taking FI to the 'new world', it's unlikely that this amazing circuit will ever host a Grand Prix again. It's a crying shame, parti.cularly when you see races at the facelessTilkedromes like Shanghai and Bahrain. It's a bit like your favourite family-owned side alley cofrfee shop closing down to make way for a Starbucks. But these are the commercial realities of the world. What's truly amazing is that even without Formula 1, Imola is thriving. The circuit is beautifully maintain#ed, the new pit facilities are fantastic, and as the quotes from Biagi ancd Liuzzi attest to, it's still a real driver's favourite. That this little circuit has been able to not only survive, but actually prosper,since losing fts Formula 1 race restores some faith that history, relevance and bea uty still have a place in modern motorsport.They still mean something. It is a beautiful circuit, in every way,"says Biagi, in summary."The old-style tracks are different, and this is a perfect example of that." I couldn't have said it better myself

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IKE Gascoyne has seen a lot of different views of Formula 1. Since he arrived in the sport almost a quarter century ago, he has worked with McLaren,Tyrrell, Sauber,Jordan, Benetton/ Renault,Toyota, Spyker/Force India and now Lotus/Caterham. Flis current role combines overseeing the technical program of the Grand Prix team with that of Chief Technical Officer of Caterham Cars, after stepping down from his hands-on technical role with the team at the end of last year. After what some might call the excesses of Toyota, which had a gigantic budget,a massive factory in Cologne, Germany,and more than 800 staff, Caterham represents a major change In direction.The small team,one of the three 'start-up'tegms that appeared at the start of the 2010 season, went from approval to finished car in less than six months,a much different proposition to Toyota's massive program. There was much to talk about with the man known as'Gazza', including the team's new alliance with Renault and the end of his long relationship with driver JarnoTrulli. But first, I wanted 0 Gascoyne's insights into life at the smaller end of pitlane after having been accustomed to the 3 largess of the Toyota era. motorsport lev

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M Fimda 1's Mggtst teanis and is now Inwe'start-np'teains, Calorliain FI. But Ms Is toH rail BRANM aM life at Intb lad^ ri parBuji vritli Ids long-tone driver Jamo Mi MOTORSPORT NEWS: Let's go back 10 years. How does the length of the process of designing a Formula 1 car differ to what it was, say, in 2002? MIKE GASCOYNE: I don't think that it has really changed. You have got your yearly cycle of racing. You have got a year to design and develop a car, and that is the same. But I think that the size of the design teams has grown, so perhaps the main difference is that the design teams are twice as big as they were 10 years ago. So the amount of work that you do in the refinement of the design that you come up with is a BIG step forward. But I would not say that the major milestones have changed. Ultimately, the time that you have to manufacture and refine the bodywork, to make an example, is about the same. So you want to push back all the aero work, and the actual design of the car, as late as possible, so that you have more time in the wind tunnel. So ultimately, the time scale of the design process has not changed, really. But the finesse, the size of the design teams that we have on it, have grown. Now you are with a team that is, if not'small' then, certainly, not as big as the one you were with immediately before - Toyota. How does that compare? www.mnevr.com.au

Although at Toyota there were 800 people and we are 250 at Caterham FI - and if you count in the guys at the windtunnel, we are probably 300 the 800 at Toyota were making the engine and lot of other things. If you count the number of people actually doing the designing, I would say they we are not much smaller than Toyota, so far as the design office is concerned. It was all the other areas that were bigger [at Toyota]; they had 40 people in HR and Finance. We have three. In production, they probably had 300 people; we have about 30. But in Design, we are not THAT much smaller. So mentally, does your approach change or is it exactly the same? I think that it is exactly the same. I think that the difference is the amount of research that you can do. If you look at the basics of motor racing making the car and taking it around the world, and racing it - that is going to cost you around 40 to 45 million euros. So, if you are spending 50 [million euros], your development budget is five. If you are spending 100, your development budget is 55. That is a massive difference. So really, it impacts on how much research you can do. What I used to say in the old days, when I was at Tyrrell, your development list, whether you are a big team or a small team, should

be the same.What you want to do,to develop,should be governed by your intelligence, your thought processes, but when you are with a small team, with a small budget you have to prioritise correctly. You can't do the 50 things; you can only do, maybe,three.You have to be sure you do the right three,to give you bang for your buck.That is a skill you need to have in a smaller team. Are you getting more bang for your buck these days - is everyone? If I compare the grid to that of 20 years ago,the cars are closer than they have ever been before;they are more reliable now than they have EVER been. If your team,a smaller team,is closer to the front, is everyone else, too? it is. I don't think that it could be much closer. It is closer now than it was at the end of last year. I think that it is very interesting. If you look at our team, it has only been in existence for two years. Ten years ago,the largest team that existed in the sport, we are the size of that team.So the level is about the same. It has not changed massively compared to what it was 10 or 20 years ago. When you look at it, the cars are massively reliable.The grid is much tighter than it used to be. don't think that that is because of the level of the teams; with all due respect, with Marussia and HRT aside, with the level of the top teams, Caterham are going to have to join them.The level is so much higher, all the way through the grid, and I think that makes big differences. We are all doing a good Job. When I was at McLaren, when I started in early 1989, 1 was head of aerodynamics,and I had one draughtsman in the office, and eight model makers working on that. When I left Toyota, I think we had 125 people doing the same Job. We Hair today, gone tomorrow:A young Mike Gascoyne at McLaren in the eariy'90s with an even younger David Couithard, centre. A few decades on and Gascoyne is technical chiefat Caterham, top. With Heinz-Harald Frentzen when they were at Jordan together,left. motorsport: v.c

probably have 70 or 80 people doing the same job. But what we could do with 10 people in 1989 won the world championship.THAT is the difference and THAT is why everyone is very, very good. So you came to Caterham,a little longer than two years ago.Is that like hitting the'reset' button on your career,on your motivation? I suppose,a little bit. The opportunity to do this, to build a team from scratch, is probably something that I will look back on as the proudest thing that I will ever do. Really? Even beyond being invoived with a titie-winning program? Yeah, I think so. I think that starting up a team, from scratch,that five-month period from securing the entry to getting onto the grid in Bahrain,that matches the edge that you get from being right at the front. I don't think that I will ever being able to experience that again. I can see what you are saying,if anyone wound back the ciock three years and suggested that one of the start-up teams,in this case Caterham, wouid be in a position to chailenge the mid-field teams,like Wiiliams, from where it was three years ago,wouid you believe that? That Just shows how your life changes. I think that we have done a very professional job. We are just like all the other Formula 1 teams; we have our own factory, we have our own design teams. Everything is on-site.The other two teams [Ed: Marussia and Hispania] have not, yet.You clearly need to do that if you are to be competitive. It just shows how things change. Williams, if you look back 20 years ago, were just entering their dominant period. For five years,they blitzed everything. If you look back at some of the grids in that period, Williams would be on pole by a second-and-a-half! I think at Barcelona in '94, they finished first and second and we finished third, with Mark Blundell, in a Tyrrell. We were the only car still on the lead lap. There were HUGE gaps. Formula 1 is cyclic. Ferrari dominated;then McLaren. Red Bull are having their good period. That is a part of the attraction of the sport; that it www.mnews.com.au

always seems to change. To me,it has always been about engineering teams.You can see that good teams of engineers get set up and they get their own in-house style. They become dominant- and then,some of the engineers in that team get poached by the 'B-grade'teams.Then the next lot of engineers come up and one of those teams will get it right. It is not about drivers; that is something that I learned very early on. It is about putting the right team of engineers together and that is something that we have been working on here at Caterham and I think that is something that will help us move through the grid. Look at Ferrari; that is a great case in point. What Ross[Brawn] did when he went there was actually not to PUT the team of people together but HOLD it together. For seven or eight years,they had that long period of dominance - then you get the best drivers. It all feeds off itself. Then that team breaks up, Ross splits with Rory [Byrne] and suddenly, three years later, they are struggling. But all the time,the next group is building up. For me,as an engineer,that is the fascination. That seems to wash across all forms of motorsport;Peugeot and Audi in their Le Mans teams,TeamVodafone in V8 Supercars... Yes it does. It is having a team of people together, not just a good driver. Teams like Ferrari, for 20 years, got it wrong. They chopped and changed and never made any ground. Ross put the team together and held it together. That is Red Bull's dilemma now; they have to keep that team together under Adrian [Newey], otherwise people will go to other teams. That is the way of the world. At Caterham, when you look at the team that I built up at Renault in 2001/'02/'03; we have that core of people here. There are some other guys who worked in other places but we can be very confident that we are well into that building process. That is what will allow us to move through. I have been doing this a long time but my circumstances at Motorsport News - my team - have changed recently. You have had such a long relationship with Jarno Trulli. Do iii^

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/ou feel a little bit out of step without him in your car? Yes and no. I think, with drivers,the time comes when they need to finish with Formula 1. With Jarno, it is a great shame. He struggled last year. He has been a great friend of mine and one of the fastest guys certainly THE fastest guy over one lap - that I have ever worked with. He had great finesse; his strength was also his weakness, in that he had greater feel in the car than anyone I have ever worked with. But that also meant that he struggled more than many drivers might if that feeling changed even slightly. If you could give him a car for 60 laps in a race that gave him the feeling that he had over one lap in qualifying,and he could drive the race like that, well ... Times moves on. I think that any driver loses that edge. I think that Jarno will probably look back on it and think that it was a difficult decision that the team made, but it was the right thing to do at the time. But he is a great friend of mine,and I am sure that we will see a lot of him around with the team It's a shame but life moves on. The same thing is going to happen to me! I am in different groups; I am in the[Caterham] Group as CTO (ED:ChiefTechnical Officer) and I am running the road car division of Caterham, which is very interesting for me as an engineer. Day-to-day, Mark Smith has taken over the role that I used to have with the Formula 1 team.That shows that it does happen to all of us. How is Jarno's wine? Excellent! Absolutely excellent!The great thing about him is, he is someone who has interests outside racing. He is a cerebral chap and he likes things outside of Formula 1. 1 am sure that we will see him racing again. somewhere, but he had a great career. He did a hell of a lot of Grands Prix nil and he is, I suppose,a little bit of Trulli great: Gascoyne says Jarno Truli is the fastest driver over one lap he's ever worked with,left. That includes, among others, the likes ofJenson Button, centre, and Adrian Sutil, above centre. motorsport new-

