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FOLLOWING this weekend’s Korean Formula One Grand Prix, there will be only five starts in the premier category of motor racing before Australian Mark Webber brings down the curtain on a career that started 12 years ago.
Fans are hopeful the boy from Queanbeyan – who had his first GP start at the Australian Grand Prix in 2002 with Minardi – can add to his grand prix wins before season’s end in Brazil on November 24.
Despite admitting he enjoys the circuit, a win this weekend is most unlikely, for he has a 10 spot grid penalty after he hitched a ride home with his good mate Fernando Alonso in the Singapore GP.
Webber announced, in June, he would be quitting F1 at season’s end to drive for Porsche in LMP1 sports car races with the German manufacturer’s new sportscar program.
Like the Singapore GP at Marina Bay, this weekend’s race suits Red Bull, for last year the Australian sporting star took pole position and subsequently finished second to team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
However, it is also the circuit that holds some bad memories, for his retirement there in 2010 proved costly in the best chance he’s had of winning the drivers’ championship.
Ahead of this weekend’s event, former F1 team owner Gian Carlo Minardi has raised doubts about the legitimacy of Sebastian Vettel’s dominance in Singapore last weekend.
The 66-year-old, who sold his team before the 2001 season, was trackside at the Marina Bay circuit where Vettel commandingly won, and he has told his website he has been troubled by the German’s often multiple-second advantage over his rivals under the Singapore floodlights.
“It’s not my intention to devalue Sebastian Vettel, who always manages his Red Bull in the best way,” he said.
“I just want to tell what I personally saw and heard during the three day event.”
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LAST weekend was huge for local motor sport competitors, with several great results coming.
After 3200 kilometres and seven days of gruelling competition in Western Australia, the remaining crews in the Australasian Safari reached Geraldton for the finish of the event.
Third place went to Bathurst’s Andrew Travis and his dad and navigator David driving their Isuzu in what was their first start in the epic event.
“Can we do another three days?” Andrew said after the event.
“The car’s been perfect. It’s time to give it a birthday present and a bit of love and we hope to come back in another two years. We’re really happy to podium in our first Safari.”
At Wakefield Park, competing in the HSRCA Spring Historic race meeting, Bathurst’s Michael Anderson qualified his Kenwood Homes Ford Falcon GTHO in second place behind long-time racer
Harry Bargwanna in his Ford Mustang, and then went on to win two races.
On the same program, Bruce Rooke, better known as a football administrator in Bathurst, won a Group J, K & L Regularity event driving the historic Volante Ford he was sharing at the event with his brother Jim Rooke.
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DICK Johnson Racing will turn back the clock for this year’s Great Race at Bathurst and run the #17 Wilson Security Ford Falcon in the race with the Greens Tuf retro livery of the Greens Tuf XE to mark 30 years since it crashed heavily through the trees at Mount Panorama.
The Johnson-built XE Falcon made its debut in 1982 at the Oran Park endurance race before being campaigned by Dick Johnson and John French in the James Hardie 1000 that year.
Still painted in Tru-Blu colours and signage, the XE Falcon started the annual Bathurst race at the front of the field and was among the leaders all day, the car crossing the line in fourth place.
The XE was to be driven in the 1983 James Hardie 1000 by Dick Johnson and Kevin Bartlett when the horrific accident came about in the Hardies Heroes (Top 10 Shoot-out) when Johnson, pushing hard and looking like taking pole, got it all wrong at Forrests Elbow.
Johnson clipped the end of the wall as he exited the Elbow and broke the steering, leaving the helpless driver a passenger as he went on a wild ride through the trees, totally destroying the Falcon.
Then came one of the mountain’s biggest rebuilds, as the crew worked throughout the night to transfer the internals from the wreck to a similar Falcon leased off fellow competitors Andrew Harris and Gary Cooke.
To the surprise of many, the new car was wheeled out with only minutes remaining before race start looking like new, complete with its Greens Tuf green livery, but it was not to be a victorious year for the Johnson camp as a blown fuse on lap 61 sidelined the Falcon.
