Motorsport News Issue 422 - August 2012

WEBB OF INTRIGUE:JONNO WEBB'S PLANS FOR V8SUPBEMACY

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1 Australian

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NEWS

Editorial Group Editor Steve Normoyle snormoyle@chevron.com.au At Large Phil Branagan

THIS MONTH’S FEATURES

The Grid

Editorial Enquiries Chevron Publishing Level 6,207 Pacific Highway, St Leonards, NSW 2065 Locked Bag 5555,St Leonards, NSW 1590 admin@mnews.com.au

Contributing Writers Mark Glendenning, Andrew van Leeuwen, Mitchell Adam, Geoff Rounds, Paul Carruthers, David Greenhaigh, Danny Gardner, Bruce Moxon

Photography Sutton Motorsport Images, Dirk Klynsmith, John Morris, Andrew Hall, James Smith, Geoff Gracie, Phil Williams, Peter Bury, Michael Vettas, Ken Ferguson, Daniel Beard Paul Carruthers, Rob Lang

STONEAGE One halfof the Stone Brothers dynasty, Ross Stone, discusses Ambrose, the drivers that have come since Ambrose, the V8 Supercars Car ofthe Future, and the future in general

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 lfinn@chevron.com.au P 02 9901 6368 M 0423 665 384

We chat with rising V8 Supercars star and the only Sydney-based V8Supercar team owner,Jonathon Webb

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Chairman, Chevron: Ray Berghouse Circulation Director: Carole Jones Subscriptions: www.mnews.com.au

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VERGING ON F1 Level 6,207 Pacific Highway, St Leonards, NSW 2065 Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590 Chief Executive Officer, David Gardiner Commercial Director, Bruce Duncan Motorsport News is publishecJ by nextmedia Ply 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.

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He's more than on the verge ofFI, because JeanEric Vergne is there right now, and in a fight for Toro Rosso supremacy with Daniel Ricciardo

1 At Le Mans,in fact, where John Martin took pole position in the LMP2 class

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motorsport news

Unusual Suspects

motorsport News photographer brought . home this collection of images from Le Mans

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TWO MONACOS Danny Gardner finally makes the pilgrimage to Monte Carlo, half a century after the principality first Ignited his passion for Formula 1

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When you apply Andrew Hall's photography skills to the 24 hours ofLe Mans, you get spectacular results - as can be seen from page 52.

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OUTLAW NO MORE Meet Tim Shaffer, one ofAmerican Sprintcar racing's best

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VOODOO CHILD Chris Matheson and the crazy world ofsix-second passes on two wheels

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KARTING IN THE TOP END Darwin hosts historic first national karting title

REGULARS The Front Row Motor Mouth with Phil Branagan

David Greenhaigh was at Le Mans not only to witness the first hybrid victory in the 24 hours, but to observe the debut of Aussie John Martin in the famous enduro.

The Scoop with Steve Normoyle On The Limiter with Chris Lambden Box Seat United States of Origin The Second Row

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Model Behaviour 1.

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

Heinz-Harald Frentzen was at Albert Park this year driving a Porsche. It provided the perfect opportunity for the retired German FI ace to catch up with his race engineer from the 1999 Fi season, the man who these days runs Ford Performance Racing.

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THE FRONT ROW

since we last met

V8 SUPERCARS

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Approaching the halfway point in the season and theV8 Supercars Championship battle between TeamVodafone and Ford Performance Racing continues to intensify.

FPR and Will Davison in particular made the early running at the start of the year, but the Tones'grinding consistency has kept Jamie Whincup in the contest long enough for the team to hit back with a winning package.

Victory in Race 12 at Flidden Valley was only the third win this season for the defending champ, but last time out in Townsville Whincup broke through for his first clean sweep of the season.Two wins from two races elevated him to a neat 100-point lead over MarkWinterbottom, who was 40 clear of team-mate Davison.

Amazingly,the 15 races so far have been won exclusively by FPR Falcon and TeamVodafone Commodore drivers.

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MOTOGP Flopes of Casey Stoner scoring a fairytale world MotoGP title in his final season appear to be fading fast.

After winning in the Netherlands, in Germany Stoner dropped his Repsol Flonda on the final lap while holding down second place.Then at Mugello the Australian battled a bad handling bike to salvage only eighth place.

Mugello was won by Jorge Lorenzo ahead of Dani Pedrosa, in a reversal of the order from the German race.

Lorenzo leads the championship on 185 points from Pedrosa's 166, with Stoner lagging a further 37 points adrift in third place.

QUICK QUIZ 1. How many times has American racing iegend AJ Foyt won the Indianapdiis 500?

2. How many different drivers had won grands prix in 2012 at the conclusion of the recent British GP? 3. After qualifying for round nine of the World Drivers’ Championship, at

Siiverstone, how many times had Australian Daniel Ricciardo been outqualified by Toro Rosso team mate Jean-Eric Vergne?

4. How many times has Stone Brothers Racing won the V8 Supercars Championship?

5. Heinz-Harald Frentzen once dated the woman who would become the wife of Michael Schumacher, but during the 1999 FI season the two German drivers shared something rather different in common. What was it?

QUIZ ANSWERS ON PAGE 98

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NEWS OF THE MONTH WEBBER STAYS AT RED BULL

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FORMULA 1 Fernando Alonso became the first driver to win more than one grand prix in 2012 with his emotional victory on home Valencia soil in the European Grand Prix.

Reigning Champion Sebastian Vettel heid sway early on, and in an ominous display reminiscent of many of his performances from 2011,the German would surely not have been challenged had a mechanical gremlin not grounded his Red Bull after 34 laps.

In what was easily the most exciting race yet held on the Spanish harbourside street circuit, Alonso headed home Lotus'Kimi Raikkonen and Mercedes Michael Schumacher, in the first podium results in the comebacks of both former world champions.

Raikkonen and the fast finishing Schumacher benefitted from the late-race clash between William's Pastor Maldonado and Lewis Fiamilton which saw the McLaren in the wall and Maldonado penalised by the stewards.

Alonso looked likely to make it two in a row at Silverstone two weeks later, but Mark Webber had other ideas as the Australian overhauled the Ferrari in the closing stages to snatch the victory.

Mark Webber has ended speculation about a shift to Ferrari with the news that he has re-signed with Red Bull Racing for 2013.

Webber admitted that there had been discussions with Ferrari but was'very happy'with his decision to remain at Red Bull for a seventh season.

The Australian conceded the fact he is well placed to fight for the championship this year was a factor in his decision, but said that the deal has been close to being finalised even before his win in the British Grand Prix.

DE VILLOTA CRASH NOT CAUSED BY CAR Equipment malfunction has been ruled out as the cause of Maria de Villota's recent FI testing accident,the Marussia team says.

De Villota sustained head injuries including the toss of her right eye when she crashed into a truck while conducting straight-line aero tests for Marussia at Duxford airfield on July 3.

Team principal John Booth said the findings of the team's investigation of the accident have been shared with the HSE (Health and Safety Executive)for consideration in its own investigation.

"This has been a necessarily thorough process in order to understand the cause of the accident," Booth said."We have now concluded our investigatory work and can again focus on the priority, which continues to be Maria's wellbeing. In that regard, we continue to support Maria and the De Villota family in any way we can."

De Villota is now out of sedation in hospital and is said to be making a'remarkable'recovery.

JACQUES’ BACK

INDYCAR Ryan Hunter-Reay has stunned the IndyCar scene with a hatrick of victories that has shot him to the top of the points table.

The Andretti Autosports driver took his first win for the year on the Milwaukee Mile oval, heading homeTony Kanaan and James Hinchcliffe.Then Hunter-Reay backed up in Iowa, before winning for a third time on the streets ofToronto.

With bonus points from having led the most laps in Milwaukee and Toronto, Hunter-Reay led Will Power by a healthy 34 points with five rounds still to run.

www.mnews.com.au

Kelly Racing has confirmed that Jacques Villeneuve will substitute for Greg Murphy in the Pepsi Max Crew Commodore at the Queensland Raceway and Eastern Creek V8 Supercars Championship events.

The 1997 World Drivers'Champion made his debut for the team last month in the Townsville event, sitting in for Murphy who is recovering from major back surgery.

"It is great news for the Pepsi Max Crew and V8 Supercars that Jacques is coming back to race in Australia for the next two events,"Todd Kelly said.

"Jacques is a absolute professional and will add a lot of value to the team especially as he secures further seat time over the next couple of rounds.

"Jumping in the car at Townsville without testing or for that matter even sitting in the car is a daunting task but he took it all in his stride and was pleased with his efforts and have absolutely no doubt he will quickly move through the field in future events."

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PHIL

IBRANAGAN

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MOTOR MOUTH

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ne of the great World Drivers' Championship battles took place 40 years ago.

Tyrrell's defending champion Jackie Stewart was engaged in a battle to the last with Lotus's Emerson Fittipaldi.The two sideburned (sideburnt?) heroes split eight of that season's 12 Grands Prix and when the points were tallied, Emmo became the first Brazilian Formula 1 World Champion. His win opened the floodgates; since that time, his countrymen have followed his example and travelled to Europe in droves,to fill the grids of Formula 1 and lesser formulae.

Two have even won WDC titles of their own.

I wonder if the die from which that model was cast changed last month.

The race that prompted me ask that was, appropriately, at

Road America, a little bit of Spa-Francorchamps in Wisconsin.

Its swoops,sweeps and dips revealed one driver to be the class of the NASCAR Nationwide Series field. From pole, he sped away before pitting, strictly to strategy. He saved fuel when he had to, went fast when he had to and won - not easily, but comfortably. Nelson Piquet Jr took his first NW win and first by a Brazilian in NASCAR's three top categories with an impeccable performance.

After the unpleasant events of Singapore 2008, Piquet and Formula 1 appear to be finished with each other, and his future looks to be in America. He is in his second season in the Camping World Truck Series, and on a path that might be familiar, in particular, to any Tasmanian NASCAR fans. Racing on ovals is different to racing on road courses, but Nelsinho clearly has

ability and, probably, backing enough to get close to the top tier of the sport in the USA. For NASCAR,that makes a ton of sense. Brazil Is virtually untapped territory for Stock Car racing, and represents a big opportunity. In terms of both its population and GDP, Brazil is among the six biggest countries in the world, and while the daily news is filled with tales of other nations'economic woes, none of them are about Brazil. Its economy is forging ahead, led by strong energy and manufacturing sectors. Also, its almost 200 million residents live in times zones similar to those of the USA,so fans can watch on TV or even fly from Brazil to most NASCAR events in a few hours (possibly aboard a Brazilian-built Embraer airliner).

Over recent years, NASCAR has promoted a diversity program, to encourage drivers from African-American and Hispanic backgrounds, in particular, to move into and through the ranks of NASCAR racing and so, open the sport up to a new

audience.These things take time to bear fruit, and so far results are thin on the ground, but 1 would think that a driver with a ready-made following in South America makes a lot of sense.

