Motorsport News Issue 431 - May 2013

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WOP FUEL TV: ABC GOES ORAG RACING IN NEW TV COMEDY

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No. 431 May 2013 Australia $8,50

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Free ridinggearavailableuptolSpercc value.EG pufchaseXT660Rand receive S660RRP worth of riding gear from supplying dealerattimeolpurchase.unet available at participating dealers only, while stocks last, conditions apply. Productsfeatured in images are for illustration purposes only,some may not be available,

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

Editorial Enquiries

THIS MONTH'S FEATURES

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KWICKKIWI It's been a long career with its share of highs and lows, but through it all the competitive tire continues to burn brightly within Craig Baird.

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; iBie wpirliel! ©I ^liislifalteiT Ip© ' Fuel drag racing is the unlikely setting of a new ABC TV series, ' Phil Branagan asks the show's ' l director what it’s alhabouit,

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His career looked over alter

liie failed' a d'lJiag lest, ib|!)l now AJ Allteeitidiriger is filtiabilifated and ready to imalke his Indy 500 debut. motorsport news

Unusual Suspects

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Rob Huff Touring car world champion Rob Huff was at Mount Panorama for the 12 Hour and did pretty well despite having no experience of either the circuit or the Audi R8 he was driving.

He'd love to be back for October and there are no date clashes between the '13 The Great Race and the WTCC.

0hfisiLambden went|0' “ ^ l New Zeafend!for the Mb i Ipeedway Wofid .0haffipion l and enjoyed'a relleshing helping of,pnre rnOtor^port.

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SICILIAN LAKESIDE

It's alongside a lake, like Lakeside, but it runs around the lake, so it's more like Albert Park.

Actually, Pergusa isn't like any other place in the world, as Andrew van Leeuwen discovered.

78 .

THE REJUVENATION OF GARY PHILLIPS

The Top Doorslammer category is in for a shakeup as Gary Phillips prepares for his return with a new Camaro.

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Jules Bianchi He is doing pretty well in his debut FI season in a Marussia, so the chances are high that the grandnephew of '60s F1 star Lucien Bianchi is set for a big future.

When it comes to sprintcar racing there are few who can match the record of success and the sheer longevity in the sport that Max Dumesny boasts.

t^'kz'k 1SI 8REGULARS Motor Mouth with Phil Branagan 10

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The Scoop with Steve Normoyle On The Limiter with Chris Lambden

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Box Seat

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United States of Origin Model Behaviour

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Trade

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Classifieds

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My Favourite Race From the couch

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Parting Shot

Max Dumesny Dumesny perhaps doesn't get the credit he deserves but the superstar of sprintcars is one of our all-time greats.

He's versatile, too, having also raced OK on bikes, Australian NASCAR and V8 Supercars.

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r.Branagan | 1 Phil

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HERE is always going to be a friendly, cousinly rivalry between Australians and New Zealanders.

We usually beat them at Test Cricket; they usually beat us at Rugby. They had Split Enz; we had Crowded House. Jack Brabham made his way in Europe; so did Bruce McLaren.

But when it comes to motor racing, we have something they don't: Bathurst.

Whatever they did across the Tasman, Mount Panorama stood head and shoulders above the sport in both countries. It had been the sport's Mecca in this part of the world.

And now, those Kiwis have Highlands Motorsport Park.

One might assume that it is sacrilegious to compare a brand-new and relatively unproven track smack-bang in the middle of the South Island with Bathurst, which hosted its first race seven decades ago. After all, when I visited Highlands last month, the kerbs were still being ground and painted; the fittings were still arriving in trucks. There was no lap record until a few days later when Craig Baird went out and had a lash in a McLaren MP4/12C GT3 racecar.

But if first impressions count. Highlands deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Bathurst. The track may lack the dramatic changes in elevation that you see at Bathurst but it does have some great features. Fast straights; a long horseshoe-shaped corner and a mini-Karussel; and a Suzuka-style bridge that changes the direction of the track.

But, as they say in the classics, there's more.

There's the National Motorsport Museum,

which is going to rotate a fascinating series of cars through its facilities. Luxurious members' clubrooms, complete with leather armchairs and a fireplace with a mounted deer's head above. For those who feel the need for speed, laps of the circuit can be arranged, including passenger laps in a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, well capable of frightening occupants at 200plus km/h. Or, if something slower is the go, a kart track and, even, a mini-track for kids to ride on with their trikes. It is in the shape of Mount Panorama.

Then there's the restaurant, called The Nose, which features fine local fare and wines - some from the adjacent vineyards. Inside there is a climate-controlled wine tasting room and what amounts to a small cinema, where there will be either motorsport offerings or - and this is thoughtful - movies for kids, so adults can enjoy a meal in peace and a beverage while the rugrats do the same.

If you get the impression that I think that they have thought of everything at Highlands, you are close - and I would think that, except that track owner Tony Quinn kept prompting we in the press visiting the track that if we thought of anything they had missed, or noticed anything that looked wrong, please mention it.

Of course, one man cannot build a track

(although, fanciful as it sounds, it is said that property developer Oscar Glaser singlehandedly built Amaroo Park in the 1960s - ED). Quinn admits to having invested $20 million in the facility (and that may be a conservative estimate) but it does seem that his spend, and the massive efforts of the locals involved in the project, have delivered a magnificent result. I cannot imagine that we could do anything on the same scale, for anything like that money, in anything resembling the same time frame, on this side of the ditch.

Quinny is considering a number of events for the track's somewhat limited schedule, including a 'retro' Historic racing weekend, complete with attendees in period apparel.

He is also looking at an international GT3 race for the venue, at the same time of the year as the Bathurst 12 Hour. As if the latter is not already fast becoming a magnet for international teams, endurance races at Bathurst and Highlands back-to-back looks nearly irresistible.

Tony Quinn's new track in Central Otago is a splendid facility in a breathtaking part of the world. It's clearly the biggest thing ever to happen to the sport in the region - and in a funny way, it could also be one of the best things to happen to motorsport in Australia.

Tony Quinn's new track in Central Otago is a splendid facility in a breathtaking part of the world.

motorsport news

In October 1963, Harry Firth and Bob Jane drove one of three ‘works’ Ford Cortina GTs to victory in the Armstrong 500, the first time The Great Race was run on the Mount Panorama circuit.

In the second quarter of 2013, APEX Replicas will release this famous Ford in both 1:18(AR80501) and 1:43(AR40501) scales. The photos are of the pre-production sample - the finished products will be produced to our precise standards and will fill a huge gap in your Bathurst-winners collection!

We expect this long-awaited Ford will be a rapid seller so pre-order yours today!

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Normoyle

7 The Scoop

he V8 Supercars Car of the Future might not look any different from the V8 Supercars of the past. But three just events into 2013 and we have a very different looking championship.

Apart from ensuring the long suffering V8 Supercar mechanics had no rest between December and February (and if working on building new COTFs day and night for two or three months straight wasn’t enough, how about that one-day break to get the show from Symmons Plains and on its way across the Tasman for the Pukekohe event the following weekend?), the field of all-new machines has made for some unexpected form on the track.

The COTF transition hasn't been as smooth as had been hoped. But one thing is has done is given the whole thing a big shake up. With everyone starting from COTF ground zero, it was never going to be a given that the usual suspects would all line up at the front of the field. It was a fresh start that always had the potential for someone to emerge and unlock the secrets of the new cars more quickly than their opponents.

Which is what Brad Jones Racing appears to have done.

At the end of 2012, BJR had won two races and taken one pole position - in 13 years.

Less than four months into 2013 the team had trebled its tally of wins and poles. Right now it is the form team in the championship; as they returned from New Zealand, Jason Bright and Fabian Coulthard were the only drivers with more than one win to their name.

Just as BJR has seized the opportunity presented by the COTF, so too the Holden Racing Team has managed with its new VF Commodores to partition off whatever it was about the old cars that had been causing them so much grief. They're moving on from 10

There was always the suspicion that Scott McLaughlin might have been a little bit special but no one could have seen this coming. the nightmare of 2012 at full speed - Garth Tander's looking like a new man this year; James Courtney's looking mighty relieved.

Heading into the new season, Jamie Whincup said he felt reenergised by the task of developing all-new cars from the ground up. If it was a fresh challenge he was craving, then he surely must be enjoying himself with only one win from the first nine races... Triple Eight's progress in the coming months should make for fascinating viewing.

Then there are the new drivers. In an ideal world Scott Pye would still be racing in Europe, perhaps pushing forward towards GP2 or Renault 3.5. But this world ain't perfect, and insufficient funds means he looks set instead for a V8 Supercars career. Eleventh in qualifying first time out for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport in Adelaide was probably about as good as anyone could have done, and he backed that up with 11th place in Sunday's 250km. Granted at Symmons Plains it went pear-shaped in spectacular fashion, but keep an eye on this guy over the coming months.

As for the other bright young star to emerge this year, well... There was always the suspicion that Scott McLaughlin might have been a little bit special - he won the Dunlop V8 Supercars Series last year, after all, and against some pretty substantial opposition.

But his early season efforts in 2013 - no one

could have seen that coming.

His victory at Albert Park was in a sense by default, but the one at Pukekohe was utterly undeniable. McLaughlin had won his first V8 Supercars Championship race in only his sixth start. And while the rest of his weekend in New Zealand fizzled, in all five previous races he had finished in the top 10. He has qualified in the top 10 for every one of the first nine races. And he’s only 19.

If I try to think of the last time we saw such an impressive debut from a young driver in V8 Supercars, I keep going back to Craig Lowndes in 1996. When McLaughlin was three years old... It's early days yet, but this kid looks like a star.

You have to hand it to that V8 Supercar talent scout supreme Garry Rogers; it looks like he's done it again.

You'd hope, though, that with McLaughlin, Rogers won't repeat the error of judgment he made back in 2003. That was the decision he took that year that the young talent he’d unearthed to partner Garth Tander (another Rogers protege), just wasn't worth persisting with.

But then you'd have to say that McLaughlin's debut season with GRM is already looking a whole lot better than Jamie Whincup's debut with same team 10 years ago... motorsport news

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o the weekend started with a 14 year-old making the cut at the US Masters golf; within a few hours a 19 year-old had won his first V8 Supercar race.

Apart from making a lot of people feel a bit older than they had been, the first of those is, of course, quite amazing; the second just another example of the ever-faster arrival of young talent in motorsport. Having said that, the chances of a 14 year-old lining up at Bathurst are rather slim - you have to be 16 to start up the car racing licence ladder, although there have been a couple of interesting exceptions to that in recent years Regardless, the progression of (yet another) young Kiwi, Scott McLaughlin, has set new 'youngest ever' records, in some ways not dissimilar to a young German who has been in the FI headlines a bit of late.

In Sebastian Vettel's case, his early opportunity, as it so often does, came at short notice and thanks to another’s misfortune. In his case, it was the massive accident at the Canadian Grand Prix of 2007 suffered by BMW Sauber driver Robert Kubica. As reserve driver, Vettel stepped in at the subsequent US Grand Prix, qualified seventh, and finished eighth, becoming the youngest pointsscorer in FI just a few days short of his 20th birthday. A few weeks later, American Scott Speed was dumped from the Toro Rosso team, Vettel was drafted, and away it went.

V8 Supercars is a long way removed from Formula 1, but McLaughlin's arrival has its similarities. After debuting in the Fujitsu (development) series in 2010 with - who else - Stone Brothers Racing, at the age of 16, McLaughlin ran fourth in the series the following year, then sealed the championship win last year (with Matt Stone running the Stones' Dunlop development series effort) at the final round, at the Homebush street race.

By this point, Scott had made his main series debut, co-driving with Jono Webb at Sandown and Bathurst (finishing 10th and sixth), but the opportunity for his solo debut was to come literally hours after that Dunlop series clincher in Sydney. Enter Garry Rogers Motorsport.

GRM's French import, Alexandre Premat, had been forced out of the previous day's opening race with severe heat exhaustion and, as Sunday dawned, it became clear that he wasn't really going to be fit for Sunday.

GRM's prime sponsor is Fujitsu; Stone's prime sponsor was Fujitsu; it made sense.

Premat's misfortune would be McLaughlin's opportunity. He was allowed to qualify and race the GRM car without having practised it, and finished sensibly mid-field, but enough to make his point.

Rogers, currently celebrating 50 years 12

McLaughlin works in the team workshop during the week,then drives one of the cars at the weekend. It's a slightly old-fashioned formula, but in GRM's case,it works.

Trophy, going to JR's old team, and team in motorsport, has evolved something mate Jason Bright. of a reputation as a talent-spotter in V8 Street races seem like a good idea at the Supercars - the list of ultimately successful time, but there is nothing to match the young drivers who have debuted or got their ambience of a great purpose-built race track. first full-time gig via the GRM 'Academy' is By their very nature, street tracks - and we do impressive: Steven Richards, Garth Tander, have some good ones - have limitations. The Jason Bargwanna, Jamie Whincup, Lee return to Pukekohe, though, was a reminder Holdsworth, Michael Caruso ... and so it was not a revelation when it was announced that of just how good, and challenging, a 'proper' race track can be. Even the addition of a new McLaughlin would partner Premat at GRM corner to take away the blinding approach this year. speed to the Pukekohe hairpin worked out, Any of them will confirm what you've heard. There are no frills at Garry's place-just despite some reservations from locals in the lead-up. Track designers everywhere take a very efficient, and pretty successful team. note: slight sweep leading into tight corner = For McLaughlin, it's no different. He works passing ... in the team workshop during the week, then Pukekohe concluded a brilliant international drives one of the cars at the weekend. It's a double-whammy for the Kiwis. Three weeks slightly old-fashioned formula, but in GRM's case, it works. earlier, the opening round of the 2013 World That Scott's first win, at 19 years and 10 Speedway series had provided a similar months of age, would come at home in NZ, at 'classic track' buzz at Western Springs, just the rebirth of the classic Pukekohe circuit, was 10 minutes from the centre of Auckland. one of the bonus ingredients which added up Worlds apart from 'Puke', but another super to one of the best V8 Supercar race weekends venue and event - but that is another story (elsewhere in this issuel). for a long time. After a couple of pretty good debut events for the Car of the Future, the It's been a great, but hectic, few weeks in this part of the world. I think I'll go have third championship round turned out to be a ripper - and ended with the emotional over a lie down. Teenagers winning V8 races... all win, and thus the Jason Richards Memorial honestly ... motorsport news

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f ever I were asked to make a list of my top five underrated cities in the US, the Texas capital Austin would be on it, as would Portland, Maine, and Savannah, Georgia,(having never actually been asked to make such a list, I haven't decided on the other two yet).

It's a great city; compact by American standards, with a great live music scene, lots of green spaces and small lakes, an emphasis on small independent businesses over large corporations, and a decidedly eclectic population. The town motto is 'Keep Austin Weird'. The best description I've heard of the place came from a local, who suggested that it was 'an oasis of normal in the middle of Texas'. If you've spent much time in Texas, you might understand where they're coming from.

