This year’s 53rd Daytona 500 was a messy, crashed-filled race with a record number of 16 yellow flags. As a result it was the second slowest 500 we’ve seen, but there was also a record 74 lead changes and, more importantly, an excellent win by a 20-year-old rookie driver and one of NASCAR’s oldest, most celebrated teams.

Trevor Bayne, making only his second Sprint Cup start aboard the Wood Brothers Ford, drove a flawless race to score the team’s first win in 10 years. In fact it was the Wood Brothers’ first victory at Daytona since David Pearson won the 500 back in 1976. Bayne therefore becomes NASCAR’s second youngest winner behind Joey Logano, who won his first race in 2009 when he was just 19.

Bayne led a Ford 1-2-3 with Carl Edwards and David Gilliland finishing second and third. It was also Ford’s 600th win in NASCAR’s first-division Sprint Cup series.

“I keep thinking I’m dreaming,” said a grinning Bayne in Victory Lane. “I’m so thankful for the job these guys did on this car. To win our first one in our second ever Cup race is just incredible. There must have been 15 different drivers who helped me today, and Carl [Edwards] helped us across the line. Wow, this is unbelievable!”

Many of NASCAR’s favourites were delayed or eliminated in a series of accidents. Defending champion Jimmie Johnson and team-mate Jeff Gordon’s cars were damaged in an early multi-car crash, while Dale Earnhardt Jr was knocked out in another pile-up at the end of the race. Earnhardt had to start the 500 from the back of the grid after crashing his pole-winning car in practice. NASCAR’s most popular driver enjoyed a strong race, coming through to lead a handful of laps and bringing the cheering crowd to its feet.

Another young star, David Ragan, was leading near the end with Bayne fastened to his bumper. But Ragan made a mistake on one of the final restarts, moving from the high lane to the bottom of the track as he took the green flag and earning himself a black flag, because NASCAR requires drivers to maintain lane position on restarts.

You can criticise NASCAR on many fronts, restrictor plate racing in particular. But Trevor Bayne’s win at Daytona for the Wood Bros emphasised the vitality and strength of America’s most successful form of motor racing.

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From your responses to last week’s blog about Jim HalI at the Nürburgring, it’s clear that many of you were taken by the Chaparral 2F long-distance sports/racer from 1967. Phil Hill and Mike Spence drove the winged 2F in that year’s International Championship for Makes and it was often the car to beat. Spence turned the fastest lap at Sebring, and Hill was on pole and set fastest lap in the Nürburgring 1000Kms.

But time and again the main drive-bearing in the 2F’s automatic transmission failed to go the distance, until the Brands Hatch (above) season-closer where Hill and Spence came through to beat Jackie Stewart/Chris Amon’s Ferrari 330P4 and Jo Siffert/Bruce McLaren’s Porsche 910. The CSI rewrote the rules for sports car racing that winter, mandating a 5-litre engine limit and effectively driving away the Ford and Chaparral teams. Hall and his partner Hap Sharp were ready to go in 1968 but the new rules brought an abrupt end to the Chaparral team’s European foray.

Nor did Hill race again after his Brands Hatch win with Spence. The 1961 World Champion’s Formula 1 career effectively came to an end in 1964 after a year with Cooper. He didn’t run any F1 races in ‘65 and started three GPs, each for different teams, in ‘66. Phil’s primary effort that year went into driving the Chaparral 2D in long-distance sports car racing and the 2E in Can-Am. He and Jim Hall were Can-Am team-mates in ‘66 when Phil (below) scored the Chaparral team’s only victory at Laguna Seca, heading a one-two sweep.

“Phil was a great guy with a lot of talent and really fun to work with because he understood a lot of what was going on,” says Hall. “I think he was probably as good as anybody at making the car finish. He’d put many cars together himself and knew how everything was made and how to take care of it. He was a great endurance driver for other reasons, but for that reason too.

“When we got near the Can-Am season in 1966 we decided we’d offer Phil a drive. He was a great guy to have on your team – he pulled for you and worked for you. And in the endurance races he was our man. I think Phil enjoyed driving for us, we just had a good relationship.”

Hall also had great respect for Spence (above with Jim Clark and Colin Chapman), who was killed at Indianapolis in May 1968. “I really thought a lot of Mike,” he says. “He was an awfully talented driver, very quick and a smart guy who worked hard. He was a good fit for Chaparral too. It takes the right kind of person to be on your team who fits in with your people and how they work, and Mike fitted us well and was a joy to work with.”