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Renault is ready for the challenge of 2014's new Fomiula 1 regolations. Win the company that introlhiced tnrhocharged Vfis to M Prix pacing ride again? PHU BRAIilH ashed a mao who may know

SOMEWHERE a darkened factory, not far from Paris,a in new beast is about to spring into life for the first time. Deep within Renault Sport FI's headquarters at Viry-Chatillon lies a new motor. It is a V6 and will, in time, have more bells and whistles attached to it than any engine has ever had in Grand Prix racing. For now,the engine does not have a publicly-known designation; it will have, almost certainly,'just'a turbocharger attached while a myriad of ancillaries are being prepared for use somewhere down the development road. But much depends on Renault's 2014 Formula 1 engine. Nobody knows that more than Remi Taffin, the company's Track Operations Manager. It is his role to liaise with the company's four customer teams; Red Bull Racing, Lotus FI, Williams FI and Caterham - and ensure that their Renault RS27 V8 engines are as a competitive as they can be. But on his mind,to nearly as great a degree,is the development program of the new-for-2014 Renault V6. "It actually started around the end of 2011," he says. "At that time,the new regulations were supposed to be introduced for 2013.So at that point, we started to look into things." The decision to delay the introduction of the new motor by a year was a big help, according to Taffin. "It made things much easier.The schedule at the time was really tight, and we could not really do what we wanted to do. We are building ' a completely new engine,so the change was actually a relieffor us. It was a good idea!" One thing that is vital is the packaging of the engines in the cars - and that is something for which Renault is well-known. When Adrian Newey arrived at Red Bull in December 2005, the technical set-up was that RBR used Ferrari customer engines and sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso used Cosworths. After a season, the team transferred its Ferrari deal to STR and RBR got Renaults - because Newey wanted the French motors for the'A-Team'. It was a telling endorsement - particularly when you consider that Renault and Ferrari were so close in the championship. What input does Taffin expect to have from his customers in the architecture of the new motor? "We are actually working all together," he says. "We have to make sure that the new engine packaging is right; it will have two electric motors, a turbocharger and will be a V6, so it will have a completely different architecture to, say, our V8. In this way, we will strive to make things

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fit as well as we can.The turbocharger; do we put that on top of the engine? On the side? How to we get the engines to Join to the chassis and to the turbo? "It is not something that we can do by working alone. We must work together because we need to make sure that the specification will work but for the teams and for Renault. We can share information and we need to be ready when the engine starts on the dyno." With a lot of work already having been competed,expect to hear some V8 sounds in France soon... "We expect that we will have the turbo engine on the dyno by May or June," he says."Obviously we have made a lot of work on single-cylinder engines prototypes,to work out what will be the combustion, what will be the piston and the interaction with the turbocharger. We have done a lot of testing with the ancilliaries as well." That is not to say that the company will soon be running a prototype FI motor in another car - as it did in the 1970s when a Renault Le Mans car acted as a rolling test bed for the company's RS01 engine in 1977. In that arena,times have changed. "These says we can have very good simulations,"Taffin says."We can actually put a gearbox on the engine and run that on the dyno,and the results are very similar on what we can get from putting it in a car. So we do not need to put the engine in a car that early because we can simulate how it is going to be on a dyno. We can do that for two months or three months and see how it will behave in a car. To be honest, maybe 90 percent of the job is on the dyno now and on the computer as well." With its alliances with competitive teams,and history in the sport, there are expectations that Renault will be competitive at the very start of the 2014 season. "Obviously everybody is going to be starting from scratch and this is a good opportunity to show the world that we are going to be very competitive. But it is a lot of new technology, so we need to be good in every aspect. We have turbocharging; direct injection; electrical motors. It makes a lot of work to be done at the same time. I don't think that we will be the best in every area but we need to have the best overall package." Renault produced the first turbocharged engine to win a GP;likewise for pneumatic valve actuation and VI Os. Next month marks the 35th anniversary since Renault's RS01 debuted at Silverstone.There will be a lot of French fans - and four FI teams in Britain - hoping that in 2014, history repeats itself.

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^iii an unfulfilled talent, in a number \ of ways, in terms of victories. But th|re are so many people like that, being in the right place at the right time. Look at Jenson [Button]; yes, he won a World Championship and he deserved it. But he could have left that team before that year and it^ould have been a case of the great talent&irifulfilled. Right place, right time. If dfflibte diffusersmad been declared illegall.. . Exactly! ' There is a massive regulation change coming up in a couple of years. Caterham

is not one of the bigger teams in terms of size, compared to McLaren, Ferrari and Red Buil, at what stage do you start looking at preparing for a new car, and how do you feel about how the playing field will look for you? I think that anything that levels the playing field is always good, in terms of the teams that are not winning. We have already started looking at the implications of the new regulations. We are starting in the wind tunnel soon, and we view this as an opportunity for us. It is something that we actually need to prioritise.

Even as a small team, we would be looking to actually switch resources to that. You say'small team'; sometimes is it an advantage being a small team. If you are at that end [the top] of pitlane, competing for a championship, you have to concentrate on that. If you are here, you do not. You can put more resources into 2014, because that represents a chance for us to make a statement and a step. So, we are already prioritising that. History shows that Renault comes out very competitive, very quickly, when there is a major change in regulations. We have a very good relationship with Renault. With a big engine regulation change coming, we think that we are absolutely with the best engine manufacturer, this is the best place to be, in terms of engine supply. We are looking to make our links with Renault much, much closer. What is realistic in 2012 for Caterham? Q3 and points? Q2 and points. Q3 might be a step too far. You never know, towards the end of the year, but I think that we are in the mix. I think that that middle part of the grid will be very tight and there could be teams covered by half a second or less. If that is the case I think that, certainly for the races, we have two of the better drivers in that group and that means that we need to be looking to score points. Team effort: Gascoyne knows what it's like

800 people - but even minnow FI teams like Caterham are not short on staff above, I requirements, to work at a Toyota FIleft. team that employed motorsport

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OR a little while, we all kind of forgot about Richie Stanaway. Having been super fast in Australian Formula Ford in 2009, top right, Stanaway went to Europe with the express aim of becoming a Formula 1 driver. It sounds horrible, but once he left Australasia a lot of us stopped paying attention. Let me explain why: upon arriving in Europe, Stanaway decided to take a path less travelled. Conversely, his countryman Mitch Evans took the fireworks approach to heading overseas, signing a hugely newsworthy GP3 deal with Mark Webber for 2011. By the time Evans and Webber had shaken hands for the cameras, Stanaway had already spent 2010 racing in ADAC Formel Masters, a German based open wheeler category that acts as a Formula 3 feeder series. He won the championship, but such is the category's obscurity that it didn't really register down under. For the 2011 season, Stanaway moved to The Netherlands, and subsequently dominated the German Formula 3 Championship with Dutch squad Van Amersfoot Racing. If it had been the British Championship or Euro Series, more people outside of Europe might have taken notice. But it wasn't until the second half of last year that it became apparent to everyone down under that Stanaway was a man on the

move. It started with a two-round cameo appearance in GP3, the first of which was at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Having never driven one of the cars before, Stanaway finished eighth in Race 1, and took an emphatic win in Race 2.Then, when the post-season Formula Renault 3.5 test rolled around, Stanaway jumped straight in and went fastest on the opening day. Suddenly, New Zealand's best-kept secret was back in the limelight, emerging as the man most likely to become the first Kiwi to start a Grand Prix since MikeThackwell. While we in Australasia didn't pay much attention to Stanaway's results before the Spa GP3 race, he caught the eye of some influential people in Europe the moment he landed. At the start of 2011, while Evans was stealing headlines with his MW-Arden deal, Stanaway was quietly signed as part of Eric Boullier's Gravity Sport Management. A little over 12 months on and that deal now gives Stanaway access to the Lotus Formula 1 team, as well as having contributed greatly to his deal with the Lotus World Series team in Formula Renault 3.5. In other words, it is a crucial part of his quest to become a Formula 1 driver. "So far it's going really well," says the likeable 20-year-old. "The idea behind the program for this year was to reduce the amount of drivers, but increase the amount of focus on those drivers. So there's only four of us racing at the World Series events, and then motorsport news

ANAWA7 HAS FOUND HIMSELF « CAUGHT UP WITH THE 70UNG KIW one driver in karting.The focus has definitely increased, and [Gravity] is doing a lot for us. It's nice to be associated with a Formula 1 team and have that connection. "I'm at Enstone most days during the week,so I've spent some time with Romain [Grosjean] and Jerome [D'Ambrosio]- I've not met Kimi [Raikkonen] yet. But it's cool to see those guys around and have a chat to them." Having been very fast in pre-season testing, Stanaway had an indifferent start to the season at the opening round at Motorland Aragon recently. He was fourth fastest in the first qualifying session, but an electric problem left him stalled on the grid in Race 1. In the second qualifying session poor tyre management hurt his starting position (11th), but he did recover to finish sixth, despite an engine problem restricting his straight-line speed. Reflecting on his first round, Stanaway's conclusion is that learning to use the tyres properly in qualifying is the biggest challenge he is currently facing. "In the first qualifying session, the result wasn't too bad. But to be honest I didn't really put it together on my second set of tyres at the end of the session. I was PI with a few minutes to go, but I was bumped back to P4 because the track was getting better and www.mnews.com.au

better, and I didn't get a lap together at the end to take advantage of those improving conditions. I was a little bit disappointed not to get that last little bit out of it, but at the same time I wasn't overly disappointed to be on the second row for my first World Series race. "Then we had a bit of a disaster in the second qualifying as well. I was mucking around trying to find some space on the track, and right in the tyre peak I wasn't really setting a time because I was too busy trying to find a clear piece of track. Once I did find some space, the tyre peak was gone and I couldn't get a good lap together. "Apart from a couple of GPS races I did last year, I haven't really raced in a category that has a full grid. So I'm not really used to having so much traffic in qualifying. You have a very, very small window of opportunity to get the most out of the tyres, and if you don't get it right at that moment then you have no chance of being in the top five. "It's such a competitive championship that if you want any chance of being near the front you've got to do your best lap right in the peak of the tyre. And you have to get everything right on that lap. If you don't, you'll probably be outside the top five. There are so many quick drivers, so if you don't get it right, somebody else will. nil "There were some positives to take out of the weekend. My 67

i n-IE S1B> WASN'T THAT BIG BETWEEN FOI^ULA 3 AND THE OLD WORI.D SBWS CAR THAT I TESTED LAST /lEAl^ BUT THIS NEW CAIR HAS CHANGIED THAT