There's always something going on in Austin, ranging from the famous SXSW annual music festival to events at the wineries hidden 45 minutes out of town. To help locals navigate all of their recreational possibilities for the coming weekend, Austin, like most US cities, has a couple of websites listing what's going on. So by going to www.austintexas. org/visit/events, someone who is going to be around on the weekend of May 18-19 will learn that they can head to the O. Henry Museum for the 36th Annual O. Henry World Championship Pun-Off. Sounds fun!

The www.austin360.com site presented a few more possibilities. Plug 'May 19' into its search engine, and you find that there are actually 10 things you can attend on that day. Top of the list is a Star Trek film in 3D. Other potential outings include a gig by Toad the Wet Sprocket, a Scooby-Doo live musical mystery, and a facial-hair-themed art exhibit and craft fair. Told you Austin was eclectic.

Have you noticed what's missing yet?

At the time the Austin deal was announced, V8 Supercar CEO David Malone spoke of the opportunity to "showcase Australia's premier motorsport category at first-class venue and in a national marketplace with a healthy appetite for top-notch auto racing and family friendly entertainment."

Sounds good on paper, but how many people are going to actually know it's there? Even the circuit itself must be facing some limitations when it comes to early promotion, because it has to get people through the gates for MotoGP first.

Another potential hurdle could be that the people that V8 Supercars are likely hoping to showcase themselves to already have a lot of motorsport to contend with in mid-May, so even those who might have been tempted to travel to Austin from elsewhere will have to weigh V8s up against some pretty stiff competition. The NASCAR season is in full swing. Then there is the Indy 500, which will suck 300,000 racing fans into the Mid-West a week later. The economic squeeze hit hard 16

in the States, and not many fans will be I'eceptive to the idea of travelling to two races in a month.

Following on from that, tickets for the V8s are expensive. Not by the standards of a major motor racing category, you might argue. You can get a single-day grandstand seat on Sunday for about USD$85, and the cheapest three-day pass I could find on a third-party site was USD$123. On the same weekend, fans going to the NASCAR All-Star race in Charlotte will fork out USD$99, or USDS149 if they want a scanner thrown in.

The best grandstand seats for the Indy 500 have already sold out, but you can still get yourself a seat for USD$90, or pay just USDS30 for general admission and watch from inside Turn 3. Take the Indy 500 out of the equation on the grounds that it's the freakin' Indy 500, and a reserved seat at April^ IndyCar race at Long Beach would

have set you back $130 for three days.

Price-wise, then, admission prices for V8s are roughly on a par with - or slightly more expensive than - NASCAR and IndyCar. For a championship that is still little more than a curiosity to most racing fans on this side of the Pacific, is that where it wants to be?

It's not all negative. Austin is a relatively small city - its population is about two-thirds of Adelaide's - but it is within easy striking range of San Antonio, and less than three hours' drive from Houston to the south-east and Dallas to the north. So the potential catchment area is decent, provided that you can convince a lot of Texans that loading up their pick-up truck and heading out to watch a foreign racing series is their best entertainment option for the weekend.

I bumped into someone with a peripheral connection to the V8 race organisers recently, and there was also good news from them motorsport news

Mark

Whether V8s in the USA can succeed where V8s in China,Bahrain and Abu Dhabi did not depends on how the series defines'success'. about how it is all coming together. The one thing that seems certain is that the event itself will be great. But the same person appeared to share some of my concerns about the long term viability of a V8 race in Austin in May; when I asked how long they thought it would last, the reply was 'a year'.

Whether V8s in the USA can succeed where V8s in China, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi did not depends on how the series defines 'success'.

Random countries willing to pay a high sanctioning fee are great for the bottom line, but how much do they really expand the fan www.mnews.com.au

base?

If the series wants a genuine presence in the US, maybe it would be better to replicate something that history has proven works.

We can't revive the Surfers Paradise V8s Supercar/Champ Car (IndyCar) doubleheader anytime soon, but why not reverse it and do a Surfers in the States?

The street events already exist, although some are a better fit than others. St Petersburg is annoying to get to. Detroit is GM's home turf, which creates possibilities, although it doesn't have the party atmosphere

that the Gold Coast had. Baltimore is fun, although paddock space could be a problem as there is a baseball stadium in the way.

Toronto's great, but it's not in the US. But Long Beach is a different story. It's just outside LA, so it's an easy trip from the east coast of Australia. It's already a wellestablished event, it has a fun, Surfers-esque vibe, and gets good crowds. An lndyCar/V8 Supercar double-header at Long Beach in late April? I'd pay to go to that. And everyone knows how cheap journalists are.

17

THi.GOOD, THEImp ANCiElUGLY 18

motorsport news

Craig Baird's easygoing nature belies the fiercest of competitive instincts. As Edward Krause discovered, after a career of highs and lows, the likable Kiwi's current success and contentment haven't dulled the fire within one of the world's pre eminent Porsche racers.

www.mnews.com.au

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go straight back to Germany - Bleekemolen fastest at Bathurst," explains Baird.

He can be fastest in that practice session, but I'm not having my f—ing name on the timesheet. People thought I was gonna brush it off, (but) I said 'either take the new tyres off and put the last week's race rubber on like we've got to run, or I ain't going'. If it's not an even playing field, I'm not going out.

Missing a practice session on principle might seem over the top and counterproductive to the main aim of winning.

But the principle was important to Baird.

Over the past half dozen years he had been the dominant Porsche driver in the

is he gaining on me there! But he was.

I was faster through there than I was in qualifying and here's this bloke closing down on you. But then there's other parts where he felt the same - you can't go through there like that. And you know. afterwards, we shook hands and I had

region. In addition to his - at that stage nine Australian and New Zealand titles as

whose transporter the party was in' and the '19th hole' style social setting is one of the things he loves about the Garrera Cup championship. But at the same time within that same championship, he says

well as twice winning the Singapore Grand Prix Carrera Cup event. As he saw it, he wasn't just taking a stand for himself, he was taking a stand for the credibilitv of

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huge respect for him.

The contrast between just how competitive he is with his off-track nature is extreme. 'Bairdo' is one of the more easygoing and friendly drivers you could meet; nothing's too much trouble - a typical laid-back Kiwi. He misses 'the old days' where 'the first thing you did (after a race) was have a beer and work out

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Battle of Bathurst: Baird vs Bleekemolen on the Mountain, top.

Cun for hire in V8 Supercars: with Carth Tander at Sandown, 2007. motorsport news

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The team to whom the trophy belongs As a sponsor of Brad Jones Racing, FUCHS Lubricants

the team went to New Zealand hoping to take home

Australia has always been proud of our long term association with the team. However, we have never been

some special silverware.-*

prouder than when Team BOC and Jason Bright took a very special overall win at the New Zealand round of the

The Jason Richards Memorial Trophy was awarded to the driver with the best combined iiiesults over the four

V8 Supercar Championship.

V8 Supercars Championship races at Pak-ekohe Park Raceway over the weekend. And in the same io'!|iFS

After a strong start to the season, a string of victories

once sported by Jason Richards, Jason Bright deiivefed--s

and good results for Fabian Coulthard and Jason Bright,

from the all of us to all of you - well done BJR.

I It was an absolute disaster. The car was an absolute dog. It had this heavy V6 engine up front, no grunt, overweight, was designed by a singleseater outfit that had never built a touring car before

3enal karting cars lip at 17. a Atlantic ing them British of lack he was jn the local four years y\Win A successful guest drive with BMW Australia in the Super Touring support races at the Bathurst 1000 resulted in him being offered a contract for the 1997 championship alongside Paul Morris. He accepted and was released from his South African commitments, but then it got 'weird'.

I don't know how or where the contract came from, but one of the other drivers (Geoff Brabham) that wasn't under contract, all of a sudden had a contract. But not from who gave me a contract.

He did not race in the championship, but he partnered Morris at Bathurst, where he would become the focal point of one of the most controversial Bathurst 1000 results ever.

His well-documented 3hr and 59 minute final stint to claim the victory on his Bathurst debut contravened the 'continuous driving' limit of 3hr 30 minutes. He and Paul Morris were excluded and the result went to their BMW team-mates, David and Geoff Brabham.

Baird holds that their interpretation of the rule - that it didn't apply because of the pit stops - is still valid and an appeal or legal pursuit would have vindicated them. But, he

The silver lining for Baird was the Bathurst performance caught the eye of the European teams that had come down for the race.

He was recruited to race in the 1998 British Touring Car Championship in the factory Ford team, run by West Surrey Racing.

Unfortunately this only delivered more frustration.

It was an absolute disaster. The car was so bad, it was an absolute dog. It had this heavy V6 engine up front, no grunt, overweight. was designed by a single-seater outfit that had never built a touring car before, so things were just never right with it. The only time the car was good was in the wet- it was a jet so you just prayed for rain.

Before the year was out Baird was sidelined in favour of Nigel Mansell and for 1999 the Ford contract moved from WSR to Prodrive.

He returned home with 'the absolute shits with it'.

His next full-time opportunity also came aboard a Ford - replacing the US-bound Jason Bright at Stone Brothers Racing in 2000.

Baird got the season off to a bright start finishing on the podium at the series opener at Phillip Island. But from then on things just went backwards in a season he names as his biggest regret.

We just basically re-engineered the car -just turned it into a BMW, or tried to. Part my fault, part engineering. There was a new engineering team that hadn't done Supercars before and we all just went up the path and got a bit lost.

So I got sacked from Stone Brothers, but I could understand why Ross and Jimmy did i t. At that time they had mortgaged their house and it was two brothers trvine to do

Out of time: Running over the maximum driver time limit cost Craig Baird a Bathurst win in 1997, above. But it did iead to a BTCC drive with Ford, top.

22

motorsport news

outfit in 2002, then two years with Team Kiwi Racing before going to Craig Gore's WPS outfit, which he admits was the’wrong move.

"I should never have left Team Kiwi, because they were starting to gain a little bit of commercial backing in New Zealand and they were slowly stepping forward, getting better equipment, "And then, you know, a rich bloke rings you up and offers you money and at the time, young bloke, you're looking at money and not just outright opportunity. But I thought, the backing that he had, this was gonna turn into something massive."

An eighth place at Bathurst was the only decent result of the year and at the end of 2005 WPS merged with Mark Larkham's team and Baird was out of a drive once

Endurance man: Baird scored two top 10 Nurburgring 24 Hour finishes as part of Tony Quinn's Porsche team, above, and a pair of Bathurst 12 Hour podiums in Mok Weng Sun's Ferrari, centre. A season with WPS in 2006 was his last as a V8 Supercar full timer.

more. He had a year left on his contract and, despite Core's reputation since, Baird says Core was 'thoroughly decent to me' and he was paid in full.

This meant Baird wasn't left out of pocket, but he was stil l concerned about his future.

As he approached his 36th birthday, he was no longer the young up and comer. Full-time opportunities in V8 Supercars had dried up and in Australia, there are few professional driving gigs outside of the main game.

But then an out-of-the-blue phone call from VIP Petfoods owner Tony Quinn got his career back on track. Having wrapped up the 2005 New Zealand Porsche GTS title, he was asked to test Quinn's Carrera Cup car, which led to Quinn offering him the full time seat in the VIP Petfoods car for the 2006 season.

Baird won the opening three rounds of the championship and went on to clinch the title in his debut season, defeating Alex Davison and David Reynolds. Those three fought it out again in 2007, this time Reynolds prevailing over Davison and Baird.

"Quinny was 100 percent behind me (and) I couldn't have dealt with a better bloke - it was like having another dad, really. I couldn't believe someone was paying for me to go Porsche racing."

■In addition to Carrera Cup, Baird joined Quinn racing overseas.

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"We did the Nurburgring stuff - we had two top 10 finishes at Nurburgring, (including) a top three finish in the top class.

We won the 24 Hour Dubai and I reckon it's gone under the radar. People don't realise what sort of results they are."

For 2008 Quinn pulled back from sponsorship, but he offered Baird the use of his car and Baird joined forces with Porsche stalwart Peter Fitzgerald. He won back his Carrera Cup crown and wrapped up his fourth consecutive New Zealand Porsche GT3 title. He also linked up with the Juniper Racing team for GT races in Europe and Asia.

With the collapse of the Australian championship just prior to the start of the 2009 season, Baird raced primarily in New Zealand, winning two more New Zealand Porsche titles - making it a total of six - as well as the New Zealand V8s title as well as

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Quick Kiwis; His time with Stone Brothers mightn't have worked out, above right, and Team Brock was shortlived, left, but Baird would deliver Team Kiwi Racing with its one and only pole position in V8 Supercars, top These days he is one of the world's top Carrera Cup drivers, below.

his ongoing V8 Supercar endurance drives. ' In 2010 he did the Carrera Cup Asia championship with Team PCS Racing, finishing third overall despite missing the penultimate round. This included a pair of wins at the prestigious Singapore Grand Prix support races. Despite not competing in the full championship in subsequent years, he still raced at Singapore in 2011 and 2012 in the SG Global guest car. He finished second to former champion Ghristian Menzel in 2011 before returning for what was one of his most satisfying victories in 2012.

"Last year was really rewarding, because obviously the front part of that field is really competitive. Martin Ragginger, that's the factory Porsche driver, they planted him in there for the season, so you've got a factory driver, factory blokes working on the car, and Karl Batson (Craig's engineer) and I rock up in there, borrow a lease car that someone crashed at Malaysia, and we smashed them. We really did smash them. So it was rewarding, probably more rewarding than some of the stuff I've done in Australia."

When the Carrera Cup series returned for 2011, it was far from certain that Baird would be returning with it. But he received a call from Porsche about a ‘really nice guy who wants to sponsor a car'.

"I said it'll never happen; the number of people that have told me they're gonna sponsor me and it just flakes out."

But there was no flake out. When it came time for deposits to be paid, to Baird's surprise his new sponsor - JetTravel Insurance - paid the whole amount up front. Baird repaid the faith by winning back-to-back championships to take his tally to 10.

The 2011 season was a classic with six different race winners. While the 2012 title was statistically more dominant, in reality was much harder fought with Alex Davison rejoining the series.

"With Alex and Jonny (Reid), every time they turned up at a race track, they had an absolute A game. It didn't matter whether it was first practice, qualifying, the three races motorsport news

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"Whereas, I don't really feel that now. I'm very relaxed. I try and do the best job I can every time, but if I lose I don't go and throw a helmet. I just get on with it, so that's why it's enjoyable. Matty (Matt Walton) and Karl, not only are they my engineer and mechanic, they're two of my best mates. I have a perfect car, we're not here late, we always want to get back, have a nice meal, cold beer, and I really enjoy my racing."

That enjoyment hasn't dul led his competitiveness. At the opening round of the championship at the Clipsal 500, Baird notched up his 50th Carrera Cup win in Australia. He was on track for a meeting clean sweep, but was adjudged to have jumped the start in race three. A regular Twitter user, he obtained the

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lane', his first priority is his racing career. And while he's not looking to move away from the Porsches just yet, he's looking to his childhood hero for the template of how to grow old In motor racing gracefully.