As epic a period as the ’60s was technically and aesthetically it was also, as we all know, a deadly time.

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On Tuesday it was announced that Richard Petty has bought his NASCAR team from majority owner George Gillett Jr to become chairman of Richard Petty Motorsports. NASCAR’s most successful driver has taken back control of his family’s team in a partnership with Medallion Financial and DB Investments. Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion, said his company had purchased Gillett’s reported US$90 million debt for less than US$50m. Gillett defaulted on his loan earlier this year and was also forced to sell Liverpool FC in October after he and partner Tom Hicks were unable to refinance US$445m in debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Petty’s new partnership ends two years of uncertainty about his team’s future after he sold a majority share to private equity firm Boston Capital in 2008. A few months later a merger was completed with Gillett Evernham Motorsports, but George Gillett has been dogged with financial troubles.

Kasey Kahne (above) has led RPM for the past two years but after a series of disagreements he left the team near the end of this season. Kahne won a few races during his time at RPM before seeing out 2010 with Red Bull’s Toyota NASCAR team. He will drive for Red Bull next year before moving to Hendrick Motorsport in 2012 where he’ll replace the retiring Mark Martin.

Petty takes a one-third stake in the latest version of Richard Petty Motorsports for an investment of “several million dollars”. The 73-year-old will take a hands-on role as the team’s boss. RPM ran four cars this year and will run two Fords next year for AJ Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose. Roush-Fenway Racing, Ford’s top NASCAR team, will supply chassis and engines. Australian Ambrose has shown lots of ability during the last two years with JTG Daugherty Racing after breaking into NASCAR in 2007. Allmendinger came up through Formula Atlantic and Champ Cars, demonstrating plenty of talent before moving to NASCAR in ‘07 with Red Bull and then joining Petty last year.

Stanley Tools will sponsor Ambrose’s car and Best Buy will back Allmendinger. Andrew Murstein told the New York Times that without the weight of Gillett’s debt burden, Petty Motorsports’s finances are in good shape and will enjoy US$30m in sponsorship next year. Medallion Financial, by the way, finances the purchase of taxi medallions in New York, Boston, Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Petty’s team is NASCAR’s oldest, starting in 1949 with Richard’s father Lee doing the driving. Lee won 54 races and three championships before Richard took over, winning 200 races and seven championships. In total the team has won 273 first-division NASCAR races from more than 3300 starts. We wish the King the best of luck on his team’s 63rd season.

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Denny Hamlin established himself as the top seed in NASCAR’s Chase for Cup by scoring his sixth win of the year in last Saturday night’s race at the 0.75-mile Richmond oval. Hamlin dominated the 400-mile race’s final stages in his Joe Gibbs Toyota, narrowly defeating team-mate Kyle Busch and defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. Joey Logano showed the strength of Gibbs’s Toyotas by taking fourth place in Virginia.

Richmond was the 26th and last race of NASCAR’s regular season before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, which kicks off this weekend on the one-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Twelve drivers qualify each year for the championship play-off and they are seeded based on victories, so Hamlin goes to New Hampshire as the championship leader with 5060 points. Hamlin, 29, has been racing in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series since ’05 driving for famed NFL coach Joe Gibbs’s team. He finished third in the ’06 championship and came fifth last year. This season has been his most successful to date.

Defending champion Johnson is seeded second in the Chase for the Cup with 5050 points, courtesy of five wins. He has won the last four Sprint Cup championships with Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet team and is going after a record fifth straight title. Johnson was very competitive at Richmond, leading a good deal of the race, and is the favourite going into the championship play-off.

Kevin Harvick led the championship for most of the year and has won three races but could finish no better than ninth at Richmond. Harvick is seeded third in the Chase for the Cup with 5030 points. He drives for Richard Childress’s three-car Chevrolet team and has been racing in NASCAR’s premier series for 10 years. His best season came in 2006 and ‘08 when he finished fourth in the championship, and he won NASCAR’s second division Nationwide championship in 2001 and ‘06.