STANAWA7 ON HIS SWITCH FROM 20TIR. ABOVE,TO 2012 WSR,FaOHT ^ team-mate[Marco Sorensen] was leading the second race comfortably, which shows that the team are doing a good job. Fie was just unlucky to have an electrical failure just before his pitstop.That's unfortunate, but there's a lot of potential there." While Stanaway was a little disappointed with the weekend, he's right to say there were some positives to take away. Being on the second row for Race 1 was an impressive show of pace from a rookie, and it has to be remembered that Stanaway is a genuine rookie at this level. He's come straight out of a domestic Formula 3 championship and into what is now widely regarded as the best Formula 1 feeder category in the world. It's a big step, and so far Stanaway is making it look easier than it is. "The step wasn't that big between Formula 3 and the old World Series car that I tested last year, but this new car has changed that," admits Stanaway. "It's a couple of seconds a lap faster than the old one,so it's made the gap between the two categories that much wider. When I drove the old car, straight out of the F3, it wasn't too bad. I only had to get used to a bit more power, because there wasn't a huge difference in the downforce. "Now,the new car has something like 34 percent more downforce and a bit more power again, so you can really feel the difference. It's much quicker than an F3 car, particularly when the car is in high downforce configuration. At Motorland we had medium downforce, but there's only a few circuits where we'll be using that. Most of the circuits will be high downforce, and that makes it a lot tougher. In terms of performance,the new car is very close to a GP2 car, which is very good for driver development. I think the old car was just a bit too slow compared to a GP2 car." There Is little doubt that Richie Stanaway will grow into a regular 62 nil

Formula Renault 3.5 front-runner and race-winner as the year wears on, and that means one thing - Formula 1 is getting closer. In fact, Stanaway is hoping to do enough between now and the middle of the year to get a gig with Lotus at the mid-season FI young driver test at Silverstone. If it happens, it will be his first drive in a full-blown Grand Prix car. "My goal is to drive a Formula 1 car this year, at the young driver test," he says. "That will depend on having a strong season in World Series. If I do have a strong season,then I'd be looking at a third driver role for next year, and then be looking at a race seat in 2014. "If I can drive at the young driver test this year and then be considered for a third driver role, that would align with my goals. But like I said, a lot depends on results. So my main focus at the moment has to be to get the job done in World Series." If the chance to take part at the young driver test does present itself, Stanaway is already making sure he'll be ready to grab it with both hands. "Physically, I'd be capable of driving a Formula 1 car right now.The FR3.5 isn't massively slower in terms of corner speed,so there would be no issues. "As a driver, you have to be one step ahead with your fitness. You can't Just befit enough to race in your current championship. My fitness training now is all about preparing for Formula 1." Stanaway is 20, living in Europe and knocking on the door of Formula 1. From the outside it looks like a fairytale life, but there are some hard truths. For one, Stanaway left home as a teenager and moved to the other side of the world on his own. As great as it sounds, that's a lot for a kid to take on.The homesickness,the language barriers, the feeling of being an outsider racing against guys who started in karts together - these are things that have broken plenty motorsport news

WHERE SIMPLICITY MEETS INNOVATION

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of FI hopefuls in the past. But while Stanaway admits that this whole game has its downsides, the upsides are just too good to give up on. "I'm sure you know as well as I do that it's a very different culture over here in Europe," he says. "It's certainly not easy to get used to being so far from home, but it does get a little bit easier every year. In 2010, it was really hard because it was my first year out of school and I was living in a foreign country.Then 2011 was a little bit easier, and now I'm really starting to get used to it. Europe feels like a second home for me now. "There have been times when it's been challenging. But, coming from New Zealand,and trying to get into Formula 1, was never meant to be easy. It's something you Just have to deal with, because it's Just one of the things you need to go through if you want to chase your goals. "You've Just got to make the most of it. There are plenty of people who would give an arm and a leg to be in my position, so I Just appreciate the opportunity I have to be here. When I think of it that way, it's definitely not so bad. It's nice to travel around and see different parts of the world. "When I was sitting on the grid about to start my first FR3.5 race, it felt unreal, especially having watched the series so closely for the last two seasons. I've seen guys like [Daniel] Ricciardo and [Jean-Eric] Vergne race in this series and then go straight to Formula 1, and the next minute I'm sitting on the grid! That feels unreal. "Even Just being involved with the FI team,and spending time at the factory, it's a surreal feeling. I have to pinch myself quite often." Stanaway may have taken a unique approach to racing in Europe until now, but things have changed. With buckets of talent, that Gravity contract in his pocket and a plum Formula Renault 3.5 drive, Stanaway has well and truly arrived in the mainstream. Trust me,it's going to be tough to forget him from here. www.mnews.com.au

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DUNLOP V8 SUPERCAR SERIES It was a weekend of breakthroughs in Round 2 of the Dunlop Series at Barbagallo Raceway, with Scott Pye and Nick Percat taking their maiden race wins and Scott McLaughlin clinching his first round victory. In his second start in the class, Triple Eight's Pye converted pole position into victory in the wet opening race, leading home fellow front-row starter Ash Walsh, with McLaughlin third. With the Top 10 inverted, Walkinshaw Racing junior Percat took out Race 2 ahead of MW Motorsport pairTim Blanchard and Luke Youlden. Sharing the front row with Pye, McLaughlin got the best of the start in the final and went on to win the race and round in his Stone Brothers Falcon ahead of Pye. After winning the opening round in March, FPR's Chaz Mostert was third to maintain his lead of the series.

r CARRERA CUP After missing the opening round, it's going to be a big askforJonny Reid to win the 2012 Porsche City Index Carrera Cup Australia, but results like his round win at Barbagallo Raceway aren't going to hurt. A 2011 front-runner, Reid made his first start of the year at Albert Park in March after linking with Nathan Tinkler's Hunter Sports Group out on the eve of the event. In his second hitout, he scored the team's maiden race and round wins. Alex Davison won the opening race from Reid and pole-sitter Craig Baird, before Reid stepped up to control the remainder of the weekend. He led home Baird and Davison in Races 2 and 3, with Daniel Gaunt fourth for the weekend. Baird continues to lead Davison in the standings, with Reid up to third. Shane Smollen claimed his maiden Elite Class round win in the West, while James Koundouris now leads MaxTwigg in the class standings.

motorsport news

NZ V8 SUPERTOURERS

V8 UTES

Jonny Reid moved into the lead of New Zealand's V8 SuperTourer Championship with a round win at Manfeild Autocourse. In the third round of the new series, Reid led home John McIntyre in the opener and Andy Knight in Race 2, as McIntyre - the points leader entering the weekend - dropped to seventh with bent steering. Greg Murphy was third in Races 1 and 2, before dominating the final. Murphy broke away early in the greasy conditions and never looked back, with McIntyre and Richard Moore eventually roudning out the top three. Reid was fifth, enough to take the round honours and move into the lead of the standings. Despite missing Round 2 through injury, Murphy is back to second, ahead of McIntyre.

Kim Jane claimed his first round win in the Auto One V8 Lite Racing Series in almost 12 months at Barbagallo Raceway. Jane's last win came at Hidden Valley in June 2011, but he started strongly in Western Australia, taking pole position. He turned that into a Race 1 victory, and while he could only manage 15th in the Reverse Grid Race 2,second in the final was enough to seal the round honours. Ford drivers Kris Walton and Ryal Harris won the other races, with Harris finishing second for the weekend ahead of Holden pair Nathan Pretty and Craig Dontas.The result means Pretty remains in the lead of the series, holding a 13-point advantage over Walton, with Harris and Jane rounding out the top four.

DRAG RACING

PRODUCTION CARS

Peter Ridgeway claimed one of the last great barriers in Australian Drag Racing by recording a 6.99s pass in Pro Stock at the Nitro Champs at Sydney Dragway. Ridgeway's second round pass set a new national record and he continued on to win the event over Dave Newcombe. Damien Harris put on a consistent race day performance to win Top Fuel, beating Darren Morgan in the final. The win, plus bonus points for low time and top speed, put Harris into the lead of the championship by just 2,5 points. Top Doorslammer saw a number of scintillating performances with 5.76s times recorded by both Robin Judd and John Zappia.Zappia reached the final but lost to Peter Kapiris who set a hot time of his own with a 5.78s at 412kmh,a new class speed record. Other winners included Steve Ham in Top Alcohol, Chris Matheson in Top Bike and Locky Ireland in Pro Stock Motorcycle. Matheson also wrapped up his third championship in a row.

