MOTORSPORT: Holdens set V8 Supercar pace

The free V8 Supercar pre-season test at Sydney's Eastern Creek was a hit with fans, lots of new F1 cars in the next two days, and Chip Ganassi achieves an American 'grand slam'

Lowndes on top, Courtney midfield, FPR pair near mark
The motor racing year is going up a gear – the V8 Supercars have had the pre-season test day in Sydney, the new Formula One cars are starting to roll out and testing starts in Europe tomorrow, while America's Daytona 24-hour has been run and won.

Craig Lowndes, Holden, Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone topped the V8 Supercar test at Eastern Creek.

Indeed Holdens filled the top seven positions in the three-hour afternoon session, when some cars ran on soft “sprint” tyres.

However, the morning times of Will Davison – in his debut with Ford Performance Racing after two years at Holden Racing Team – and another Ford driver, Shane van Gisbergen, were good enough for them to be fifth and sixth fastest overall for the day.

In front of a crowd estimated at more than 10,000, who took advantage of free admission, Lowndes clocked a best lap of 1 minute 30.1877 seconds around the partly resurfaced 3.93km circuit on soft tyres late in the day.

That was half a second better than the decade-old pole position time of Mark Skaife, who did a few laps in the Triple Eight Commodore on Saturday too.

Fujitsu Racing/Garry Rogers Motorsport's Michael Caruso set the second fastest time late in the day and his teammate Lee Holdsworth wound up fourth – with Team BOC's Jason Bright sandwiched between them.

A highlight of the day was Brad Jones Racing colleague Jason Richards fronting after chemotherapy and driving eight laps.

FPR's Mark Winterbottom was the fastest Ford driver in the afternoon, but he had Tony D'Alberto (Wilson Security Commodore), Jason Bargwanna (Team BOC Commodore) and Garth Tander (HRT Commodore) ahead of him.

Winterbottom had been fourth in the morning as well.

Reigning champion James Courtney was only midfield all day in his HRT debut – 14th in the morning and 16th in the afternoon.

The V8 Supercar Championship starts in Abu Dhabi on the second weekend of February.

$9 million upgrade for Eastern Creek
Eastern Creek, although no longer a V8 Supercar Championship venue, is to get a $9 million upgrade – well short of some of the grander plans around a couple of years ago, but with the NSW government tipping in $7 million.

The weekend announcement by the government and the Australian Racing Drivers' Club, which operates Eastern Creek, said the upgrade would "increase the circuit's capacity and track configurations to four different layouts - with two circuits able to operate independently".

"Critical to the upgrade will be a lengthening of the circuit to accommodate the multi-purpose layout and an additional pit lane to support the two-circuit configuration," it said.

ARDC president Andrew Leithhead said: "This investment by the government will allow the ARDC to expand the capacity of the track to service demand from both club-level motorsport and broader community needs.

"The circuit upgrades will also allow us to service the growing demands for race circuits since the closure of other permanent circuits in Sydney."

ARDC chief executive Glenn Matthews said the extensions would double the Creek's capacity.

"This will allow two or more track activities to be held concurrently," he said.

"The project will allow for a significant expansion of driver training capacity - in a safe, controlled environment."


New F1 cars to come in a rush
Ferrari took pole position for F1 launches with the unveiling of its F150 – named to mark 150 years of Italian unification – and three more teams will reveal their cars tonight before testing starts at Valencia in Spain tomorrow.

The first test – on Valencia's permanent Circuit Ricardo Tormo rather than the temporary street circuit that hosts the European Grand Prix - will be over three days.

It will be followed by three four-day tests before the season starts in Bahrain in mid-March.

The other tests will be at Jerez in Spain on February 10-13, then the Catalunya circuit in Barcelona on February 18-21 and finally in Bahrain on March 3-6 – a week before the opening GP there.

The two Lotus teams – one that was previously Renault and is now sponsored by Malaysia's Proton, which owns the Lotus road car marque; the other the second-year outfit independently-owned by Malaysians – and Sauber will launch their cars tonight.

Red Bull, Mercedes, Williams and Scuderia Toro Rosso will unveil their cars tomorrow, while McLaren won't reveal its MP4-26 until Friday – in Berlin.

However, McLaren test driver Gary Paffet, then Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will drive last year's MP4-25 on the new Pirelli tyres at the Valencia test.

World champion Sebastian Vettel will have the first run in Red Bull's RB7 at Valencia, before handing over to Australian teammate Mark Webber mid-Wednesday.

