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No.358 4 April -17 April 2007 Australia $6.50 NZ $8.00 inc GST
BRIGHT TO RACE BORROWED FALCON -
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Issue 358 4-17 April 2007
www,mnews.com.au
5 BrightJones Diary
BJR saves Britek’s Bacon
9 Sitting Pretty atHRT
Red October for Nafey
10 Cleaning up the floor
Ferrariforced to change
13 Driving with a GGOOALLLI Soccer meets FI-Lite 16 Forbes back-in a Porsche Rodneyin Carrera Cup
OPINION Cover: James Smith, Dirk
26 Motor Mouth
Glendenning on the March
Kiynsmith Contents;Dirk Kiynsmith,
28 Box Seat
French Cricket. Yep, really
Britek Motorsport, Ryan Briscoe
30 Opinions
Dyky's third, with a sore foot
(yes, really), Porsche Media, Neil Blackbourn
82 Talk Converter Some happy faces,some not
32 Five Minutes with Ryan Briscoe 34 Five Minutes With Steve Johnson 36 A Tiger in his Tank Greg Murphy on life in his new team. NZis looming and we know what usually happens there... 40 Rock around the Clock:Bathurst 12 Hour History 42 Alexander the Great: The amazingly normal Mr Wu'rz 46 The New Senna:Bruno Senna talks about GP2
48 Just call him Mister The West After all these years. Garth conquers Barbagallo. Atlast. PhewlAII the V8 action from Perth 56 Hoiden wins a Fujitsu Round Must be a mistake. No,it did. Really. We checked 60 Citroen wins. Ford has trouble with Windows No, not the Bill Gates-kind. Real Windows 62 In the Family Way Simon and Sue win everything, Eli chases
20 Bikes 22 US ofA 66 Speedway 68 Drag Racing 70 NationalScene
76 Race Shop/Industry News 79 Classifieds
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Questions remain- but HRT is NZ-bound THE Holden Racing Team heads to New Zealand next week determined to end its longrunning control issues with a win for team boss Mark Skaife. While Skaife could not be contacted on Monday,sources close to the Clayton team have told MNews that the squad has redoubled its efforts to repeat its 2006 round win at Pukekotie, Skaife's most recent victory. A round win would be of great significance to Skaife, as it would not only make him the most successful driver in the history of V8 Supercars/ATCC(he and Peter Brock have both scored 37 round wins) but it would be a great birthday present (Skaife turned 40 yesterday). "We have always been sharp in New Zealand," said one HRT team member."Mark won there last year.
THE forthcoming quantum change here at MNews(see p6/7) and the departure of Deputy Editor Mark Glendenning for internationai pastures, aiso prompts changes at MNews Centrai. Current Editor Phil Branagan now takes on the Executive Editor's role on both Motorsport News and Motorsport eNews. News Editor Grant Rowley assumes editorial responsibility for our exciting new'virtual' weekly Motorsport eNews, while Aaron Noonan - originally back temporarily to help out while Growley had his arm fixed - will complement his TV commentary duties by editing Motorsport News in Its monthly form. As we said. Interesting and exciting times at MNews... 4
we were fast at both Adelaide and Barbagallo and this would get things on the right track." While MNews believes that the question of the team's ownership and compliance issue's have been dealt with by TEGA,subject to some clarifications the owners' group has requested,there does appear to be some question over its ongoing relationship with technical supplier Walkinshaw Performance. As reported in the last issue of MNews,TEGA has approved of WP as a 50 percent owner of Skaife Sports - which holds the licences under which HRT competes -TEGA clearly pointed out to its other teams that it has not approved Tom Walkinshaw as a "person suitable to hold a controlling interest in a licence nor to hold a licence in his own right."