Jim Pollicina and Ryan Simpson combined to take out Round 2 of the Australian Manufacturers Championship at Phillip Island. In the final stint of the six-hour race - the first enduro of the 2012 season - Simpson hunted down the similar Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X of Stuart Kostera and InkyTulloch, passing reigning champion Kostera with four minutes to go to cap an inspired charge. Nathan Morcom and Chaz Mostert grabbed third in a BMW 335i ahead of the Subaru WRX of Cam Wilson and David Wood and Jake Camilleri and Scott Nicholas in their Mazda 3 MPS. Tony and Klark Quinn led early, before their Evo was forced into retirement when a jack pierced its floor during a pitstop.

www.mnews.com.au

Since the return of carrera cup in 2on max twiqg has been the man

FOR part time racers. MITCHELL ADAM SPOKE TO TWIQG ABOUT HS TIME IN

OTORSPORT NEWS: Let's go right back to the beginning. Your background's in motocross, but how did you first get involved in circuit racing? MAXTWIGG; It was Just an itch I had to fulfill. I raced motorcycles from when I was about eight years old until 1 was 23, and I did that as a pro for 12 months, but I broke my back, so I had to give that away. I went to work for eight or 10 years and was lucky enough to make enough money where I could get back involved in some form of motorsport. Car racing was a natural progression for me. I was in earth moving and I knew Rusty French through business and he ended up selling me one of his cars, I think it was an old 993 GT RS, an ex-Geoff Morgan car, built by Barry Jones. We took that out for six or eight months and we Just couldn't keep up with the GT3 cars that were running around. We were doing some state racing, and also some rounds of the really early days of the Australian GT Championship. The car Just really wasn't up to it; no ABS, the aero wasn't there, and it Just wasn't a competitive car. We went and bought a 996 CupCar, while they were still the Carrera Cup cars, off Greg Keene ,and that's 66

the car that really got me hooked.That's really where it started, buying that car got my confidence up, I was driving it better and better. I got to know people like Craig Baird, who gave me a few driving tips, and 1 set up my own workshop at home. It just sort of evolved; I got addicted - by the time I bought that 996, 1 was hooked. And from there Carrera Cup became the logical step? I didn't do any when I bought that 996, 1 was waiting for the last year of the 996s to finish (ED; 2006, with 997s introduced in 2007) so I never actually raced my car in it. Although I did Bathurst and Gold Coast with Sherrin Motorsport, they were my first two CupCar events. My very first one was Bathurst and I didn't have a lot of experience, but I remember Jim Richards being on pole and I was last. He walked from the front of the dummy grid to the back of the dummy grid to wish me luck, that's one of my memorable moments. That was where I started feeling really comfortable in that category, and we Just persisted with it, really. I don't know of any other category that's as safe or has the

quality of cars for the running cost that CupCar has. We've looked at other categories, but at the end of the day, you can always find a set-up, they're beautiful cars to drive, they're incredibly safe and Porsche Cars follows you around with hundreds of thousands of dollars of bits sitting there. While Carrera Cup was away, you ran in the Australian GT Championship in a Porsche GT3 Cup S. Was there ever a temptation to stick with that? We were successful in there, we had quite a few poles and won rounds at the Grand Prix, Homebush and I think we were winning at Adelaide as well when we broke a driveshaft. We were winning races there reasonably consistently. But then cars started to come into the field that made the Cup S uncompetitive and that was something that really steered me away from GT racing. It's a phenomenal category, but you need to spend the money on the cars and that's not what motorsport should be about. It should be about level playing fields and racing against the best drivers you can race against. I've always been of the point of view, as well, that 1 don't care if I come eighth, 10th motorsport news

D BEAT IN T>e EUTE CLASS ORSCHES AND HAPPY DAYS - I'm probably not really happy - but I'm happy to finish there as long as I know that I've driven against the best guys and driven the car better than I did the week before, and it's very easy to gauge yourself in Carrera Cup. Exactly, there's been plenty of quality at the head of the field in the last 18 months, with guys like Bairdo. And from what I understand he was very active last year in helping some of the new Elite Class guys out. He's a top bloke like that; he's helped me immensely. We're good friends off the track. He's never been short of giving me the best advice he can give me, and that's another reason why I hang around, I enjoy the company that's there. When I can have someone like that give me help with car set-up or a few pointers, it helps you develop as a driver as well. Even Steven Richards has helped, Daniel Gaunt has been fantastic with me, any of those top drivers, if you keep what they tell you to yourself, they'll keep helping you. They're a phenomenal group of guys to race against; it allows you to be a better driver because you're not guessing ail of the time. www.mnews.com.au

You mentioned days where you get out of the car happy. I'm guessing that after the race at the Grand Prix in March, where you ended up finishing between Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Mark Skaife, that you'd have been pretty happy... Absolutely. Even my laptimes and consistency, I think my consistency helped me more than anything.That's as good as I've performed, and to do it on a big stage and dice - and not be in their way, I don't believe I was holding them up, I think I was in there amongst it - that was probably the pinnacle of what I've done so far. Back when you were running around in the 993, or even a couple of years ago, would you have ever entertained the prospect of having a day where you'd finish between a bloke who'd won FI GPs and another who's won six Bathursts? (Laughs) Not in a million years! I never even contemplated that kind of finish. We finished in front of Skaife three times and that's not a fluke.The first time, I was

panicking and thought'I'd better go well in the next one'. We took off in-front of him and he didn't close on us, he finished behind, where he started the race. I was rapt with that. There's a bit of audio going around from the commentary where it goes 'there's a four-way battle between Gaunt, Skaife, Frentzen and Twigg'and your name's in amongst three pretty good names there! Even the next race, they were still talking about the dice, to have your name mentioned in that environment is fantastic. The Tweets we got afterwards from [commentator, Aaron] Noonan, Daryl Beattie, Baird and V8 drivers like [David] Reynolds and [Dean] Fiore ... they gave me a nickname -'Maximum Skaife'. I like it. You'll need to throw that on the car somewhere. I like it to, but I didn't want Skaife to see it. I don't think he was as happy as me!(Laughs) And the other notable weekend you've had so far this year was

III!

Tl^S A 0T CF AUDO GOINS AROUND FROM THE COMMENTARY WHERE IT oops “THERE'S A FOUR WAY BATTLE BETWEEN GAUNT, SKAFE FRENT2EN AND TWte’ AHD YOUR NAMES M AMONGST THREE PRETTY GOOD NAMES THERE' TWIGG ON THE COMPANY HE KEPT AT ALBERT PARK ^.911

Barbagallo, where you weren't scheduled to compete, but you got a phone call on Friday night from Jamey Blaikie (ED: Porsche Cars Australia's Motorsport boss) to head over and have a pedai after [former West Coast AFL footballer and guest driver] Troy Wilson couldn't run due to licensing issues. Originally I wasn't going to run with family commitments, work commitments and a

whole bunch of things. It was crossing the country as well. It was going to be a big ask for competitors like myself. I was picking up some takeaway for my family, having a couple of beers In the pub with a mate, and Jamey phoned up.That was at 6:30 at night and I think I was up at 3:30 the next morning. Jamey picked me up from the airport and I got there, it wouldn't have been any more than 20 minutes before qualifying. Troy is a bigger guy, so the belts were massive, the crutch belt was up around my chest, so we had to get all of that organised, then I had to get In the car for qualifying. They had way too much rear brake in it, the set-up wasn't where it needed to be, but we got it set up for the first race, which was good. 68

Of all of the categories in Australian motorsport, Carrera Cup's probably not a bad one to jump into someone else's car at late notice, given they're all identical. You Jumped in and knew from the outset what was wrong and how to fix it. Exactly. Those cars are Identical, there's no two ways about it, once you get your seating position and belts right, you feel comfortable. When I got in, it had a long brake pedal, so it was little things like bleeding the brakes and clutch. After changing the wing, a little bit of camber and setting the brake bias correctly, the car was mint. It's about setting it up how you like it. From here, you're in the mix for back-toback Elite Class titles. Is that your focus, or is it more about,for want of a better term, personal development, and trying to have more of those days where you finish ahead of a'Mark Skaife'? That's all I'm about. My goal is always to be better in the car than I was the last time I drove it. Last year, honestly, I would've risked the whole title to finish ahead of a 'Skaife' or one of those guys. I wouldn't have settled for a mediocre finish Just to win a title.

Maybe in the last race at Homebush, but any other race, I'd go as fast as I can for as long as I can to finish as high up the field as I can. That's what you race a car for, to race. If the race Is in-front of you and you need to catch that next guy and he's a Pro, well that's where I'm going to race. That's what you spend your money to do. And that's not to degrade the competition I've got in the Elite Class. James Koundouris is a very good driver and I've really spent the last five years chasing James to race against him. I chased him into the GT category; he was buying a Cup S and I thought'that's the guy I've got to race', so I bought a Cup S as well. We discussed together that we wanted to keep racing each other, so we bought CupCars to go back into Carrera Cup last year. That's always been my goal, to chase and finish ahead of James and last year we did that, but that's the first time I've ever done that, finishing ahead of him in a championship. My goal, this year, is to chase and finish in amongst the Tom Tweedies, the [Andre] Heimgartners and [Nick] Fosters. They're the guys I want to hang on to and run with. If I'm having a good day, then absolutely it happens. That's my goal this year, to run with those guys. motorsport news

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JTES.RICHARD CRAILL SPOKE TO HIS SWITCH FROM SALOON CARS

S usual, last year's Sydney Telstra 500 offered up plenty of surprises. m m rule and not the exception at the demanding street circuit that forms a near perfect square around Sydney Olympic Park. What was surprising was that the biggest 'where did he come from'moment of the weekend came from the Auto One V8 Lite Racing Series - admittedly,a series that has the'surprise'factor at 11 already. His name was Kris Walton. A 32-year-old from Redcliffe in Brisbane,though few fans in the grandstands that weekend would have known that. In fact, unless they were the keenest of racing fans few would have known who Walton was at all. But those who did - those who had seen him race - would not have been surprised that this quietly spoken Queenslander was running at the front of the ultra-competitive Ute pack in just his second meeting. A product of Queensland's Karting scene, Walton made his name in Saloon Cars by driving a blue AU Falcon to top.race results in the national Saloon Car Series against the best in the business, despite a limited budget that never allowed a full championship campaign. Racing and beating the likes of Bruce Heinrich,Shawn Jamieson and John Goodacre when the six-cylinder Holden-vsFord battle was at its peak,Walton was known for his levels of commitment and car control that saw him win plenty of races. At the beginning of last season, however, it seemed as if racing was firmly on the back burner until the call-up from the V8 Utes came for what was then a pair of events. That call, as it turned out, got the ball rolling for a championship tilt this season, even if in November last year that wasn't even in the planning. "Six months ago there was nothing/'Walton admits."! was running around the go-kart track and that was it; we had sold all the racing gear we had and I Just focussed on work until this opportunity came around. "At the moment it's still a bit of a dream. I don't feel like I should be here but I'm fortunate that I am!" Walton's debut at Sandown saw him sneak through for a win in the reverse-grid race, while Sydney resulted a more complete performance with fourth on the grid and finishes of third in Race 1,a non-finish in (the reverse-grid) Race 2 and a storming fifth in the finale'. With Sydney's results firm proof that he could regularly compete at the front,the seed had been sewn and the focus quickly turned to securing a full-time drive this year. And then he came out and won the season opener on the streets of Adelaide. nil "It was a dream start,"he grins."To

come away with two wins,the round win and the new lap record there was awesome,especially given we were in a new car (his Rentco Ford FG Ute). It was a bit of a dream come true start.The trick is staying there. "Homebush was our first run on a street circuit but it was my first time at Clipsal. It was great to get that first round under our belts last year so we had a bit of an idea about what to expect - but it was still amazing to come out like we did at Adelaide and perform so well." Notoriously challenging to drive, Walton says his biggest weakness to date is extracting one-lap speed out of the Utes; something that even the likes of V8 aces Cam McConville and Nathan Pretty have struggled with. "We're struggling early in the meetings because,firstly. I'm having to learn a lot of the tracks and then learning to get the most of the car and tyres in qualifying," he explains. "You get a lot of points for qualifying and I'm losing a lot out of that in the championship. But it's all about learning and becoming more confident in the car and if I can pick that up then we're going to be looking pretty good in the championship at the end of the year. "By the time we get to Race 2 and 3 we're quick enough and we just have to make sure we keep that up... I can get a bit quicker but that will come with experience." With three rounds completed,Walton's Rod III