Juan Pablo Montoya has not really caught the imagination of the public, but Piquet may be the man to break down the walls (not literally, this time)for a new generation of Brazilian drivers, who dream not of being the next Ayrton Senna but the next Johnson.

It is also worth noting that NASCAR media darling Danica Patrick drove well at Road America. In her 39th NW start, she was battling for fifth place until she was bundled out of the race (rather clumsily) by Jacques Villeneuve on the final lap. On the other hand. Piquet's win came in just his third NW start.

One last thing; there are two free weekends between theTalladega and Martinsville NASCAR Truck rounds. One of them is October 19-21, the date of V8 Supercars'Gold Coast 600.

Just saying, is all.

Piquet may be the man to break down the walls(not literally, this time)for a new generation ofBrazilian drivers, who dream not of being the next Ayrton Senna but the nextJiminho Johnson

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f STEVE

NORMOYLE I THE SCOOP ext year we'll have three manufacturers in V8 Supercars.

Actually, there are three manufacturers in V8 Supercars right now.So in 2013 when Nissan Joins in the fun, there'll be four.

The'third' manufacturer to which I refer is Mahindra. It's been involved In a minor way, as a supporter of Scott w ww in the Dunlop Series.

For those unfamiliar with Mahindra, it's the world's biggest manufacturer of tractors.

But It also makes utes(and has been selling them here for a few years now), and now has expanded Into the SUV market with its new XUV500 model.

This is an important moment for Mahindra. It's the Indian company's first attempt at building a vehicle specifically for the International market, having previously exported its domestic models (like the utes).

If it goes well for the XUV500, the Mahindra brand is likely to become known to many more people very quickly.

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It might not be a household name in Australia, but the Mahindra Group is no backyard operation. It's a colossus, with an annual turnover of more than $15 billion. It's involved in everything from aerospace to holiday resorts, and it employs nearly 150,000.The automotive section accounts for only 40 percent of the company, which last year sold 440,000 vehicles.

Among those is the range of motor scooters Mahindra sells in India. Right now it only has one proper motorcycle model, and that's the Mahindra MGP30 Moto3 race bike. Uniquely,the company has entered world championship motorcycle racing with its own factory team and bike despite yet having produced a single road-going motorcycle.

According to Mahinda's chief executive of International Operations, Ruzbeh Irani, who also played a key role in the establishment of the race team,the MotoGP effort is aimed at generating world wide exposure for the Mahindra

name while also providing its engineers with the platform to develop technologies they'll be using in their future road bikes, which are on the drawing board right now.'

Of course, this kind of cartbefore-the-horse marketing strategy is not something Mahindra can apply to V8 Supercars - unless V8 Supercars Australia suddenly decides to allow SUV-shaped vehicles in the Car of the Future.

But whether it's V8 Supercars or via some other avenue, Mahindra is soon going to be looking at strategies to get its name out there.

Sport is a pretty good way of getting the message out in this country. And if Mahindra opts for sports sponsorship in its marketing programme, it won't be short of options.

The thing is that for automotive manufacturers in Australia, motorsport is far from the only marketing game in town. And over the past 20 years of V8 Supercars, during which Holden and Ford were the only manufacturers welcome,the car makers have had no trouble finding other sports to which they can attach themselves.

Mostly, they've gone to the footy - all four codes in the case of Hyundai,\which is series sponsor of the A-league soccer competition as well as sponsor of the Melbourne Rebels Rugby Union team, Carlton AFL and Wests Tigers NRL teams.

Volvo sponsors three of the five Australian Rugby Union teams in SuperRugby, while Lexus sponsors the national team.

In addition to Hyundai, the NRL also enjoys the patronage ofToyota, Suzuki and Opel. But the AFL boasts more than twice as many again - it has no less than nine car manufacturers amongst Its sponsor portfolio: Hyundai,Toyota, Ford, Mazda, Kia, Skoda, VW,Jeep and Opel.

Now marketing is a sophisticated science these days, and certainly one which I don't pretend to understand.

Clearly, though, a motor racing programme isn't for all manufacturers all of the time.

But they do seem to value sport as means of promoting brand awareness, and right now in Australia there are 11 of them that enjoy an involvement in top-level football, but not top-level motor racing.

The thing is thatfor automotive manufacturers in Australia, motorsportis far from the only marketing game in town.And over the past20 years of V8 Supercars, during which Holden and Ford were the only manufacturers welcome,the car makers have

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f? CHRIS

LAMBDEN : ON THE LIMITER

play a bit of golf every now and then with a good friend of mine who is by all measures a better golfer than me.

I'm basically a weekend 'hacker'and it's all a bit of fun but there's always been some form of mental block which doesn't allow me to beat him. I have led with a hole to play, by a couple of strokes or more, and I blow it. The slice returns; trees jump out to obstruct my ball ... you know what I mean. Someone once reminded me that golf is F-L-O-G spelt backwards.

Stupid game ...

It doesn't happen when I play anyone else. Just my mate. Fie calls me IBF. Ian Baker-Finch, for those who don't follow the game, was a talented Aussie golfer, a super guy, in the Norman era. He broke through and won the 1991 British Open and looked set for a spiraling international career.

It spiraled, but unfortunately down. IBF won a couple of Australian tournaments, but never really got near it again on the PGA tour. It became bizarre - he could play a blinder in practice, with his mates, or even on the warm-up range, but once he placed the ball on the tee on the first hole, it all went awry.

It came to its conclusion at the 1997 British Open (as a former winner, he of course had 10-year entry guarantees to all the majors). IBF shot an

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opening round 92(20 over par), another shocker, withdrew from the tournament that night and retired from professional golf.(As it happens, he went on to be, and still is, a superb commentator for US TV).

In golfing terms, IBF is the classic mystery crisis of confidence case. But only in tournaments. A psychological road block.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Apart from my own inadequacies with a pitching wedge,there are a couple of professional racers out there puzzling us, and I suspect themselves, with a form 'slump'which just doesn't want to go away.

Unlike IBF, people do come through form slumps. It happens all the time. You'd probably say Mark Webber had a mini-slump last year - the confidence, and results,just weren't quite there,for whatever reason. Look now - another great 2012 win and a freshlyrenewed Red Bull contract all in the space of a few days. You can see the confidence.

Along pit lane, Jenson Button is looking perplexed right now.

The former world champion is trolling around on the fringe of the top 10. Yes, McLaren is having some issues, but generally speaking, his team mate is a fair way further up the road. People are asking'what's up with Jenson?'

Locally, it's hard to miss the '●lilt,

raised eyebrows looking in James Courtney's direction.

Pretty much since he snatched that cliff-hanger 2010 championship win in a DJR Falcon, then left to join FIRT, Flolden's'factory'team, on a pretty handy deal, things just haven't quite clicked - and it's hard to figure out why.

Up front, team-mates Jamie and Craig, and Mark and Will are almost driving around sideby-side in pairs they're so well matched, but at HRT there's a gap. Not big, but a gap. And while Garth is good,James certainly shouldn't be that far away. It seems to be about qualifying speed - and once you start down the grid in the ultra close V8 Supercar world, it can be hard work.

Motorsport is a fraction more complex than golf - there are all sorts of personal intra-team relationships that have to work; technical input and set-ups. Is that the problem - after all, compared with the other top team pairings, who are like old married couples in comparison, James is the newish face at his team? Fie also lives interstate. Is it burn-out... or even the silly old'two-tenths per child'thing ... It's impossible, probably even for James himself, to really know.

You don't just'forget'how to race and James has pedigree.

Remember, he literally went and lived in Italy, boarding with locals, at the age of 15 to pursue his dream Fie was a double world kart champion by 18, won the British Formula Ford championship in 2000 but, while leading the British F3

championship in 2002, had a massive crash - rear suspension failure - testing a Jaguar FI car at Monza, which concussed him badly and for some time.

Ultimately, even though he tried to race on when perhaps he shouldn't, the F3 title slipped away,Jaguar changed hands, and the Euro dream faded.

Under the management of Alan Gow,James moved to Japan, winning the All-Japan F3 title in '03,followed by a couple of lucrative seasons in Japanese GT, before snaring the seat at Stone Brothers Racing, replacing the departing Marcos Ambrose, in 2006, enabling him to return home for something approaching a'normal'life, for the first time.

On that front, the James Courtney of 2012 looks happy -married with two young children; living on the Gold Coast - and by all accounts having made a reasonable pile along the way. And still only just 32. Professionally, though, he's facing the challenge that confronts many sportsmen at some time or another.

IBF on wheels? Don't think so.

A couple of decent qualifying sessions could turn it all around tomorrow - in V8 Supercars that's just a tenth of a second here or there.The margins are pretty small.

There is precedent. Last weekend I finally beat my mate.

OK, he missed his drive on the last, but I got there by a couple of strokes.The scorecard is framed,on my study wall ...

No doubt James will be inspired by that!

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themselvesr with a form 'slump' which just doesn't want to go away

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WITTER can be a sportsperson's worst nightmare.

Ever since the social networking giant kicked into gear, Australian sports stars have been finding themselves in hot water over their 140-character antics.

We've seen swimmers tweeting about gay rugby players, A League players tweeting about gay referees, AFL players tweeting about bad umpiring, AFL players tweeting about other people's mothers, AFL and rugby players allegedly paying for followers, and so on and so forth.

Recently, Hawthorn gun Lance'Buddy' Franklin decided to quit Twitter. Between being accused of paying for followers, copping some heat over a clothing commercial and seeing some of his colleagues get busted for bagging umpires, he decided enough was enough. His selfimposed Twitter ban lasted 20 hours.

Of coCitS^?1t's only the tweets thatJaad famous people in hot water that make the news.The reality is that, aside from the controversy,Twitter has given the general public a whole new way to interact with their favourite sports stars. While an autograph used to be the holy grail, now it's a retweet or a mention - and they are easier to get than a barely legible scrawl of magic marker across a notebook.To me,anything that makes these people more accessible to the fans i^^good thing. .i ● ● ■ Right now, Fernando Alonso is giving the Buddy Franklins and Brock McLeans of the world a lesson in using Twitter properly. At the start of the 2012 Formula 1 season,the Ferrari driver started an open dialogue with all 800,000 of his Twitter and Facebook followers, asking them to send questions.

He then started a regular blog, offering all the answers. For the most recent blog,there were 12,700 questions alone.

'Alonso's Global Virtual Travels'makes for some fascinating reading. As the questions come from fans, not Journalists, there is a completely different dynamic to the responses. In other words, Fernando can pick and choose which questions he answers,so there are no boring PR-driven answers. Here are some examples from the most recent blog; Q - What does the hand gesture mean that you make on the cool down lap?

A - It started with a TV program that I watched in Spain when I was little and the main character always made this sign.Then I began to use it to say hello to my grandma and every time I headed for the airport to head off to a race, she would say'remember to say hello to me if you win'. From then on, I always did It and I will continue to do so every time I win.

Q - Do you have to pass any tests for M

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alcohol or drugs or have a blood test before and after the race?