Seeded fourth, also with 5030 points, is Kyle Busch who’s won three races so far this year. Busch, 25, is known as ‘Rowdy’ and has been touted as a future champion since his arrival in the Cup series in 2004. But he’s yet to find the consistency to challenge for the championship. His best year thus far came in ’07 when he finished fifth in the points in his last season with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team before moving to Gibbs’s Toyota operation.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt has won two races this year driving one of Roger Penske’s trio of Dodges, so he’s seeded fifth. Kurt won the championship in 2004 with Jack Roush’s Ford team. Completing the list of this year’s 12 championship chasers are 2002 and ‘05 champion Tony Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet), Roush Ford driver Greg Biffle, four-time champion (1996, ‘97, ‘98 and ‘01) Jeff Gordon in one of Hendrick’s Chevrolets, Carl Edwards (Roush Ford), Jeff Burton (Childress Chevrolet), 2003 champion Matt Kenseth (Roush Ford) and Clint Bowyer (Childress Chevrolet).

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Delta Wing’s CEO Dan Partel says the unique single-seater is by no means dead. In fact, Partel is confident he will be able to strike a deal in the next month to build and test a Delta Wing prototype with a plan to race the car in 2013. In recent weeks Partel has had meetings with a number of European automobile manufacturers who have expressed interest in building 1.6 litre in-line four-cylinder ‘Global Racing Engines’ which are ideally suited to the Delta Wing.

“We are moving absolutely as fast as possible and I hope to have something concrete in three or four weeks time,” Partel told me this week. “If this comes together in the way we hope we will be looking for the very best talent in every category. We want people who are the best and the brightest. We want to get a prototype up and running in the next six months and then test and develop the car so it will be ready to race in 2013. And the beautiful thing about motor racing is there’s more than one sanctioning body out there.”

Partel is convinced the ‘Global Racing Engine’ concept will take off over the next few years with four or five manufacturers already looking at supplying different versions of the ‘GRE’ to different categories from touring and rally cars to single-seaters.

“Chevrolet, Ford, Mazda and BMW are up and running with their in-line fours,” Partel says. “The FIA regulations for the GRE will require the automobile manufacturers to sell or make available to the public the basic components of their engines within six months of entering competition. We believe we will be able to buy production engines that would require a dry sump lubrication kit and a few other bits and bobs for $15,000-$20,000. This whole thing has been well thought-out by the engine manufacturers working with the FIA and obviously they are going ahead with it.”

Partel says he’s sure the VW Group will also produce a ‘GRE’. “At the moment there are a lot of internal politics going on inside the VW Group so it’s difficult to say what’s going to happen, but I have no doubt that Volkswagen-Audi will be I-4 engine suppliers in the future.”

Meanwhile, IndyCar’s suddenly-embattled new CEO Randy Bernard has been told by most of his team owners that they cannot afford to buy and race the proposed new Dallara-Honda combination in 2012. Partel ridiculed last month’s ‘Iconic’ committee decision. “Now that the Chevy, Ford, Mazda and BMW in-line four engines are available,” Partel remarked, “I’m perplexed about how the ‘Iconic’ committee came to the conclusion that nobody wanted to supply an I-4 engine.”

Partel also offered a few words of advice to Bernard. “When you’re trying to develop or maintain a racing series you have to look at the key figure, which is return on investment for your teams. If your teams are financially healthy the whole series will be healthy. The return on investment has to be at least equal to the cost of operating a competitive team. That is the first target any series must set for itself. How do you create and build the proper media platform for your teams so that sponsors have confidence?

“To my thinking this has not been done by the IRL and I’m not sure they have the opportunity to do it because of budget constraints. In my opinion, the IRL are under spending, forcing Randy Bernard to do things that probably are not in the best interests of the series in an attempt to reduce the IRL’s deficit. That’s a tough assignment.”

Is it possible the Delta Wing will come to life while IndyCar’s 2012 Dallara-Honda formula will be delayed or stillborn? At this point it’s impossible to predict what the future holds for American open-wheel racing.

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I have been asked to get back to the blogging, from which I have been absent these past weeks. So here I am. Where have I been hiding? All over the place actually, as is my wont. I was set to take a holiday – my usual lolling around on the Ionian island of Corfu – when I became embroiled in an event called Vintage at Goodwood.

This has little to do with cars and a lot to do with music, although there were some lovely cars there including spectacular 1950s hot rods and Ford Mustangs. I have long coveted a good, genuine Mustang. This new event was a huge success and, as Bob Marley famously said, “one good thing about music is that when it hits you, you feel no pain”. Not like motor racing.

Now I am preparing for the Barum Rally in the Czech Republic and a visit to the Skoda Museum. Then it’s back here for the Goodwood Revival, which has little to do with music but a lot to do with some wonderful racing cars. And between these two, I’ll be going to the World Championship finals of the F1 stock cars to understand a bit more about why people go blasting round ovals in the dark in close company with some very high-powered, very dented cars. This season the championship is as close as it gets, as close as the championship for Grand Prix cars. But they’re spending thousands, not millions.