SALOON Cars are not, if we're honest, the most glanriorous category going around. It's raw, gritty racing that tends to miss out , I'

on the hype that goes with other categories that compete at a similar level. Whatthe category-does have, however, is competitive racing and plenty of depth: The Australian series averages 30-car grids on the Shannons Nationals program whilst state-level championships also remain strong, particularly in Victoria,South Australia and in 'the West The cars are affordable to build and maintain and have established their own niche in the market as a category that provides competitive racing. But they have also, in recent times, become something of a stepping stone for drivers before moving into higher profile categories. Basically, it seems that if you can handle the cut-and-thrust of Saloon Cars you're prepared for anything. "I think you can say that this(Utes)is similar to the early days of Saloon Car racing when . the top guys where there,"Walton explains. "As they moved on it got a bit easier but the best thing about the Utes is that the quality is very high and it's incredibly competitive. Between the Utes and Saloon Cars a lot of the characteristics are similar, I guess;the way they handle is similar and the tyre is quite similar. It came to me quickly so I'm fortunate that the background I have has helped." n’

Dawson-run Rentco Ford sits second in the V8 Utes standings.Just a handful of points behind leader Pretty. After winning at Clipsal, Walton finished third at Symmons Plains and sixth overall in Perth, but the round results only tell part of the story because consistency has been his strongest suit this year. As well as winning at least one race in every round so far(and two at Clipsal), Walton has never placed lower than sixth in any of the races this year. His charges through the field in the reverse grid races, in particular, have been critical to his strong championship position. He attributes a lot of his success to the team - Dawson's two-car operation that includes team-mate Ryan Hansford. "Rod Dawson is doing a great Job,the hours he puts in and the effort the puts in is fantastic and you couldn't ask for any more. The assistance and advice he's given me is invaluable and it's really helped the transition period into the Utes. "Having Ryan as a team mate is great, too, you couldn't ask for a better guy.We all get on well and we gel well and we feed each other information which helps us all." And so,a championship campaign now waits for Walton as the series has a month's hiatus before travelling to Darwin's Hidden Valley, yet another new circuit he will has to learn and experience. At the moment,though,titles aren't even

In fact, it could turn out that his Saloon Car background could have inadvertently been the ideal preparation for going racing in the Ute series. Both series'share similar characteristics; heavy cars, relatively under-tyred for their weight with enough power to cause dramas and a production-car basis that delivers handling attributes that requires a unique style to drive. "It was a great stepping stone. Anyone who wants to race tin-tops it's a great category, especially for race craft. It's Just so much closer, you get a bit of rubbing,and get in and have a go. It sharpens the mind up and shows how quick you are; Race craft was the main thing we got out ofSaloon Car racing." However,Walton isn't the only one. Adelaidian John Goodacre is perhaps the highest profile driver to make the move from Saloon Cars,stepping into the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge last season with great success and quickly establishing himself as a frontrunner in the all-Porsche series. In the meantime,Goodacre's former rivals in Saloon Cars- Bruce Heinrich and Shawn Jamieson - have quickly become front runners in the rapidly expanding Kumho V8 Touring Car Series;the evolutionary step up from six-cylinder to V8 touring car undoubtedly assisting their transition. - RICHARD CRAILL

in the picture. For this driver who didn't even have a thought of getting a drive six months ago, it's a case of taking things slowly, one round at a time. "At the moment,in my eyes,this is great and I'm perfectly happy with how it's going," Walton says. "The category is great for sponsors especially those from the transport side of things - and we all get out there and have a great time. And at the same time the competition is fantastic - anyone who can come in and match it with guys like Pretty and McConville straight away is on it. "We're going to keep doing what we are doing and the rest will take care of itself."

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THE RADICAL TREATMENT

NE MAKE motorsport categories have a some>what chequered past in Australia. Very often, a seriieshas been introduced,thrived for a few seasons ariidthen fallen into decline before quietly disappearinig,due to either waning interest from competitors or the business case for the series simply not stacking up. However, one of the more recent one-make series to hit Australian racetracks has been the Radical Australia Cup,, and if the consistently strong fields and intelligent business nous behind the scenes are any indication, this one-make series is set to lasta lot longer than most. The series started in NSW,running as a class within the> NSW Supersports Championship.The category experienced several years of growth as more drivers had the chance to experience some time behind the wheel of the Radical SR3 race-cars, made possible by the Radical Events arm of the Radical Australia business. In 2010, the year concluded with a couple of endurance races at Eastern Creek as a support category for the Eastern Creek B Hour with drivers like Greg Murphy,Warren Luff and George(VSiedecke teaming up with some of the regular competitors - and the series expanded to a national series on the Shannons Nationate calendar in 2011. Greg Smith is a co-owner of Radical Australia, and one- ofthe driving forces behind the category's radical rise to promiinence on the Australian motorsport scene. "We've got over 31 cars registered, which is about a 50 percent 74

increase to last year,"Smith said."We're also now starting to attract experienced racers from other categories, which is starting to bolster the driver levels." Smith believes that the series is successful because, unlike some other categories, it is not heavily reliant upon sponsorship, and has attracted competitors who may not have otherwise chosen to pursue motor racing. "The model is based on competitors owning their own cars, and we've attracted a number of people to racing who would not normally have put out the time to arrange their own logistics, their own support and their own data engineering," he said. "We've done that, which has made it a lot easier for people to participate." The Radical Australia Cup is unique among Australian series in that it runs a twin-driver format at each round, giving the owners of the cars the opportunity to pair up with more experienced, professional drivers. While Smith agrees that this has been a point of difference for the series, he emphasises the point that the Radical Cup is not intended to be a breeding ground for young drivers. "We are openly supporting the gentlemen racers who are doing it for fun, and consciously pushing away the young guns. We've been very open about the fact that we're about the gentleman racer," he said. For a couple of years now,the Radical Australia Cup management has been planning to introduce the V8-powered Radical SR8 motorsport news

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LACHLAN MANSELL TAKES A LOOK AT THE ONGOING GROWTH OF THE RADICAL AUSTRALIA CUP race cars to run as a separate class within the series, alongside the existing motorcycle-engined SR3 models. However,the introduction of the SR8, right, has been delayed until next year, with Greg Smith citing driver development as the primary reason for holding off on the more powerful car's introduction. "There's been some demand for the SR8, but we pulled back for some other reasons," he said."There were a number of people who were a bit concerned about their ability to handle the SR8.1 think the driving standards now are such that the experienced guys can definitely handle the SR8. "We've done a deal with the factory to produce a specific SR8 for the Australian market. We'll be introducing that as a class within the Radical Australia Cup next year. We currently believe we'll have between 10 and 15 SR8s participating next year." With the expansion of the national series has come the demise of the Radical Clubman Cup NSW state series, although Radical owners are still able to run their cars in the NSW Supersports Series. NSW is still the state with the highest concentration of Radical race cars, but Smith and his Radical Australia colleagues are hoping for an expansion throughout not only Australia, but also Asia, in the next five years. "We would certainly like to see Radical in every state in Australia," Smith said."We'd also like to see it in Asia, where we have the distribution rights, so that we have a race series based out of Singapore. We would then have the ability for drivers to participate in Australia and also the circuits planned for Singapore." www.mnews.com.au

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PETER RIDGEUMV MADE PRO STOCK HISTORY AT SVDKEV DRAGUIAV LAST MOHTH. BECOMIHG THE FIRST AUSTRALIAK COMPETITOR IN THE CLASS TO PRODUCE A SIK-SECOKD PASS. HE SPOKE TO MHEUIS ADOUT THE BREAKTHROUGH AHD lUHAT COMES HEKT

NE of the last great Drag Racing barriers fell on May 6 at Sydney Dragway's Nitro Champs event, when Victorian Peter Ridgeway drove his Holden Monaro to Australia's first six-second pass in Pro Stock. The 6.99s pass was a fitting achievement for Ridgeway, who was also the first in the category to reach the seven-second zone.

back when 350 cubic-inch engines were the norm as opposed to today's 400 cubicinch formula. Ridgeway was perhaps not the favourite to be the first to the'sixes'. By his own admission the last 18 months had been torturous, knowing he had the horsepower to run the'six'- his old motor, in Chris Soldatos'car, recorded higher speeds at the same Sydney

event - but also a gremlin somewhere that was getting in the way. Following a first round loss in the last round of the championship in March, a frustrated Ridgeway went into overdrive, going over every minute detail on the Monaro. "I started with the motor then went through the clutch, then the suspension and then the driver," he said."I left no stone

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unturned, working from 7am to the early hours of the morning." Confident everything had been looked at, Ridgeway headed to Sydney for testing in the week before the Nitro Champs event.The Monaro's first passes saw it heading towards the walls and Ridgeway was unable to get through even the low gears.The team got brutal and decided to sacrifice some runs to

pull apart the suspension. "We tore the whole rear end out and found where the issue with the car was. We had time to do one more run and posted the fastest pass of the cars testing on the day to that point. We knew we could go faster; we were just happy we had something I knew I could tune. "I had enough power to run sixes a year