"If I could end up doing stuff as Jimmy (Richards) did. Jimmy, I reckon he was nearly 60 and was still winning. I'm not saying I'll go that long, but I'd like to carry on at least until I'm 50 in the Carrera Cup, As long as I'm still enjoying it and I'm competitive. If I look like a wanker and I'm gonna get absolutely pasted by 20 year-olds, I'd rather put a set of headphones on and run a bloke that's going to win than be smashed to bits."

Given the competitive fires that still burn inside the likable Kiwi, he'll be terrorising the 20 year-olds for a while yet.

I got sacked from Stone Brothers, but I could understand why Ross and Jimmy did it. At that time they had mortgaged their house and it was two brothers trying to do Supercars on a very limited budget

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A iiew #Bi; W series^ is about two families ‘^^^^^vione^thosefaOiilies’ b^iness is a i:in Racings teapk My? Ho^ hnd whet is a Bo^liV anyw^ BR/^N^JIN lopifed htehind the sceit^^bf litpper Midille Bpg^if with f^ducei^Bireetpr^iiiyne Hope abd^bp Fubi(Shafbpibh Darren Morgan

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ACKING up a Top Fuel Dragster is never an easy task.

After a burnout, the driver needs precise directions to ensure that the car's tyres line up as closely as possible to the stripes he (or she) has just laid on the startline. This is where the help comes in, usually from a female member of the team using hand signals to back up the car to behind the lights. The good ones manage to combine their important roles with a bit of sass for the crowd. It all adds to the show.

So it was at Calder Park a few months ago, as a very attractive young lady learned the fine art of backing up a Top Fueller. The difference was, she was not a member of a racing team. She was acting. And that Top Fuel car was really a golf cart.

Welcome to the world of television.

Later this year, professional drag racing will play a major role in a new comedy series on ABC Television. Gristmill Productions, the Melbourne-based husband and wife team of Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler, will follow on from their successful series Librarians and Very Small Business with Upper Middle

26

Bogan. The eight-part series follows the story of two families, living on opposite sides of the same city and of wildly different social demographics, who find a common link.

One of those families is the Wheelers and their family business is racing. Not just any racing; they have their own Top Fuel drag racing team. And motor racing, any motor racing, was unknown territory for Hope and Butler when the series was in the planning stages.

"I knew ‘The Wacky Races'," Wayne told me.

"Robyn said to me, when we were starting to write the series, that we would have these two families with an adoption story. Someone finds out that she is adopted and wants to find her real family.

"It roughly looks like us. Robyn comes from a background where she was brought up with a private school, whereas I was kicking around schools where the hall was burned down three times, and I was one of 1200 [students]. So she was in Sydney, in a small group, learning about Catholicism and I was at Wantirna High.

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Above: Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, the husband-and-wife team that created the show, with drag racer Darren Morgan (centre).

I

"So she says,'What could this family do?

What could they do?' She wanted something that was a business that involved the whole family. And I just said,'Drag racing'. Off the top of my head!

"She laughed, and I brought up a YouTube video of 'drag racing'. A Top Fueller came up.

The shape of the cars is kind of humorous - they don't look like a car. It was sort of a supernatural thing, almost like an aircraft. And that was all we knew.

It was starting to look perfect. It was not just a business; it was also a hobby. It involved lots of people.

People who do not really love their work, the ones who work all week, usually have a hobby of some kind. J, don't, if don’t have ANY hobbies.1.just do my work and, come the weekend, people want to throw their time and energy into something that they love, something ^at they are passionate about

That was the idea when we started looking at motorsport.

"So, we looked up 'Top Fuel'. When was the next meeting, and what do we do about getting there? Then we realised that there was a thing with ANDRA and a falling out with Bob Jane, and that none of the races were in Victoria. The nearest thing to us was that there was a drag meeting at Mildura, at the Sunraysia Drag Strip over Easter. So we packed up to go on an Easter holiday, and it turned out to be a long, long way.

"It was just a country drag meet. There was a Show'n'Shine in the mall on the Friday, and there were a lot of boats there, because there was water skiing on as well. There were boats, a motorbike thing and a drag thing all on over the same weekend. It was the ultimate petrol-head weekend! All the cashed-up boat people were there, and their shining Dodges or whatever large pickups were there as well.

At the drag meet, the headline act was an exhibition by Darren Morgan - who of course, is from Mildura. So his car is there; we walk around a corner and look down the mall and we see his trailer, which is spectacular. His top fueller is next to it and there is a queue of about 50 people, lined up to get an autograph It was huge for Mildura.

It was so striking. The car is there in its full livery and it looks brilliant.

So, how do we do this? We see the merchandising caravan, so we head over. It turns out that Darren Morgan's daughter is running the merch tent.

So we say ...'Oh, hello, we are from the ABC. Have you heard of The Librarians? Can we talk to the owner, can we talk to your dad?'

And she says,‘Nope, Mum is the better person to talk to'

Right away, Hope and Butler had made a connection. They realised that on the whole,, drag racing involved families and that the business and passion were the one thing.

"We got hold of that very quickly," Hope says enthusiastically.

"Caitlyn, the daughter, she raced Junior Dragsters. It was fantastic. Robyn and I and the girls walked over to this hill and there was a car, a Torana or something, setting off. The noise of the thing, the first time it hits you, is amazing. The fumes and the noise, the fuel in your eyes and a little 10-year-old freaking out and asking why we are there.

"We spent all day there. We walked around for six hours. We realised that they are all families, all there with pop-up tents and barbecues and everyone knows everyone. It was a real family day. Drag racing is a family sport.

"That is exactly what we had been thinking about. And they showed exactly the misconceptions that people would have about the sport. It is not as rough as people might think. It's like anything; it is a bunch of people involved in something that they love. It is not what people looking in might think, and we can cut against that."

Without knowing a great deal about the sport, Hope had made an important first contact. Morgan had credibility, a solid team and, importantly, two cars.

As far as looking at the outline for his family, you are right, it ticked the boxes.

It was such a flukel Darren was the Australian Champion. We met his family and they were all lovely.

That weekend, we met them, they invited us into their pit and we were there when they pulled the engine apart. They worked with the

3 KEYS TO VIDEO CAPTURE :||I :is.fist Oleiii «ln®t a piiii mapztne aSks.yto t© walciln^ a f¥ senies. : JS'iiiS til Itok I® is aiapiFefpttitle I® d© so;fere, i fet Pine'^ate^lfpttee PefiOPdli'lihawe ppofessiorial:apid' pepsoina;l‘ : assodatons.vwithi Ate W andi Radio. But this is Piot ciboiiit tlat I Wihen; was tho tast tipoe'you heard'the words'Drag iRaeiflg’ om i telewisiopi?' It is, usually, during the news, VMhen some ; stem-faGed newsreader is,telling us that someone a usually young a j 'has feeeni hurtor, worse, killed, when a car has ‘gone out of control' ; and;tbeen iinvo'lved' i n 3terrible impact. The news is nearly alway$ $ai andi the ipeperGussioins;for those'iniwoliwed: heatitbreaking.

AndiiOiftensiPiOl,ajlw/ays„'but often^the ieadsOn the telly refer to the actions thatil,edltp*rs,unfoptunately conclusion as 'Drag Racing'., fhat's,wrong,illIs 'ffiOt. 1iig streetTacing. As readers of this fublication well know. Drag Racing is an organised and professionally ; coniuetedispoiit. ilffewusIby people-of great.enthusiasm', along lings : thateneouitage responsFb'le behaviour and -with'the utmost emphasis I 'PP 5Afdl|«;ilii!tinlny.eases, it is done sO'to specifically discourage Ipeop'I’e .w;hoimighlt;0ithepwi.se .raceonthe streets to. bring,theirtarsto' 1 .adontfOiled'enwironmenittodOsOrsafely^ n .

I Ih.e misuse of the >wOrds 'Drag Racing', are symptomatic of I riporters elher not knowing or caring, what the sport actually iss ! and: at the snme tifne, that lack of endeawouf or competence to ibg i accurate does the sportiitself, itSipa^cfarits an#Is fans a massive ! disservice.

Well, here is a chance,even if it is a smdliehance, to do.something I aibout that. Upper Middle Bogan :is not.about Drag Racing,per se ; but the sport plays a central role in the series. It is an opportunity to . expose the sport to people who may have never seen it before. j There is every likelihood that it will be a success. Hope and Butler ! have a great track record in the genre; Librarians was watched, on occasion, by almost 1,3 miUion viewers nationally,nuQibers that many a commercial network programmer would kfif for nowadays. I. can voueljfor the fact ftat Bogan is funnyjt will, hopefully, rate well I and leaito more series. .iZ ^(ilh ytor-family andjriendsl- tt’Rgoodlj- and it might.just, ;

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are they prepping a car for nine hours, to run 1 ' it for four seconds? Well, that was one of the paciiiig'rniowles are ilike things we had to understand; they are doing BusesTlihere are :h:©ne ferailong all this for FOUR SECONDS? frrie agdftliietnfsure ieni0,ugh;„'they corfie | And then you see a pass for the first time ... ^li^@#,Jhingsll'0.p:li:gfi)0di i(3f course',, | You feel it in your chest. You feel it in are waifcrig | your whole body. It is kind of like an explosion.

1 , -|0r|R|r)lip.ward's®ushjj5the s^ot^r#the | i After that first pass, we said,'We get it.

I IJiaiifles^^n&iNjJi'lauldia'battle for-the 'j We get why you do this'. Because you look ’ti‘9"?i,6ji0rrnul'a^#0ri'di;©hatmpi0h at Darren and you think,'Who would put I Aussi^Kfisi^lp'ernswbrth'add ©ahief themselves through this?' And then you see it ^lQiSliifar,arid;,pe©p'le .who'ihave seerlt and you understand completely." jprevidws aret^lking’'Pscar".'We-Milllget j From Darren Morgan's point of view, the ^|§'see^1nfSep.terhber. approach was well-timed and welcome, ^ feor Jragracing-Jaris, the waith^, j "I think that we have always pushed ^HeiaCbhg one-M^Vs© years smeMeM harder than a lot of teams to get recognition, ^ke a lWiheelJ.o\h\tke story of Shirley he says. j^/lMdswney'sTdeterriiried'rise to the We have been to a lot of other events, like SSoi^OfitheiSport, andfwhile there have i at Bathurst and at the Clipsal, and places like Ib'een some srhaller efforts since, there I Numurkah when the kids run Juniors. We try islndllf a quaility-mowie-tosee. Snake I to be everywhere that we can to try to make a/i£/ /\d'ong0Gse details the famedi story i j a deal work for us. We are always looking for ofihOw/ion^^'iheir^^ Prudhomme another gap in the traffic, where we can be a andilfe,rri'';fhe:<fM0n'g0ose' McEwen hullt j standout and look after our sponsors. This was the mostfamious rlva!iry ihithe sport and:, ^ just another opportunity." *’ SEvlth:the’h.eipt Ofi.M'atteli, put a two-iSne So, it all came together. Hope and Butler toy raclng'set iin?the;;hands of miliionsrof i hunkered down to produce the scripts for eight n ryounglboys, Along,the way, some ofthe j half-hour episodes. Hope, who has a small ibiggest iames in the iNHRA are featured j on-screen role as an amped-up racing driving T|ihdlUdingrWally iParks and engine gurus i instructor, shares directing duties with Tony jKeithiiBiaekahd^fdilltonovan;, .

Martin.

So the TV side of things were being ' likewise:. Snake anS Mmgoose is set sorted out- but nobody in the cast or crew for alj^irele^e iinifeptembet, thoughi ; was prepared, properly prepared, for what ,h;0:details.of a llo.cai'release date have I happens in Top Fuel drag racing. 'been fublishedl!Keep your eyes openi; "We shot a scene where we had our family r SeptemberJlboks like a busy imonth...

J - the Wheeler family, the drag racing family in 30

'The tradition is, of course, when they launch the car, the team stands behind, all wearing their team colours, and it looks spectacular. It is great vision, the whole scene.

We needed to replicate that.

So we get to the day we are shooting the scene at Calder. We lined the cast up and Darren did a launch. We couldn't afford a whole PASS, we could only afford a launch!

Enter Morgan; And they kept it as short as possible! They are just so expensive to run; last season, we worked it out that it costs us $17,000 a pass to run."

Hence, the golf cart for practice runs. Back to Hope; "I had kept telling the cast, none of whom had been to the drags, 'You have to concentrate, otherwise this will freak you out'. We had to be prepared anyway; we had paramedics and fire people there, because if you are launching, it is like you are doing it.

So after a day of me barking at them, they are all, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's just bloody get on with itr "So, it launched.

"Michala Banas, one of the actresses in the other family, had been lined up and she was behind the car when Darren launched.

It physically moved her back. For about an hour afterwards she was crying. Then she was laughing, then crying. It was like something so big happened; she could not stop the tears from coming. I think it was a shock, it was like being in a car accident; even if you are not hurt, there is like a half-hour or something afterwards when you are quivering. You are in motorsport news

shock. And this shocked her. She was totally freaked out by it. It was mad.

And everyone THEN got it. They understood. THAT is the rush. That is why they are throwing all their money, all their time, everything at this sport. It pays back with this incredible rush. And when you pull it offwhen you WIN, and that can come down to hundredths of a second - it all works. So that ■was brilliant to film that.

A different scale to most things we have done. A long way from The Librarians!"

That process worked both ways. Once they were on the set, the Morgan crew were the ones in unfamiliar territory. Accustomed to tearing the car to pieces to prepare for the next run, they had relatively little to do.

"We have very organised procedures to run the car, to turn it around in 90 minutes," said Morgan. "Our tuner Benny Patterson has just finished his degree in mechanical engineering, so we have every nut and bolt and screw, and everything that we have to do on the car, down on paper. We are very clinical about that.

"We had two cars there, one for shooting and another one. We have a one-piece carbon fibre body and we can swap them over, and we could make our cars looks like many cars.

It was unusual. The crew was great. Jo Briscoe did all the artwork and she was terrific. I am very anal about getting everything perfect, it was different. But it was all good."

Of course, one of the most controversial things about the show is the title; Upper Middle Bogan. Morgan says that he is a bogan; Hope says that some people will attach negative connotations to the title.

"I think that they will. We wanted to deliberately raise that question. I think that everyone has prejudices; they can have good ones, bad or otherwise. It's controversial."

Then he takes a long pause, which is unusual for a guy as chatty as he is.

"Look; I am a bogan. That is the safest way that I can say it; I am a bogan. That is the way of saying it that makes sense. When I talked before about the differences between my upbringing and Robyn's, I go, 'I was the bogan'. I was brought up where there were differences to the way my wife was.

"I tried to explain this to the cast. I don’t ● want to take the long way around, but when I tried to say what a bogan was, the truth is, I don't know. " I want to say this from the outset; the series is about two families that we absolutely love. They are great families. They are in different parts of the world. When we put them together, side-by-side, that is what we find out, and they have a relationship. And it is funny.