A - We have to follow the same procedure as cyclists. We have to tell the FIA where we are for all 365 days of the year so that we can take anti-doping tests. I have already done several; a few days ago I found myself chatting with a gentleman in my lounge at seven in the morning, while I was undergoing an anti-doping test.

Q - From zero to 10, how similar is the Ferrari simulator to a real Formula 1 car?

A -1 would say nine. It's a professional simulator, developed by the team to replicate the characteristics of the car, automating movements during laps on track and trying out possible modifications.

It is not a game, it is part of work.To tell the truth it is one of the least enjoyable things to do,even if that does not seem the case.

Q - One day, we saw that Luthi's heart rate during a Moto2 race reached 177[beats per minute]. What does yours do?

A - It depends on the circuit.The highest is in Flungary where it reaches a maximum of 194 with an average of 177.The lowest is at Monza - maximum 158,average 126.

Other circuits are somewhere between these two.

That's only a taste of what's available in the blog, but it's genuinely Intriguing stuff (and it's all still available on Ferrari's FI website).Towards the end of the'interview', Alonso is asked what the worst thing about Twitter is. His response?"Trying to say everything in Just 140 characters."

If only Aussie sports stars found the world of social media so simple ...

Ever since I moved to Europe and started covering the International Superstars Series, I've been pestering the organisers to hook me up with a ride in one of the cars. At the Hungaroring in Budapest recently my persistence paid off.

While I'd spoken to guys like Gianni Morbidelli,Tonio Liuzzi and Christian Klein about the differences between a V8 Supercar and a Superstars car, I wanted to see(and feel, and hear)for myself.

So, the good folk at FG Group asked race winner Francesco Sini to take me for a burn.

Just to make the comparison as accurate as possible, the chosen car was the Superstars-spec Chevrolet Lumina ... which is a fancy overseas name for a Holden Commodore.So, with the ambient peaking at a sweltering 40 degrees, away we went.

The overall sensation is so very similar to a V8 Supercar. From inside the cockpit.

the Lumina sounds almost identical to a Commodore or Falcon - right down to the clunk of the cogs as Sini hits the sequential lever for each new gear.

But there are some differences. While the track dimensions for the Chevrolet and a V8 Supercar are quite similar, the Superstars car is a little stiffer, and the Hankook tyres offer a little more grip,so the car is more eager to turn in. In fact, it feels a lot like a GT car when Sini attacks the corner entry.

But with less horsepower (the Chev makes around 550)and less braking power, the Chevrolet isn't as aggressive out of the corners or into the braking zones particularly given the minimum weights are so similar.

In general,the build quality of a Superstars car isn't at the same level as a V8 Supercar.That's not to say that the Superstars car is poorly built, it's Just at a different level from that of super-slickTriple Eight Commodore or FPR Falcon.

In saying that,the budgets are at different levels as well. A couple of Superstars sources have placed a year's running in a competitive car at somewhere around €200,000(AUD240,000).That's not far off a Formula Ford budget in Australia, and well below the sort of cash required to run competitively in even the development series, let alone the Championship Series.

To summarise,a good V8 driver would have no trouble adapting to a Superstars car and vice versa. But if any of the Aussies want to have a crack at the Superstars, and plan to do it in Hungary,don't forget your cool suit. Phew.

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HE first time I interviewed AJ Foyt, he spent the first 10 minutes bemoaning the presence of foreigners (that would be me)in his trailer. If you don't know what you're in for then this sort of welcome can be disconcerting, but fortunately I'd been forewarned. It also helps when you figure out that AJ's definition of'foreigner'extends to pretty much anyone born outside Texas.

If anyone has earned the right to be onery, it's Foyt.The 77-yearold's achievements in themselves bestow a degree of privilege that wouldn't be tolerated in lesser drivers. This, remember, is a guy who has won the Indy 500 four times, and the only driver ever to have won the Indy 500,the Daytona 500,the Daytona 24 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours.

He's also potentially the hardest person ever to have walked into a race paddock. When he was 16 he escaped drowning by clinging to a buoy for almost eight hours when his boat capsised (his friend who accompanied him perished). Since then, various racing accidents have left him with shattered feet, a broken back, second and third degree burns, and a crushed arm.That's not including the occasion when he was run over by his own dirt car at DuQoin. Or the times he was mauled by a lion, rolled a tractor down a 15 foot slope into a dam,or got attacked by killer bees. He had knee surgery during the last off-season, had himself sent home from hospital three days early, and told the doctors that he didn't need morphine, although he later conceded that the latter was a mistake.

In short, AJ Foyt a guy who commands respect. But when his team was fined and docked entrant points after driver Mike Conway's car failed a tech inspection afterToronto, his response in an American newspaper crystallised an attitude that is all too common in the paddock, and for which the series has only itself to blame.

"I don't want to get another fine for speaking my mind," Foyt said.

"I'm angry. Period."

So just to be clear, he's angry because his team ran a car that was in contravention of the rules, got found out, and got punished.

There are a few things worthy of being angry about here, but the hit to Foyt's pocket is just about the least of them. Policing technical breaches has been one of IndyCar's weaknesses this year, which is bizarre when you consider what a difference doing it properly could make for a series still yearning to reinforce its credibility.

In Formula 1, cars that are found to be illegal are frequently disqualified - a few millimetres of bargeboard on Eddie Irvine's Ferrari in 1999 initially ended the world championship battle a race early before the Prancing Horse was able to get his ban overturned on a technicality and keep McLaren's Mika Hakkinen waiting one more week to secure the crown.

In Conway's case,the car fell outside the permitted fuel capacity. In a series where fuel mileage is so important,this sort of thing could

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easily mean the difference between finishing third, as Conway did, and finishing 18th.

IndyCar's technical boss Will Phillips even said as much when the punishment - a $15,000 fine and 10 entrant points - was announced.

"We felt the discrepancy in the size of the fuel tank was enough that it could potentially have provided a track position advantage," he said. "The penalty is reflective of that."

So the car was not only illegal, it was also gaining a clear advantage. Conway kept his third place.The team copped a fine - a large fine if it were me that had to pay it, but a 20th of what Conway was awarded for being classified 29th at the Indy 500 in May. IndyCar's entrant point standings are not easily available, but with Conway currently sitting 18th in the drivers'championship, it's safe to assume that there's not a lot of sleep being lost on that front either.

Meanwhile, if the irregularity with Conway's car were such that it could 'potentially have provided a track position advantage', then where does that leave Sebastien Bourdais, who was running third when taken out in an accident initially triggered by Conway squeezing Charlie Kimball? Is it unreasonable to assume that if Conway's car had been legal, he'd not have been in a position to challenge Kimball, and Bourdais might have survived the last restart and finished on the podium?

This is not an attack on Conway himself, who is a good driver and thoroughly pleasant bloke. It was just as much a problem when Justin Wilson won in Texas with a car that was later found to be carrying an illegal gurney flap. Again, the team was sanctioned, but the win was allowed to stand. On that occasion, the series stated that he'd also run the illegal part during qualifying, but claimed that the fact that he'd only qualified 17th suggested that it wasn't a huge performance differential. At best, this explanation was naive. Plenty of things can affect qualifying, including set-up and traffic. And at worst, it appears to set a worrying precedent.

Perhaps the biggest concern of all is that so many breaches are only being detected after the races, not before, and this is clearly something that the series needs to tackle, perhaps by revaluating its scrutineering processes.

But things will always slip through the net, and as long as the penalties are so soft, there's little incentive for the teams to tighten things up at their end. In many respects Formula 1 is still an open formula technically, which means that you're dealing with interpretations of the rules rather than the letter. But IndyCar is a mostly spec series, and the grey areas are a lot smaller. Why shouldn't expectations of technical compliance be correspondingly stricter?

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fj^ears after Stone Brothers Racing was built into a tMe-v^ni^ powerhouse, there are signs that the Pord:team i^on the way up and, with its three current dA^ers, be in a position to challenge for a title.

Ross Stone is as enthusiastic as he ever was and tells PHIii BRAMi^dAMwhy he believes SBR can win again

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T is difficult to know where to start a feature about Stone Brothers Racing, or Ross Stone.

Ross and his brother Jimmy have been involved with V8 Supercars for as long as there have BEEN V8 Supercars. At the time the sport evolved from Group A which saw, a category based on the premise of a number of models of cars you could not, mostly, buy in Australia thrash everything else but only one model at a time - to what was known at the time as Group 3A, the Stones were at the coalface at Dick Johnson Racing, it was not a huge surprise that John Bowe won a title in a DJR Falcon in which the brothers had huge input.

Nor was it a massive shock when the brothers went out on 'their own', first as partners with Alan Jones in Pack Leader Racing, then Alan Jones Racing and finally, at the end pf 1997, Stone Brothers Racing.

As the sayihg goes, the rest is history; a year later, SBR took what appeared to be an unlikely Bathurst win; three Drivers' and two Teams'Championships followed in the ensuing years.

All this has been built on the back of two brothers, who put their lives, and much of their families' lives, into their team.

"I think that with our backgrounds - we started off in Formula Fords and, in my case, an Atlantic car - we could have gone into any form of motorsport," Stone says. "But, Touring Cars have played a big part in our lives, so V8 Supercarsis a good fit."

The list of SBR drivers reads like a Who's Who of V8 Supercar racing.Three V8 Supercar champions have raced SBR Fords, Ambrose, Ingall and James Courtney; four Bathurst winners (Jason Bright, Steven Richards in SBR's lone win in '98;Tony Longhurst and Ingall). SBR even won a Development Series title, in 2003 with Mark Winterbottom, and continues to race in that series - or at least.

Matt Stone Racing does.

Asking Ross to talk about drivers brings an enthusiastic response.

"We had Russell and Marcos both win championships. Marcos was special and Russell was great. We still enjoy a good friendship with him. But yes; we are very happy now with how we have positioned

ourselves with our drivers - very happy.

"I think that we are pretty close. In saying that, the V8 Supercar business has changed, a lot. Marcos, if he was a V8 Supercar driver now, would still be successful - there is no doubt about that. This is a different time, but the three drivers that we have got, they are alia little bit different but they work really well together. They have great chemistry, and we could not he happier."

The current crop may not have the credentials of the titleists, but Shane van Gisbergen, Lee Holdsworth and Tim Slade are all in the top 10 in the championship points, and Stone reckons that the mix is just about right.

"Shane is 23. He has been doing this for five or six years, so we need to take that experience and turn that into results. Lee is ready to win, we just need to give him a car that he is really comfortable with.Tim is turning into a fantastic test driver, and he obviously is good at getting a car set-up to suit him. Some of his results are promising, he races really well and he is stepping up ail the time.The test driving skill is a big bonus."

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As with any business,there are Bests and -Worsts in the job. . "[The best] is being involved in a business that you have a passion for,"says Ross."l feel fortunateJt|ptiwe have such a great group ^ ofpeople arbund us,and that we^erifc'do what vie want to do."

And the worst?

'The commercial pressures. It is a tough

moment,and certainly where we are based, that is Just the way that it is.