After an enforced (by the FIA) two-week shutdown, invented to cut costs, we are now approaching Spa and the second half of the Formula 1 season. Who will come back on top? Red Bull surely, or will they? McLaren is well equipped to take the title, both technically and financially. Ferrari is very cross with itself, and everybody else, and will return with Alonso firmly favoured. It can’t get worse for Mercedes, can it? It can, but it probably won’t because they’ll be terrified of further shame. My prediction? Hamilton will be World Champion – just – with Vettel very large in his silver mirrors.

On the subject of Grand Prix racing, the paddock will be well represented at the Revival, where Adrian Newey will share his rapid E-type Jaguar with Bobby Rahal in the TT Celebration race. Also out on this demanding circuit will be Christian Horner in the St Mary’s saloon car race, an encounter guaranteed to loud cheers from the grandstands. Red Bull boss Dieter Mateschitz is clearly a generous and spirited man, allowing two of his key people to take part in this spectacular meeting. Both Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna are determined to get in on the act as well, possibly relishing the prospect of racing further up the field. And I hear Gerhard Berger will be there this year. Stand by for mischievous humour and impressive lap times. They don’t forget how to do it.

Finally, keep a close eye on the Formula 2 series. There is a distinctly feisty battle being fought out between Jolyon Palmer and Dean Stoneman, a fierce rivalry which will see one of them win not only the title but also a test drive in the 2010 Williams F1 car. Let’s hope it’s a fair and sporting contest.

Autumn may be on the horizon, but there’s a huge amount for us fans to look forward to. Back soon.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Kevin Harvick has led NASCAR’s Sprint Cup championship for most of the year, and by winning Sunday’s 400-mile race on the Michigan superspeedway he became the first driver to guarantee himself a place in this year’s ‘Chase for the Cup’. After 23 of 36 races Harvick leads Jeff Gordon by 293 points, followed by Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart and defending champion Jimmie Johnson.

‘The Chase’ begins at round 27 in New Hampshire at the end of next month. NASCAR’s championship play-off among the year’s top 12 drivers takes place over the season’s final 10 races, and Harvick has won enough races and built sufficient points to earn the number one seed in this year’s ‘Chase’.

Harvick’s Michigan win was his third of the year and his first in a Cup car at the track. The 34-year-old drives one of Richard Childress’s three Chevrolets and this is his 10th year with the team. He replaced Dale Earnhardt Sr after he was killed at Daytona in 2001 and has now won 14 Cup races. Harvick’s Michigan victory was the first for RCR at the track since Earnhardt won there in 1990.

“This has been a very bad track for us,” acknowledged Harvick, “so to come here and do what we did today says a lot about where RCR is, where our cars are and, hopefully, what we can do in the last 10 weeks of the season. We’ve got three weeks of vacation and then we’ll go back to the pressure cooker for the last 10 races.”

At Michigan Harvick beat title rival Denny Hamlin in one of Joe Gibbs’ trio of Toyotas followed by Jack Roush’s three Fords raced by Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth. Tony Stewart finished sixth followed by Juan Pablo Montoya. Four-time champion Johnson came home 12th, while Hendrick team-mate Jeff Gordon led a portion of the race but lost a lap after a front tyre blew.

Harvick has never seriously challenged for the championship. His best year was 2006 when he won five races and finished fourth in the points, 78 behind that year’s champion Johnson. But Harvick has been the man to beat this year, steadily building his points lead over the spring and summer. Right now, he’s a favourite to win his first Sprint Cup title and possibly keep Johnson from racking up an unprecedented fifth consecutive championship.

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Touring cars are great to watch for a number of reasons. Mostly notably the racing is extremely close and you’ll see cars passing each other in places that you never thought possible. Another draw, for me anyway, has always been that you can clearly see that they carry some DNA from their road-car equivalents.

Let’s ignore the silhouette racers in Germany’s DTM for the moment, and the fact that underneath the shells of WTCC and BTCC cars very few have anything resembling what you’d find on your mother’s SEAT. What’s important is that these cars look like something you could go and buy in a showroom the next day. ‘Race on Sunday, sell on Monday’, as they say.