However,there appears to be some resistance to the deal from Walkinshaw Performance itself. While the terms of the deed to which Skaife Sports and Walkinshaw Performance must commit remain confidential, such are its conditions that as of Monday,there was no agreement in place to allow the two parties to proceed. Indeed,there were suggestions that WP may not supply HRT with cars and technical support to enable the team to race inNZ. MNews's HRT sources dismissed those suggestions as 'unfounded rumour"so we turned to Walkinshaw Performance Managing Director Craig Wilson to clarify whether the red team would race in Auckland. "As far as I am aware,there is nothing I am aware of(to stop HRT
competing),"he said. And, asked whether there was an ongoing technical relationship between Walkinshaw Performance and HRT, he offered only lukewarm - and highly conditional - support. "As we are sitting here today (ie, Monday), yes,there is," he said. Other team principals continue to privately express dissatisfaction about what they perceive as the amount of leeway Skaife and HRT is receiving in this matter but while they are less than happy, everyone to whom MNews has spoken simply want the whole matter to be over. Clearly, there is much to be clarified prior to NZ and, while the Clayton team is pressing ahead with plans to set a new mark in round wins,the saga may well continue for some time yet.
V8 brake changes cause concern PROBLEMS with the new-for-2007 Alcon braking package struck a number of teams at Barbagallo last weekend,and hardest-hit were the Ford teams. The new standardised package has seen a number of teams experience alarmingly high brake temperatures and sudden and unexpected fade problems. Such a drama is thought to have contributed to the Friday practice accident that claimed the Jeld-Wen car of James Courtney,the driver snagging the car's accelerator when the brake pedal suddenly went'long'on him. One Ford team manager, who asked not to be named,said that his cars showed brake temperatures of almost 1000 degrees celcius in Perth, an increase of 200 degrees over the figure the same cars had in 2006. "It is a matter of making sure that the package we have works," he said."I am not saying that it is not going to work, it is early days. But there are some things we need to work on." Another team manager suggested that a contributing factor to the high temperatures may be
the Ford's revised bodywork. In the change from the BA model to the BF in the off season,the cooling ducts for the front brakes have been redesigned. "If you look at the VE Commodore,its brake ducts are about twice the size of ours,"he said."! have not seen a single VE have anything other than some newcar [brake] issues, and I have not had any problems with the rear brakes on our cars. So maybe it is the ducting that needs to be looked at." One suggestion is that a back-to-back test between two Fords with identical brake packages, but one car with a BF bodykit and one with a BA, be conducted to clarify any differences that might be occurring. Such a test would need to be conducted outside the normal TEGA test days and therefore, would require approval by TEGA. Ford Racing Manager Ray Price was on vacation this week and unable to be contacted for comment. -PHILBRANAGAN motorspori news
NEWS
Brightto borrow Brad's
Britek working overtime to turn a BJR bodyshell Into a Fujitsu Falcon
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JASON Bright will change'horses'to compete in the third round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series at Pukekohe next week. The Britek Motorsport team is hard at work in Melbourne,turning a Brad Jones Racing bodyshell into a Fujitsu Falcon BF by fitting new components to the car in time to leave for Auckland on Tuesday. In the meantime,the car that was practically destroyed in a practice crash with Jason Richards at Barbagallo Raceway last week has been stripped and is being repaired at Peter Beehag's factory in Queensland. 'The boys reckon that the car can be fixed," said Britek General Manager Chris Jewell. I am not so sure, but we have to fly back to Australia through Brisbane anyway,so we will pick it up on the way through.' Team members described the damage to the car as the most severe to any V8 Supercar since the Mark Larkham/Paul Morris impact at Oran Parkin 2000.The rear of the Bright car was completely destroyed and the differential
housing ended up where a normal car's back seat would be. Team BOC team manager Kim Jones said if was not a difficult decision to loan the bodyshell, which was last raced by John Bowe i n 2005,to Britek. "They needed a shell and we had one," he said. It is never a good feeling when you see something like this happen. It's no big deal, really. We would like to think that if something like that happened to us and we needed someone to help,that is what would happen.' It has been a particularly fraught time for the Britek team, which made its first appearance in the NEC Australian Rally Championship at the season-opening Queensland Rally last weekend. Both of its Super 2000-spec Ford Fiestas showed glimpses of speed in the event, but both suffered reliability problems after a frantic 18week build program. - PHIL BRANAGAN
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