"One family, well-to-do, living in a suburb like Brighton or some other leafy suburb. And then there is an outer suburb, 50 kays down the freeway, with the McMansion, the triple car garage, four bedrooms, five bathrooms, brilliant. And we found this fantastic house!

"When we were casting the show, when www.mnews.com.au

people were doing their version of a bogan - or whatever they thought a bogan was - I said, 'Don't do a voice’. Here is the difference, as I can see. In the middle class, people don't say what they want. It is all passive/aggressive; they whisper a lot.

"In a bogan family - and don't get this wrong - when they say something, they say it. 'Catherine, put your fucking shoes on I' It is does not matter if they are in public; it doesn't matter because they are no self-conscious.

They are kind of free. They are no inhibited.

That is the best way we can communicate it; one family is kind of bold, confident with who they are and they ARE who they are. The other family aren't; they are self-conscious, they are worried and they are always concerned about how they are perceived. I think that is the balance. And that is not a judgement; I think that it is just a way of being.

"I think that people will be surprised. I think that the title is controversial and I think that people will think that we are hanging shit on bogans. When they watch it, they will realise it is a story about these two families, one from one socio-economic background and one from another. And it's funny. And it's about these really nice people.

"One more thing; the bogans are HOT! They all look great!"

There could be an opportunity here to have a TV series lead the national dialogue. When Hope and I were of school age, the worst thing you could call someone was a 'wog'.

Now, everyone is a wog, in part because of the Wogs out of Work and Acropolis Now stage and TV shows that help desensitise the word.

Maybe, the negative connotations some attach to the word may fade.

"That is one of the funny things," Hope continues. "I started reading things about bogans, and people never minded. And I don't mind; that is what I am, a cashed-up bogan.

Once you start noticing that people are using the word more, I think that its impact is less.

"I think it was last year that the word 'bogan' appeared in the Oxford Dictionary. I

Above: Michala Banas, who plays Amber Wheeler in Upper Middle Bogan, with Darren Morgan. think that is a turning point.

"I think that it will attract some initial debate in the lead-up to it. That is good. Already, when we have done press releases, some of the 'snooty' press will turn up their noses at you. But they have not watched it. There is a new promo coming out about a family in the outer suburbs, and it seems they just want to attack it, for some reason.

"We have shot a promo with Robin Nevin [Ed; the actress who plays the matriarch of the 'Upper' family] walking onto the track at Calder Raceway. It was for Episode 8 of the series, and as she was walking onto the track, I told her it was for the promo of the series. The image is all wrong but it is really funny."

Obviously, the series looks interesting, the Librarians and Business as Usual series both attracted good audiences, and there are high hopes for Bogan. As part of writing this story, I got to see preliminary cuts of two episodes, and I know it passes the funny test. It is clever and hilarious. All it lacks for Series 2 is the role of a dashing motor racing reporter.

"Clearly," Hope agrees. "We are trying to work that in."

Bana; call me. We'll do lunch. I may have a part for you.

Fa m ILY He is the grandnephew gf 1 96Ds Formula One driver Lucien Bianchi, sg he is gf grand prix driver stock. And Jules Bianchi BECAME A GRAND PRIX DRIVER HIMSELF, IF A LITTLE UNEXPECTEDLY, WHEN THE 2D1 3 SEASON KICKED OFF IN ALBERT PARK. ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN LOOKS AT THE CAREER PATH OF THE YOUNG FRENCHMAN WHO IS ALREADY TURNING HEADS

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DESPITE HIS BACKMARKER MARUSSIA EQUIPMENT.

ules Bianchi has very quickly become Formula 1 's most exciting young rookie.

What's quite amazing is that the young Frenchman almost missed out on a seat for 2013. When Force India decided to sign Adrian Sutii to partner Paul di Resta, it looked for all money that

32

Bianchi had been overlooked, at least for this season.

But that all changed just weeks before the season kicked off in Melbourne.

Despite having already named Luis Razia as one of its race drivers, Marussia was forced to dump the Brazilian thanks to a hiccup with sponsorship payments. The vacant seat was

handed to Bianchi, and he's kicked off the season in a way that suggests he's not going to waste this fortunate opportunity.

That he's been so quick in a Marussia is somewhat of a surprise, but it really shouldn't be. After all, a look back at his career so far shows that while he is far from perfect, Bianchi is very, very fast. motorsport news

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Formula 3 Euro Series

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French Formula Renault 2.D

Having come from karts, Bianchi's : first stop on the single-seater ladder was French Formula Renault 2.0. And he got it completely right, joining the gun SC Formula ' team and subsequently dominating the season.

His final stats were impressive. From the . 13 races, he was on pole five times, won five races, stood on the podium 11 times, and set 10 fastest laps. As a result he finished a whopping 49 points clear of second placed Mathieu Arzeno, and more than 100 points ahead of SC team-mate Charles Pic, who now races in FI with Caterham.

The 2007 season was the last for French Formula Renault. In 2008, it was re-branded as the Formula Renault West European Cup, and won by another SC Formula driver by the name of Daniel Ricciardo.

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Formula 3 Euro Series Given that it was only his second season of car racing, and his first in F3, Bianchi wasn't given much of a chance heading into the 2008 Euro Series. Sure, he'd signed on with crack squad ART, and showed plenty of pace

in pre-season testing, but the title fight was expected to be between guys like Nico Hulkenberg, Edoardo Mortara and James Jakes.

In the end, it wasn't much of a fight at all. Hulkenberg streaked the field for ART, winning seven races to comfortably take the title - which wasn't a huge surprise.

Instead, the surprise was Bianchi. While a long way back from Hulkenberg, Bianchi finished on the podium in just the third race of the season at Mugello, and enjoyed a particularly strong run home, which included wins at Le Mans and Hockenheim to round out the season. He finished third in the points, hot on the heels of second-placed Mortara.

While Bianchi enjoyed a great finish to the Euro Series, it was at the 2008 F3 Masters that he really showed his true potential. On a wet-but-drying Zolder circuit in Belgium, Bianchi won a straight fight with Hulkenberg after the pair locked out the front row. It was a mature drive that belied Bianchi's relative inexperience, a drive that made people stand up and take notice.

Even more fitting was where the win took place; Bianchi's great uncle, Lucien Bianchi, was a Belgian racing driver who drove for Cooper in FI towards the end of the 1960s. Turn 4 at Zolder is called 'Lucien Bianchibocht', bocht being the Dutch word for 'bend'.

After exceeding expectations at Euro F3 level in 2008, Bianchi rightly started the new season as one of the title favourites.

And that's exactly how it played out. The Frenchman and ART were a formidable combination, winning nine races along the way to completely decimating a stron& field, which included fellow 2013 FI rookies Valterri Bottas and Esteban Guitierrez.

A stunning mid-season run, which saw him win four races from five starts across meetings at the Norisring, Zandvoort and Oscherleben, effectively took the title out reach from the likes of chief rival Christian Vietoris.

With the penultimate round of the season being held in Dijon, Bianchi set his sights on wrapping it up on home soil. On Saturday, he had the perfect chance, taking pole and leading the way early. But a Safety Car put paid to his chances, Bianchi making a mess of the restart by not leaving enough space, opening up a path for Vietoris to jump from fifth to the lead, and onwards to an unlikely win.

"It's my fault," said Bianchi after the race.

"I did the mistake as I pushed too hard before the safety car had gone in. It would have been nice to win the championship today in France. I hope I can do it tomorrow."

He could. The mistake was quickly cancelled out as Bianchi went on to win Sunday's race and wrap up the title. He won again at the final round in Hockenheim, finishing the season a handy 39 points clear of Vietoris.

Bianchi's impressive F3 exploits didn't go unnoticed by the FI paddock. In early December he made his FI debut during the FI Young Driver Test at Jerez for Ferrari, where it was announced that the Italian squad had signed Bianchi to a long-term deal.

motorsport news

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"It's great news for me," he said at the time, "but it's no guarantee that I will make it to Formula 1, because it's only a contract, and if I don’t do a good season next year then [Ferrari] may not want me."

za 1 □ GP2

The next logical step was GP2, and after two successful seasons together in F3, the logical team was ART. The deal was done, and Bianchi kicked off the next step of his career in the GP2 Asia Series. The highlight was a pole in Bahrain, proving that Bianchi was more than capable of being quick in the bigger, faster cars, even as a rookie.

After another Ferrari FI test (in a 2008spec car at Fiorano), Bianchi kicked off the GP2 Series proper with a bang, bagging a sensational pole in Barcelona. He repeated the feat four rounds later at Silverstone, before his season took an unexpected turn at the Hungaroring.

With his debut season going well, Bianchi found his immediate future under a cloud after he suffered a back injury in Budapest.

The cause was a Turn 1 crash, sparked when Bianchi ran wide and spun across the track, before being plowed into by Ho-Pin Tun

ZU 1 □ With a fractured second lumbar vertebra, it was unclear when Bianchi would be able to race again.

Quite amazingly, he was back for the next round at Spa, despite undergoing back surgery in Budapest. And just two rounds later he was well and truly back up to speed, taking pole at Monza. By the end of the season, despite not actually winning a race, Bianchi was third in the standings, behind champion Pastor Maldonado and secondplaced Sergio Perez.

The impressive results prompted further action from Ferrari, who named Bianchi as

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201 1 GP2 With his rookie season having gone so well„Bianchi found himself back in GP2 for a second year in '11, lining up with the newlyfofmed Lotus ART alliance.

Just like his second season in F3, Bianchi started his sophomore year in GP2 as a title favourite, and proved he was worthy of that status by winning the GP2 Asia Series opener at Abu Dhabi, his first victory, in a GP2 car.

"It's a really good feeling," he said at the

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their 2011 test driver, and handed him the reigns of their current car at Abu Dhabi for a two-day test.

"I'm really happy because I will do a good job next year," he told British mag AUTOSPORT after the test.

"I'm a lot more comfortable now in FI. I needed to improve a lot because FI is different compared to GP2. Even though GP2 is the step before FI you have a lot of difference so it's difficult to adapt."

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finish. "I haven't won a race since Formula 3 in 2009, so I'm very happy."

While more wins were expected (Maldonado tipped Bianchi to be the man to beat on the eve of the GP2 Series proper kicking off in Turkey), it was a surprisingly long time before the Frenchman found the top step again.

It looked like it might happen at the second round in Barcelona, but Bianchi was stripped of pole position for ignoring yellow flags during qualifying. Fie then made another mistake in Barcelona, earning a five-place grid penalty for Monaco by , shunting Giedo van der Garde out of the sprint race in spectacular fashion.

The next win finally came along at Silverstone, Bianchi holding off old F3 adversary Vietoris to win the feature race.

But it proved to be Bianchi's only win of the season. Fie did have a huge chance to add another to the tally at the Nurburgring, but through it away on the penultimate lap by out-braking himself into the final chicane, It was a costly mistake. With only one win for the season, Bianchi found himself 'i finishing third in the series for the second year in a row, a decidedly less impressive achievement than it was in 2010.

Still, he was able to round out the season I on a high, spending another three days at the wheel of a Ferrari FI car at the Young Driver Test in Abu Dhabi.

2D 1 2 FI TESTING/F0F3MULA

Renault 3.5

With a handful of successful FI outings under his belt, Bianchi was named as Force ' India's reserve driver for the 2012 season.

It was essentially a loan deal with Ferrari, giving Bianchi the opportunity to take part in winter testing, and make nine Free Practice 1 appearances across the season.

Bianchi made his debut for the team at Jerez in February, on the second day of the first test of the winter. But it wasn't a

fantastic debut; on his second morning in the car, Bianchi was caught out by the cold conditions, shunting the VJM05 into the tyre barrier at Turn 5. It brought a premature end to the team's day, leading to Bianchi making an apology.

I made a small mistake on my second run. he explained at the time.

The tyres were a bit cold and I spun into the gravel and touched the wall with the right rear wheel. It was not a very big impact, but it caused some damage. I'm very sorry because my mistake has cost the team a lot of time and effort."

Despite the set-back, Bianchi worked with the team for the remainder of the year, including a full day in the car during the mid-season test at Mugello and another outing for the team at Magny Cours for the Young Driver Test.

To accommodate the FP1 appearances for Force India, Bianchi switched from GP2 to a Formula Renault 3.5 program with Tech 1. ft was a good move, three wins putting him well and truly in contention for the title.

In the end, it came down to a last-round showdown in Barcelona between Bianchi and fellow FR3.5 rookie Robin Frijns. With a narrow points lead and pole for the first race, things were looking good for Bianchi on Saturday - until a late race spin dropped him to seventh in Race 1, Frijns' third enough to give the Dutchman a four-point lead for the final day of the season.

That made it a genuine 'winner-takesall' situation for the last race. And to make things even spicier, the pair found themselves running nose-to-tail in the race.

But on the 21st lap, things went awry in a big way. Flaving pulled off a stunning pass on Frijns into Turn 1, Bianchi found himself parked in the gravel a few corners later, a result of an ambitious lunge from Frijns that saw the pair collide. Frijns was penalised 25 seconds for the incident, but it didn't matter.

Bianchi's DNF decided the title in favour of the Dutchman.

"I still find myself occasionally thinking about how the championship ended," said Bianchi a couple of weeks after the season.

"I was in a strong position, but that's not the point. I would have liked to have been able to fight to the end without any sort of mishap, but that didn't happen."

Still, despite not winning the title, Bianchi's quality was obvious.

And that brings us to 2013 ...

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Peter Brock partnered with Brian Sampson for the 1975 Bathurst race.

The L34Torana qualified fast enough for 3rd place on the starting grid.

For the race, Brock was instructed to follow the plan; take it easy for the first dozen laps of the race and conserve the car, it worked,the Gown-Hindhaugh "Yellow Terror'" ran a superb race.

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The engine bay includes such detail as the unique Holley carburettor with finely moulded hoses and tubing.

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classiccarlectatdes.com.au A1127 Australian Motorsport News

last year AJ Allmendiager’s career leeked le be in ruins after he failed a drug test,but alinnst nne year en the Penske driver is net only rehabilitated but is looking forward to what will be his Indy 500 debut.Allmendinger spoke frankly to Mark Olendenning aboutthe tumultuous nine months he’s Just been through and how the experience has galvanised him to make afresh startto his career.

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ARLY July last year, a few days out from NASCAR's summer visit to Daytona, Tim Cindric had a problem.

A problem serious enough for him to do the all-but-unthinkable: he called his boss.

Roger Penske controls a billion-dollar empire. Being charged with overseeing a small part of that operation means that he trusts your judgement: that he believes you can handle just about anything that comes up day-to-day without having to defer back to him. As Penske Racing team president, Cindric

38

didn't phone Penske very often.

"He knows that I only call him when I need something," Cindric says. "I usually wait for him to call me."

