■ WILLIAMS TOYOTA? HONDA? COSWORTH? THE IMEWS BEHMIXIO THE IVEWS
No. 314 July 20-August 2 2005 Australia $5.95 NZ $7.50 inci GST
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ISSN 1320-9744
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motyyimon news
Issue 314
20 July-2 August 2005
www.mnews.com.au
news aiMl opinloii r
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features
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Sorted? Has SCAR got on top of Murph’s woes? 6 Richards in Yellow? DR eyes another FI team 8 Power to Burn Will breaks through for Bilbao win 10 Formula Future New Ford engines are on their way 17 DTM Legends Prost beats a (probably injured) Mansell 25 Motor Mouth Max Mosley: FIA Prez, skiier, gymnast 26 Box Seat Saward gets a Silver Stone in his mouth 82 Talk Converter Danica fan mail (we know it’s you, Foges)
28 Five Minutes With Dario Franchitti Finally, a win for the Scot in Nay-ashville 30 Five Minutes With Dean Canto The fast man in V8’s second series speaks 32 End of the Semester At the mid-point of the V8 Supercar. Championship Series we look at who is doing the Job and who needs to pick up their game 64 The Brooke Look Tatnell Jr tells how it looks from the pointy end of Outlaws
race coverage
I 44 On England it’s One for Juan No it's not the score in the cricket but the report on how Montoya finally broke his duck at McLaren 52 Thunder Dome Dean Canto leaves them breathless in Sydney 58 Crocker Island Cody does it again in the Safari ARC round WIlUAWS tOtOttT HOHOOTCOSWOBTHf 60 The Same Old Story Really, Sebastian Loeb is amazing. This was his sixth straight win
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Photos: Cover; Colin Reuben and sutton-images.com Contents: Holden Motorsport, 'Sip sutton-images.com, John Morris/Mpix and Honda Racing Media I CANTO i EARNHARDT
regulars 20 Stateside 66 Speedway
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22 bikes
Drag Racing
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62 Rallying Nationai Scene
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Marketplace 3
Gore’s Independence Day Mupph CRAIG Gore is calling for a new and independent board ofTEGA. The Wright Patton Shakespeare and WPS Racing boss circulated a 15-page document to other team owners at Darwin's V8 Supercar Championship Series round that called for a spill of the current board and the appointment of an independent board. He also called for changes in the distribution of funds between the teams, as well as changes to the control of merchandising and communications. Gore has listed several examples of previous legal cases that, he says, demonstrate that motor racing is subject to the same anti competitive rules as business and suggest that the current structure of TEGA may potentially expose it, and its directors, to investigation and possibly action by the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC), the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and the Department of Fair Trading, Gore's clear implication is that by having team owners sit on the Board of TEGA, they are in a position to influence their own investment in the series. The four members who currently sit on the board are Roland Dane, Mark Larkham, Garry Rogers and Mark Skaife. The Chairman, Kelvin O'Reilly, is an independent appointee. Gore has proposed a number of actions to be implemented, including appointment of an independent entity to oversee voting by the stakeholders of TEGA on a new structure. Gore's paper has had a mixed but predominantly negative reception by other team principals. Some have suggested that he is aiming to be elected to the board himself while another suggested that at
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the very least, teams were now going to have to seek their own independent legal advice to establish whether any of Gore's claims are valid. "The last thing we need to be doing now is spending more money on lawyers," he'said. "Now, it looks like we do not have a choice." PHIL BRANAGAN
GREG Murphy is one of the few to emerge from a week of V8 Supercar testing happy that progress has been made with his car. Wlrile Murphy is confident that the problems encomatered with his newly-updated (to HMS engine) Super Cheap Commodore at Darwin have been rectified after a day on a damp but drying track at Phillip Island, other tesing around the country appears to have been limited in its success. The SCAR team was the only one to test at Phillip Island last Friday (HRT,HSVDT and FPR cancelled due to tlae impredictable weather), but was able to back-to-back its two cars and convince itself that things were back on track. "We got four and a half hours in," Murph told us on Monday,"and I'm pretty happy that we are on top of it. Darwin was a whole lot of little things associated with the change of engine. The car felt pretty good at Phillip Island - not as fast as we have been in the past, but I tlunk the conditions were responsible for that.
