MOTORSPORT: Giz and Webber simply scintillating

Great action in the V8 Supercar and F1 championships, and a brighter picture on the TV front... But tough times for our boys in America and Britain

New Zealand and China serve up treats
Lots to celebrate after a great weekend's motor racing -- especially the breakthrough wins in V8 Supercars by young New Zealander Shane Van Gisbergen and the Kelly Brothers team, and Mark Webber's drive from 18th to third in the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix.

Van Gisbergen (pictured) gave Ford its first victory of the V8 Supercar season and there's good news for the series with the television figures for the second straight round returning to more respectable levels.

The news is not so good from America, however, where Will Power was run into by his Penske teammate Helio Castroneves at Long Beach after another pole position, while Ryan Briscoe's domination of the race was blown away in the end by Mike Conway -- the British driver who sustained multiple leg fractures and a compression fracture in his back in last year's Indianapolis 500. Briscoe finished second and Power recovered to 10th but lost the series lead to Dario Franchitti.

"It's not very good, but it's racing," Power said of being spun by Castroneves, who said: "I really apologise to Will. Taking out your teammate is not a smart thing. It's unacceptable. I take all the blame."

Marcos Ambrose briefly led the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at the Talladega super-speedway but was caught up in a multi-car crash, lost 30 laps and finished 32 laps down as Jimmie Johnson won a thriller, helped by a push from Chevrolet teammate Dale Earnhardt Junior.

Johnson's victory margin (two thousandths of a second) was the equal smallest in the history of America's premier stock car series and eight cars flashed across the finish line in a bunch.

And a tough debut in the British Formula Three Championship for young open-wheeler star Scott Pye at Monza... Yes, in Italy. The 21-year-old from Mt Gambier, backed by the Australian Motor Sport Foundation and prominent V8 Supercar owner Roland Dane of Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Voadfone, won last year's British Formula Ford Championship but in three F3 races at Monza his two finishes were 12th and 14th and he is yet to score points.

But back to the big positives out of the weekend.

The headline to our Friday motorsport report here was 'Time for Kiwis to shine' at Hamilton, New Zealand, and we said that Shane van Gisbergen "appears the most likely to succeed".

That the 21-year-old did on Sunday (and didn't the Kiwis love it, cheering widly from the moment he took the lead from Rick Kelly, and especially as he approached the finish) holding off Lee Holdsworth's Holden.

Hamilton was a fitting venue for expat Kiwis Ross and Jim Stone, the principals of Stone Brothers Racing, to return to the winner's circle too.

Ross Stone said a winning Kiwi driver in NZ -- the first since the end of Greg Murphy's heyday at Pukekohe in 2005 -- could only be good for the sport in the country.

"I think it's really important. The Kiwis love nothing more than the Kiwi-Aussie thing, almost more than the Ford-Holden thing and you've seen that over the years with Murphy at Pukekohe," he said.

Hamilton was a special round for family-owned teams, with Rick Kelly giving the outfit he formed with older brother Todd little more than two years ago its maiden win on Saturday.

It looked at one point that it might have been a Kelly quinella, but Craig Lowndes got by Todd who found himself without his windscreen wiper working in the crazy wet conditions.

While that weather was tough on spectators at an event that needed everything going for it (with its financials a hot potato in Hamilton), the weekend's track action was a continuation of the excellent racing since Bathurst last year and which has seen five different winners in the six championship races this year.

That is reflecting in TV figures that are on the rise again.
We reported four weeks ago that viewers tuned back into Adelaide's Clipsal 500 this year and they were much better too for this latest Hamilton event, after a sharp drop last year.

The average audience in the five major Australian state capitals for Saturday's race was 310,000 -- up almost 32 per cent on the 235,000 for the equivalent race last year. The figure for Sunday's race was 375,000.

We did not have a complete figure for last year's Sunday race, in part because the telecast times in a couple of cities were affected by the Seven Network's football commitments, but this latest number will be a substantial improvement too and getting back towards the Sunday norm of around 400,000 for rounds other than Bathurst, Adelaide and the Gold Coast. The chances of that continuing ought to be good.

Jamie Whincup 's series lead has been cut from 144 points to 71 after his horror Hamilton weekend, but there are just 51 points between second-placed Rick Kelly and eighth-placed Alex Davison -- and 21 races to go, with the next round the revived West Australian round at Perth's Barbagallo Raceway.

It may be a while yet though before we see the full wash-up from Hamilton, especially on the financials and attendance, but certainly the bounce in the television audience is a positive.


Webber's Chinese cracker
Things were looking decidedly negative for Mark Webber late on Saturday when he failed to make it through the first round of qualifying in Shanghai -- because his Red Bull team sent him out on the harder of the two Pirelli tyre compounds, condemning him to 18th on the grid.

From that lowly position Webber's drive to third in Sunday's GP is being talked of as the best of his career.

Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner called it a "phenomenal recovery" and branded Webber "the driver of the day".

Certainly it was up there among his very best performances, and he displayed an abundance of the Anzac spirit, but history is likely to remember his pole position and start-to-finish dominance of last year's Monaco GP as his highpoint, although maybe his best is still to come.