You can imagine my excitement then at the fast-approaching new FIA GT1 World Championship. Ford GT40s, Lamborghini Murciélagos, Corvettes, DBR9s, MC12s and GT-Rs on tracks such as Spa, Interlagos, Silverstone and the Nürburgring. Oh, how the mouth waters… As the promoter of GT racing Stephane Ratel points out, “they are truly inspirational cars – the ones everyone dreams of owning”.

The series, the fourth FIA-sanctioned World Championship after Formula 1, WTCC, WRC and Formula 2, has 10 events on four continents with 24 cars expected to grace each grid. Twelve teams will run two cars each with the same livery and each race will be a one-hour affair or, as the video below suggests, a one-hour long cacophony of engine noise. The European-based FIA GT2 and GT3 championships will also support the events with their own races.

“We have shaped the new championship with the aim of making GT racing more fan and media friendly,” Ratel continues. “Before, the racing consisted of long-distance racing, a mix of GT-spec cars in the same race, teams competing with a number of different cars – it was all very confusing to follow. It takes time for any sports series to become well established but GT racing will take a major step forward in becoming one of the major World Championships in 2010.”

Ratel (above) is certainly the right man for the job when it comes to making a success of a GT1 championship. Let’s hope it is exactly that, as these cars will be great to watch. The season kicks off on April 17 in Abu Dhabi – a date for the diary, I would have thought…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Craig Lowndes, the three-time Australian V8 Supercar Champion and four-time Bathurst winner, is the latest star to be recruited by Roary the Racing Car.

The popular children’s television show is narrated by Sir Stirling Moss and also features the voices of Murray Walker and Peter Kay, but the producers were keen on finding an Aussie to voice its new character, Conrod.

“I was approached by the Roary team at the Australian Grand Prix this time last year,” says Lowndes. “At that point they had a concept that they wanted to introduce an Australian character and [bring] Conrod into the episodes, but they were looking for someone to voice it.

“I was lucky to have some good results [in the V8 Supercar race] at last year’s Australian GP, which at least made them aware of who I was. I’ve never done anything like this before; we’ve done some stuff here on TV commercials for sponsors, we’ve done some radio recordings for sponsors, but this was new to me.”

Added Lowndes: “When we recorded the three episodes they hadn’t actually finalised the drawings of the cartoon character, but I suppose I didn’t make it too easy for them because I was still with the Ford team when we did the recordings, but this year I’m campaigning the Holden car. They’ve made some modifications to the car in the cartoon and made it more neutral, rather than just a Ford or a Holden.”

Having finished the three episodes Lowndes is now fully focused on the V8 Supercar Championship and winning another title. “At the moment we’re in a mad rush trying to build cars as our season starts soon,” he says. “We’ve got to have our cars on a plane heading to Abu Dhabi on February 14, ready for our first championship race.”

From the recording studio to the cockpit of a V8 Holden. Talk about different ends of the spectrum…

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A few days after Christmas I had the pleasure of talking to Jacky Ickx for a book I’m writing about the history of Carl Haas and Newman/Haas Racing. Thirty years ago Ickx won the Can-Am championship driving a Lola for Haas’s team, and I wanted to talk to him about his 1979 season in America. Jacky celebrated his 65th birthday on New Year’s Day and he’s not only one of the most accomplished racing drivers but also a delightful, old school gentleman.

Ickx is proud that, much like Mario Andretti, he won races across a broad range of categories. Jacky won Le Mans six times, of course, but he also won 37 World Championship long-distance sports car races – more than any other driver – and two world sports car titles in 1982-83.

Ickx won sports car races driving Gulf Ford GT40s, factory Porsches, Ferraris and Mirages, and came to be celebrated as a maestro of Le Mans and endurance racing.

He also finished second to Jackie Stewart in the 1969 Formula 1 World Championship and was second again the following year to Jochen Rindt. He won eight Grands Prix between 1968-72 driving for Brabham and Ferrari, and claimed the European F2 championship in 1967 when he was just 22. Jacky retired from racing sports cars in 1985 but continued to compete in the Paris-Dakar rally until 1992, having won the gruelling event in ’83. “I had a career that was similar to Mario in a way because Mario did all kinds of racing successfully,” says Ickx. “He could go from a dirt track, to Indy, to long-distance racing or F1, and whatever he did he could do it well. And that’s what I did, too.”