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ago. It was great to finally fix it, although I'm pissed off it took so long." A 7.01s in the first round of eliminations was the closest Ridgeway had yet been to the elusive'six'and gave him the clues he needed to make an assault on the record. "We made some adjustments and we had room to improve. We were hoping but we didn't know for sure," he said. nil

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TIRE AUSTRALIA

IT UIASN’T A PERFECT PASS BV ARV MEANS. IT MOUED AROUND A BIT AND HIT THE BUMP IN THE LEFT LANE BUT I WAS AWARE ENOUGH NOT TO SHIFT WHEN THE SHIFT LIGHT FLICKERED OH AND I THINK THAT WAS ONE OF THE BIG DIFFERENCES 'It wasn't a perfect pass by any means, it moved around a bit and hit the bump in the left hand lane but I was aware enough not to shift when the shift light flickered on and I think that was one of the big differences. "I was pretty happy when Johnny [O'Kearney] told me over the radio in the braking area.There were a few words yelled out.[Opponent]Tyronne Tremayne said 'you just tore away from me'." Ridgeway couldn't have timed the run more perfectly with 12 family members up on the hill watching him, the first time they have been to one of his races since 2000, given the absence of championship racing in Victoria. "Just before I raced Tyronne, I joked that he had to take it easy on me. I was pretty lucky It all panned out that way with the family there to see it," he admitted. "After I did the six I thought'well, I have to try and win it now'so it wasn't yet mission complete. But everything fortunately fell into place and the rest was history." Ridgeway was a decent footballer in his younger years and had a few ins on playing forVFL sides. He used some football analogies to describe his feelings. "For 18 months I felt like Tony Lockett, sitting on the sidelines where I couldn't get a game. I wasn't happy and it was hurting my pride more than anything," he said. nil

"Now I feel like I've kicked the winning goal in the Grand Final. John [O'Kearney)] said I was giving it away too early when I left before - and when I was sitting on the hill through that time I thought 1 had a shot at beating these blokes still." Ridgeway has never been far from success. He won four championships - 1995, 2001,2002 and 2003 - plus another two as crew chief for Dave Rogan in 2005 and 2006. His decision to move to a newly-built Holden Monaro was a project that took four years as he suffered several setbacks, before finally being able to debut in 2010 at Australian Drag Racing's biggest show, the Winternationals. "We came out with a 7.1 Os, which was the fastest licensing pass in Pro Stock history, then we qualified in the top four and went 7.07s. Since then I have had nothing but bad luck," Ridgeway lamented."We have shown performance at times. Unbeknownst to us we had the gremlin in the car." Ridgeway credited John O'Kearney, a former Pro Stock driver himself, in getting him back into racing. "He bought me a trailer and was the driving force in getting me into the seat. He talked my wife into it. I wasn't having any success and hating them but really it has been a blast and it has been a huge part of my life," he said."I have been blessed to make a living out of something I love doing."

Ridgeway was proud to be able to dedicate the win to BiH'Grumpy'Jenkins, one of the USA forefathers of Pro Stock, who passed away recently. "I think for that race there was a few people looking down on me from upstairs. I had a Bill Jenkins t-shirt and hat on," he said. 'I met Bill inthe'90s. Hewastheguy who invented the class, and he taught me so much. He was a mentor to me and was one of the smartest guys I have spoken to about engines and metallurgy. "I have had some emails from (US racers) Warren Johnson and Mike Edwards and people who watch what we are up to, I feel humbled by the whole deal." In what may come as a surprising decision, Ridgeway feels after accomplishing the'six'that he hasn't got a lot more he wants to achieve as a driver. He is an engine builder for several teams already and gets plenty of satisfaction out of seeing their success too. "I haven't got much more to do. I'm really enjoying working with (racers) Chris Soldatos and Michael All. After the Fuchs Winternationals I will make a decision," Ridgeway said. "If someone wants to walk up and buy it I'd talk. But I think I can tickle up the record some more at the Fuchs Winternationals, we have some business here to finish off. Then I would be happy to hang up the helmet." motorsport news

UIMTER IS TITLE TIME

ETK Ridgeway won't be among thetnt, but a host of drivers will head to WiKouvbank Raceway on June 8-11 in the midst of title fights. With the Fuchs Nationals again the season finale ofthe Austrafan Drag Racing season,five ofthe six brackets are still up for grabs. Momentum in the Top Fuel battle has shifted several times recently between Western Australian Damien Harris, above, and leacSing Victorian Darren Morgan. Harris ItecJ the points entering Adelaide's Pro Setiies 1000 event, but was eliminated at theliirst hurdle, with AEG Powertools driver Morgan taking the win and top spot on thestandings. Lastimonth,at Sydney Dragway's Nitro Charrfs,,it was Best Tractor Parts'Harris who regained the upperhand, beating reigning champion Morgan,and he'll head to Willowbank with a 2.5-point championship lead. Waiting in the wings,Andrew Cowin sits third after a first-rtaiirid exit in Sydney, but could still pounce iif Harris and Morgan suffer firstroundeEiminations. TopAlcohol king Garry Phillips is showing no sign of relinquishing his crown.The LucasOiils Funny Car driver wiil head to his homeevrent with 57.5 points up his sleeve over Adam Merchant and Wayne Newby.

www.mnews.com.au

Realistically,they need Phillips to be out by the first round at theJatest if they're to stop him claiming a 10th title. Like Phillips; John Zappia, below, is in the box seat in Top Doorslammer.While Peter Kapiris won in Sydney last month, he'll need four-time champion Zappia to exitJn Round 1, or out-qualify Zappia and score the bonus points for time and speed If ' Zappia makes it to the semi finals. Pro Stock is the most open of the brackets, with six drivers in the mix for the title. Local Denis Whiting will take a slender lead over South Australian Michael Ali into the event. But they're not the only contenders, with Dave Newcombe,Shane Tucker,Tyronne Tremayne and Jason Hedges in the mix, with four-time champion Aaron Tremayne i now out of contention. ^ Locky Ireland moved into the lead of Pro Stpck Motorcycle in Sydney,edging ahead of Maurice Allen.They're joirfed in title contention by Michael Gilbertson and Phil Howard. The only man who'll be able to breathe easy is Chris Matheson, who sealed the Top Bike title at the Nitro Champs. But he's now got a new goal - becoming the first motorcycle rider to produce a five-second pass in Australia.

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motorsport news

T'S well known that James Courtney was World Junior Karting Champion,at the tender age of 15. In fact, Courtney is a dual World Karting Champion, because after breaking through for the victory in the FIA Junior World Kart Championship, he backed up his historical victory two years later in 1997 by claiming the FIA Formula A World Karting Championship winning both titles at the wheel of a Tony Kart. This year there are two young Aussies looking to follow in James' footsteps, as Sydneysiders Joseph Mawson,left above, and Jacob Parsons, right above with James Abela centre, prepare to represent Australia in the CIK-FIA World U18 Karting Championship that kicks off in Braga, Portugal on July 6-8. Braga was in fact the very circuit on which Courtney won his first title in 1995. Back then it was a single-race event that decided the winner, but for these two eager Aussies it will be the start of the three-round championship with Round 2 contested at Angerville in France (August 24-26) and the final in Bahrain in the United Arab Emirates(November 8-10). www.mnews.com.au

"To win a World Championship is an amazing feeling and to be mentioned in the same breath as two icons in Australian motorsport, Sir Jack Brabham and Alan Jones, is an honour,"said Courtney. "The win certainly put me on the map in the world of motorsport and I wish the boys the very same success. "I'd never been to Braga before the event,so it was a whole new experience for me. To win was a huge achievement against the best junior drivers in the world on a circuit which was unfamiliar to me." Courtney was also regularly competing against Ryan Briscoe on the international karting stage in the late nineties. While Briscoe never won a world championship, he did win Australian, North American and Italian championships, with this path definitely paving the way for the pair to make their respective futures in motorsport with Briscoe currently one of IndyCar's stars. Back then,families and friends would be awake at all hours awaiting a phone call that would provide them with the news they so wanted to hear. However, in this technological age not only the drivers'family and friends, but the whole Australian nil 87

JAMES COURTICV AMI RVAN BRSSGOE BOTH HMHEST m?a OF OUR SniRT DUm THBR lUIRTBM MVS AM^ HAVE OOKE ON TO ACHIEVE SOME OREAT THMOS. HOPffULLVOCAN DO THE SAME PARSONS. RIGHT, OK FULOWI^ K FiW^ nil

karting community will be right behind the pair thanks to iive timing.They will even be able to send messages of support via social networking sites - and there is still a possibility of a live TV broadcast. Mawson and Parsons will be just two of a total of 81 drivers from 24 countries represented to compete in the'Under 18'World Championship, where, as the name suggests, all drivers will be under the age of 18 years, the same championship in which Cairns driver Aidan Wright finished 18th out of 85 drivers in 2011. The competition will be fierce, with the likes of 2011 Under 18 World Champion Matthew Graham from Great Britain back to defend his title along with third and fourth-placed drivers Anthoine Hubert(FRA) and Dave Blom (NLD), not to mention the top three place getters from the last year's Trophy Academy - winner Charles Leclerc(MCO), Ben Barnicoat(GBR)and Juho Valtanen (FIN). With the focus to be on driver talent rather than total racing budget, competitors in the championship compete in a kart chassis of their choice,from a registered list of 18, fitted with identical Parolin engines, LeCont tyres and using a controlled Panta fuel. For Mawson,the current World Junior Rotax Vice-Champion and three-time Australian karting champion, he believes this is his big opportunity to make his mark on the European karting scene. "The World Under 18 Championships is the best of the best and I see it as a great opportunity with the top bosses from many forms of motorsport watching,"said Mawson, who recently turned 16. "I've been racing for eight years now, after starting I got addicted to it and live to race these days. During my career I've won three Australian Championships and last year finished second 82