On this occasion he needed something, and he needed it urgently enough to phone air traffic control and make contact with a plane that at that moment was flying from Europe to the USA. Shortly afterwards, Penske's voice crackled down the phone from half an ocean away, and 30,000 feet up.

"I'd just talked to him 30 minutes earlier," Cindric says. "He'd taken off and was on

his way back from Europe, and I got hold of him and he says, ‘So what did you forget last time we talked?'. I said, 'This probably isn't the way you want to come back from your vacation, but And that's how Roger Penske, among the most respected businessmen in America, found out that one of his NASCAR drivers had failed a drug test.

While Penske as a team went into scramble mode, calling up Sam Hornish Jr to fill its suddenly vacant seat at Daytona, AJ Allmendinger was trying to figure out how

motorsport news

to stop what he described as "the biggest mistake of my life” from becoming a careerending one. Drug violations are treated very differently in different sports: a first-time offender in the NFL can expect a four-match ban without pay, in the NBA, a first-time offender will sit out five games and must attend the league's anti-doping program. The NHL is a little stricter, mandating a 20-game stint on the bench. In the Olympics, firsttimers are out for two years. it has been less of an issue in motorsport because violations have been relatively rare.

NASCAR's Jeremy Mayfield is serving a permanent ban after two positive tests for methamphetamine; former rising star Shane Hmiel was also banned for life after failing three tests for an array of substances between 2003 and 2006. In Europe, sportscar racer Tomas Enge was issued with an 18-month suspension last year after failing a test at the Navarra CT1 World Championship round. The Czech argued that the drugs were part of his treatment for a medical condition and that he

WWW.m news.com.au

had learned the lessons of 10 years earlier when a positive test for marijuana cost him the F3000 title.

In the last weekend of May this year, Allmendinger will make his first-ever start in the Indy 500 as part of Team Penske's line-up, taking the car that was put on pole position for last year's race by Ryan Briscoe.

It will be his second scheduled IndyCar start for Penske, coming off the back of a slated debut at Barber in April. His stock car career is also on the rebound - he spent 10 weeks on the sidelines before making his return with Phoenix Racing at Charlotte - although he is still looking for a full-time ride.

Looking back at the original incident from a distance of eight months, Allmendinger says that from the moment he was informed of the positive test, his only thought was of what he needed to do next. There were no guarantees that he would ever race again, so the mission was simply one of working out what he could do to restore his reputation and regain the faith of the paddock - if,

FAMILY AIMO FRIFIMOS ARF OBVI

indeed, he even wanted to race again.

"At that point, as it all went down, I wasn't worried about a call from anybody, honestly," he says. "The first things I had to go through was to figure out the process and what was expected of me, and what I had to do to get back into racing as quick as possible, which was all I wanted to do.

"Last year, I put so much extra pressure on myself because my dream did come true; I was driving for Roger Penske and things weren't going right, and I was stressed. I wasn't myself. So first things first, I had to figure out if I wanted to race anymore.

I wasn't worried about a phone call from anybody, or getting a chance. I had to make sure that if and when I got the chance that I was ready to go, and during that time period it's what I focused on.

"Nobody is perfect in life, and it's just unfortunate that my mistake was played out on TV. But with that dumb mistake you can do two things - you can keep making those mistakes, or you can learn and be a lot better.

I said it when it started and I say it every day 40

- I'm a lot better for it. I'm a lot more ready, physically and mentally, for any opportunity.

No, I wasn't expecting that opportunity to be at the Indy 500 with Roger Penske, but for me that was something that I had to work hard on."

Roger Penske, for his part, has been strongly supportive of Allmendinger's return, even if he hasn't been able to bring him back into the fold on a permanent basis yet.

Allmendinger was a guest of the team at last year's IndyCar finale at Fontana; a move that Penske said was motivated entirely by a desire to help his driver to get back into a car.

Even then, he hinted that Allmendinger could figure in Penske's future IndyCar plans.

"I told AJ I wanted him to come to the race," Penske said at the time. “Fle's been under cover, and I thought it would be good for him to get out here and see a few people, talk to some of the team owners. It's obviously a speed bump in his career, but he's an option for people on the NASCAR side and also on the IndyCar side. Fie did a great job when you think about what he did in Champ

Car. Could he be an option for us? For sure."

Some will point to repeat offenders such as Mayfield and Hmiel as cause for caution, but Cindric insists that the team has nothing but complete confidence in Allmendinger.

"There was a time-out there for a while, he has paid his dues, he has assured everybody that he's on the right track, and we totally support that," he says.

"With regard to the confidence that we have ... we were pretty close to this whole situation. And when you look at it, you take calculated risks in this business every day, and for us, [AJ] is not really a risk. Roger has always been a loyal guy; he’s always been someone who has been there for anybody.

And there are a lot of stories like this that people don't know about. A lot more than you think, in terms of giving somebody a second chance, and being there for them when they need it. When you look at this thing, there is more good that can come out of it than bad."

While Penske has been explicit in its support of Allmendinger's comeback, the motorsport news

31-year-old says that there was also a lot of behind-the-scenes encouragement from other drivers. This support, he believes, was a critical motivator while he was working through NASCAR's Road to Recovery rehabilitation program because it proved that he still had the respect of his peers - even those that he didn't know well.

"When it all happened I kind of closed off, because I was trying to figure it all out myself," he says. "I had a lot of family and friends that were there, but a lot of what helped was the people that I was racing against. At that time in NASCAR it was the Jeff Gordons, the Jimmie Johnsons, the Tony Stewarts, those types of guys that reached out and saw how I was and gave me advice "And it was the fact that they trusted me.

Guys like Ryan Hunter-Reay, who I hadn't talked to much in the past because obviously we'd been on different [career] paths, but he reached out to me. Guys like Will Power. All those guys, who I hadn't spoken to much reached out. And that helped me a lot. Family and friends are obviously really important www.mnews.com.au

in life, but at the same time, when you are racing people at over 200mph, those are the people that have to trust you. They just said,'do what you need to do and get back.

Whatever the process is, do it and get back as quick as possible'. And that meant more than anything.

Allmendinger knows that for a while at least, he's going to be 'the guy who failed a drug test'. It's not a label he'd have invented for himself, but nor is it something that he plans to hide from.

I'm not scared to talk about it. he says. think sometimes people get scared to bring it up, or try to shy away from it. It's happened.

Nothing's going to change what was said in the past, or what will be said in the future.

Ve learned through this that all you can do is work on yourself, and if you're happy with yourself then it doesn't matter what everybody else thinks. I'm always open to talk about it, whether it's with people that are going through it, or people that have made mistakes, or people that just want to discuss it. It's something to be open about. It's life.

IN LIF^, AND IT’S JUST UNFORTUNATE THAT MV MISTAKE PL.AVED OUT ON TV.If It's what happens.

For Allmendinger, however, the immediate future is far more intriguing than the recent past. Named after four-time Indy 500 winner AJ Foyt (although Allmendinger is Anthony James, while his namesake is Anthony Joseph), Allmendinger was previously denied the chance to race an open-wheeler at Indy by pure bad timing; he was a frontrunner in Champ Car at the height of the series' war with the IRL, meaning that the first time he visited the Brickyard came after his switch to 42

NASCAR. Cool, yes, but not quite the same.

And that's something he's looking forward to putting right.

"I'm excited and I've got a lot of emotions. but they will be nothing close to what it's actually like for the first time when I roll out there April 11 for rookie orientation," he says.

And it definitely won't be the same until I get come out[on race day] and walk down to the yard of bricks and they introduce you and you get those 200,000 people cheering. Or booing. Whatever. At least it's a reaction. motorsport news

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When Rob Huffarrived in Australia for the liqui-moly Bathurst 12 hour he did not even know whether or not he would have the opportunity to defend his world touring car championship crown in 2013.not that it worried him at the time - the important thing was that here was a rare chance to race at one ofthe world's most difficult and most legendary circuits. Huffspoke to Steve Normoyle about the WTCC,the challenge of Mount Panorama and his V8supercars aspirations

I

t isn't often we get to see a reigning world champion strutting his (or her) ■stuff at Bathurst.

The first time it happened was 53 years ago, at the October long weekend meeting when 1959 World Drivers’ Champion Jack Brabham won the 26-lap Craven A International.

Brabham's Mount Panorama homecoming slotted neatly between that year's Italian Grand Prix and the season-ending US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, where he would successfully defend his title.

The next Australian to win the World Drivers' Championship, Alan Jones, didn't bother hanging around to defend his 1980 crown. While his former FI chums prepared for a 1981 season-ending Las Vegas Grand Prix that would see Jones' nemesis Nelson Piquet clinch the title, AJ was instead at Bathurst making his Great Race debut in a Commodore.

It would be another 33 years before the Mountain again hosted a current world champion. In this instance, however, the visiting title holder was not the World Drivers’ Champion, but rather the World Touring Car Champion.

www.mnews.com.au

Rob Huff mightn't be Sebastian Vettel. But he is a world champion, the same as Vettel.

And while the idea of Vettel on the Mountain is surely a tantalising concept, if one is to have a reigning world champion racing at the track that hosts the world's greatest touring race, then who better than the reigning touring car champion of the world? '*Yet as the 2012 World Touring Car Champion prepared for his Bathurst debut ' in the 12 Hour at the wheel of the Conroy . ' Motorsport Audi R8, there was every chance this might have been his one and only race appearance for the year. With Chevrolet having exited the WTCC at the end of 2012, Huff went into the new season with no deal in place.

That's since been sorted, and Huff will get to defend his crown in a Seat run by Munnich Motorsport.

Nonetheless, the fact that a reigning world champion of any sort could be in Australia looking for work - and at the end of last year Huff did actively explore V8 Supercar options - is a state of affairs we've never experienced before. What it also shows is that just as the domestic motor racing scene has probably never been stronger, things have scarcely

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been more difficult in Europe than they are right now.

Still, even if Huff was to have spent 2013 on the sidelines, he could at least reflect on a world title that had not come easily, but had been won the hard way, and finally, after several years of near misses and disappointments. Because when your main rivals are the likes of Alain Menu and Yvan Muller, and you beat them In identical factory-team equipment, you know you’ve achieved something special.

"To be able to put that right," Huff reflects, "to win the championship after going so close, it was just great. But not only that, because RML and Chevrolet took a gamble on me in 2005 by taking me as a novice driver in a fully factory backed works team, n and to be able to pay that back with a world championship in the year that they stopped, eight years later, I think it’s a lovely full circle of happiness for everyone."

Job security aside, the back end of 2012 was a pretty joyous occasion all round as Huff and long time partner Jazz finally tied the knot. In fact, it was while the happy couple > were on honeymoon that Huff got the call up to do Bathurst.

It was a last-minute deal arranged through Huff’s old mate James Winslow (see

breakout), who was also sharing the Conroy R8.

It was ‘about as green as it gets’, says Huff of his Bathurst debut, because not only was it an unfamiliar venue, so too was the car foreign. He had never driven an Audi R8 before - or any GT3 car, for that matter.

"This is not like going to Spa," he explained during qualifying. "It’s not like going to any other circuit. It’s not even like going to the Nurburgring.

"At least with the Nurburgring you can get round it [at speed, on non-race weekends].

The problem here is you can’t get round it. If I was out here a month ago then I’d probably have had a sneaky drive up round it, but when I arrived on Wednesday, lunchtime, they’d already closed the road, put the barriers up, so you couldn’t even do a lap.

"I had to go round in the tour bus, and we walked it as well, and then it’s into the R8 with 500 horsepower and go and do your best!"

This was the full extent of Huff’s preBathurst preparation. Circumstances back home were such that he did not even have the opportunity to get an idea of the track on a circuit simulator.

"I was on my honeymoon - the last thing I could do is get near a Playstation!

"In 2012 in the World Touring Car Championship, we had two new circuits, Slovakia and Shanghai, and I went on a proper simulator before we went to those places. So yeah, if I was at home and not on a beach on my honeymoon... because bear in mind my whole life is motorsport- if there were two weeks in my wife's life that I had to let her off motorsport, then it was tliose two weeks. Otherwise I’d be now going through a divorce I "As soon as the first press release went out that I was doing the race, my simulator man texted me to say, 'mate, we've got Bathurst on sim; if you want, come down and we’ll get it sorted no worries', but I’m going ‘dude. I’m on my honeymoon’!"

So for Huff it was very much an oldschool Bathurst baptism - which makes the reigning World Touring Car Champion’s first impressions of Mount Panorama interesting reading: "It’s an amazing circuit. It's always been on my top four or five of the world’s legendary circuits, and to be able to drive it in an Audi R8, well, it’s fairly spectacular!

"With this place, you've got the ultimate collection of what nobody else has got; a street circuit, stroke, what I would call Formula 1 circuit, [but] on the side of a Mountain.

"The speeds you’re hitting, it’s just incredible! The Esses, the Dipper, you know, I think every corner has something.

"Put it this way: there are plenty of circuits we go to today, where you think, that corner’s just a waste; they didn’t put much effort into designing that corner. But there’s not one of

motorsport news

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From Silverstone to Gold Star

R

ob Huff would love to do V8 Supercars but says it's a bit hard trying to do a deal from the other side of the world when you've got no contacts in Australia. He does have one well-connected motor racing friend down under, although James Winslow might not be of much help - Winslow is trying to arrange a V8 Supercar drive for himself...

The two English drivers are old mates from back home. They started their careers together, literally, on the same day 15 years ago, in the same race.

"It was at Silverstone at a one week Jim Russell course," Huff explains. "We'd both done karting and we went there as complete novices; didn't even know each other before that. At the end of the week everyone did two races; one in Peugeot 306s and one in Formula Fords.

"We ended up having our first race together. I've never raced against him or with him since, until novy."

By a quirk of fate, just as Winslow is the 2012 CAMS Gold Star winner (as the Australian F3 Champion), Huff was awarded the 2012 BRDC Gold Star (awarded by the British Racing Drivers Club for outstanding performance of the year by one of racing and record-breaking - second and third behi Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton).

"James and I have stayed in contact over the yea

looked like we were up against each other for the BRDC Gold Star, so we had a bit of text banter going between us during the year about who was going to win it.

"Both James and I worked with Dan Wheldon as instructors at Brands Hatch. Obviously we've done a few charity events for Dan, and I've been involved In all of them, and James saw that I'd put on my Facebook page that we were doing an event for Dan at the Autosport Awards last year and he phoned me and said, 'can I get involved in it?' So he comes over and we were chatting over a good catch up, and he says, as one does, ‘what are you doing this year?' and I said 'I dunno, but one of the things I do want to do is Aussie V8s', and he was like, 'oh, well, have you been to Bathurst?

Because we're doing the GT race there in a few weeks and I'm pretty sure there's room for another driver.

Would you be interested?'

"I was interested for sure, but four days after that I went off on my honeymoon in Mauritius for two weeks.