Jacky says that over the years he’s gained a deeper appreciation for the people and teamwork that makes the sport happen. “When you’re older you don’t see things the way you did when you were a kid,” he says. “It’s a very individual sport and a selfish sport too for the drivers, and it takes time to understand that you don’t do anything without a large number of people – the engineers and mechanics and so on – who are working in the shadows with a lot of motivation and passion. Your success depends on their abilities and goodwill. They do their jobs with pleasure, but the only rewards they receive is when their driver wins.”

Jacky is also aware how lucky he’s been and how much richer his life has been made by racing. “In sport, your career is reasonably short,” he says. “Mine started when I was 16 in 1960 and I stopped in 1992. So it was very long and I was extremely lucky to survive 30 years of motor racing in those days. Today, when I meet Jackie Stewart or Carlos Reutemann or some people from that era, the first thing we say is how lucky we’ve been to survive such a big amount of racing miles in F1, long-distance racing, Can-Am, the Paris-Dakar and everything else without losing a wheel or having a major technical problem. It’s a miracle!

“That is why every day when I wake up I feel lucky. It’s also why I pay more attention to the human side than the score. To me, the score is not important – the fact that I won Le Mans six times, or that I won 50 long-distance races, the F2 championship or Paris-Dakar. What counts are the outstanding people I had the chance to meet.”

Jacky is also a devoted Motor Sport reader. “It’s the only racing magazine I buy,” he says. “You guys are doing a great job. Keep it up!”

Thanks for the compliment Jacky. Keep reading and we’ll keep writing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Four of 36 NASCAR races down and the Sprint Cup is wide open. At this early stage four-time champion Jeff Gordon leads the series from Clint Bowyer and last weekend’s winner Kurt Busch, while defending champion Jimmie Johnson has yet to win a race and is 13th in the points. Gordon has been the most consistently competitive driver so far this season, but no one has a clear edge. Matt Kenseth won last month’s Daytona 500 and won again the following weekend at the California Speedway, before Kyle Busch scored his first victory of the season at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt scored a convincing win at the Atlanta Motor Speedway last Sunday, dominating the race and out-duelling points leader Gordon and Carl Edwards in the final sprint to the flag. Kurt is Roger Penske’s lead driver, but he and Penske’s team have been conspicuously uncompetitive in recent years. Busch demonstrated at Atlanta, however, that Dodge’s latest NASCAR engine has plenty of power. His victory was the most impressive performance for both driver and team in two or three seasons.

In the four races run so far, three drivers have won for three different teams and manufacturers. Kenseth, the 2003 champion, scored his two wins for the Roush Fenway Ford team, with Kyle Busch winning for Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota, before brother Kurt won for Penske and Dodge. And of course Gordon leads the championship for Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports, so that all four of NASCAR’s competing manufacturers have something to crow about. In that way NASCAR couldn’t have asked for more from its opening races.

Nor are there any problems – so far at least – in filling the field with 43 competitive cars. Four drivers and teams failed to qualify at Atlanta, but every qualifier was a strong runner with no stragglers. The depth of the field is evident in Juan Pablo Montoya’s continuing struggles with Chip Ganassi’s Dodge-equipped team. Montoya qualified an encouraging fourth at Atlanta but didn’t run well in the race and eventually finished five laps down in 27th place. Scott Speed is also discovering how tough NASCAR is as he struggles to match the pace set by Red Bull Toyota team-mate Brian Vickers, who challenged Kurt Busch for the win at Atlanta. Speed, meanwhile, ran near the back of the field and his race ended in the wall.

Nor has the season started well for three-time champion Jimmie Johnson or team-mate Dale Earnhardt Jr. Johnson and Earnhardt are Gordon’s team-mates, along with veteran Mark Martin, in the four-car Hendrick Chevrolet team, but neither has been able to score any results so far this year. Johnson has run well but has yet to enjoy a clean race. He finished ninth in Atlanta and is currently 13th in the points. Earnhardt – by far NASCAR’s most popular driver – has been mired in the midfield after bearing the brunt of criticism from both fans and the media following his collision with Vickers at Daytona.

One thing is clear, and that is there are going to be plenty of empty seats at many NASCAR races this year. Daytona was close to full thanks to numerous creative ways of giving away tickets, and Las Vegas two weeks ago also enjoyed a pretty strong crowd, although not a sell-out by any means. But the California Speedway the week after Daytona was only half full, and Atlanta wasn’t much better. Atlanta has been struggling to sell seats for many years and last Sunday the place was around two-thirds full.