'You have to manage your business.That is the first thing.You cannot spend more than you have coming in the door.There are three boys in our family,and we are all mechanics by trade. What I mean is, we came into racing. as mechanics,and if we have to underwrite the cost of it, there is just no way we can do

'One ofthe things that I have a l ways tried to do is to make sure that we do not have more than one title sponsor up for renewal in one year.You can renew or even replace one title sponsor a year but more than that is difficult. We have tried to stagger those arrangements;in fact, it is exactly the same with our drivers.Sladey is out of contract at the end of next year, Lee is here until the end

War of the Worlds STONE Brothers is something an ANZAC teamRacing - a bunch of Aussiesof and Kiwis working together for the common good.

'T would be a genuine dinky-di if there were more Australians working here," says Ross in a quasi-Aussie accent."There are a lot of Kiwis working here; probably more Australians now,but there are a lot of Kiwis here."

But even if SBR's driving staff maintains the same mix of trans-Tasmans,Stone expects to hear a lot more different accents in the coming years. With the change to the new car-and in particular its 18-inch tyres(compared to the current cars'17-inch rubber) he expects to see more foreign drivers in V8 Supercars.

"I think that is going to change -1 think that it will change a LOT,"he says.

"I would think that most people who come into V8 Supercars in the future will come via the Dunlop Series. Our cars are completely different to drive,and we have seen some of that this year with the #33 car, with a guy who has never driven these cars, Alex Premat.

"[But] I think that you would be surprised at some ofthe guys who could, potentially, come in. At the end ofthe day,with what you would be paying them compared to what they might get overseas,the market rate here is pretty good. It is nothing like it was 10 years ago."

Like Ambrose,van Gisbergen made an almost instant impression when he joined the category. But unlike Ambrose, he [has not yet gone on to massive success?^^ There are two reasons for that,according opinion; I think that it is a waste of time. to Stone; "We will not run a car in the Series "When Shane stepped in, he was a next year. bit fortunate. He stepped into a lower So, what will SBR do? Is there a chance pressure situation than we face now. All that the team may become mvolved in the drivers have greater pressure; nobody the new V8 SuperTourers Series, which is weak in the Championship now." has similar chassis guidelines to the 20T3 Having said that, he still thinks that the V8 Supercars?

Dunlop Series has its place but he would "Not at the moment,we have our like to see changes made to the series and hands full," he says."When Tgot off the its regulations.

V8 Supercar Board,once the sale went "I think that the whole Dunlop Series through [Ed:to private equity.company needs to be reviewed and I think that Archer],Jimmy and j talked about it and they need to cut costs out Of it. But there is we decided we needed to dig in and do a ridiculous scenario at the moment in that what we are doing.That is probably why there are not enough tyres for the young we are not running a Dunlop Series car blokes to test on propenly.il think that it is next year. time that they actually sat down and gave "EventMally*what will happen is four the Series a review,to look at how it is run. cars.il believe thatfour cars is.the d|3firf!Sm They are testing on whatever tyres they model to run under.That's our plan, but have got in their banks,and they Just do with the Car ofthe Future coming on,that not get enough tyres to teston.That is my will not happen next year."

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Wnd Qualifying sessions and the testing, the engines had done between 4600km and 4900km.

They had not been apart

to something about which he,clearly, is passionate about.

'One of the points I want to make about this is the engines,"he states.

They are SO MUCH CHEAPER than they were in the Ambrose/Ingall days.We used to rebuild those engines almost after every race.This season, we started off with fresh engines in ail three cars; we did the Sandown test day,then we came back and did our test day at Queensland Raceway,then we went to Clipsal,then the Grand Prix, then Symmons Plains.Then we had another test day in April,then New Zealand,then Perth and Phillip Island THEN,the cars all got fresh engines, in time for Darwin.

With ail the races,the Practice and Qualifying sessions and the testing,the engines had done between 4600km and 490Gkm.They had not been apart;they get serviced but they had not been apart.

The thing that changed it all was when we a went to a control camshaft, it pulled the lift out of the engines and it was so much easier on all the valve gear.When we first started on the control camshaft,there were some reliability issues.That has been sorted and we are on top of all that now.'

OK;reliability and engine costs are running well. So is Parity; motorsport: ..

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"Parity is good. It is all balancing out, there is nothing out of whack. The guys who are fast in the speed traps are fast because they are coming out of the corners onto the straights better."

The SBR cars are going faster than they ever have but so too are most of the opposition. It could be easy to forget that only two years ago, Dick Johnson's were the fastest of the Fords and now. Ford Performance Racing has taken over the mantle of the Blue Oval's go-to team. But that does not faze Stone: "If you take the last races, the FPR cars have been fantastic in qualifying and the

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he says."We have a happy team here and There been times which 1 have we try to keep it that way.We work hard, foundhave it challenging toin get on with it would be hard to work if there was not Ross Stone.

■..nil any'ch?mfs'iry'in the team.

In fact,there have been times at It's not the whole family. My son Nick / which he has called me, pretty much. is a data engineer on the #9 car and looks every name under the sun. That is not after the My daughter Anna worked because he is an unreasonable man, or in commercial. She left the team and she has suffered from Tourette's or any other now works for V8TV. Or other daughter affliction that might cause him to trade Emily used to do all our catering and in the Queen's English for something travelling, and all those arrangements, more colourful. But when you write and she has moved away from the team something that he does not like. Stone and now works for a travel company. is not one to carry on behind your back.

Jimmy's son Matt, obviously, is based not He lets you know. far frdtti'herB; with two of our carsehat he 1 reckon a big part of that is the family thing. Stone has reacted to what he might runs In the Dunlop Series.' consider to be a negative comment on The Stones are riot alonein the fainily/ his racing team as others may react to a racing team situation, of course.There criticism of their family. It is sometimes are the Joneses and the Johnsons in V8 difficult to know where SBR starts and the Supercars, not to mention that Claire Stone family ends; the reality is, probably, Williams is now on the board at the Grand much more grey than black and white.

Prix team he father started 35 years ago.

And, like in any family, chemistry in a The Andrettis are in Indycar; the Kinsers in racing team is important.

Sprintcars and the Forces in Drag Racing.

"I think so, I think that's a fair comment," The Stones are in pretty good company.

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STONE BrothersV8 Racing may team be as modern asare any contemporary Supercar but there some'Old School'facets to the team.

One is its relationship with James Rosenberg.The South Australian businessman is best described as a patron, who goes motor racing not for business reasons but because he loves the sport and likes to see young drivers getting the support he thinks that they deserve. He owns the Racing Entitlements Contract under which Tim Slade is entered, and his arrangement with SBR was first enacted without a contract, on a handshake deal.

"James is great to have around,"says Stone."He enjoys his facing and his business takes a fair bit of his time.This is his outlet, i suppose. He enjoys it, and he does not miss a thing!"

So, back to SBR, what does the immediate future hold for Ross and Jimmy Stone?

"Just try and win some championships,"says Ross.

"At the moment there is no succession plan,and that is not a good thing in business, when there are 46 people on the team.

Our immediate focus is to try to win a couple of championships.

"Jimmy has got enough projects there to keep him occupied full-time for quite a few years. I have often thought that we have only ever kept the two cars as we have gone along. We have Marcos's and Russell's championship cars; maybe we should build them up and we could go dub racing."

Of course, both drivers may make offers to buy their titlewinning cars In the future- though it is likely that an Ingall offer might involve some sort of contra-payment...

And where will the brothers end up? Could it be that they will eventually give up VS Supercars, leave the business to the next generation of Stones and go race an Historic car somewhere in the world?

“Jimmy reckons he started off in hillclimbing,"says Ross with a

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26 motorsport news

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OTORSPORT NEWS:The last time we spoke to you was almost exactly two years ago.

At that point in time, you were in the middle of what ended up being an impressive rookie season, but since then, you've won a race, gone off and started your own team and subsequently expanded it. How would you sum up the last 24 months?

JONATHON WEBB: It's been a pretty chaotic time for us. But in saying that, there's been a lot of good things, I'm more than happy with the direction everything's heading. Leaving DJ's(ED: Dick Johnson Racing) was pretty tough and was always going to be a tough one, especially with the short timespan for us to get out of there and build our own little race team.

Last year was definitely a tough one for us and unfortunately the results showed.

It took us the first half of the season to get ourselves grounded. We're pretty happy with how the second half of the season went last year, we slowly found our feet and had some good direction and the speed started to come. I think, also,for me as a driver it took a little while to re-focus on driving and not having to stress so much about setting up a race team.

Then the opportunity came up pretty

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quickly to go to two cars [in 2012],to expand,to go to Holden, which was a big jump for us as a team. And for me as a driver, I've never driven anything but a Ford V8 Supercar. It was a big Jump, but the opportunity was there to get our hands on a couple of, effectively, new Triple Eight Holdens.To build them up and grow the team over the break, to begin what I think's, again, been a bit of a tough start to the season.

It hasn't all been our own fault, but the team's getting stronger every day.The cars are good, Mike (ED: MichaelPatrizi) and I are definitely finding our feet in the new car and, so far, this year's looking like it's going to be a good one. It's getting better and better every weekend.

Through stepping out to become a team owner and overseeing - driving, if you will - all of this, do you feel like you've changed and grown as a person?

Absolutely.There's no other way to learn than to throw yourself into the deep end and see if you can swim. I think that's exactly what we've done. I've enjoyed the challenge, both as an owner and a driver, to try to put it all together to find that happy balance but I think I've definitely grown through it all.

In an average week, how does your breakdown of time go, between being Jonathon Webb the'team owner', Jonathon Webb the'driver'and making sure Jonathon Webb gets some downtime?

I think with the way we've set up our business at the moment,as far as being a team owner. I've got less and less to do, as the weeks go on.The majority of that's done

by Bruce [Jenkins], our team manager and my wife Kobe, who has a massive hand in the day-to-day running of the business.

Between the two of them,they take the bulk of it and if there are any issues or something I need to have a bit of a say in, I get involved. But on an average week, I spend most of my time Just focusing on making sure I'm fit and working with the engineers to get the car right, more than anything else.

Is there a rough percentage of your time you'd say you spend wearing the'team owner'hat?

Probably 25 percent of my week.

Is team ownership something you always thought would be in your future?

I think it was always something that was talked about roughly on the way through.

28 motorsport news

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Knowing it was always going to be a tough thing, it's probably happened sooner than I thought it would in my career, but we want to make this our lives, as long as we can.

Even if the driving doesn't last as long as I hope. I've still got some way to stay in the sport and be a part of it, to make a living for my wife and, hopefully, future family.

The other V8 Supercar chat in this magazine is with one of your former bosses, Ross Stone. Do you look at someone like Ross and think'that's the kind of thing I'd like to build up over a long period of time'?

Yeah, absolutely. It's not easy to build yourself up to a top running V8 Supercar team, obviously one of the newest ones is whatTriple Eight's done in a short period of time. FPR have been around for a while and guys like Ross and Jimmy Stone have been around for a long, long time and done a really good job of what they've put together. You definitely look at those guys who have been there for a while and done it the right way; that's a place I want to be in the future.