at the World Rotax Finals but competing in this year's World Under 18 Championships will certainly be the toughest challenge of my career. "I'm really looking forward to testing myself against the high level of competition from all across the world on the big stage,"the Fujitsu Cool driver concluded. Parsons, 17, is equally excited about the challenge that lies ahead for the pair, echoing Mawson's thoughts and hopes that a strong performance will help him follow in the footsteps of Courtney and Briscoe. "It's a great opportunity racing the best of the best at some fantastic venues across the world,"said Parsons. "James Courtney and Ryan Briscoe both competed at the highest level of our sport during their karting days and have gone on to achieve some great things. Hopefully I can do the same." The pair will be joined on the world stage by 13-year old James Abela who has secured a place on the grid for the CIK-FIA Academy Trophy - for drivers aged between 13 to 15 - which will be contested alongside the CIK-FIA World U18 Karting Championship. It will be the first time Australia has had a representative in the three year history of this event, with the Academy Trophy seeing all competitors not only line up with identical engines and tyres but also a single make chassis (Parolin) allowing true driver talent to shine. "It should be a good series, we're going to be competing on some great tracks in Portugal, France and Bahrain and I can't wait to get over there and get into it," said Abela. "It was just a recent decision to do this series, it came out of the motorsport news

blue really, but I'm really looking forward to it.To race against some of the top young drivers from all across the world is something that I'm really looking forward to." Both Under 18 Australian representatives have chosen Top-Kart as their chassis of choice due to their familiarity with the product, and will be joined by mechanic and mentorTim Craig from Kart 1/ Top-Kart in Sydney who will assist all three boys. Craig has experienced great success with Top-Kart in Australia, including winning the CIK Junior Intercontinental Championship for

four consecutive years. That run started with now V8 Supercar driver Tim Slade in 2001,followed by Ben Chong Sun in 2002 and then Kristian Lindbom's back-to-back titles in 2003/2004. Neil McFadyen also won three CIK titles aboard a Top-Kart, the first as a junior in 1998,then in Intercontinental A as a senior in 1999 and finally In the elite Formula A class in 2000 - capping off an amazing three year streak. Well-known Australian karting identity Troy Flunt was also successful in CIK racing for the marquee, winning the 1997 Intercontinental A title.

DRIVER TRAINING By Doc Pearson DKK - Docs Kart Kraft Tel 04 0956 5483, Fax 03 9844 2894 www.dkk.com.au

Top Kart

www.mnews.com.au

MODEL BEHAVIOUR

JASON RICHARDS LEFT USLASTDECEMBER BUT WE CAN ALL REMEMBER HIM WITH BIANTE'S NEWJASON RICHARDS MEMORIAL TEAM BOCCOMMODORE MODEL-WITH A PORTION OFEACH SALE GOING TO JASE'S FAMILY

OME interesting releases this month. First, the rumoured Jason Richards VE Commodore is real. Biante has stocks of this car on the way, and I'm sure, given the love the V8 Supercars community had for Jason, this model will be popular. The pictures you see here are of a pre-production car, so the one you buy should actually be better (these are sometimes a bit scruffy.) Not that I can see anything wrong with the model. Opening bonnet and boot and doors, with lots of detail packed inside, the model is an accurate representation of Jason's last-ever podium in 84

a V8 Supercar. Those of us who were at Amaroo Park for the Super Tourers back in 1997 and saw this kid from New Zealand in a BMW knew we were seeing someone special, and so it proved. Flardly ever having access to top equipment, JR did some great things. And always with a smile, always there for the fans and the media, with a child-like enthusiasm for what he was doing. It's going to be available in 1/18 scale only. Pre-order now at your favourite shop or via www.biante.com.au Also from Biante is the Glenn Seton/Alan Jones Sandown EB Falcon from 1992.This

was the first appearance or what would beconneVS Supercars.This 1/18 scale model, with everything that opens and shuts (as we've come to expect)shows quite clearly the evolution from Group A to V8 Supercars. The Falcon started with a production body shell and the interior, while being all business, shows that it's not that far removed from the Group A cars that preceded it. There's not much in the way of a roll cage (by current standards), the boot doesn't have anywhere near as much hardware as a modern car, either. I almost chuckled when I saw the'Smoking Reduces Your Fitness'statement next to motorsport news

Tribute: The prototype model ofBiante's planned Jason Richards Team BOC Commodore,left. Biante's Glenn Seton Falcon from 1993,right, and Peter Brock's 1978 ToranaA9X, bottom, with tobacco sponsor signs removed, ofcourse.

/almostchuckled when Isaw the'Smoking Reduces Your Fitness'statement next to where the modeldoesn't have the cigarette signs. Defies logic,doesn'tit? where the model doesn't have the cigarette signs. Defies logic, doesn't it? Also from Biante comes another new model sons tobacco company signage, this being the Peter Brock 1978Torana A9X. It's presented in ATCC trim, and was the car in which Brock made his triumphant return to the Holden Dealer Team after three years as a privateer. Check it out, looks pretty good. Trax has played it safe again by releasing at least one each of the Big Three. First, there's yet another HQ Statesman in its Opals series - this one's in a very nice Gunmetal Grey, with opening doors and bonnet (in 1/43). There's another Holden, an LCTorana in Plum Dinger (a blue/purple)- looks nice. There's also a pair of Falcons, and XR and an XT.The XT is a Taxi - Regent Cabs from the Gold Coast have this one. According to Trax's blurb, the crown-shaped roof light was as objected to by Queensland Ambulances, it looked too much like they had, so the cabs had to change. Trax's latest Chrysler offering is a very nicewww.mnews.com.au

5 ' i.

BROCK ,

CLASSIC CARLECTABLES'NEW RELEASE FORD FALCON XA GTS LOOK FANTASTIC WITH THEIR 12-SLOT WHEELS,BLACK BONNET,THE FACTORY BONNETPINS AND THE NACA-DUCTS looking Valiant Pacer. It's a 1970 VG, in Hot Mustard, with the optional'go-fast'stripes and black bonnet.Trax say it's five years since their last Pacer - wow,seems like yesterday. Mopar fans will be keen to get hold of this model. Trax's'wrecking yard'has a couple of nice bargains from time-to-time.These normally have some damaged packaging or are just excess stock.The one that's caught my eye this last week Is a twin-pack of Bathurst 1977 A9XToranas.There's the Peter and Phil Brock car and the John Rutherford/Janet Guthrie Ron Hodgson car. Peter Brock put his car on pole but the weekend went downhill from there after teething troubles with the new car. Rutherford zigged when he should have zagged passing Bob Holden early in the race and deposited the car in the bank at Skyline (right under my feet). I'd be prepared to bet that this might be the only-ever model of this car. Anyway,the pair of them for $55 is a damn sight cheaper than what I paid a few years ago,so grab a bargain. I have to say. Classic Carlectables' new release Ford Falcon XA GTs look fantastic. They've got the 12-slot wheels, black bonnet, the factory bonnet pins and the NACA-ducts. Classic has done them in both four-door and Hardtop coupe, which you see here in all Its glory. In 1/18, they're amazingly detailed and they look pretty accurate to me - you could easily mistake the pic of the Hardtop for the real thing! There's only going to be 1,000 of these available so you might want to get in fast. Word is that more than a few make their way to the USA and Canada, where there's a bit of a following for our Muscle Cars and models thereof. My plea for'Code 3'cars last month bore 86

instant fruit. Minh To,from Sydney, is an avid collector of Hot Wheels, but more than that, he likes to change them around.This is his XB Falcon, redone as a tribute to actor and revhead Eric Sana's car, as seen in "Love the Beast"a couple of years ago. Minh used the Hot Wheels XB (in 2012 packaging). repainting it the orange/red and making the decals himself. You can download logos from the web and the paper is available through art suppliers. The wheels and roll cage came from another Hot Wheels, a Mustang. Minh uses a solvent to get the blister off the card, then glues the finished, modified model back in for display - looks like a bought one, right? X-factonXA Falcon GTfrom Classic Carlectables looks a treat in 1/18 scale, above and below, but also impressive on

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I/?e story ofleadfoot'Len Brock's 27-yearSpeedway career is aslarge as life as the man himself- one ofthe best everin Speedcars and a driver who survived a series of blood-curdling crashes over20years in the sport By Bill Lawler and Steve Normoyle

HERE'S Peter Brock.There's also Pete Brock,the American former racing car designer-turned Journalist/ photographer. And then there's Len Brock, or simply'Leadfoot'Len, which is a fair description of this legendary figure in Australian Speedway. Len Brock's career began like a fairytale although there'd be plenty of horror stories along the way. It began one autumn night in 1949, when a young Len Brock strolled into the Cumberland Oval Speedway(now Parramatta Stadium) and declared his ability as a midget driver to anyone within earshot. Car owner Vic Hibbard called Brock's bluff and offered the 18-year-old his chain-driven Harley/JAP powered midget. This was how Brock got his first race - and the first of his countless victories. But success came at a price. Brock's time in the sport coincided with the most dangerous period in the history of Speedway racing. The cars were rudimentary: crudely constructed chassis with no roll bars. Serious injury and 88

death were common-place. It's said that Len Brock always had a shot of hard liquor before he pulled on his helmet.Truth told, many Speedway drivers from this period raced whilst drunk. Such behaviour might seem irresponsible to the point of being almost unbelievable, but such were the cold, hard realities of pre-1970s Speedway;this was how many of them quelled their pre-race fears. "I expected to be killed every Saturday night," Brock once said. He recalled one night when he and crew member Alan Bongers put together a list of all the drivers and riders they'd known who'd died.They came up with 70 names. How Len Brock wasn't added to that list was a mystery to the man himself, and not to mention anyone who witnessed any number of his fearful crashes. But in the races Brock didn't end up upside down or on fire, chances were he finished in front. After a six-year spell with Hibbard, Brock drove for a series of owners in addition to

cars of his own.(As a car owner, Brock would provide future Bathurst 1000 winner John Harvey with his first drive.) Brock dominated the Queenslanders during his regular visits north, initially in Eddie Dark's 110Occ JAP-powered car, and later in Don Mackay's Holden Speedcar. By then Brock had made the transition from the outer-Sydney Cumberland to the big time of the Sydney Showground, claiming his first win there in 1956 - driving Dark's 1.1-litre car against the more powerful 2.5-litre six-cylinder Holdens and Ray Revell's even more potent Offenhauser. In an era when death and injury never came as a surprise, it was not uncommon for drivers to take over cars in which other drivers had been killed. Indeed,for the 1959/60 season. Brock purchased the Repcopowered car in which Arne Sunstrom had lost his life the previous year at Rowley Park. Sunstrom's demise was one of five fatalities that season. In this car. Brock was close to unbeatable. Victories on the east coast were followed motorsport news