After four straight races on superspeedways NASCAR takes a rare weekend off before resuming with a pair of short-track races on half-mile ovals at Bristol, Tennessee on March 22, and Martinsville, Virginia on March 29. Bristol seats no fewer than 130,000 fans and has been a sell-out for many years, but not this time. It was reported last weekend that more than 30,000 seats are unsold, but it’s fair to say that in today’s economy 100,000 isn’t anything to sneeze at. NASCAR has its troubles, but the party is far from over.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

After the success of last year’s Jim Clark Film Festival, Legends Film Festivals is returning this year with ‘Legends of Le Mans’.

The festival, dedicated to the history of the Le Mans 24 Hour race, will take place in Oxfordshire on March 7/8 and will feature three hours of archive footage focusing on the period between 1955-75. As well as celebrating 50 years since Aston Martin’s historic 1-2 finish, 40 years since the JW-Gulf Ford GT40’s 1-2-3 finish and 50 years since the Lotus Elite scored the first of six consecutive class victories the day will be filled with guest speakers.

This year Jackie Oliver, Richard Attwood, David Piper, John Wagstaff and Peter Riley will all be on hand both days. There will also be a dinner on the Saturday night where all the guest speakers will be present. For more information and to book tickets, go to www.legendsfilmfestivals.com.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I set out, the other day, to talk to two of the Fat Cats of Formula 1. It was only a partial success.

I wanted to talk to Nick Fry (above) from the Honda team and to Christian Horner (below) from Red Bull Racing. I succeeded in the former and dismally failed in the latter.
Nick Fry because I wanted to know more about the arrival of Ross Brawn in the team and Christian Horner because of the progress that Adrian Newey is clearly making with the 2008 car.

By the time I’d got myself organised and had an interesting chat with Fry, I had missed Horner. Quite understandably he’d given up waiting and probably had far better things to do with his time just ahead of the European season. Problem is, will he ever speak to me again? Have I gone into the black book of people who wasted his time? Hope not, as he’s an articulate bloke and his team is showing all the signs of moving up the order. Anyway, I apologised, and will wait a decent interval before knocking on his door again.

I like Nick Fry because, it seems to me, he has taken a lot of flak over the disappointing performance of the Honda Grand Prix team and yet he always seems so positive and upbeat about life. He came to Formula 1 from the motor industry, not an easy move, as things change a lot more rapidly in racing than ever they do in industry. He climbed the corporate ladder at Ford with almost indecent haste but his move to the whirlwind of F1 coincided with a dreadful time for the Honda team and somebody had to take the blame. The wacky ‘earth dream’ livery for the cars hardly helped the team’s predicament.

Things are looking up, however, for Fry and some of this is undoubtedly down to his recruitment of the highly respected Brawn. Will he be the miracle cure for all their woes?

“The effect Ross has had on the team is nothing, and everything, depending which way you look at it,” says Fry. “Over the past year or so we’d been building up a very good engineering team so we had already made progress and let’s not forget that this year’s car was designed before Ross joined us. However, and this is a very, very big however, when Ross arrived he gave us all huge confidence, and that is so important. Without him, we might have begun to panic, but he is turning our natural optimism into a reality. He has helped us to focus on getting the basics working properly, he has laid a steady hand on the tiller, and – because of his past achievements – he has instilled more confidence into the people who work for him. I was absolutely singular in pursuing, and then hiring, Ross – he can definitely do for us what he did for Ferrari. We’re not there yet, but we will be in the top 10 in the next few races.”

So the much publicised recruitment drive of last year was worth all the stress and controversy?

“I interviewed more people from other teams than I can possibly tell you,” he smiles, “including a couple that became very public. If our dining room walls had ears then they would have a great story to tell, with the number of people who passed through there, but I’d made up my mind that Ross was the right person to get the job done. Given time, I have no doubt at all that we can be competing for the world championship. We’ve already seen what he can do, we have new aero packages, and there is no fallback plan. We are on our way, and I am absolutely convinced we will build from here.”