Overall, from your two-and-a-half

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years as a fulltime V8 Supercar driver along with the time beforehand to get there - and the 18 months as a team owner, what's easier - driver or team owner?

Oh, I think the team ownership has a lot to it. There's a lot of depth to what's involved, how to keep a business running and keep 20-odd employees happy on the way through.There's a lot of intricacy inside the business to make it run the right way. From my side, I enjoy every part of driving; good, bad or otherwise, but there's plenty of ups and downs on the ownership side of it.

You touched earlier on 2011. In 2010 you were part of a three-car team with two very experienced and successful drivers to learn from. For your second season, going out alone, even though you were in the same car and with the same engineer, how tough was that?

Entering your second season without some of the tools you had at your

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We still have a chance of getti NG WHAT I CAME INTO THIS SEASON WANTING - FINISHING IN THE Top lO IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP. That’S still very MUCH ALIVE, I THINK disposal in the first?

It was probably one of the toughest seasons I've had in motorsport, being out there on my own. I guess, too, I still consider myself fairly new in the sport, I didn't start until late In the piece, when I was 18.

I still had a massive amount to learn, I took a massive amount on board at DJR, and it was brilliant having James [Courtney] and Steve [Johnson]there. They're both really competitive and obviously James won the championship that year; I couldn't ask for more of a role model to look up to at the time. I picked up a lot from there and took as much as I could into the 2011 season, but there's also been quite an evolution in the category; different tyres, different races and strategies, and that's changed again this year.

When you're out there doing it on your own, without anyone to be able to throw ideas around with or get support from, is very difficult.

In that answer, you touched on another part of your career that's very rare

compared to the rest of the field. You didn't grow up karting and you didn't do Formula Ford or any of those'traditional' early categories. You started off in Porsche Cup. Yeah, I hadn't done anything in motorsport until I turned 18. 1 did one season in Porsche Cup and then I transitioned into what's now known as Carrera Cup, raced there for a few years, then the Development Series for three years and stepped into the Main Game in 2010. It was very much an untraditional path for a V8 Supercar driver, or any driver, really.

Do you still feel like you're learning as a race driver?

Absolutely. I'm learning a lot on the track, racing against 27 other guys, learning from my team-mate.The whole reason I went to the UK [in late June] was to spend some time with Rob Wilson (ED: Renowned driver coach)to try to learn as much as I possibly could on the way through.

Everyone talks about V8 Supercars

being the most competitive touring car championship in the world, and it's our plan as a team and my plan as a driver to one day try to win that championship.

We're going to have to work extremely hard to do that.

In terms of 2012, you mentioned 'teammate', with Michael coming on board.

Was two cars in 2012 something that was planned, or did it come a little earlier than you would've liked?

Yeah, a lot of people asked me last year whether we were going to go to two and my clear and honest answer then was'no, we have no intention of doing so until Car of the Future'.

And,to be honest, that's the way it was for most of last year, until we got whisper that Paul Morris was looking to change his outfit and the way he went about it, and there was an opportunity to grab some cars and another licence and to grow and I guess - from my side - take a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to be able to grab those V8 Supercars that were built by Triple

30 motorsport news

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Eight, championship-winning cars.

And to be able to evolve that into staying with Holden for Car of the Future, when it was there and put on a plate for us, we thought it was something we had to do, timing right or not.

With Michael, you've got a team mate again. You're both in your third Main Game season, but he didn't do any Development Series running beforehand, has it been a nice change having a team-mate there again to bounce everything off?

Most definitely. There was obviously that opportunity for us to grow as a business and it was the right business decision. But bringing someone like Michael along was always going to help me, rather than being stuck on my own again for another season.

Michael's done what we expected and what we wanted from him, to have some good, consistent results.

We knew, like any team,that when everything goes right on a weekend, there'd be that brilliant result like he had in Perth. His speed is very, very similar to mine and we can definitely feed a lot off each other to try to help each other go forward. It's been a really

good season so far in that respect.

In the six or seven months that Michael's been a Tekno driver, what have you learnt about him?

I knew him pretty well before, as a friend and we used to, we still do, do a lot of riding and training together. I've known him quite well outside of the car, but inside ofthe car he was a bit of an unknown,to be honest.

He'd had a few flashes of speed in the couple of years he'd been in here, but he wasn't really able to take a good foothold in the championship.

He worked hard in the Porsches and the time he was out of the V8 Supercar championship and you can definitely see that now that he's back in the car. He's confident in what he's doing and,from my point of view, is doing a brilliant job.

You mentioned some of the results that've come up so far in the first half of the season. You've both qualified inside the Top 10 and there have been plenty of signs of promise. But through things like the Sunday morning incident at Clipsal (ED: where Webb,on an outlap, was rear-ended by Greg Murphy, on a hotlap, in qualifying)some of that

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promise hasn't turned into results. How do you rate the first half of the season?

Adelaide was extreme highs and extreme lows. We went out on Saturday with a brand new car, after a major evolution of the team and to put the car fourth on the grid was a massive high.

From then, obviously, to turn it around on Sunday, when my brand new baby was effectively destroyed, was a tough start.

Then we missed the Grand Prix (ED; with primary car, Webb competed in a loaned PMM-built Commodore), which was really tough. We needed the development and that opportunity for both myself and the team to get comfortable with the new car and try to develop along the way.That put us behind a little bit, but from then on, it's slowly gotten better.

We're putting forward some good results, getting some clean finishes and putting some points on the board. I think, since the Grand Prix, we've done nothing but crawl our way back up in the championship.

1 think I'm now 17th from 27th in the championship and, hopefully, with some good consistent results in the Top 10 between now and the end of the season, we still have a chance of getting what I came into this season wanting - finishing in theTop 10 in the championship.

That's still very much alive, I think.

How on top of the Commodore package do you feel? It's still Triple Eight DNA you're dealing with, but it's not the same as the Falcon.

There are still plenty of differences and it's still quite a big evolution from the Ford, which Triple Eight hadn't touched for a good couple of years.There's plenty of evolution, the car's undoubtedly a better car to what we had, but in saying that, we're still working on it.

We had a really good test at Queensland Raceway before Darwin, where it was really the first time this year that we've been relatively comfortable in the car and really just went out there and started to try to learn more about it. We got caught out a couple of times, particularly in Perth, where it was wet all day Fri day, and we were thrown in the deep end on Saturday to come up with a car that worked.

We've been caught out with a couple of little instances like that, but we had a really good test at Queensland Raceway to try to learn and understand the car a little more and I think we're at a point now where we know the car and we've got to get on with the job.

With the Triple Eight arrangement, as it's turned out you've been in Triple Eight gear throughout your entire Main Game career and this ties you in nicely entering the Car of the Future phase. Maybe not initially in the first year with DJR, but since then have you had one eye on Car of the Future and making sure you were going to have a good alliance in place?

Yeah. I think coming into the championship, it was quite clear that, two-and-a-half years ago,thatTriple Eight were the cars to have, the cars to beat.

Coming into it, the opportunity was there to get my hands on a Triple Eight Falcon at the time and put me in a Triple Eight chassis straight away.

We've worked really hard now as a team to work as hard as we can with them and to stay partnered with them going into Car of the Future, knowing that they're still very, very strong. Obviously FPR and a few other teams have given them a bit of a run for their money but, by far, over the last four or five years. Triple Eight has been consistently at the front.

In terms of the structure ofTekno Autosports, my understanding is that the'PMM'licence, for want of a better term, in use is leased with an option to

32 motorsport news

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'1^ Max impact: Not the best way to start the season, above, but Tekno's form has otherwise been solid and the team is attracting plenty of attention. buy at the end of the year. Is that still the case?

Yeah, it is.

Looking forward, is something you plan on activating to stick with two cars?

I think two cars is definitely where we want to be. How we go about that, to be honest, we haven't really spent too much time on that recently. We'll cross that bridge when we get closer to the end of the season.

All in all, you've had a busy few years. The 2010 pre-season was your first as a Main Game driver, the 2011 pre-season saw you head out to establish your own team and for 2012 you expanded the team and switched brands. The next pre-season involves the Car of the Future introduction - are you already looking forward to the 2013-2014 off-season when things should be a bit more stable?

Oh, to be honest, that'd be really nice.

But it's one of those game where you're always chasing something. If it's not what we've been working on recently. I'm sure something else will come up in the next short amount of time to keep us busy in the off-season.

I think, to be honest, it'll be a relatively easy transition into the Car of the Future for our team. We've now got the two cars and the crew in place, and it will be a new car and there'll always be something to learn, but as far as the team structure, I think we're as strong as we've ever been and I'm quite confident in what's coming up.

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RACING REUNION IN 1999, A YELLOW CAR TOOK THE FIGHT RIGHT UP TO MCLAREN CHAMPIONSHIP. MITCHELL ADAM SAT DOWN WITH ITS DRIVER. H CHIEF MECHANIC, TIM EDWARDS.TO REMINISCE ABOUT JORDAN

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M

OTORSPORT NEWS:So,the 1999 season. What do you both remember from that year?

TIM EDWARDS: I can remember the two highs of that year, Magny-Cours and Monza, wasn't it? They were the two races we won.

^^atWest Muocemm

.awEw_>

AND FERRARI IN THE WORLD EINZ-HARALD FRENTZEN, AND ITS jRAND PRIX'S FINEST SEASON

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HEINZ-HARALD FRENTZEN:Yeah, I got the two wins. I had a terrible experience at the Nurburgring when the electronics failed.

TE: After the last pitstop, going down into Turn 1 -1 can't even remember what happened - but the car turned off, didn't it? As you went into Turn 1, in the lead of the race.

HHF: I know what it was, I remember very well. It was a safety issue.

It was something to do with the car going into neutral with the anti stall system. Before the car stalls, it goes into neutral, but just a taste.

You have to hit the switch, otherwise it turns off in case you could not stop the engine, or something like that.

TE: We were the underdogs that year,though.Theoretically, there were three drivers, wasn't it, that could've won the championship?

HHF: Yeah; Eddie [Irvine], Mika [Hakkinen] and me.We didn't expect so, but we just ran with them in the points.

MN:Going into the start of the season, what expectations did you all have for the year?

TE: We came off the back of a good year, well not a good year, but'98 was the first year we won a race, with Damon [Hill] at Spa. Our expectations weren't that high for'99 because we'd only just won our first race, so we never thought we'd be anywhere near being able to win a championship.

MN:From memory,in '98,Jordan had finished fourth in the constructors title.

TE:Yeah,'98 and '99 were the best years of Jordan. After that, we started to struggle, largely down to funding. When did you finish? Was it halfway through 2000 that Eddie had a meltdown?

HHF: It was 2001.2000 we had also a good car, but there was something fundamentally wrong - we discovered it but it was too late to change it. And then we had a bit of a misunderstanding, Eddie and me.

We extended the contract with the team, but Sam Michael went and other guys had been bought out of the team,and that wasn't agreed at this time. So we had a bit of a misunderstanding, Eddie and me...