"So on my honeymoon I get a text from my dad to say it's on, so we eet home from the honeymoon \m

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j4s soon as the first press release wentout that I was doing the race, mysimulator man texted me to say,'mate, we've got Bathurston sim;ifyou want,come down and we'llgetitsorted no worries', butI'm going 'dude,I'm on my honeymoon'!

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those corners on this circuit. It's certainly one of the most exciting I've ever driven."

What made it all the more exciting w/as the fact that the Audi R8 GT3 car is a fairly different beast from the Super 2000-spec 200kW (270 horsepower) front-wheel-drive touring cars which have been his normal mount since 2004.

It was that year that Huff made his BTCC debut in a Seat run by Ray Mallock Limited.

When RML migrated from the BTCC to the WTCC (the team swapping from Seat to Chev in the process), Huff came along for the ride.

As the reigning world champion. Huff has strong views on the WTCC and future direction of touring car racing. He is something of a V8 Supercars fan, and reckons the WTCC could learn a few things from a series like ours.

They(WTCC cars) should have more horsepower. I just think that as a world championship, you should make the cars harder to drive than a national championship.

There's a reason why Aussie V8s and DTM are such highly followed series and why they get so many fans, and it's because of the

noise of them, the speed - they are very quick cars.

"To be a world championship, I think they should be the hardest cars in the world to drive - in that category.

"With 400 horsepower it would be difficult with front-wheel drive; you'd have to make a hell of a tyre to cope with it, but at the same time these things are sent to test us.

That's why I feel we should be pushing the boundaries of that sort of power.

"I think we should have about 400 horsepower. At the end of the day you've got world Formula 1, world rally, and they are the two hardest forms of motorsport in their categories.

"Under touring cars come DTM, Aussie V8s, and our European spec cars. The Aussie V8s have always been renowned as very hard to drive, although I know they're changing them this year and they'll be a bit easier; DTM is pretty much a Formula 3000 car with a body on it, very spectacular and great for the Germans even if they aren't really anything like the production cars.

But, more power, more grip, and harder to

drive. Simple."

In the 12 Hour Huff did a pretty reasonable job, taking the start in the car and hauling it nicely up the order in the early running. They had their share of issues but eighth outright was third of the R8s home and the first of the older non-Ultra upgraded cars.

Huff hopes his first appearance on the Mountain won't be his last - in fact, he hopes it'll only be another eight months before he's back here.

I'd love to do Aussie V8s. I have looked into it, but it's very difficult for someone who lives in Europe and has no contacts in Oz. "At the same time I'm hoping that by coming here and doing this event. I'll be able to meet a few team bosses and see if there are any possibilities. 'd love to do Bathurst, or the Gold Coast race, maybe for a few years and see where that took me. I'd love to come and do a season of V8s- I'd love to do five or six seasons down here in those cars. I'd love to be in those cars battling it out with Lowndesy and Whincup and all those guys. It's just finding the opportunity."

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World championship speedway has come a long way ... by not changing too much at all. Chris Lambden went to Western Springs to see for himself here are sports which have reinvented themselves in order to try to meet the demands of the 21st century sports fan, and there are those which haven't.

Well-meaning guardians of various sports have modified their approach until the sport is barely recognizable as the sport it once was 66

(there are those who believe F1 has changed too much in order to accommodate the Great God Television) while others have barely outwardly changed at all, and are all the better for it.

The world of bike speedway is one of the latter.

In the '80s I went to a World Speedway

final, at Wembley Stadium in London. Over 90,000 people were there, with a temporary track created annually at the then mecca of football. It was a massive night. In those days, bike speedway was a huge thing in the UK and the Nordic countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Interest dipped as the century headed motorsport news

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Flying solo; Jaroslaw Hempel gets some air under the front on his way to winning the final of the World Championship at Auckland, main, left. Solo speedway racing has not changed much in decades - and is all the better for it, above. ;

in the '70s you could generally watch them

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race each other at Christchurch's Templeton Speedway. We were spoiled.

Fast-forward to March 2013, Western

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Fundamentally, not a lot has changed and, in this case, that is a great thing.

Yes, there's more colour - enter sponsors Monster energy drinks; yes, there's an airfence between the riders and the outer fence; toward its end, but there is no doubt that the and yes, it's now a global TV spectacle. But emergence of the 21 st century version of the that's about it. one-off world championships of the past - the The bikes are still powered by single FIM Speedway World Championship series, carburettor 500cc methanol-burning fourfirst run in 1995 - has reinvigorated one of strokes, and have no-brakes, no electronics the great two-wheeled competitions. or telemetry. The races are still just four laps, It turns out to be a great TV sport, with a from behind a simple starting gate. Each rider new and growing global audience. gets five heats, using each of the four 'gates' I love bike speedway. I grew up In at least once.

Christchurch, New Zealand, which just The one addition to the format since those happens to be the home town of Ronnie days of yore is the addition of two semi-finals Moore, Barry Briggs and the great Ivan and a final once the 20 heats are over. The Mauger. The trio won 12 — yes, that s 12 top eight qualify and away they go - two world championship between them and over semis, then a four-man final, still over just the southern hemisphere summer months www.mnews.com.au

four laps. The winner of the final is the event 'winner' even though it's possible that someone else might have accrued a few more points. No-one notices - and it provides a great climax to the three-hour show. And of course, the championship isn't decided over a single night any more - Auckland is the first of 12 stops in 2013, the only one outside Europe.

Given that the current world champion Chris Holder and recently-retired multichampion Jason Crump are both Aussies, it's surprising that Australia doesn't host a round - it did, once, in 2011, but for one reason or another, it wasn't commercially successful.

Now there's an opening for an entrepreneur ... this circus isn't that expensive to move around ...

But back to Western Springs, at a few metres over a quarter mile, the fastest track on the calendar. Used regularly for Sprintcar and Midget racing, the surface has been relaid with the best option for bikes.

The racing is, as it always was, raw and edge-of-seat stuff. Clearly, getting the jump at the start - gating - is crucial, and on this day the track surface on the inside lane seems to offer that little bit more. Even so, it's no guarantee, and ultimately there's room for individual brilliance to get away well, or make a crucial race move.

As with everything else, bike speedway 67

r

Bike speedway is physicai — the first corner can be a meiee of eibows, front wheeis touching someone eise's ieg. It's combative but, generaiiy, there's a 'racing room'understanding among riders remains simple, even in this area. No fancy clutch technology here - just old-style multi plate clutch, hand-operated.

Bike speedway is physical - the first corner can be a melee of elbows, front wheels touching someone else's leg. It's combative but, generally, there's a 'racing room' understanding among riders, though even that goes out the window sometimes.

As the track surface evolves through the meeting, so does the optimum and optional lines. In the end, it produces the race of the day in the 20th and last heat. Even better, the star is another young rising Aussie, Darcy Ward.

From an outside start. Ward is dynamic.

From third, he disposes of American former

champ Greg Fiancock, around the outside, then the lead changes three times in just over a lap as he dives around, then inside, of effervescent Russian Emil Sayfutdinov.

Last corner, and the Russian has fought back, looks home, but Ward goes in wide at seemingly suicidal speed and somehow holds it all together around the outside to snatch the win.

Brilliant. Worth the trip across the Tasman alone. The crowd erupts. Even the madcap Poles, there to support superstars Jaroslaw Hempel and legendary Tomasz Gollob, go nuts. Their big moment will come a little later, when the two Poles run 1-2 in the main final.

After such a great afternoon. Ward and Flolder struggle in their semis, and neither

makes the final four. But, in Ward's case, a young man with talent to burn (but an unfortunate knack of getting into off-track problems), has thrown down his marker.

Watch for him as the year progresses.

You can do that because World Speedway has great TV. Via Foxtel, you can watch live in the middle of the night as the circus goes from Gothenberg to Prague, Cardiff to Copenhagen, Terenzano to Stockholm, or again on delay a few hours later. It's a great show - ask Mark Webber. Aussie's F1 star and partner Ann are great fans, and quite likely to rock up at races that don't clash.

If World Speedway doesn't make it to Australia, check out your itinerary if you're heading to Europe, or consider a transTasman trip next year. The amphitheatre that is Western Springs is one of the best speedway venues in the world and it's literally 10 minutes from the centre of Auckland.

Speedway CP 2013-style continues speedway's long tradition of simple, raw, motorsport. And it is one great example of , the success of just tweaking, rather than re inventing, the wheel ...

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The Albert Park Formula One circuit is a bit over 5km and runs around a lake. So too does the Pergusa circuit run around a lake for about 5km - but that's where the similarity between the Melbourne and Sicilian venues ends. Andrew van Leeuwen takes us on a tour of the Autodromo di Pergusa, surely one of the strangest motor racing circuits in the world.

motorsport

ei manent race circuits have a habit of popping up in strange places.

Thanks to the inevitable noise and air pollutions that accompany motorsport, purpose-built, regularly used tracks tend to give big cities and suburban areas a wide berth. That's why Australia has major circuits in places like Benalla, Symmons Plains and Phillip Island.

But in the 'strange location’ stakes, none of these Aussie circuits comes close to Pergusa, a bizarre track situated smack bang in the middle of Sicily.

Sicily in itself is a unique enough place.

The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea almost feels more like Africa than Italy, which kind of makes sense given that only the 145km wide Strait of Sicily separates the Sicilian west coast from the city of Tunis in Tunisia.

About 140km inland from Palermo, Sicily’s capital, you’ll find a small village called Enna, a town of approximately 28,000 inhabitants that is famous for teetering on a hilltop some 930 metres above sea level. It’s also famous for being the closest major town to the volcanic Lake Pergusa, home of the infamous Autodromo di Pergusa.

The history of the Autodromo di Pergusa is a bit like the circuit itself - long and unique.

The track, a five-kilometre circle around the lake, was originally built in 1951, and was essentially an oval without any banking. In its original form, completely devoid of chicanes, it was notorious for being fast and dangerous, during an age where almost every circuit was fast and dangerous by our modern standards.

Throughout its early days, the circuit played host to a lot of big races and a lot of big names. While it was never a Formula 1 World Championship venue, it was a regular part of the European Formula 2 Championship between 1967 and 1984, and hosted a lot of Touring Car and Formula 3 races throughout the '60s and ’70s. It was also the home of a unique non-championship FI event called the Mediterranean Grand Prix, oddly named

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given that Enna is more than 80km drive from the nearest coast. During a four-year stint running under FI rules, the wins were shared between Lorenzo Bandini, John Surtees and Jo Siffert. The Mediterranean GP name was retained for the F2 and Formula 3000 races that followed the short-lived FI era, with guys like Jackie Stewart, Clay Regazzoni, Keke Rosberg and David Coulthard later adding their names to the list of winners.

But it was during the heydays of the 1970s that Maurizio Flammini first raced at Pergusa The flamboyant Italian was at that time one of the country’s most promising young drivers, and by the mid-’70s part of March’s factory F2 team. Flis racing exploits took him to Pergusa many times in his youth, and he remembers it fondly.

"First of all, this is a special place because of my age," he tells Motorsport News, before breaking into a hearty laugh.

"I first raced here something like 40 years ' ago. But Sicily is a special region. The warmth here is unlike anywhere else in the world. I have eight trophies, but I didn’t win eight races. I only won two. But in the old days, everyone who raced here left with a trophy, because the Sicilians wanted you to be happy.

"It was the same when you had a problem.

If you called the race director at, for example, a track in Germany, he would say 'OK, I’ll see what I can do’. If you called the race director' at Pergusa, he'd say 'no problem’. This is something fantastic. It’s different to any other circuit in the world."

While Flammini did have success at Pergusa, he could never quite win a race in the prestigious F2 series. While he was certainly one of the quicker guys around the lake, no mean feat given he was racing against guys like Jacques Laffite, Patrick Tambay, Rene Arnoux and Eddie Cheever, misfortune twice took likely wins away.

"I won races in Formula 3 and in Super Touring. I don’t remember when exactly, but it was many years ago.

"And I went close to winning a couple of Formula 2 races here. In 1975 I had the fastest time until there was an hour to go [in qualifying], but here there is a particular phenomenon. We were here in July, and the temperatures were high. We had 90 minutes, and it was close to sunset. And for some reason, right before the sun sets you always go 1.5 seconds slower, and right after it sets you can go 1.5s faster. So, what happened in both 1975 and 1976 - is that I was leading right before the sun set, and then I had accidents. So I always lost out.

"In the 1976 race, when I vyas racing the works March, I was leading until the very last lap. Rene Arnoux was second, but I was 71

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Drivers had to be constantly mindful of the waterfront that lay Just metres from the inside of the circuit, as well as stray snakes, which became a famous feature of the-track. leading by 14 seconds with just a lap to go.

It was really hot, so I decided to slow right down for the chicanes, because I had plenty of time. But then, at the first chicane, the tarmac just stuck to the rubber. Suddenly, the car was uncontrollable! I was going 40km/h slower than anyone else, so I lost the race on the last lap. Unbelievable."

Despite these instances of misfortune, Flammini is still happy to reminisce about the old. days of Pergusa, and the thrill of racing on such a unique circuit.

"In the beginning, this circuit had no chicanes," he says.

"It was fantastic. Flat, using just fifth and fourth gears. The corners were 250, maybe even 270, km/h. I raced here when there were two chicanes, and the long corner was still 180km/h. It was really something unbelievable."

The high-speed corners weren't the only danger at Pergusa. Drivers had to be constantly mindful of the waterfront that lay just metres from the inside of the circuit, as well as stray snakes, which became a famous feature of the track. But according to Flammini, the snakes weren't actually snakes at all.

"The lake is a unique thing. If you look at history of the circuit, more than one driver has been in the lake, and their cars usually go with them! As for the snakes, I haven't ever' seen any snakes. But there is a lot of Anguilla (ED: a freshwater eel). I have seen them there."

Even after the golden years of European F2, the Pergusa circuit somewhat amazingly continued to host top-level open-wheeler. In fact, it was a regular part of the International Formula 3000 Championship's schedule until 1998, the last race being won by Juan-Pablo Montoya, after Nick Heidfeld qualified on pole. And boy, what a place it must have been in a (relatively) modern single-seater.

One man who knows exactly what it was like is Christian Fittipaldi. A stint in F3000 gave the former FI and IndyCar driver the chance to race at Pergusa for the first time in

72

1991, something that to this day sticks in his mind.

It was pretty wild, because they didn't have all of the chicanes that they have now," says the Brazilian.

So we went all away around the big corner over the back flat-out. We were going hard from the second chicane onwards until the last chicane at the pits.

In a 3000 car, if you had any mechanical failures or a puncture over there you were having a big crash. Luckily nothing happened that weekend, and everyone left unscathed It was bumpy, but it wasn't the worse place we raced at. A place like Pau in France, that was place was really bumpy. Pergusa, it wasn't radical. We were suffering more from top speed than the bumpiness. I don't want to guess how fast we were going ... but it must have been about 285 or 290km/h."

While it's been some time since the circuit has seen regular motor racing action, there are plans afoot to bring the sport back to Enna. Last October, a major step in the right direction was taken when the track hosted the final round of the International Superstars Series. The event wasn't without its troubles.

but overall marked a return of top-level motorsport to Sicily.

