Whincup on a world stage
A few things this week tell us quite a lot about V8 Supercar racing. First, the confirmation that reigning champion and this year's series leader Jamie Whincup is to compete at the Race of Champions in November -- against the likes of seven-time Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher, likely 2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button, and young three-time grand prix winner Sebastian Vettel.
It's a huge feather in Whincup's cap that he was invited to participate and something of a reflection of the regard in which Australian racing is held in world motorsport circles.
The Race of Champions has been around for 21 years, pits drivers (some retired) from various categories, and even some motorcycle racers, against each other in a variety of machinery on a custom-made track. Among the vehicles to be raced this year are a Ford Focus rally car, the KTM X-Bow and a specially-made Race of Champions car. Troy Bayliss, a multiple superbike world champion now embarking on a V8 Supercar career, has taken part in the past, while five-time 500cc world champion Mick Doohan is supposedly also set to be an Aussie representative this year.
Another participant this year will be Ford and Finland's World Rally Championship leader Mikko Hirvonen, who we read has refused to accept the winner's trophy from the recent Rally Australia in northern NSW which was presented to his great French rival Sebastien Loeb before the three factory Citroens were penalised for illegal front suspensions. ("He [Hirvonen] refused it because he knows Seb won in Australia," Citroen's rally boss Olivier Quesnel told Radio Monte Carlo).
The Race of Champions has traditionally been held in Europe but this year it will be in China -- at Beijing's Bird Nest stadium which came to the world's attention during last year's Olympics. Whincup will be the first Australian four-wheel racer to compete. Mark Webber was invited last year but couldn't make it once he broke his leg.
The event is on November 2-4 and Whincup's participation has been made easier by the cancellation of the V8 Supercar Championship round in Bahrain that was scheduled for the following weekend.
That round will now be held at Phillip Island on November 7-8, with a 100km Saturday race and 200km Sunday race, while Bahrain will host round two of the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship a week after the new Abu Dhabi round in February.
"I will get to race some amazing cars against the likes of Schumacher and Button, which is incredibly exciting," Whincup said.
Good luck to the boy. He deserves to be seen on a world stage, and hopefully he will do well.
The story V8SA doesn't want read
Another matter this week which reflects V8 Supercar racing in a different light is the removal -- or attempt to remove -- a story from the website V8Supercars.com.au because it wasn't music the V8 Supercars Australia honchos wanted to hear.
It was a story by experienced journalist and former Auto Action magazine editor Bruce Newton, saying that Holden might turn to production car racing if it is unhappy "with the way V8 Supercars' Car of the Future-based expansion of the category develops".
The story quoted Holden motorsport manager Simon McNamara saying: "If they go down a path that doesn't suit us in any way, shape or form then we just won't do it. Simple as that...The way the world is now, we could go and do some production car racing (and) spend significantly less money."
Newton wrote that McNamara wasn't enamoured by the prospect of other manufacturers entering the category but accepted it may happen.
We heard that the boys at V8 Supercar headquarters weren't happy with the story and that V8SA media manager Cole Hitchcock was delegated to contact the man with the contract to supply the editorial content for V8 Supercars.com.au, Neville Wilkinson of V8X, to get the story removed. The story's headline, 'Holden may not play if CoF isn't right', promptly disappeared from the site news list or story menu. However, we have noticed since that the entire story can still be read at this link.
This matter sounded and looked to us like V8SA being very thin-skinned and intolerant of any view that didn't align with its own, so this author emailed V8SA media man Hitchcock the following note:
"Is it right that you/V8SA demanded a story about Holden foreshadowing it might race production cars if it doesn't like the look of the Car of the Future proposal(s) be removed from V8supercars.com.au this week? If so, might that action (removal of story from view) be construed as censorship?"
This morning we received Hitchcock's reply, which said:
"Yes we did. We did not demand, we asked. It is our website... Censorship -- not even close. It was removed because of inaccuracies and its misleading nature."
We appreciated the prompt reply but this author then sought clarification of what V8SA saw as inaccurate or misleading. It seemed to us to be simply a case of Holden's McNamara expressing a point of view. Unless there is more to it than this author can comprehend, calling the story inaccurate and/or misleading could be unfairly damning the respected author. And we disagree with Hitchcock. It looks like blatant censorship.
We pointed out here a week or so ago, in relation to another motorsport entity but coincidentally also on the Gold Coast, that conflict of interest did not seem to be a matter easily comprehended in that part of the country. It seems to us the same can now be said of censorship. On a check of our incoming emails now we discover a reply from Hitchcock to our query about how the story was inaccurate and/or misleading, and here is the gist of it:
"Holden Racing Team pulling out of V8 Supercars -- you have to be joking. That's absolute rubbish for a start. Why would Holden just back TeamVodafone if they want to go race production cars?.. We have always said the external appearance (of V8 Supercars) would retain its current philosophy and that there would not be a silhouette type formula applied. Everyone at HRT and Holden knows that and has been fully briefed... Simon [McNamara] is totally entitled to his opinion, which we respect, but that particular story was a beat-up. Again, it's our website. And we were never asked to comment or given the right of reply, something I thought was one of the first and most basic ethics of journalism."
A few points from us about that now.
- Holden pulling out of V8 Supercars rubbish? A joke? The story Hitchcock sought to remove from the V8Supercars.com.au website, but which when we last checked was still accessible here includes a paragraph: "As sensational as that threat sounds, McNamara admits it's only a remote possibility." So Holden's McNamara has said that. But let's not forget that Holden's parent company has been in bankruptcy protection in the US recently and is far from out of the woods yet. And who would have thought Honda would have quit Formula One so promptly late last year? And that, a couple of years after taking over Sauber, BMW -- the maker of more sports cars than any other manufacturer in the world -- would be quitting F1 at the end of this season? Those decisions ought to be lessons to V8SA against any complacency about participating V8 Supercar manufacturers.