TE:... that's a very politically correct answer!(Laughs) MN:In '99, what were the initial impressions of the Jordan 199?

Could you tell it was going to be a nice little car?

HHF:The Jordan was a good car. It didn't have as much downforce as the top cars, but it had a, as I remember, very good efficiency and it was very reliable as well.

The car was a little bit heavy on the rear, but at this time it didn't really matter. It was a really good,quick car for the top eight all of the time and we had a very good run. I felt very good with the car, I felt very comfortable in the car.

TE: Magny-Cours, we won that more on strategy than anything else, didn't we?

HHF: We were also lucky as well. With Sam,we worked out a very special set-up that turned out very good in the rain.

We tried to make the car a lot softer at this stage; if it was in the dry, it wouldn't have been very helpful but we stuck with it. And I had, anyway, a broken leg, so I was not 100 percent physically in top form.

MN:That would've been after your Canada crash?

HHF:Yeah. At Canada, we lost six points in that race as well, because the brakes just failed. From that race, I had a broken leg, so we made the car a little softer to drive for Magny-Cours but that turned out very well.

TE: Monza, we just had very good straight-line speed.

HHF:That was the good thing about the Jordan; it was very quick on high-speed corners.

TE:They've almost hung onto that a little bit.The Force India's actually been like that. I don't know about this year but over the last couple of years, that's where they've been able to shine.

35

I

MN:The racing got underway here, at Albert Park, you finished second to Eddie Irvine for a podium straight off the bat.

HHF:We started off very well, with second here and third in Brazil. We were right there,from the beginning.

MN:Do you remember there being a point, maybe early in the season when you were getting podiums,that you thought'oh, yeah, we might be looking good here for a really good year'?

HHF:[Long pause] I think we all had a very comfortable feeling.

TE: We always felt like we were the underdog anyway.

Jordan was more of a place where you always just focused on the next weekend. I don't think we ever really got ourselves all hyped up that we were going to win the championship at any point, not that I remember anyway, we Just went race-by-race.

Apart from what happened,the Nurburgring was another good weekend. We had good pace and I think you qualified on pole, didn't you?

HHF:Yeah.That was the weather; I was very comfortable in wet-dry conditions. And the Nurburgring was wet and the circuit was drying out, I remember.

We were strong on circuits like Monza,Canada or Hockenheim, the high-speed circuits, but the Nurburgring wasn't our kind of circuit normally. We would've been behind Ferrari and behind McLaren for sure.

But these conditions, we were lucky because we had a problem in practice and couldn't get out in free practice.

TE: Gee, you've got a better memory than me!(Laughs) HHF: I remember that because I had a long discussion with Trevor [Foster, Managing Director] and Sam regarding going out in qualifying, because we made a mistake in Magny-Cours, where we won.We went out late and the first guys did the quick laptimes in the drier conditions but I did mine in full wet in qualifying but still managed to get fifth.

Since then, we had complicated discussions going on about when we should do our qualifying sessions.That was fun. I remember we were always like'arrrrggghhh'-fighting and shouting about what is

^..1

kk

the right time to go out.

Remember that?

TE: Yeah,Sam and Trevor never really saw eye to eye.

HHF: At the Nurburgring, we had the same discussion.

At that time, I was wrong in Magny-Cours, to go out late, but Sam and I were right at the Nurburgring to go out late. Because we saved our tyres for the last minute. It was drying out,the circuit, and it could have come,another rain shower, but we waited until the end and kept our options alive until the end and got pole position.

MN:Obviously the Sunday, you were leading the race but it didn't go to plan. A couple of the other front-runners had problems, but by that time you were already in front and looking good.

HHF: I was in front straight away. I was at the front from the start and I was under a bit of pressure to start with; but there was rain coming and we stayed still on the dry tyres, it wasn't wet enough yet.There, I could keep my position.

When it started to rain more, I actually had a bit more of a gap between me and Mika and David [Coulthard]. When I came into the pits, I had an eight or 10 second gap.

TE: Now, 1 remember you were still in the effective lead when you went out of the pits before it turned off atTurn 1.

MN: After the Nurburgring,the points deficit was 12 points, going to Malaysia and Japan. If the Nurburgring went to plan it would've been much less. Was there a point at that time,or afterwards, where you felt like you missed a really good opportunity to snatch it?

HHF:We did our best all of the time.That was unlucky, as was Canada, when we had the brake disc fail, but then we were lucky in MagnyCours to win the race there, because of the big fuel tank we had.That was our'big arse'.

TE: I'd forgotten about that.

HHF: We were the only ones who could, at that time, at Magny-Cours, fill up the car completely with fuel and make it to the end.

No-one else could do that there.

MN:Overall, during the course of the year, consistency was a key point.There were a couple of DNFs in there, but there were nil lots of thirds and fourths.

I DON'T THINK WE EVER REALLY GOT OURSELVES ALL HYPED UP THAT WE WERE GOING TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP AT ANY POINT, NOT THAT I REMEMBER ANYWAY,WE JUST WENT RACE-BY-RACE EDWARDS,BELOW HOLDING FRENTZEN'S LEFT LEG AFTER WINNING AT MONZA. ON THE'99 SEASON

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motorsport news

ET'S face it, some Formula 1 seasons have been less interesting Lthan others. Remember the dominance of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari in the early 2000s? r'l Well, before that,there was the 1999 Formula 1 season,the 50th , < year of the World Championship.

1i While Mika Hakkinen won the World Championship, his second . title with McLaren was a Ipt hardetithan it should've be^^.Th'e Finn claimed pole position in 11 of the first 13 rounds but won only fourofthem - in Brazil, Spain,Canada and Hungary - due to a regular stream of mechanical failures and driver errors.

After the French Grand Prix - where Heinz-Harald Frentzen became ^ the fourth different winner in seven races - Hakkinen led the points by just eight over the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher, who had won -i two races,and Eddie Irvine, who won his maiden GP in Australia.

Then came Silverstone, where Schumacher broke his leg. Suddenly, J Hakkinen was in a title fight with Irvine he was expected to win,^but 'rj with Frentzen and Hakkinen's McLaren team-mate David Coulth*ard 3 doing enough to go with thern.^ ■wsi Frentzen bought further into contention with victdr‘;^*ffl''Mon?a, where Hakkinen spun out and Irvine could only manage sixth. A -Vl fortnight later, Frentzen claimed his first pole in two years at the Nurburgring and had the race shot to pieces. But then the electronics } failed. With Hakkinen and Irvine in trouble, Jordan and Frentzen i could've left the weekend just one point behind Hakkinen.

But it wasn't to be and they could only manage four points from the remaining two races, with Frentzen finishing the year third in the World Championship. Schumacher returned for Malaysia and helped Irvine win, but Hakkinen sealed the championship by two points with victory in Suzuka's season finale.

-MITCHELL ADAM

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AT JORDAN. EVERYTHING WAS.STRAIGHT AWAY.QUITE SIMPLE AND QUITE EASY FRENTZEN ON MOVING TO JORDAN AFTER TWO TRYING YEARS AT WILLIAMS HHF:The car was reliable, we had hardly any gearbox problems. It was a heavy gearbox from Gary [Anderson], but it was very reliable.

MN:For yourself, Heinz-Harald,the two years at Williams probably didn't go as you would have hoped. Moving to Jordan and having such a strong year straight up,that must have been a good boost.

HHF:Williams was a complete disaster.The timing was not good from my side to join the team.

I should've gone normally, in comparison of the whole career, when I was asked by Frank already to go in '94, but I wanted to stay with Sauber until my contract finished, because he got me into Formula 1.

After two or three races, I was not able to leave the team because of the long history between Peter Sauber and I. At Jordan, everything was, straight away, quite simple and quite easy.

It was an equal situation for all drivers and we were told to'go ahead'.

At Williams, everything was so difficult.

TE:The thing with Jordan, it was such a small team, by comparison,to a lot of the other teams.

MN: At that time, how many staff members do you think were there?

TE: 200, maybe.The most Jordan ever had, was in 2002, 1 think we had 260. And then it slimmed back down in 2003 and 2004 to about 200 again. I think probably around 200 at that time and I imagine Williams was probably 400.

HHF:That was a big team.

TE: It was a pretty simple team.

MN:From a Jordan point of view, with Heinz-Harald joining the team,what did you know about him before the start of 1999?

TE: Not a great deal, to be honest. At Jordan, we had a fair turnover of nil

drivers so there was no-one who really stayed there for a long time.

You were there for two-and-a-half years and that was up there for a lot of the drivers.

A lot of them were one year, occasionally two. Rubens [Barrichello] was there for four years but apart from that we had a fairly high turnover. But it was good,a lot of the drivers started their Formula 1 careers with Jordan, starting with Michael[Schumacher], his first race was with Jordan. Rubens,Irvine, there were a lot who started their careers with the team.

MN:Overall, on-track it looked like a really good year. For you two, was it an enjoyable time in your careers?

HHF: I enjoyed the time very much. No doubt about it.

TE: It was an enjoyable time.Those years, around then,they were probably the years when the team was the best funded and we performed like that.

A lot of the years leading up to that, and post that, we were always strapped for cash.That window there was probably the most enjoyable. Paul Stoddart was a sponsor of the team, before he bought Minardi,so we had our own 50-seater plane that Paul used to fly us all around in.

I remember flying home from Magny-Cours, after we won; we flew out of a local airport. We had Murray Walker and a few others on the plane and Stoddy used to do this aisle surfing and I remember Murray, on take-off, flying down the aisle of the plane, sitting on the safety cards, with his catchphrase.

It was good.There were a lot of parties that year, because all of the European races we'd fly in on his plane and have a pretty good party on the way home.

38 motorsport news

—_1

THEN AND NOW I

T'S been over a decade since Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Tim Edwards last worked together at Jordan Grand Prix. But their careers brought them back together at Albert Park's Australian Grand Prix in March.

Edwards remained with Jordan until the end of the 2004 season, upon which time he returned to his native Melbourne to take up a role in the organising committee for the city's 2006 Commonwealth Games.In 2007, he joined V8 Supercar outfit Ford Performance Racing as its Managing Director and he remains in the role; with FPR the dominant player so far in the 2012 season through Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom.

Interestingly, a piece of the 1999 season came with him to Melbourne.

"I'm constantly reminded of Magny-Cours[in 1999],"Edwards said.

"Eddie gave me a framed picture when I left Jordan,an artistic drawing ofthe car crossing the line and all of the team on the pitwall, and Eddie doing his stupid Jiggy dance he used to do.

"It's a signed framed picture of that and it's on our study wall, which is our gym as well. I've got a constant reminder of it; it's one of the very few things I've got in my house to remind me of my Formula 1 career."

After departing Jordan during the 2001 season, Frentzen went on to contest further GPs with Prost, Arrows and Sauber before exiting the sport at the end ofthe 2003 season.That was followed by a stint in the DTM and a period of effective retirement.

"I did DTM with Opel for two years and then with Audi but then after 20061 really had enough.I wanted to take it easy and stop racing," he explains.