It also gave both Flammini and Fittipaldi a chance to return to Enna, the Italian as one of

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the series bosses, and the Brazilian as a guest driver. For both, the biggest change was the chicanes, which have now multiplied to four.

"First there were no chicanes, then one chicane, then two chicanes, and now. honestly speaking, there are too many chicanes," says Flammini.

"But this is only because safety standards make it that way. There isn’t enough runoff otherwise. And the chicanes aren’t there just to slow down the speed. They also mean you have to drive, and it helps with overtaking.

They are all totally different. It gives the circuit seven different corners, so it’s not too bad."

While the return of the Mediterranean Grand Prix may be some way away, it would be undoubtedly fantastic to see this unique piece of Italian motor racing heritage stay in regular use, and maybe even cop a bit of a birthday. And according to Flammini, it can and should, happen.

There’s a lot to do in the infastructure, he says. "The track itself is not too bad although they need to find a way to stop people cutting the chicanes. But that can be done with rules and regulations, you don’t need physical things in the chicanes. That’s too dangerous. You can just say that if drivers drove over a certain line, they are penalised.

"But the infrastructure here isn’t veiy good anymore. For starters, it needs a tunnel. because you can’t get anything out of the pits during the race. It’s a problem, and it was always a problem. But it’s quite a difficult thing to do, because of the environmental impact.

"We probably need new pit boxes, maybe some more bathrooms, but it’s nothing dramatic.

"It’s still a good circuit."

74

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Last year’s race will go down as one of the classics, with a determined Garth Tander holding out a hard charging Craig Lowndes in possibly the most exciting finishes in the history of the race. This is the original Bathurst annual hard-cover book, the definitive publication on Australia’s Great Race. This fabulous annual hard-cover book is a collector’s prized possession, and a great gift idea.

Available Now I Price: A$98

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The Australian National Drag Racing Associations Top Doorslammer category could be in for another shake up when 16 times Australian champion Gary Phillips debuts a new Camaro with the full intention of returning to the competitive end of the supercharged sedans.

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or the start of this season, Phillips has turned most of his attention towards Top Alcohol, where he currently leads the points in his Lucas Oils Funny Car. In contrast, his Studebaker-bodied Doorslammer has been quiet, making just the one appearance at the Australian Nationals where It scored a runner up spot. But beware the sleeping giant.

The time Phillips would have spent racing the Studebaker has instead been dedicated to the preparation of the Camaro, a chassis he imported from the USA. The car made its first public appearance at the Australian Automotive Aftermarket Association show in Sydney.

Phillips explained that the team worked to that deadline and now anticipates running the car at the Nitro Champs on May 3-5.

"The AAAA show was a real success at Sydney Convention Centre, it was a big deal and It went over really well," he said.

The Camaro's main improvement over the Studebaker will be a new lightweight frame that will allow Phillips to be under the minimum weight for the class.

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"The other car was 90-100 pounds overweight all the time whereas this one needs ballast to make it legal so you can put the weight where you want it," he said. "It's as good as they come as far as chassis go.

"Being able to shift the weight around makes the car more balanced. With the Studebaker, as soon as you started putting power into the thing it didn't take much to unsettle it. It was good to go 5.90s but that's ho-hum these days."

Phillips will be keeping the engine technology the same for the Camaro. That said, the Studebaker has not acted as a 'donor car', and the Queensland-based drag racing veteran said he could make It ready to go with an engine swap in two hours.

"We're not going to change anything in the driveline, it's straight out of the Studebaker, if we don't change the engine then it's just the chassis we need to sort out, hopefully. You want to be at the pointy end and that's why we decided to go with it (the new car).

"I'm going to keep the Studebaker, even though I had a few guys interested in buying it. It's not really for sale at the moment. It will

still be perfect for eighth mile stuff (such as the regional Slamfest series).

"It's good to keep as a spare car. We can perhaps shuffle cars around the country in different containers."

Phillips is always coy about giving expectations on performances, preferring to let the numbers do the talking once they have been run. But he also stated he wasn't going , through all the effort of a new car to.stay in the same place.

"5.7s will be the aim. You can think you can do it all you like but until you do it, it doesn't mean anything," he said. "It's not lacking anything, it's just how you've got it set up.

Hopefully the chassis will take up some of the shortcomings the Studebaker had. The engine combination had been very reliable and it's making the horsepower, it's just being able to apply that horsepower.

"5.7s are not an easy task. Everything has to be perfect and only a select couple have done it. If the numbers come great, if they don't then we will work harder. That's what keeps me driven."

Returning focus to Top Alcohol, where motorsport news

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Phillips currently leads in the series by 46 points over fellow Brisbane resident Steven Reed,, he said it was business as normal.

"With the Funny Car we have only been playing around with some little things and it's there," he said, "it's not hurting any partsthat's the main goal of doing what we do and then going as quick as we can.

"We're not planning on making any wholesale changes although we're contemplating changing the body because this car is overweight as well. Unfortunately the Mustang body we crashed is junk, it's been cut in half and is hanging on somebody's wall now."

Every the forward planner, Phillips said he is going to wait on the new Camaro styles arriving in the USA so he can have a matching set of cars, albeit one a 1968 and one a 2013.

"We're waiting for the new Camaro to come because no one has got one yet," he said. "We had the first Chev Monte Carlo out here and now almost everyone has one.

"We will wait and see what happens with that, the car is heavy but it's still competitive.

It's just the physical weight of the body, es pecially after you repair them a few times.

They're never as good as they are when they're brand new. We haven't made any firm decision yet either way."

With a new lightweight Doorslammer ready v/A'w. mnews.corn.au

to go and a new lightweight Funny Car a possibility, the last thing to lighten the load on is Phillips himself. A health kick has seen him lose 17kg in recent months.

"I feel heaps better just using moderation with eating and changing the habits," he said.

"I still don't exercise but we are go, go, go all the time. I don't sit down to eat lunch."

While the Lucas Oils team has the championship lead, the competition is improving all the time. The depth of that competition is perhaps where the most

change is being felt. Phillips himself has lost twice to Wayne Price this season for instance, a car typically qualifying in the bottom half of the field.

"Anyone that can qualify is realistically a tough rival on race day," he said. "Everyone has the same equipment. It's just a matter of making sure you're there on race day. That's why the eight-car field is still a good deal because you have to work hard to qualify and every one is a threat, if they're in the field they deserve to be in there."

1

When it comes to sprintcar racing there are few who can match the record of success and the sheer longevity in the sport that Max Dumesny boasts. And there are probably no drivers as versatile - Dumesny also raced bikes, as well as enjoying competitive stints in NASCAR and V8 Supercars. He's still racing today and, as he tells Geoff Rounds, isn't planning on hanging up the helmet any time soon

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AX Dumesny remains as popular as ever.

If any evidence of his immense popularity was needed then the brilliant noise and scenes after his victory in the final round of the 2013 Easter Trail backed this up.

At 53, Dumesny again etched his name into Easter Trail history and along the way whipped his more fancied younger counterparts at his "hometown" and favourite venue, Premier Speedway, a place he grew up just a few kilometres from.

He set the tone for the night by recording the fastest time trial with a 10.117 after he and his crew, led by Daryl "Mouse" Green, built a new car earlier that morning at his mother Lorraine's, dairy farm at Nullawarre.

It took just under four hours to build and did the trick for the popular Australian motorsport legend.

"It wasn't a problem," Dumesny said, "We were fairly confident we were going to get it done."

From position three in the 30-lap feature, Dumesny would end his drought at the speedway that has made him world-famous, it was his 32nd Easter Trail success and his 11th at Premier Speedway.

"It was over halfway in the race I got going. I was pretty happy with that and to beat some young guys."

Dumesny, based these days in Sydney, has raced speedway in many parts of the world: NASCAR in Australia, touring cars and

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to do it anymore and until I'm imm racing listiirJenj^ ii^f wouldn't be doing it if / didn't For me ii's^bSut^limmg fun:it pretty mmh a/tways has been. motorbikes, but still gets very enthused about his sprintcar racing - so much so that the dreaded R-word (retirement) he can't handle.

"No, it's not happening, not anytime soon as far as I'm concerned," said Dumesny, who won his first Easter round way back in 1985.

"As I've told you before. I'll keep racing until I don't want to do it anymore and until I'm really sick of it. I still enjoy it. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't. For me it's about having fun. It pretty much always has been.

I think I've enjoyed this season more because I'm not doing World Series and I can pick and choose my races which is a lot more fun."

Dumesny's legions of fans, and there are many - he may just still be Australia's most popular sprintcar driver, judging by the amount of merchandise being worn and sold in speedway pits across the country. Much of his popularity has continued since the heady days with great rivals such as Garry Rush, Bill Barrows and in recent years with Robbie Farr and Garry Brazier.

Dumesny is now in his 27th year of sprintcar racing has won and done everything there is to do in this sport. He has nothing to prove to anyone. However, he has more

adventures ahead of him, personally, and this is likely to include some of the world's toughest terrain.

Last August Dumesny and good friend Sean Curren of Western Australia joined forces with a group of four other walkers and took to the iconic Kokoda Trail. The three-time Australian sprintcar champion said he trained daily consisting of many days of many kilometres, with one session of 30km.

"We'd talked about it for about 12 months and we just thought 'why not?'. It was a fundraiser for children's charity Bravehearts (a charity against child sexual abuse based in Queensland) there were six of us all together and we raised $240,000.

"When we were on the track we actually trekked a lot. I did a lot of study on the track before we left so I'd had all the reminiscing before we went on it. There were a couple of spots on the track that touched me, though.

We were walking through this valley where there were bullet holes in the rocks from 70 years ago.

"We got to Surgeons Rock (this is where the medics patched up the soldiers before sending them back to Eora Creek, near Port

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motorsport news

Moresby where they could receive further medical treatment), we were there 70 years to the day and I thought that was pretty damn cool to be there on the anniversary; it was a neat deal. It took us 86 hours and our aim was to do it in 96."

So is Dumesny turning trekker? You bet he is. His next assignment is a very big one, the biggest.

"I'm thinking of now doing base camp at Mount Everest next. I was talking to Kees Weel's wife, Judy, and she's pretty much inspired me to do this. I really do enjoy trekking."

The past year has been good and bad for Dumesny.

His son Mitchell suffered a serious back injury and was diagnosed as being a cracked T4 vertebrae with a small fragment of his

vertebrae approaching the spinal-cord after a crash at Sydney Speedway last November.

Dumesny, though, remained confident during his son's rehabilitation and said he is now fully recovered.

"He's good now. I was never really overly concerned as straight away we knew that it wasn't that bad and with the type of fracture he had we knew it would heal." , Just two months earlier Dumesny and his family lost one of their closest friends and their long-serving Sydney business manager Ken "Titch" Radcliffe to cancer. For more than 20 years Radcliffe had worked for Max and his wife Melinda.

During that same week Dumesny also endured the loss of two more friends, in American HoosierTire counterparts. Bob Newton, co-founder of the famous tyre brand

and loyal employee Mike Bolts.

"It was a sad week for Hoosier Racing Tire.

But we will carry on in their honour, because that's what they would want us to do," Dumesny said.

"Hoosier are still going great, we're getting more into road racing and many other forms of motorsport, so the business side for me is still good."

Dumesny is always passionate about the state of the speedway world and says the sport is in good place at the moment, just as he is.

"Speedway is going pretty, bloody good at the moment. Bloody oath it is, it really is. I think Sydney is suffering a bit. They over-do it and wear people out. In Victoria it's different as they don't get too much. Life's pretty good though, I got no complaints."

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www.mnews.com.au

83

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Ferrari

by Lego

Build your own Lego Ferrari, or grab a small scale version of Allan Grice^s 1982 Bathurst Commodore, or John Coss^ 1975 Falcon, or an early ^60s Scarab sports car, or some of the latest V8 Supercars... There’s something for everyone this month in the world of model cars. By Bruce Moxon

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ego purists might not like the way the iconic maker of those plastic blocks have gone. When I was a kid, there were blocks, flat bits and the odd wheel and axle to hang them off - not much more. You could build houses, some cars and the like, but mostly had to rely on your imagination and creativity.

Now you can get kits to make Star Wars and Harry Potter toys, and now some cool little Ferraris. In conjunction with Shell, Lego has a range of half-a-dozen Ferrari

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kits available at service stations. They're not expensive and they're some fun. The bodies are shaped but there are still a few blocks and flat bits - I reckon you could make other things using them were you so inclined.

The instructions aren't terrible either better than Ikea, that's for sure. And when you're done, you can put them into your collection as a bit of whimsy.

The wonderful start to the season for Brad Jones Racing has had the collector market getting all eager to grab hold of models of the

Fabian Coulthard and Jason Bright cars. The word is that both will be available from Biante in at least 1/18 and 1/43 scales. For myself.

I'd love to see them in 1 /64 as well. Why do I love 1/64? They're more affordable, both in dollars and in space - I can have a much more extensive collection and not need a warehouse to keep them in!

Classic Carlectables has sent me details of a couple of older but very interesting new releases. One Holden, one Ford, one each from the '70s and '80s and a pair of great looking models.

I remember well Bathurst 1982, when Allan Grice took on the might of the Holden Dealer Team, sharing a car with Re-Car owner Alan Browne. With touring cars getting faster and faster, Browne put up a $5,000 prize for the driver that could first beat the 100 mph (160km/h) average speed barrier (in a touring car, that is, because Kevin Bartlett had already eclipsed that magic ton in an openwheeler back in the '60s). And it was Grice who did so - much to the delight of most present.

In the race, Grice and Brock had a great scrap early, before Gricey settled into a small lead - only to lose the place after 10 laps with a spin caused by a brake problem. Grice and Browne battled hard to finally finish second, behind Brock and Larry Perkins motorsport news

Motorcraft Shell

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1 (incidentally winning his first Bathurst) and narrowly ahead of John Harvey and Garry l Scott.

The model features great detail - like l woven mesh air filters, sanded vinyl tyres and those distinctive BBS wheel covers. Open the boot and the fuel tank even has weld marks. like the real thing.

While 1982 was a good year for Holden, 1975 was aterrible year for Ford. Just three Falcons started the Hardie-Ferodo 1000 and none finished. The one we're looking at today is the John Coss/Kevin Bartlett car, which retired after just 10 laps with a blovi/n engine.

They'd won the previous year's race and were hoping to repeat the performance, but things were not to be. They qualified the car tenth, too - lots of number 10s in there.

Again, the model is a good thing - lots of detail and quality. I've said before that the big Ford looked good as a coupe with wide tyres to fill those huge rear guards. I do love John Goss' driver names - they were on the car (and other cars the two shared) as 'Johnny Goss and Kev Bartlett'. You'd never see that now, would you?

These two great 1/18 models will be available through your favourite retailer.