- The story a "beat-up"? Newton has simply reported remarks by Holden's McNamara, including the comment that a pull-out from V8 Supercar racing is "only a remote possibility".
- "We were never asked to comment or given the right of reply." McNamara expressed a point of view. He wasn't making any accusation against V8SA. Why is it essential that the story contain a V8SA comment? Not that anyone could reasonably object to a V8SA comment/point of view being added -- either in that story or a separate reply. As Hitchcock points out, it's V8 Supercars' website and it could easily do either of those. And it's much easier and quicker to do that in these wonderful days of the internet than in a printed publication.
- We still feel the bottom line is, as we said at the outset on this matter, that V8SA is being thin-skinned and intolerant of views that don't align with its own.
It's ironic, in light of the haste to go the smother on the Holden article, that another story has survived the censor's snip on V8Supercars.com.au. That is another story by the same author, Bruce Newton, and filed only a day earlier, that begins by saying that Toyota is "unenthusiastic" about getting into V8 Supercar racing. Newton writes that "Australia's No. 1 vehicle retailer and the only other local manufacturer apart from Ford and Holden isn't waiting with baited breath to see what actually turns up in the Car of the Future regulations being devised by Mark Skaife".
The story quotes Toyota Australia senior executive director (sales and marketing) David Buttner saying:
"My personal opinion is that if we were to enter into some form of partnership or marketing which was to promote a product other than that which we can show our customers in the showroom as a standard offering from one of our manufacturing facilities from here or overseas, then I would have to seriously question the relevance of that and the viability of such an investment."
That story in full is here. Might Holden's McNamara be entitled to lodge an equal opportunity claim with V8 Supercars.com.au over this -- that Toyota's David Buttner is allowed to say his piece but that he (Holden's McNamara) isn't?
Cost-cutting plans almost in tatters
Something else caught this author's attention this week in regard to V8 Supercars. It was a headline on page 4 of Auto Action magazine edition 1359, out on Wednesday, that read, "V8 cost reduction plan hits trouble". Even before we read it we had a suspicion that it was going to confirm our long-held view that trying to mandate cost-cutting in motorsport rarely, if ever, works.
Our belief is that spending in motor racing only falls when those participating simply haven't got the money to spend; before that point is reached those participants will spend whatever they have, can afford or can get. We found this week's Auto Action story, by editor-at-large Mark Fogarty, interesting and revealing, and we take the liberty of repeating the first two-thirds of it here:
"V8 Supercar's bold plan to reduce costs has been reduced to a handful of restrictions following widespread disagreement with the proposals. The much-vaunted 14-point cost reduction scheme outlined by V8SA executive chairman Tony Cochrane at Darwin in June was largely rejected as unworkable.
"Although the teams supported the money-saving strategy in principle, they objected to the lack of evidence to justify most of the proposed controls. They have consistently complained that the recommendations submitted for approval have been little more than a slightly expanded version of the original outline.
"The promised comprehensive report into the cost reductions -- to be achieved by specification freezes, control engine components and more standardised running gear -- has failed to appear. Questions are being asked about what happened to the work former category technical director Campbell Little did on defining the cost reduction rules before he left last month, amid claims that his final report hasn't been seen.
"AA has learned that, following a meeting of the four team representatives on the V8 board in Melbourne on September 14, much of the 14-point plan has been abandoned. The teams received a report late last week that, according to senior team sources, informed them that only five of the initiatives were being pursued. 'Seventy per cent of it has been knocked on the head as not feasible,' one of the sources said. 'And there's more work to be done on the rest.' "
All of which confirms this author's view that the notion of mandating cost cutting is largely pie in the sky.
Webber's take on title -- and Briatore
Some interesting comments from Mark Webber ahead of this weekend's second Singapore night GP. Firstly, that it is now "very difficult" for him to win the drivers' world championship.
"Jenson (Button) only has to get four, five points on us at this event and it's all over," Webber said.
Button has 80 points, his Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello 66, Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel 54 and Webber, also with Red Bull, 51.5. As much as we're disappointed to see our boy out of contention for the title, he's admitting what had become pretty clear after he failed to collect any points from Valencia, Spa and -- courtesy of being punted -- Monza.
Webber has also had his say on Flavio Briatore, the man run out of the sport this month for having ordered Nelson Piquet Junior to crash his Renault in last year's Singapore GP to help teammate Fernando Alonso win. Apart from running the Renault team, Briatore managed a stable of drivers -- including Webber.
"I've had Flavio looking after me for 11 years and I have never looked at the contract from the day I signed it -- and there's not many other people in the paddock you could say that about," Webber said.
"I don't want to work with anyone else in the future if I can't work with him. He was a very good character for our sport, and I'm sure a lot of other people would agree."
Now loyalty is one of Webber's strongest and most commendable attributes, and it is understandable for him to feel indebted to Briatore for facilitating the long career he's had in F1, especially as he came with next to no sponsorship. But to stick to the line that Briatore has been "a very good character" for the sport is misguided. Briatore's colourful character may have brought attention on the sport, but that character has been exposed for what it is in "Crashgate".
Webber also said: "I'm running out of patience sticking up for the sport and I am sure other people are as well."
We have some difficulty reconciling that with his defence of Briatore.
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