Fernando Alonso will do the first two days in the new Ferrari, with Felipe Massa in it for last day at Valencia. (The BBC's Andrew Benson's report on the team's launch, angled on Ferrari feeling the pressure to topple Red Bull, is here).

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will share driving duties in the new Mercedes W02 on the first day of the test.

Toro Rosso's Australian reserve driver Daniel Ricciardo, who is to take part in Friday practice at GPs this year, will do some pre-season testing of the Italian-based Red Bull junior team's STR6 – but not at Valencia.


Red Bull chief on how Webber no match for Vettel
Just a month and a half out from the new F1 season, Red Bull motorsport chief Dr Helmut Marko has inflamed the Vettel-Webber rivalry, saying that the Australian would never have challenged the German last year except for the youngster's mechanical reliability issues.

Marko said there would never have been any speculation about a need for team orders –which aren't Red Bull's style anyway – at the Abu Dhabi championship decider if not for Vettel's gremlins in Bahrain, Melbourne, Barcelona and Korea.

"Without the 66 points he lost due to technical defects, the stand-off with Mark Webber would never have occurred," he told Germany's Sport Bild,
see here.


Ferrari driving hard against small turbos
Ferrari is still griping about F1's switch to four-cylinder, 1.6-litre turbocharged engines in 2013 for greater fuel efficiency.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has said that he does not oppose the introduction of "green" technologies – like the return of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) this year - but is vehemently opposed to halving the number of cylinders in the engines. Montezemolo is against anything smaller than a V6.

"A four-cylinder Ferrari seems absurd to me," he said. "A six-cylinder would have been more in line with the F1 positioning on the market."

Montezemolo also has another bee in his bonnet - the ban on testing during the season.

"A sport on such a level can't continue with such an absurd limitation regarding testing, in terms of development and in terms of safety, for our new drivers, who have to involved and have to be able to test," he said.

Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Jean Todt, ironically for many years an employee of Montezemolo as chief of Ferrari's F1 team, said the decision on the engine formula from 2013 was carefully considered.

"I think the team and the people at Ferrari know very well that we've discussed everything, and Ferrari has always been involved in those talks," Todt told Motorsport-Total.

"Regarding the engine, everything has been decided - it's done.

"It was not said suddenly that we do four cylinders, and a turbocharger. All of this is the result of lengthy discussions with experts."

Todt said he would have been happy with any size engine as long as it helped to reduce costs in F1 while making a better show for fans.

"If the result [of those discussions] has been that we want eight or 10 cylinders, then I would have no problem with that," he said.

"What I want, however, are lower costs, a better show and the introduction of new technologies."


Ganassi achieves American 'grand slam'
For now, at least, Chip Ganassi has taken Roger Penske's mantle as the top all-round team owner in American racing.

Ganassi scored its fourth Daytona 24-Hour victory in six years with a one-two finish at the weekend, while Australia's Ryan Briscoe was one of the drivers in the fifth-placed finisher, a Dallara-Chevrolet.

The Ganassi team's No. 1 Riley-BMW MKXI/XX driven by Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas, Joey Hand and Graham Rahal crossed the line two seconds ahead of its sister car.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, who shared the second Ganassi entry with Juan Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti and NASCAR star Jamie McMurray, could not take advantage of a late safety car, which turned the race into a final lap sprint.

Ganassi now has a "grand slam", holding the trophies for four big American races at once as last season he won the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 NASCAR events with McMurray and the Indianapolis 500 with Franchitti.

Last year's Daytona 24-winning team, Action Express Racing, finished third this time with its Riley-Porsche driven by Joao Barbosa, Christian Fittipaldi, Max Papis, Terry Borcheller and JC France.

Barbosa was only 0.3 seconds behind Dixon at the flag.

British ex-F1 drivers and former Le Mans 24-Hour winners Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell finished fourth in the United Autosports Riley-Ford they shared with Zak Brown and Mark Patterson.

They came back from a lap down to be only three seconds behind the victors.

The Dallara-Chevrolet that Briscoe co-drove ended a lap down after two major delays.


Petty tells how close team came to folding
Still on the American scene, NASCAR "King" Richard Petty has told of how close his team came to closing its doors just after Australian Marcos Ambrose signed last year to drive for it in the new season about to start.

Petty's version of events is here while another article on some of the difficulties NASCAR is facing is here.

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