"I didn't particularly enjoy the DTM racing because it was a different type of racing. Opel had left DTM so it was only Mercedes and Audi and the racing was...for me,it was boring. I don't know how it is in [V8 Supercars], but if you've only got one guy who can win the championship,the rest are only technically driving.

"For me it was like a soccer game.It was Mercedes against Audi. I didn't really enjoy that, I was coming more from an individual racing, like Formula 1. You have a team-mate but at the end of the day you're always fighting for yourself."

He got back behind the wheel in 2008 through the Speedcar Series based in the Middle East and contested the Le Mans 24 Hour with Aston Martin - a program,incidentally, run by FPR co-owner Prodrive.

In 2010, he was scheduled to return to an Australian racetrack, signed to co-drive with Tim Slade in V8 Supercars'inaugural international event on the Gold Coast.Several months out, however, he elected to withdraw from the role and the sport again.

"At this time 1 agreed to do it, but I had so many things at that time to

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do,other things, and I decided to stop racing," he recalled.

"I said 'I can't do Gold Coast because there are so many appointments and things I have to do around this race weekend. If 1 cancelled it. I'd have to cancel my racing career for ever, because I had people ringing me up saying,'do you want to do this, want to do that?'And I decided to stop."

However, his second retirement didn't last either. At Albert Park in March, he was a one-off competitor in the Porsche City Index Carrera ' Cup,driving the series'Guest car. , "It took me only a year to miss it,I (jJid some GTS races last y^ear just * for fun,so that's why I'm also here," he said."I'm doing GTSin Germany again this year."

After finishing fourth in Races 1 and 2, Frentzen copped a 30-second penalty in the final for a clash with Daniel Gaunt which dropped him to 15th. Overall, he enjoyed the experience,only his second hitout in a Porsche,and the chance to spend more time in the country.

"My first experience in a Porsche after 20 years was nice. It's a really fast sports car. For my age it's perfect; I shouldn't go any faster," he said.

"It's great to be here,seeing old guys,old friends and seeing Australia.

It's a very nice country. It's a good opportunity to come here. 1 wish I would've been here for a holiday for longer but every time you do Formula 1, you see the airport, you see the city but you do'ri’f^’e much'. about the country.

"This time we came couple of days earlier and went to see the Gold Coast and Sydney.So we came a little bit more as a tourist couple, not so much as a racing couple.You see a lot of countries when you do Formula 1,and you always get a slight touch of a feeling of what it's like to be in a country but you never really have the chance to get to know more about it."

-MITCHELL ADAM

r

OM m .

VURGMI:01-1-1 HE HAS BEEN QUOTED AS SAVING THAT HE IS AS GOOD AS IUARK WEBBEII,AND THAT HE WII.I. BUIIY DANIEI.RICCIARDO'S FORMIIU 1 HOPES.THA TS NOT THE KIND OF TALK LIKELY ENDIiAR.IEAN-ERIC VEKGNE TO AllSI RAMAN FANS,EVEN IF SOnill: OF IT MAY HAVE BEEN LOST IN TRANSIATION.$0;WHAT'S HIE TRUTH ABOirr RICCIARDO'S TORO ROSSO TEAHAT E? RY ANDREW VAN I.EEIIWEN EAN-Eric Vergne and Australian Formula 1 handful of testing days under his belt. Still, that he fans got off on the wrong foot. would honestly believe he could match the pace It all started last November, not long after of a Monaco winner wasn't a big surprise. From the the young driver test in Abu Dhabi. Having moment Vergne arrived on the periphery of F1, it was spent three days in Red Bull Racing's title-winning clear that he was not lacking confidence.

2011-spec car, and having topped every session, Of course, he's not,seen as a villain by Aussie FI fans because he is confident, or because he's French. the Frenchman allegedly made some very cocky comments about how he would stack up in Formula It's because he's fast, and he's directly teamed up 1. In fact, he allegedly claimed he could have easily against another Australian in Ricciardo. If Sebastian matched the pace of Mark Webber had he been an Vettel, one of FI's genuine nice guys, struggles to RBR driver during the 2011 season. be loved by the Aussie fans Just because he likes to "When I came back [from Yas Marina], I saw stick his finger in the air when he wins (I'll be honest the comments of engineering boss Ian Morgan and,admit I'm not sure why that's so annoying),then and they were very positive, I cannot hide it," Vergne has no chance.

Vergne was quoted as saying by French website Mid-way through the 2012 season,Toro Rosso Le Nouve'l Observateur. team-mates,Vergne and Ricciardo are locked in a battle for pole position in the Red Bull favourtism "I know that the top teams are cautious of young stakes. While Webber has recently re-signed with drivers; the only one that dared to go with a young RBR for the 2013 season,that it is another one-year guy recently was McLaren with [Lewis] Hamilton,and it worked. We have had a similar preparation; I did contract suggests that any season could be his last three days of testing and physically had no problems. with the team. If at the end of the'13 season Webber So I think if I was put in the Red Bull, I would do no decides not to sign another contract, it could (with a worse than Webber." big emphasis on the could) be that one of the young guns is promoted to an RBR seat.

It's worth noting that these comments were made Even RBR boss Christian Horner has fuelled in French and then translated into English. Perhaps the fire with early season suggestions that both what Vergne meant to say was lost in translation. drivers are indeed in the frame for a main team Perhaps the quotes were completely fabricated (it seat in the future. happens). Perhaps that's exactly what Vergne said, "I think it is entirely logical that if you have a and exactly what he meant. ● youth policy, and that youth policy is delivering real Regardless, it is completely plausible that Vergne talent, and that talent is exciting talent as Sebastian , would make such bold statements so early in his Vettel has demonstrated,then it would make more I Formula 1 career. At that stage, he was Toro Rosso's sense to take a home grown driver rather than I reserve driver(a role he inherited after Daniel going externally," Horner told assembled media in I Ricciardo was farmed out to HRT),and had Just a

J

47 «'www.mnev.'i.com.au

iTHINKQIIAUmNli IS A KI!AI.I.V nimCULT EXIiKIIISII. I TS THE ONLY

mmim that wi:dom't ih:Ai.i.y have any tinie to pbactice Melbourne at the season-opener.

We'll be keeping a very close eye on them.

They're both RBR drivers that have been placed on loan effectively to Toro Rosso.They are both very talented young guys that have had their GP debuts as a result of Red Bull's investment in youth and talent, and it's a really exciting period.

"I think they are two of the most exciting youngsters to have been on the periphery of FI over the last couple of years and they have the opportunity now to go head-tohead to show they have warranted that opportunity and investmentthat has been placed within them. I think it'll be fascinating to see how the two ofthem evolve throughout the season.

"To put them in the same environment gives us a much better visibility in terms of seeing how they progress.

"They have done tremendously well in the lower formulas and in test and simulation

work for Red Bull Racing and we are fully supportive of their promotion into the race seats."

Of course, young drivers are so overly media trained that they don't fall into the trap of discussing such matters with the outside world. Even if Vergne has said before he could match Webber for pace, he recently told the official Formula 1 website that, in his new role as an STR driver, he wasn't even thinking about Red Bull Racing.

"Some people will tell you that we are in a fight for the Red Bull cockpit, but 1 don't see that right now," he said.

"I am racing for Toro Rosso and I want to help make the car a points contender. I have no interest finishing in PI 5 ahead of [Ricciardo]. I'd rather finish in P4 behind him

if that meant I had a quicker car. Did I just say finish behind him? No, I don't think that I would like this! Only the part about fighting at the front is true. Forget about the rest."

The relationship with Ricciardo is an interesting one.The pair has been crossing paths for years,the tension between the two coming to a head in the early part of last year, when they were both racing Formula Renault 3.5 with Red Bull support. Regular Motorsport News readers will recal our exclusive interview with Ricciardo back in the March issue (#417), where the Aussie opened up on his feelings about Vergne.

"We're ... alright,"Ricciardo said.

"The truth is, the further we've gone up the ladder,the more competitive we've become.

Back in the day we were kind of mates, but

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now we have a very competitive rivalry."

While Ricdardo was brutally honest about the situation, Vergne plays a more PR-friendly line when quizzed on the subject.

"I think [the relationship with Daniel] is going well," he says.

"I think he has to work on some things, and I have to work on some things. I just concentrate on what I need to do. But it's going well with Daniel. He's a really good driver, he has good feedback, and it's nice to work with him."

Compared to the head-strong comments from Abu Dhabi last year, Vergne has certainly settled down a little bit when it comes to mouthing off with the media. It could be that the realities of being an FI driver are starting to hit home, particularly

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given the Frenchman's poor qualifying form so far this year. When asked how he would rate his season to date, Vergne barely gives himself a passing mark.

"I would say 50-50," he says.

"I've had some great moments, some good racing and some good performances. On the other side I've had some downsides, like in qualifying and so on. I think I can be happy, because there are some answers to make it better, and the day I can put everything together, that will be a good day.

"I have no problem [with the pressures of Formula 1 ]. I'm really, really happy to be in Formula 1.1 feel comfortable."

It could also be that, having been a front runner in ever category he's raced in since karting, getting used to life towards the back of the grid is like crashing back to earth with a big thud.

"Confidence is really important/'Vergne '"admits.

"When you are a driver that is used to winning everything in all the other categories, even if you know you are coming to FI and that you might not win, that you won't get podiums or even that it will be difficult to score points, you think it's going to be OK when you are at the back of the grid, or if you make a good race and you finish it quite far off. It's of course a little bit difficult for me.

"In the end I learn from it and I will just try to be more satisfied with the race even if the result is not fantastic. I think we need a positive spirit that will bring us closer to the front. I'm sure that's what we are doing.

"We are working hard in a good way and the result will come, maybe not now, maybe not in three races, but it can only get better I think."

While Vergne is often accused of being arrogant - not necessarily an unfair accusation - he does balance it out by being honest and, when he deems necessary, self

critical. There is no doubt thatVergne has struggled to come to terms with how to get the best out of an FI car in qualifying trim, and has been out-qualified by Ricciardo 8-1 in the first nine races of the season (see breakout). But, he has proved that he can get the job done on Sundays, beating Ricciardo 5-4 in races and scoring two more points than him (as of the British Grand Prix).

Still, the qualifying stats are damning, and Vergne makes his disappointment no secret.

"In general, I have better races than qualifying compared to Daniel," he says.

"I think qualifying is a really difficult exercise. It's the only time you run with no fuel in the car, so you have to get the best out of the car. Therefore it's something that we don't really have any time to practice. The only moment you have to practice is in the qualifying [session].

"So it takes a bit of time. But I know what's going wrong, I will work on this, I will improve. I might not arrive in the next qualifying session and everything is there, but I'll work on this and in the end it will be good."

He even refuses to take the obvious 'get out of jail free'card and blame spate of early season flyaway races for his below par Saturday results.

"I don't think being in Europe [or not] makes a difference," he adds.

"We have the simulator, so even if I've never raced on a track, I know them from the simulator. By the end of the first session, I already know the track quite well."