Greatest hits: At the Sydney Showground in i962 as Len Brock(99 rides over the back of John Harvey's car, above. Riding the fence, above right, in car 2, with Brock steadying himseifwith an ungioved hand on the hot exhaust... His first big crash, centre right, at the Showground in 1960. in later years driving the Faicon-powered Tornado, below right.

by a trip to Perth. Brock loved fast tracks, and that meant good luck to anyone who wanted to take him on over the wide expanses of Perth's Claremont Speedway. At Claremont he won back-to-back features, despite a half-lap handicap. Back in Sydney a few weeks later, he won his fifth straight main event. Later that year. Brock faced American import Bob Tattersall. They lined up side-by-side for the heat race, but Brock never nil madeTurn

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l.The ex-Sunstrom Repco hit the wooden fence and was flung into a horrifying series of roll-overs. Brock suffered a fractured skull, the result of a broken radius rod piercing the side of his helmet.Tattersall later observed that it was 'the first time anybody beat me into the first goddamn corner'. By the 1961/62 season, both car and Brock were repaired and back in the winner's circle. The NSW Speedcar Championship was being run at the Showground, where Harvey was shooting for a record fourth consecutive crown. It all went wrong for Brock on the first lap.Trying to avoid a spinning car, he aimed for a gap but instead rode over Harvey's wheel - with Brock's outside rear wheel literally running over Harvey's helmet. Brock cartwheeled across the top of the pack before crashing back on the track, the car a ball of flames. "All I can remember is my hands on fire and trying to blow them out," Brock recalled."I was trapped upside down in the car, with the right side of my face ripped away.The crash crew were trying to put out the flames, but they were using the wrong type of extinguisher.The more chemicals they poured on the flames, the bigger the fire got. Somehow they got me out. I learned later that two of the crash crew were burnt while rescuing me. I owe my life to them." Alan Bongers jumped the fence that night and ran to Brock's aid. When he reached the upturned car. Brock was clawing at his face. "I've got dirt in my eyes!" Brock screamed. Bongers replied:"Christ, Brock, leave it alone, let the ambulance guys fix it." Brock's right eye was hanging out of the partially torn socket. The following week's meeting was rained out but, the week after. Brock was back, his head swathed in bandages covering the burns and 68 stitches under the helmet. Motoring journalist Barry Lake recalls his disbelief when he saw the mummy-like bandaged figure of Brock preparing to climb into the rebuilt car - Lake had witnessed the nil

LeadfOot Len:Brock in action in the Holdenpowered 'Repco'at Westmead in 1963, right. Posing for the cameras in the Tornado, , bottom.

crash and hadn't figured on seeing Brock again for at least the rest of the season. Even that wasn't the last of Brock's shunts. Nor was it the worst. Late in October, 1964, Brock was pitted against Jeff Freeman - who would be killed at Westmead in controversial circumstances the following year - at the Showground. Starting off the back row, the two stars charged to the front, but on the way through Brock tangled with another car and cartwheeled. It was one of the biggest crashes ever seen at the Sydney venue. Making it even worse. Brock got trapped by his shoulder harness as the car gyrated through the air. As each roll was executed, the shoulder harness would drag his limp body from under the car, only to be slammed to earth once more, over and

-A

over, until mercifully it ended - with Brock lying unconscious face down alongside the wreck. The worst was feared as he was rushed to nearby StVincent's Hospital. But again,just five days later, and with a medical clearance clutched in his fist. Brock was back at the Showground the following weekend. Brock made light of this shunt, declaring he had a permanent bed booked at St Vincent's. But it was the most internally damaging crash of his career, and one which would have repercussions later. He finally retired from racing in the late '60s - returning for a one-off'veteran's'race in 1976 on the pavement of Liverpool Speedway, which he won. It was a fitting postscript: Brock won in his final race,just as he had done in his first race 27 years earlier using a borrowed car and helmet. Later life he would suffer a painful legacy of his various crashes. When he was being treated by doctors in 1991, a year before he died, aged 59,the surgeons could scarcely believe the extent of his internal scarring. It led them to conclude that he must have been the victim of a badly botched operation. But on too many occasions. Brock had ignored doctors'orders and signed himself out of hospital before his wounds had healed - so that he could race that Saturday night. More than 20 years at the top of one of motor racing's most dangerous forms took its inevitable toll. But Len Brock was surely one of the best - and bravest - drivers in Australian Speedway history. motorsport news

The goggles t

A personalreflection from the late Bill Lawler,Speedway historian and Len Brock crew member. The night Nick Collier died a midget Harry Pfahl,a fellow pitcrew member ofin Brock's, diedcrash, in a car accident on the way home from the Speedway.Three months later, Jeff Freeman was killed at Westmead.While we were at Jeff's funeral, Len walked over and placed a beer on Harry's grave. It was Len's way of genuinely paying his respects to a close friend. One Saturday night,two detectives were trying to serve a summons on Brock in the pits. Feature race time,the crew pushed the 99 Repco out onto the track while Brock got ^hanged inside the ambulance on the infield. As the last cars were being pushed away, Brock sprinted over and jumped into 99. When the race was over. Brock pulled infield and parked amongst the vehicles in the centre, grabbed his gear and jumped the fence over on the opposite side of the track and went home,leaving two very unimpressed detectives waiting in the pits for his return. During the'60s, Brock rented a building in Peakhurst and turned it into a gambling hall where poker, blackjack and roulette were played and alcohol was sold to raise money for injured drivers. As a raw pitcrew novice, my position on the team was 'goggles and teeth'man. It was always critical to have at least five or six old army disposal-type gas goggles ready for each race, well cleaned and spaced on the helmet so the driver could flick each one off as they became filled with dirt - this was long before'tear-offs'were invented. And the teeth? Well, Brock would take his out before a race and hand them to me, and say,"if I win, you make sure you are the first to the start/finish line." "Why's that, Len?" I asked. "So's I can thank my sponsors, and it sounds better with me teeth in." - BILL LAWLER www.mnews.com.au

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MY FAVOURITE RACE

STEVEN RICHARDS V8 SUPERCARS RACE 26,2010

Y last full-time V8 Supercar race at Homebush is right up there. That weekend, we'd practiced well, but in the first race I bent the steering at the first corner, so I was effectively out of that. We went down a lap on the first lap due to contact with another car (ED: eventually finishing 11 th). But the second race is one I'll always remember.We qualified 16th - we had a steering rack failure on about the fifth lap of qualifying, running over the kerbs, one of the racks failed, which left us down the order a bit. In the race, we had good pace, good strategy, and passed lots of cars to end up in second place. At that point I didn't necessarily know it was going to be my last race as a full-timer but as it turns out, it was a nice way to finish up. Ford Performance Racing were having a good race, both Frosty (MarkWinterbottom)and I were running well but Frosty ended up with a blown engine or something in that race. It was really close at the end, I think Lee Holdsworth won it and Shane van Gisbergen finished third. Going into that weekend, I wasn't thinking that it could be my last 96

full-time weekend at all. I was obviously hoping to get a good result because I had a few irons in the fire for a drive for the 2011 season, so to come away with that result was definitely better than finishing last! We're still doing the enduros, but it was definitely better to finish that chapter on a high than a low. The 2010 season had been a bit of a frustrating one, with a few problems along the way, and it wasn't until the chassis change at Sandown (ED: the penultimate round)that the performances turned around. We had a front-row qualifying at the Gold Coast and Sandown was looking really good until the Red Flag incident in the second race, where we were one of the unfortunate cars that hadn't completed a pitstop, which meant we had to pit when the race restarted. We were on for a podium at that one, too. To perform so competitively at the end of the year was a nice way to finish off But more so Homebush,coming through the pack from 16th to get on the podium, that's one of those highlights. Not many people remember who came second, but for different reasons we didn't start at the front, we had good pace, good strategy and we did a good job. motorsport news

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NOT MANY PEOPLE REMEMBER WHO CAME SECOND,BUT FOR DIFFERENT RBVSONS,WE DIDip'^ START AT THE FRONT; WE H^ GOOD PACE,GOOD StRATEGTl^MD WE DID A REALLY GOOD JOBP C

I really like the Homebush circuit. I think it's got a heap of challenges to drive it well, lots of surface changes and while people may be a bit critical of it, I think it's a good racetrack. I don't think there's been a bad V8 race there. It's hard on the cars, but there's also good speed there. In terms of the physical and mental challenge, each race around there is comparable to a race at Adelaide. Probably the only real difference is that at that time of the year, it doesn't tend to be quite as warm in Sydney as Adelaide is. But it's still a very physically demanding track to drive around, with the amount of kerb you have to use, which is probably a little bit different to Clipsal. I would say that if you copped a 35-degree day at Homebush, you'd have to rate it right up there with Clipsal. As it turns out, that was a good way to bow out after the best part of 15 years as a full-time V8 Supercar driver. I guess you're always out there to try and prove yourself,that you can do the job. And for those last four race meetings we were able to do that and finish on a high in Sydney. Steven Richards spoke to Mitchell Adam www.mnews.com.au

2.In the V8Supercar era. Holden has held the upper hand at MountPanorama, the Commodore winning 14 Bathurst 1000s to five for Ford's Falcon. 3. Before the 2012Spanish Grand Prix, Bruno Senna had scored more points for Williams in 2012 than Pastor Maldonado had since the startofthe 2011 season. Senna had Mon the board. Maldonado a totaloffive.

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4. MichaelSchumacher won the last Formula 1 Grand Prix, for now atleast,atImola,in 2006.

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5. The 2012season is the eighth ofCarrera Cup Australia.Itfirst appeared in 2003and has been run each yearsince,other than 2009 and2010.

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