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Like many others, I fell a bit in love with the Can-Am cars that raced at Phillip Island in March. The big bangers were loud, fast and spectacular. So Apex Replicas having a range of Can-Am cars is a bit exciting. Sure, there have been Lola T70 and various McLarens around for a while, but what's got me a bit excited is a pair of Scarabs from Spark.

The Scarabs were the brainchild of Lance Reventlow - born to a fantastically rich family who decided to go motor racing. While his Formula One ambitions were fruitless (his cars were front-engined, just when the mid-engine became compulsory if you wanted to be

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The model features great detail - like woven mesh air filters, sanded vinyl tyres and those distinctive BBS wheel covers.

Open the boot and the fuel tank even has weld marks, like the real thing. competitive), his sports cars were good things.

The first versions were front-engined and competed with distinction against the Ferraris, Maseratis, Cunninghams and home-built specials racing at the time in the late fifties in America. And they looked gorgeous. There's a Mk 1 as raced by Reventlow himself and a Mkl 1 as raced by Chuck Deigh (who also designed and built the cars). Scarab did build mid-engined cars later on. There's also a model of their rear-engined sports car, as raced by AJ Foyt.

Frankly, I'd love to see a model of Scarab's aborted F1 car - It looked great, even if it was a year too late.

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Finally, I've written before about how far model cars have come. So have a look at the Polistil Formula One model. Look how basic they were, how little detail appeared. And yes, the model has transverse leaf springs at both ends. I scored a couple of these from a mate recently and even though they are supposed to be two different cars, the bodies are virtually identical other than the engine cover. The red car is a Brabham and the yellow one a Lola. Just in case you were wondering!

Trax Moffat Falcon llan Moffat's finest moment at Bathurst was undoubtedly his 1-2 'form finish' triumph in 1977. It was also no doubt Ford's finest moment on the Mountain as well, but the Blue Oval only hung around for one more year, leaving Moffat to solider on as a privateer in 1979. Bathurst that year was to prove no repeat of the 'll win, with Moffat retiring with engine failure on a day when arch-rival Peter Brock won by six laps. Unsuccessful it may have been, but in that distinctive Federation Insurance colours the big Falcon looked an absolute treat. Trax has recaptured the '79 Allan Moffat/John Fitzpatrick Bathurst Falcon in small scale, and is available now at $42.95.

For more info check the Trax website: www.topgear.com.au

86 motorsport news

Free Wheeling is not just a new nnotorcycle nnagazine but a completely new way of living the motorcycle experience.

Free Wheeling is a new motorcycle magazine dedicated to the fastest growing segment of the market - touring and adventure riding. Featuring the most stunning destinations in Australia and overseas, Freewheeling offers readers a truly cultural motorcycling experience including authoritative testing and analysis of the latest bikes and products, apparel and services, plus travel features showcasing some of the most exciting rides and destinations.

This is mixed with a blend of history, shared reader experiences and contributions from some of Australia's best and most passionate motorcycling journalists.

Free Wheeling magazine is the motorcycle experience, follow US on Facebook, or online at www.freewheeling.com.au

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Wizard of Oz

Norman 'Wizard' Smith is one of our most important motoring pioneers. He was a racing driver of some note, but he was more famous for the distance and land speed records he set in the 1920s and ‘30s. The somewhat tragic story of Smith and his brilliant engineer/designer Don Harkness has been told before, but it is a tale worth telling again. Clinton Walker is best known as a culture writer/ historian of some note, and this non motoring background brings a different perspective to the Wizard Smith story in Wizard of Oz: Speed, modernism and the last ride of Wizard Smith. Walker is no motoring/motor racing expert, but he more than gets by with his painstaking research and his ability to tell a story.

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My

Favourite Race

o

bviously when you win your first Grand Prix - that's an important day in your life. Your last Grand Prix, because in my case I knew I was retiring so my last Grand Prix was a very emotional one because I didn't do it. It would have been my 100th Grand Prix, but unfortunately my team-mate (Francois Cevert) got killed on the Saturday of qualifying at the American Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in 1973. So I in fact withdrew from the race in, let's say in recognition of his life.

If I talk about the best race of my life would

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be the German Grand Prix of 1968. It was the old Nurburgring which is 14.7 miles, or 23km, each lap and 187 corners in those days. I won by more than four minutes - a big long win. So that was, to win the Nurburgring was always a big thing, because it was the granddaddy of them all race track wise. It was by far the most dangerous race track in the world. And to win it by such a big margin was very unusual. Nobody has won it by that kind of margin before or since.

I was driving a Matra Ford, a French car with a Ford Cosworth engine. It was entered

by Ken Tyrrell and was my first year with motorsport news

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Ringmaster: Sir Jackie Stewart was supreme in the wet at the Nurburgring in 1968, above, below left. Stewart tried the Matra without wings in a practice session, left. On the podium with Jochen Rindt and Graham Hill, below.

Matra in Formula 1 and I won three Grands Prix that year with that car and it was a good car.

My car wasn't ready, it had an electrical problem and I only got a small amount of running on the first day, because then they had two days of qualifying and it meant that I .only started sixth on the grid.

It was a bad weekend of weather. That .race would never have been started today, it would never have been allowed. At times we were down to 50 and 60 metres of visibility.

The marshals couldn't see each other, there was fog and a huge amount of rain, a lot of flooding, a lot of rivers running across the track and everything was one big adventure really.

It didn't cross my mind to pull out of that race because of the low visibility. Keep in mind that motor racing in those days was extremely dangerous. If you raced for a five-

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year run there was a two out of three chance you were going to die. And you knew that.

A one out of three chance you were going to live. So the batting average wasn't good.

By the exit of the first corner I think I was in third place. And then I picked the other two guys up - I think it was Chris Amon in a Ferrari and Graham Hill in a Lotus - before we were quarter way around the Nurburgring.

At the end of the first lap I had something like a 20-second lead. Twenty seconds is a long way but keep in mind the Nurburgring, we must have been lapping in the rain in around 13 minutes.

It was difficult to know how much of a lead I had because it was a long way to come to the very next lap to get a signal. So I just kept moving along and by the end of it I was more than four minutes ahead.

Everything was pretty all right. I certainly think that I drove within my limits. I was very mindful of the fact that you had to go fast enough to win, but not overly fast where you would start making the sort of errors that some people make under real pressure or over-the-limit sort of performances.

All the really good racing drivers, in my

opinion, can just drive within the limit.

Jim Clark was the best racing driver I ever raced against. He was a great master at not overdoing things and not going beyond his own limits. I learned to do that fairly early on, so I was in pretty good shape.

So that was a giant event for me and that race is probably the most outstanding of my life, but there are so many more to think about. Winning that first World Championship in Monza, winning my first Grand Prix in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, winning my last World Championship, securing it again at Monza. So Italy had a lot to do with the success I achieved.

Sir Jackie Stewart spoke with Edward Krause

Professor

m Victor Haight

i From the couch

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ead a piece by the editor of a respected online motorsport magazine, bemoaning the circus' long trip down under, to a city that just doesn't seem enthused about the F1 'brand', and it's too hot, and doesn't this place appreciate the wonderful gift that F1 has bestowed upon it? And that she'd rather be in Singapore or Bahrain or somesuch...

And I thought to myself, 'suits me', girlie.

But she's right, you know - the locals couldn't care less, and I don't blame 'em. The appeal of shelling out a hundred bucks to watch low flying aircraft zot past the top of a concrete wall wears off pretty fast if you're not a hardcore fan. It costs the taxpayers a bomb, disrupts the city; it's time to let it go.

And if you are a hardcore fan, you'd be perfectly happy to watch Grands Prix on Sunday nights, but see the Australian Grand 96

Prix revert to being a race for the country's premier open wheeler category, which is Formula 3. It could alternate, a different city every year. Imagine a Grand Prix at Flidden Valley? Why not?

I would like to remind you all that the Australian Grand Prix was first run in 1928.

That's 22 years before Formula One existed, 57 years before FI went to Adelaide. The FI race at Albert Park is played out. No other town should pay the extortionate cost of hosting it. Let the Middle East, Russia, Mexico and Thailand have a go, and at the same time we can redress the balance of category interest in the sport at home, by letting local formula cars get some much needed exposure.

Speaking of John Goss...

Lie's still the man with the most awesome title in domestic motorsport; the only man

to have won the Australian Grand Prix an,d the Bathurst enduro. The question is: will this record ever be equalled? It is possible, and looking more possible than it has for a while with the increasing participation of overseas drivers in the category. Jacques Villeneuve could get a Bathurst drive; Goulthard and Hakkinen have a history with Mercedes, so maybe they could be lured out to partner Floldsworth and Engel? Jack, Denny, Stirling and Jack Ickx are the only Formula One Grand Prix winners to race in the enduro, and only Ickx won it. Of course, Casey Stoner has won the AGP a few times...

Aaron Noonan Why is Aaron Noonan not the head of the TV team for the Super V8 Intergalactic League or whatever it's called series? I don't understand. No disrespect intended to White Matthews or whichever, but he's a TV talking motorsport news

Mercedes-Benz I'm not sure who wants us to think what about those cars with a Mercedes-Benz logo on the grille running around the midfield and below of V8 Supercars. It has so many titles that I'm confused - and I'm a Professor.

Erebus? AMG? Mercedes?

m\ 4 l

head guy, not a racing guy. Did he attend Amaroo/Calder/Lakeside as a kid? I doubt it.

If not, he's not required. I know the histrionics and yelling and 'this is extraordinary!' pull in the casual viewer, in the same way they apparently only watch 'for the stacks', but I don't care. I just want motor racing, and someone to fill in the gaps that the endless graphics don't fill; pretty much who's leading, and why, and not much else. Cater to my needs, not someone you're hoping will switch over from another sport, like netball. Why? Because I've spent heaps of money on car magazines over the years and deserve respect.

Noonan is articulate, but more than that, he's passionate. Never met him, of course, but I just know he's obsessed with it. And if we must have someone on the commentary team who isn't an ex-racer, it's got to be him.

I just don't get it. v\/v/w. mnews.com.au

One thing we can't get confused about, and I want you young kids to pay attention here, is this: a Mercedes-Benz has already won the Great Race; the second instalment of which, at Phillip Island in 1961. Now, let's get one thing straight; this is the 'Great Race', Bathurst or not. With the passing of time, folk forget that the event began at the Island. So, Bob Jane (still the only guy to win it four times in a row) and Harry Firth were first home, in a Mercedes-Benz 220SE, despite Bob pitting two laps in with a flat arid having to change it himself. Tom Naughton and Ross Wemyss, strangely, ran a 280E in 1975. They qualified about 30 seconds off pole, somewhere around the Minis, Passat, and Doug Whiteford's Datsun 240Z... Jane himself entered two Mercedes-Benz 190Es in his huge team for '86; one ended up in the fence after a lap, the other came home second in class, driven by a Kiwi ex-world champ (there's only one, Hulme) and Franz Klammer, an Olympic Gold winning skier! A few years on, Phil Ward gyrated one through the sand at McPhillamy, got yelled at by the officials for encouraging the crowd to help dig him out, and carried on sans windscreen...

Three years later he returned with his Merc to finish 12th outright and claim victory in the 1600-to-2500cc class - with none other than John Goss as co-driver. So, MercedesBenz and the Great Race have a colourful, idiosyncratic history already; that young lass with the tattoos kind of fits the picture nicely!

Massa and Courtney So, what do the soft hearted Brazilian and the former Jaguar test driver have in common, other than getting big bumps on the head while driving an FI car? Over the last few years... a lack of results, basically.

Massa went two years without a podium before Japan last year, and Courtney has placed tenth in the points standings the last two years. Neither should be considered acceptable. Ferrari is like the HRT of Formula One, and HRT is the Ferrari of V8 Supercars, I think, and... I say, with the emergence of Triple Eight, and FPR's expertise at winning races that aren't Bathurst, and leading the points table at times that aren't, you know, the end of the season, being in the elite factory squad means one should be winning races and running top six in the points. At worst.

Basically, if motor racing was like football, both these guys would have been dropped already, and Nick Percat and Perez would have been in their seats by mid 2011. But

both seemed to weather the storm, and both are now back in form. Massa is now no doubt beginning to make his erstwhile team boss nervous, having outqualified him four times on the trot. Beats me why they were given so long to redeem themselves; I bet my students wish I was that patient...

Liveries You have to hand it to FPR; at least they're having a go. The asymmetrical paint schem es on the cars this year are daring to be different.

What stops V8 Supercars from looking like a grown-ups category is the need still for some teams to run two different liveries, relevant to stretching the sponsorship bucks across two cars, the Tekno cars being a good example (I preferred it last year when they had no livery at all).

Craig Pollock tried this in FI when BAR entered the fray in 1999, planning on running cars with different designs, one for each of two fag packets. But this offended Ecclestone's sensibilities; he would have none of it, so instead they did each side of the car with a massive zipper down the middle.

Curiously, FPR and BAR have won the same amount of Bathurst/V8SC championships.

I guess Tekno are avoiding the prospect of having a pet food and iconic chocolate retailer separated only by interlocking metal teeth...

Scott McLaughlin I do try not to get too misty eyed about young talent coming through the ranks, after being burned by Nicola Larini, Toranasuke Takagi and Phil Brock - drivers who all showed so much promise but never fulfilled their potential. But, Scott McLaughlin is looking so good I just can't help myself. Nice move on Winterbottom at Symmons Plains.

Fantastic effort to win a race at the Grand Prix meeting. And he's already won a few championships in touring cars. Did I mention he's 19? Terrifying, really. I like the speed, the racecraft and the results and, probably like Garry Rogers himself, I really like the fact that his cars don't seem to return to the pits in small pieces.

But, what's most striking is the demeanour; he's cool, calm and articulate with a camera in his face. If he keeps paying attention, he could be a real prospect. Where will he be at age 30? In Carrera Cup or that absurd Lite racing sideshow, and on the scrounge for an enduro co-drive? Or going for his third V8SC championship? NASCAR or DTM? Good luck to him; he's a real racer, and looks like he'd help your grandmother across the street, too...

Professor V Haight 97

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Next issue of Motorsport News on sale 22nd May

98

motorsport news

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Get on the Grid! with the

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Post Classic Racing Association

Come and join the PCRA & meet some really friendly girls and guys and have some fun racing.

Lots of different classes to choose from;

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Engine capacity Manufacture date

For more information go to: www.pcra.com.au E-mail: secretary@postclassicracing.com.au f

Or come along and watch the action and chat to the friendly racers in the pits.

Round 1: 4th May Sydney Motorsport Park Round 2: 9th June Sydney Motorsport Park Round 3: 31st August Wakefield Park

Enduro: 1st September Wakefield Park

Round 4: 29th Sept Sydney Motorsport Park Trans-Tasman Challenge: 25-27 October Hampton Downs, New Zealand

We're busy preparing for this years FUCHS Winternationals. The biggest drag racing event in the Southern Hemisphere. 600 teams, 4 days, the best racers in the country and in each category, there is only one winner.

t's going to be brutal.

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