IMZ Deal Gets Thumbs-Up V8 SUPERCAR teams and drivers have expressed overwhelming support for the two-year deal struck for V8s to race at Pukekohe. Under the auspices of a new promoter. Capital Streetrace Management (headed by Dean Calvert, former General Manager of IMG NZ, which promoted the Pukekohe race for the last five years), the race will become a 'flyaway' air-freight race, thereby saving the downtime characterised by previous seafreighting arrangements. NZ company Placemakers has agree to continue its sponsorship for at least the next two years as CSM seeks a new location for the NZ race for 2008 and beyond, "This is fantastic news for all the Kiwis involved in the V8 Supercar Series," enthused multi-NZ round winner Greg Murphy. "Not only is it the logical decision to be going back to Pukekohe, it is also the right one. It was vital that we continue to race in front of NZ race fans while we continue to look for other options such as a street race. It's not only a case of us wanting a street race - New Zealand fans deserve an event like that." At this stage, following Wellington's withdrawal from the negotiations to host a race a few months back, there are no concrete proposals on the table in terms of a replacement venue. However, the proposed new Auckland circuit south of Pukekohe is expected to be operational by then and there 4
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is now an extended period of time for both Auckland and Wellington Councils to overcome the red tape which stymied both bids earlier - should either choose to have another look at the proposition. "Of the street race options, I guess our preferred option would still be Wellington," AVESCO CEO Wayne Cattach told us on
Monday, "if they can overcome that dreaded Resource Consent issue. "There's no doubt our preference is for a street race, but certainly the reputed $35 million investment in the new purpose-built track south of Auckland looks interesting and there should be something concrete there by that time." motorsportnews
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Moving Forward
SCAR make gains in testing; Queensland teams not so lucky "I'm a lot more confident now -1 guess we'll see at Queensland Raceway." A number of otlrer teams have
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taken advantage of the breather betVi'een Darwin and Brisbane to use up a test day, including a number of the Gold Coast-based Ford teams and,in Melbourne, Team Dodo,Team Castrol Perkins and GRM. Weather at Queensland Raceway was initially damp,then quite windy-conditions not ideally suited for conclusive testing. "No,not the best," confirmed SBR's Ken Douglas."Like most others, we weren't able to get through everything we'd hoped to. We did, however, give Luke (Youlden) and Warren (Luff) good time in the cars. They both settled in extremely well." At Winton,Steven Richards' day was curtailed by an engine problem in the Castrol VY.
$200p000 Sandown Revamp? THE Sandown 500 may become an internationally-licensed race in order to ease the use of 'import' drivers by V8 Supercar teams. AVESCO CEO Wayne Cattach is due to meet with Melbourne Racing Club officials shortly to discuss options in relation to the $200,000worth of work required to bring the venue up to international licence spec. "A number of teams have asked us to look at it - an international licence - as tliey want to use international
drivers for Sandown and Bathurst," Cattach told MNews on Monday. In the past, some drivers have been able to make use of the concession
allowing one change of licence nationality a year to take part, but those needing to return to their own competitions overseas prior to yearend have been excluded. Now,it seems, sufficient numbers of teams wish to explore the 'import' option that AVESCO is seriously looking at what is required. With promoter IMG less than likely to stump up money
for structural improvements for a once-a-year event, AVESCO is pinning its hopes on the owners of the facility. "We are hoping the MRC will look at the idea seriously," Cattach said. "Obviously they'll be looking for some indication from us as to the long-term viability of the venue as a major race venue. I see no problem there -it's a terrific urban venue and
the long distance race falls at just the right time leading into Bathurst. - CHRIS LAMBDEN
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New livery for WPS... on Friday LOOK for fresh colours on one of the WPS Racing Falcons this weekend. Yep, David Besnard will be wearing new hues at OR and they will be ... Who knows? The team has obviously decided that publicity is a bad thing and will unveil the hues at the track this Friday, which guarantees a minimum of media attention. Our insider tip is that the 'wow factor' of the announcement will justify the team's actions ... n After four years as SBR's Operations Manager, Matt Cousins has resigned from the dual V8 championship winning team. Cousins will now spend the next six months concentrating on managing the rapid growth of Fluid PR, the public relations agency he co-owns with wife Martine. The recent addition of Triple Eight Race Engineering to Fluid PR's client base was the catalyst in his decision. "Ross and Jimmy have been fantastic to me over the past four years," he said, "and I didn't want a clash of interest situation to arise with me having working relationships with two Ford teams. Something had to give." Beyond that. Cousins wiil be assessing further V8 Supercar and Motocross/Supercross opportunities as they arise. n A1 Grand Prix has announced the signing of Melbourne's Mick Webb as its Australian motorsports manager. Well known in local racing and performance car circles, Webb has, in recent years, devoted aii of his time to his SVO Motorsports company in suburban Ringwood. "The advent of A1 GP racing heralds a new challenge in my life", said Webb. "The prospect of playing a pivotal role in the debut year of this new formula will be both exciting and demanding. Webb will take charge of the Australian team at Brands hatch in Septemer. n If your collection of recycled musical cliches from the 1980s is incomplete, look no further than AVESCO's first foray into music. Yup,'A Full Tank of Rock' will bring back all those songs your therapist thought were electroshocked from your mind years ago. The CD, featuring tracks from INXS, Floodoo Gurus, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl and Hunters and Collectors, went on sale last Friday and is available from Sanity, HMV, JB Hi-Fi, Leading Edge Music, Kmart, Target, David Jones and wherever CDs are sold. And just when you thought it could not get worse - Vol II will be available next May. 5