Arrogant? Perhaps. Honest? Definitely.

Fast? You betcha. A villain? In any other country, no. But for as long as he's teamed with Ricciardo, Vergne's chances of winning over the Australian public are low.

However, if Vergne goes on to become France's first Formula 1 World Champion since Alain Prost, I don't think he'll care if we like him or not. And nor should he.

44 motorsport news

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IlicciAiinavVEiHMi; HAT do Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Pedro de la Rosa all have in common? They are giving their team-mates an absolute walloping in qualifying this season.

While Alonso, Hamilton and de la Rosa are all 9-0 compared to Felipe Massa, Jenson Button,and Narain Karthikeyan respectively(as of the British Grand Prix), Ricciardo is not too far behind, having handed Jean-Eric Vergne an 8-1 belting.

It all started at the Australian Grand Prix.

While Ricciardo only qualified one place ahead of Vergne,the gulf was made to seem bigger in that Ricciardo was 10th fastest, putting him into Q3. At the time Vergne might have been disappointed not to join Ricciardo in the final segment

of qualifying, but right now he'd probably happily take a sixth-row starting spot.

Since Melbourne,Vergne hasn't gone close to replicating that result, being bundled out of Q1 four many times and settling on an average starting spot of almost 17th. In Canada, he was even out-qualified by the Caterham of Heikki Kovalainen. ■ Ricciardo, meanwhile, has avoided Q1 in every session, and even made Q3 again in Bahrain, where he qualified sixth - a full 11 spots ahead of his team-mate.The Spanish Grand Prix was the only time Ricciardo started behind Vergne,the pair lining up in 14th and 15th (that being theVergne's best starting spot since Australia).

But Vergne has narrowly had the edge In races,the stats currently standing at 5-4 in the Frenchman's favour.

Vergne's average finishing ●i' position is four places better than his average qualifying position, and his best showing was the Malaysian Grand Prix, where he found himself near the front after braving a rain ( storm on intermediates long enough for the race to be stopped. When it was restarted in drier conditions,Vergne was in the perfect position to nab eighth place and the four points that come with it.

Ricciardo, meanwhile,is still 4 stranded on two points, having I collected them with his ninth 1 place finish in Melbourne.

-ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

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THE HARDEST RACE JOHN MARTIN HAS FOLLOWED AN UNUSUAL PATH TO GET TO LE MANS.BUT HE MADE A PRETTY GOOD FIST OF THE BIG DAY - AND PUT IN THE KIND OF PERFORMANCE THATJUST MIGHT ATTRACT INTEREST FROM SOME OF THE s. LMPl FACTORY TEAMS, by David Greenhalgh

OHN Martin has had a very unusual career by Australian standards.

It started off in fairly orthodox fashion when,as a CAMS Rising Star, he edged out Tim Slade for the 2006 Australian Formula Ford Championship. He headed overseas - which of course had been the

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original point of that series - initially into the British F3 Championship. From there, he was picked by Alan Jones, and showered with plenty of compliments,for some of the 2007/08 and then virtually all the 2008/09 seasons forTeam Australia in AIGP. No less than eight Australians drove for their country in AIGP, but Martin drove more races than the other seven. His next move which really marked his career as unique for an Aussie abroad, was to Superleague, a series which had some similar marketing BEE] 0 Bg

association with Delta Engineering that had been on foot for some years. For Docking, the revival of the old WEC tag for 2012 was a key factor in deciding his new focus, and his driver certainly had no objections:"I've always known what Le Mans was about, an^ had a bit of a like for sports cars. I thought, they looked quite cool, and I always wanted to come here and do it."

Paired with Robbie Kerr and Tor Graves, Martin made a fairly subdued start In the opening WEC race at Sebring ("we'd only just got the car, so it was just a matter of survive"), but for the second round at Spa, the Australian raised some eyebrows by plonking the car on the P2 pole.

"I was really looking forward to Spa," he says,"it's a proper drivers'circuit - I don't think anyone can not like Spa, and 1 knew wlilaa BmilEItl BWl

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As well as having to plan the physical 'rigours of managing his body over the : 24 hours, Martin also faced the familiar psychological shift required by an openwheeler driver who turns to sports cars.

"I'm still getting used to sharing my car in openwheelers, you're trying to screw your team-mate over all the time, but now you have to tell him because you're all in the same car, you're all working for the same thing." "[But] I like the whole endurance racing aspect of it all, because you're in the car for a long time.There's a lot of strategy, it's much more of a team event, there's so many pit stops and so many things that can go wrong."

At least the car itself was surprisingly similar to what he'd been used to in other categories."The car's quite nice to drive; these things are very, very, very much like an openwheeler.The Superleague car has quite a bit more power and was a little bit lighter, and was quite a bit more physical to drive than these. But these cars are pretty much openwheelers with guards over the wheels."

But what of the famous old track; did Martin find the sheer speed daunting at all?

"Not really. I'd rather see it without the two chicanes on the Mulsanne and we have about 600 more horsepower, to make it

interesting. It's not like the old Group C, over 400km/h - a proper pace, that's where we need to be!"

In fact, it is a curious feature of the current sports car rules that the P2 cars don't have much of a top speed advantage over the GT brigade: while the works PI cars this year were up over 330km/h, Martin's Oreca (shared this time with Jan Charouz and Tor Graves) and the other good P2 machines were only loping along at about 303km/h through the speed trap, while the quickest GT cars were topping out at about 295. But when it comes to the whole lap, a good P2 car like the ADR Oreca gets around in about 3m38s, compared to about 3m55s for the fastest GT boys.

That kind of speed differential mismatch can make for some interesting moments in traffic at Le Mans, as Martin discovered.

"We don't have much top speed over the GT cars but obviously under brakes and the high speed corners the aero is massive - so at the end of the lap through Indianapolis and the Porsche Curves, there might not be someone there but you come through the second left of the Porsche Curves and there'l just be a Porsche in the way and it's like 'whoa, what are you doing?'. But it's just one of those things and you've got to get used to it."

Getting a clean lap was largely in the luck of the draw, Martin told us, but he did get at least one good clear lap, and that was one of the key factors in enabling him to claim pole position in LMP2. It was an impressive feat, but he was staying fairly calm.

"We were not even concentrating on the whole qualifying thing. It was just all race setup, really, then we'll see what happens at the start of the session. 1 went out, asked Dave [Leach, his engineer] to find me some clear track, and then pushed on. Lap two, I was just trying to clear some traffic, then back them up and go: I caught a couple of Ferraris but I managed to get them in the right place, on the straight.

Obviously qualifying around here doesn't mean that much; it's nice [to be on pole], but in the grand scheme of things, there's a long way to go.There's still a lot of learning to do."

Starting from the P2 pole meant that Martin would have the luxury of a clear road in the early laps, as the PI cars disappeared up the road. His first stint was very strong, as he settled into a rhythm and drew away to a five-second lead. But in such a competitive class, avoiding delays is the key - and it all started to unravel for Martin at the very first pit stop, when the car stalled.

It was reluctant to refire, because

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everything was so hot - then it started, but stalled again. At the end of the first hour, Martin was down in 13th, more than a minute off the P2 lead.

He started to move back through the field, but a long delay at one-third distance undid a lot of the good work. As the race wore on, the car also developed clutch and fuel pressure problems, hindering it from climbing too far back up the order.

"It's just like a massive rollercoaster," he says."You build all the way up to somewhere a bit respectable, and then down again - but then other people are doing the same thing, so it's just whoever has the least amount of issues wins the race."

Martin did his fair share of night driving, and, like Alex Davison before him (see MN419),found that it was difficult to judge the headlights looming up behind him.

"The Audis have such strong lights -just trying to work out where they all are, it's just massively mental, drains you big time trying to sort it all out. Sometimes you'd leave a gap for an Audi or something but they'll be a whole half a straight away - you're leaving them room but they just don't come."

His longest stint, a quadruple from 4.10 to 7.21 on Sunday morning, brought the car out of the darkness.

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"This morning as the sun was coming up and the track was coming alive, driving from the night into the morning was the coolest stint, nice to be in the car then. Every lap the sun is a bit higher; it's mentally tough.

"There were a lot more people on the bank as the sun was coming up, and there's more and more people coming all the time. By the end there's just people everywhere,just standing in the forest, hanging from trees, just to see the end. By far the hardest race I've ever done in my life;just mental really."

But Martin's exhilaration at the sheer challenge and adventure of the race was tinged by his disappointment at the result: all the delays kept his car back to just sixth in P2 at the flag.

"We had the fastest car, we were on pole; it was an outstanding effort by the team.

Everything's new,three rounds of sports cars, we had the quickest car at Le Mans, my first time here - you can't really say too much more, really. I'm a little bit disappointed with the result, but when you look at the big picture, you can't really be disappointed."

So where to from here? In the short term, Martin is particularly looking forward to the next WEC race, since it takes place at his home track of Silverstone. Beyond that the plan is to build up his sports car career and

hopefully end up with a manufacturer drive in PI. "That's where we want to end up, with Toyota or whoever, that would be a dream really", he says, before adding rather drily, "not in the one Davo [Anthony Davidson, who was involved in a massive high-speed shunt] was driving, though!That thing's not so good. I'll wait for them to fix it and then I'll have a go."

Martin is not the only driver with aspirations of a works LMPl drive, of course.

But with a vacancy at Audi, Porsche coming back to the top category in 2014, and other manufacturers rumoured to be increasingly interested, the number of works seats will expand substantially. And this year's Audi squad, and the drivers who had been selected for promotion to Peugeot's aborted 2012 attack, both show that the big marques are quite prepared to look around with an open mind for their next wave of drivers.

The move to sports cars could prove to be the making of John Martin.To take pole position, against top-class opposition, at both his second and third attempt surely bodes well for his future. And in the meantime, he can reflect with a good deal of satisfaction on what was'now by far my favourite event that I've ever been to'.

MARTIN/CHAROUZ/GRAVES,LE MANS 2012 Qualifying: Race: Fastest laps:

3:38.181 (Martin), 13th outright, 1st in P2.

13th outright,6th in P2, covering 346 laps(Martin 136, Charouz 113, Graves 97).

Charouz 3:38.803 (1 st in P2), Martin 3:40.435 (3rd in P2), Graves 3:41.528(15th in P2).

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array made their mark on not only Mount Panorama, but Australian motorsport ih g The main hall is packed with not just touring cars, but open-wheelers, motorcycle and al of fascinating memorabilia - trophies, driving suite, leathers, helmets, posters and phOt^^^^fT"^ Take a break in the 40-seat theathrette and watch the videos covering the glofiouTs history' of racing on Mount Panorama since 1938, and the just-released version on the htetdr^# ‘^t^| motorcycle racing at the track.

Enjoy a coffee and check out the museum shop. It’s packed woth official yearn merchandlik 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.

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Mount PanoramaTbathurst NSW 2795 63323349 ! PHONE(02)6332 1872^)f( IWeb: www.nmrm.com.au^§^ C^-