Nick Fry also has a feeling for the history of Grand Prix racing. He’s read Motor Sport since he was a teenager and says he always will. That’s good. And he likes Spa and Monza. “Yes, the sport has to retain some of its heritage,” he says, “and I can still get misty-eyed at Monza, even on a wet Wednesday. Formula 1 would be much the poorer for losing those European circuits and I can never see that happening.” Let’s hope he’s right.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

(1971 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Rodriguez & Jackie Oliver (Porsche 917 LH) leads Gerard Larrousse & Vic Elford (Porsche 917 LH), Mark Donohue & David Hobbs (Ferrari 512M), and Jo Siffert & Derek Bell (Porsche 917 LH))

Do you remember the great days of Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans? When an annual pilgrimage to the little town in the Loire was something not to be missed? If you couldn’t be there, you’d tune in to BBC radio for those brief news reports, the late night bulletins always the most atmospheric, romantic even, with the sound of the cars wailing past the pits. If you were lucky, you’d get to see some pictures on BBC television, usually the start on Saturday afternoon and the finish on Sunday with the cameras lingering on that famous clock as the hands ticked round to 4pm. Remember when Ford took on Ferrari, when Porsche came with the long-tail 917, the arrival of the glorious-sounding Matras, the big yellow Renaults and the ceaseless scream of the Mazda? That’s all fairly recent of course. We could go back further, to the triumph of Jaguar and the heroics of Duncan Hamilton, the almost military presence of Mercedes-Benz and the night Phil Hill danced his Ferrari through driving rain to a last-gasp victory.

(Left-to-right in the Jaguar paddock at Le Mans in ’54: Peter Walker, Peter Whitehead and Duncan Hamilton (with a bunch of bananas). Behind include Mrs Lois Rolt (seated), Tim Seccombe and Mary Walker (behind Hamilton))

These were the days when the 24 hours of Le Mans was truly the most famous motor race in the world, when people bought cars because the manufacturer had won at La Sarthe, thinking they must be both rapid and reliable. Us Brits travelled in our tens of thousands to France that weekend in June, pitching our tents, watching in awe at the speed on the Mulsanne and tramping through the woods to see the cars flash through Indianapolis corner. The food was good, and the wine, for this was France and those catering vans at Brands seemed a planet away. OK, you were so tired – and sometimes soaked – by the end of Sunday that you swore you’d never go again. But you did. It was fun, romantic, exciting and knackering.

Things are different now. The race still runs for 24 hours, and the wine still tastes good though the exchange rate has done for the price. But the long blast down Mulsanne has been broken up with chicanes, and wire fences force us to watch the cars at a distance. Health and safety. For us, and them. And then there’s the Audis, the diesel-powered Audis. Much to the chagrin of legendary Le Mans heroes like Henri Pescarolo, the silver cars have come, conquered – and stayed.

I mention all this because next weekend sees the running of another famous endurance race. We’re off across the Atlantic to see the Audis at Sebring, where the mighty German cars have won every time this century. Extraordinary. A mirror of Le Mans in many ways. Sebring has a fine history, it’s one of the classic long-distance events, and the old airfield circuit remains pretty much as bumpy and basic as ever it was according to Allan McNish, who aims to win yet another one for Audi at the weekend. But this year could just be different. Peugeot is entering a single car, in preparation for Le Mans, and in the hope of getting one over the Audis in this duel of the diesels.

We know the beautiful Peugeot is quick. We saw that at La Sarthe last summer. If it was as fast as it looks, it would win by miles. This is surely one of the best-looking racing cars of the modern era. But can Peugeot get on terms with the sensationally reliable Audis over a 12-hour period, let alone double that distance in June? We don’t know, but it will be worth watching, and it will be some kind of guide to what’s in store at Le Mans. Peugeot is desperate to win in France, of course, while Audi is in no mood to give up its hard-earned reputation as the fastest diesel in the world (we’re not counting the JCB Dieselmax world land speed record machine).

(March 16 – 18, 2006, Sebring 12 Hours – Allan McNish in the Audi R10 leads the pack)

To Sebring then, and memories of reading about Stirling Moss’s great feats around the wide-open runways, remembering pictures of headlamps lighting up those warm Florida nights, with drivers in shirtsleeves and sneakers and shades. All very Steve McQueen. Like Le Mans though, it will be different now, if only because of the new world order in long-distance sports car racing. Audi dominates, Peugeot challenges, the fans long for a battle. Which TDi will they want to buy on the Monday morning, believing that racing can only improve the breed? Well, I have owned both marques, and both were damn good in their different ways. I will be there as an impartial observer but I have a gut feeling that Peugeot will have to wait until June before it gets a proper crack at making a dent in Audi’s armour.

(2007 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Lamy/Stephane Sarrazin/Sebastien Bourdais (no 8 Peugeot 908 Hdi FAP) leads Lucas Luhr/Alexandre Premat/Mike Rockenfeller (no 3 Audi R10))

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine