MOTORSPORT: Endurance glory for Ford

The racing year is off to a bright start for the Blue Oval, with its engines powering all the podium placegetters in the Daytona 24-Hour, while the rival Corvette prototypes dunced

Briscoe didn't get a lap in Daytona enduro
Ford-powered cars have finished first, second and third in the first of the world's major endurance races of the year, America's Daytona 24-Hour.

The five new Corvette Daytona Prototypes, backed by General Motors and with Dallara chassis, all had problems with the best of them finishing fifth, three laps down, and eighth, 15 laps down.

The favoured cars of Chip Ganassi -- using BMW engines in Riley chassis like those of the first two of the Ford-powered cars and with brilliant driver line-ups -- both had gearbox issues and finished fourth, one lap down, and sixth, four laps down.

Chip Ganassi missed the podium for the first time since his team's debut in the Daytona 24 in 2005. He has won the event four times.

The top five GT cars finished on the same lap, with Porsches sweeping the podium in that class.

The outright winning car was entered by Michael Shank, an American businessman who is looking at fielding an IndyCar for veteran Canadian driver Paul Tracy's farewell season in openwheeler racing this year.

It was Shank's first Daytona 24 success and the victorious car's star driver was A.J. Allmendinger, who was Australian Marcos Ambrose's NASCAR teammate at Richard Petty Motorsports last year and who will race for Roger Penske in this year's NASCAR Sprint Cup starting at next month's Daytona 500. Allmendinger's co-drivers in the enduro were Englishman Justin Wilson and two of Shank's regulars, Ozz Negri and John Pew.

Runner-up, by little more than 5 seconds after a late caution, was the similar car entered by the Starworks team with five drivers, including Scottish ace Allan McNish and his younger countryman Ryan Dalziel. It led almost 300 laps of the race but an excursion off the track in the 17th hour damaged its rear end and that ultimately proved decisive.

McNish had a bumping duel with Allmendinger and was not happy at the American's tactics in moving up on him from the low side of Daytona's high banking at more than 280km/h.

Allmendinger is one of Shank's co-owners in the new IndyCar team hoping to field Tracy in what is likely to be a Honda-engined car, rather than the Lotus power previously announced.

An older Riley run by Shank's team took the final podium position. Riley Technologies, based at Mooresville in North Carolina, has an illustrious history in GrandAm racing.

A builder of customer racing cars owned by Bob Riley, it was created after previous manufacturer Riley & Scott's demise in the bankruptcy in 2001 of Reynard, which had become owner of that operation two years earlier.

While the first three Daytona 24 cars each completed 761 laps of the 5.696km circuit, the Corvette that Australian Ryan Briscoe was to have driven was out after just 30 minutes and 14 laps with an engine failure.

Briscoe said it was "tremendously disappointing" that he did not get to do a race lap in the car in which he was partnering Max Angelelli and Ricky Taylor, son of team owner and two-time Daytona 24 winner Wayne Taylor.

"The effort that everyone on the whole team put in for the 50th running of this race and not to have a shot at winning, it hurts," Briscoe said. "This is very similar to having the strongest month of May at Indianapolis and then going out in the opening laps of the Indy 500... We are all hanging our heads a bit low right now."

New IndyCar testing begins in earnest
Now that the Daytona enduro is over, Ryan Briscoe immediately turns to testing of the new Dallara IndyCar at another Florida track, Sebring, with his Penske teammates, fellow Australian Will Power and Brazilian Helio Castroneves.

"The testing Monday and Tuesday will be the first time we can really take advantage of us being a three-car team," Briscoe said at Daytona. "The more track time we can get the more we can keep learning... The more we can test the car the quicker our development will be.

"It is going to be an extremely steep rate of development. We have been figuring out what aero configurations and geometries we need to use.

"The car is so different from the previous model -- it takes a lot of tuning and we have just touched the surface... We will be working hard this week.

"I want to win the first race (at the St Petersburg street circuit in Florida on March 25) and go on from there."

As mentioned last Friday, Formula One veteran Rubens Barrichello will be another driver testing at Sebring over the next two days -- with KV Racing.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated has reported that IndyCar drivers want their voices heard more in the wake of Dan Wheldon's death at last season's finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway -- a race that Will Power says in this article "just should never have happened".

More Targa glory for Lambo man White
Tasmanian Jason White has won the state's two-day Targa Wrest Point for the second year and is poised to win the Australian Targa Championship with just Targa Tasmania remaining on April 17-22.

Lamborghini Gallardo driver White -- who also won the previous round, Victoria's Targa High Country in November -- extended his series lead to 60 points at the weekend by beating first-day Targa Wrest Point leader, Victorian Matt Close in an Audi TT RS.

White won six of Sunday's seven stages to turn an eight-second deficit into a 41-second victory. He has 500 points in the series while Close is on 440 after his second place at the weekend. Targa Tasmania is worth 500 points to the winner.

Youngster Brendan Reeves took third place at Targa Wrest Point in his first outing in the factory-backed Mazda RX8 SP, while Targa legend Jim Richards was fourth in his Porsche 911 GT2 RS.

Simon Evans dominated the Showroom class, taking a six-minute win in the Mazda3 MPS ahead of this year's Australian Rally Championship in which the multiple national champion will drive a Mazda 2.

Tasmanian drivers did exceptionally well at the weekend. Launceston's David Cooper won the Classic Outright competition in his 1977 Holden Torana A9X, while Hobart's Eddie Maguire took victory in TMR Performance 4WD Showroom category.

Hobart's Matthew Rickards in a 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer won the Early Modern class and was fourth fastest in the event -- more than half a minute ahead of Richards' Porsche overall.

High five for Brooke Tatnell
Speedway ace Brooke Tatnell notched his fifth Australian Sprintcar Title at the weekend -- in Adelaide, where his late and legendary father George won the only time he took that title.

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