Webber did not have the benefit of KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) reintroduced to F1 this year -- in either qualifying or the race in Shanghai, and he said teams are "still learning every GP about the tyres, and how DRS [the drag reduction system or drive-adjusted rear wings] will work".

While there has been great despondency among the Australian audience about Webber's results early this season, he has garnered a fifth, a fourth and a third place despite all the obstacles.

It took time for him to craft that first podium of the year yesterday, especially as he started on the harder tyres.

"When you still see P17 on your board after 15 laps, or whatever it was, you think 'how is this going to come?' " Webber said.

"But then all of a sudden I just felt comfortable with the car. When I saw Seb [Webber's world champion teammate, Sebastian Vettel] ahead of me in the closing stages, I initially thought it was one of the Toro Rossos!

"I'd been so focused on what I was doing that I hadn't asked for my position and I couldn't believe that I was only three seconds behind Seb, who'd started on pole position."

In another Red Bull strategy error, again one of tyre choices, Vettel (second) was beaten for the first time this season by Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren-Mercedes.

It was one of the most entertaining GPs in recent memory.

Webber's comment that it was good that Hamilton had ended Vettel's run of success is being seen in some quarters as a dig at his teammate, but in the big picture it increases the likelihood of an exciting title tussle towards the end of the season rather than Vettel wrapping it up early.


Crossing the Jordan
The World Rally Championship is a tighter contest than F1. Young French star Sebastien Ogier won the new and shortened Jordan Rally by smallest margin in WRC history -- 0.2 seconds.

The new Citroen ace came from 0.5 seconds behind Ford rival Jari-Matti Latvala on the final stage of this year's fourth event for his second straight win - and Citroen's third this season.

Latvala overtook Citroen's seven-time champion Sebastien Loeb on the final morning and wrested the lead from Ogier on the penultimate stage.

While the Frenchman reversed that at the very end on the "Power Stage", Loeb's third-place finish moved him into the championship lead ahead of Ford's Mikko Hirvonen.

Ogier's maximum points haul moved him ahead of Latvala.

Meanwhile, 29-year-old Sunshine Coast motor mechanic Ryan Smart scored his first Australian Rally Championship round win in Western Australia's Forest Rally that kicked off this year's ARC.

Smart and his new co-driver John Allen (replacing Smart's sister Rebecca, who has moved to Europe to co-drive for young Australian, Molly Taylor) won both WA heats in a four-wheel-drive Toyota Corolla Sportivo.

Victorians Mark Pedder and Justin Dowel finished the event second and third in Mitsubishi Evos.

The next round on May 13-15 will be on Smart's home ground -- the Sunshine Coast and the Mary Valley.

It will also be a round of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, which fellow Queenslander Chris Atkinson is leading for Proton.

Formula One drivers' world championship standings after three races: Sebastian Vettel (Germany, Red Bull-Renault) 68 points, Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain, McLaren-Mercedes) 47, Jenson Button (GB, McLaren-Mercedes) 38, Mark Webber (Australia, Red Bull-Renault) 37, Fernando Alonso (Spain, Ferrari) 26, Felipe Massa (Brazil, Ferrari) 24, Vitaly Petrov (Russia, Renault) 17, Nick Heidfeld (Germany, Renault) 15, Nico Rosberg (Germany, Mercedes) 10, Kamui Kobayashi (Japan, Sauber-Ferrari) 7, Michael Schumacher (Germany, Mercedes) 6, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland, Toro Rosso-Ferrari) 4, Adrian Sutil (Germany, Force India-Mercedes) 2, Paul di Resta (GB, Force India-Mercedes) 2.

F1 constructors' championship standings: Red Bull-Renault 105 points, McLaren-Mercedes 85, Ferrari 50, Renault 32, Mercedes 16, Sauber-Ferrari 7, Toro Rosso-Ferrari 4, Force India-Mercedes 4.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after six races: Jamie Whincup (Holden) 654, Rick Kelly (H) 573, Craig Lowndes (H) 552, Garth Tander (H) 543, Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 543, Shane van Gisbergen (F) 534, Will Davison (F) 528, Alex Davidson (F) 522, Steve Johnson (F) 455, Fabian Coulthard (H) 441, Jason Bright (H) 414, David Reynolds (H) 354, James Courtney (H) 352, Todd Kelly (H) 338, Jonathon Webb (F) 326, Lee Holdsworth (H) 320, Dean Fiore (F) 309, Michael Caruso (H) 305, Karl Reindler (H) 294, Greg Murphy (H) 290, Paul Dumbrell (F) 288, Steve Owen (H) 285, Tim Slade (F) 267, Jason Bargwanna (H) 261, Russell Ingall (H) 243, James Moffat (F) 209, Tony D'Alberto (H) 194, Warren Luff (H) 189.

World Rally Championship driver standings after four rounds: Sebastien Loeb (France, Citreon) 74 points, Mikko Hirvonen (Finland, Ford) 72, Sebastien Ogier (France, Citroen) 69, Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Ford) 66, Petter Solberg (Norway, Citroen) 31.

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