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Everything you need to know about racing

Can Kimi still cut it?
It was quite exciting to see Kimi Räikkönen – sporting a mainly white crash helmet – back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car today.

The Finn, who found himself shuffled out of F1 at the end of 2009 as Ferrari secured the services of Fernando Alonso, has spent two years in the grand prix wilderness, but is returning to the grid with Lotus GP this year.

This morning he had his first acclimatisation drive with the team, testing a 2010-specification R30 chassis at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, Spain. So is this the start of a fairytale F1 comeback, or a desperate, last-gasp attempt by a past champion to rediscover his glory days?

One thing Kimi has on his side is time. It’s seems astonishing that he is only 32, until you remember that he started his F1 career at the age of 21, racing for Sauber.

He should also be relatively competition sharp, having taken part in one-and-a-bit seasons of World Rally Championship action, even if he might take some time to get used to Pirelli tyres and the adjustable rear wing for overtaking.

His switch to rallying was inconclusive yielding the occasional points finish but also some accidents. Kimi was probably as fast as he could have expected to be, given the caliber of driver he was up against and the alien concept of having a second competitor alongside him in the car, barking instructions.

His outings told us more about the specialised talent needed to win in the WRC than it did about Räikkönen’s talent or motivation.

As to whether he’ll be quick on his F1 return, it all depends which Kimi we’re going to see. Will we get the meteorically quick version who raced for McLaren in early to mid-2000s and then made a successful switch to Ferrari, where he claimed the 2007 world crown?

Or will 2012-spec Kimi be the less-than-convincing version who looked out-of-sorts for most of the 2009 season, bar the odd inspired performance?

We’ll find out more next month, when he’ll get the chance to drive the 2012 Lotus (albeit now without the trick reactive suspension system that has been declared illegal by the FIA).

If he senses some winning potential in the car, it could be all that’s needed to refire Kimi’s enthusiasm for the sport. After all, with five other former champions on the grid – Vettel, Button, Hamilton, Alonso and Schumacher –he’ll have to be right at the top of his game to succeed.

Red Bull chief delivers withering critique
Helmut Marko, the former BRM F1 driver who is the trusted right-hand man and close advisor to Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz, has delivered a withering critique of former Scuderia Toro Rosso team drivers Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari.

The two racers were replaced at the end of last season by new youngsters Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne.

Buemi (left) and Alguersuari

"Toro Rosso was created to give young drivers a chance," Marko told Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport. "Alguersuari and Buemi had it for three years and after this time it's possible to evaluate a driver's development.

"We haven't seen in them any possibility of growth. Both are worthy of grand prix racing, but for us that's not enough: we need winners."

Buemi and Alguersuari had driven for Red Bull's junior Formula 1 team since the start and middle of the 2009 season respectively, but have been dropped in favour of the two newcomers for 2012.

Although Alguersuari's future is currently uncertain, Buemi will remain in the Red Bull fold as a reserve driver, ready to step forward to stand-in for Sebastian Vettel or Mark Webber should the needs arise.

Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost said last month that the driver decision had been taken to ensure STR remained a training ground for the next generation of Red Bull F1 stars rather than a home for established drivers.

Marko – who oversees the firm's driver development – believes Buemi and Alguersuari had sufficient opportunities to show what they could do, and proved “adequate rather than exceptional.”

Bad for Meeke, but BMW will suffer too
The sensational news that British rally star Kris Meeke is to be dropped from the Mini team he joined barely a year ago for the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally next month will doubtless be billed as a matter of financial strictures within Prodrive, the Banbury-based team that builds and runs the cars.

Whatever the truth, the episode promises to reflect very badly indeed on BMW, a company which talks a great deal about being internationalist in outlook — and is more than content to earn richly from all points of the compass — but remains cloyingly German when the chips are down.

While the promising Mini WRC team, which exceeded all expectations (including BMW’s) in its debut season, struggles to keep its head above water, BMW is spending an estimated 20 times more on a programme in the German DTM touring car series which, even if successful against Audi and Mercedes, will have zero impact on the brand’s value or strength outside German borders.

The fact that a promising international competition effort looks like being allowed to whither in favour of DTM – along with BMW’s former F1 involvement and its international saloon racing programmes — shows just how parochial the company’s top management is inclined to be when the chips are down.

The final indignity is the dropping of a British driver, Kris Meeke, in favour of a Spaniard who on his last outing was slower. When it suits them — or at least their cash register — BMW will bang on at length about the importance of Mini’s British roots.

Ours is Europe’s biggest market by a mile for the brick-shaped cars. Our country is where the rally cars have been developed and promoted. Yet when pressed they drop the Brit, and make no mistake, that decision will have come from the very top.

There is a suggestion that some of the financial fault is Prodrive’s: they agreed to a comparatively small financial input from BMW and backed themselves to find big-note sponsors (as they have done in the past) but have so far failed.

But BMW’s big men, whose actions appear to show that on weekends they only really care what happens at Hockenheim and Lausitzsring, should really have a concern about this debacle will play in largest biggest Mini market. And rapidly do something about it.

Life on planet Red Bull: not for the faint hearted
On the one hand it’s hard not to feel sorry for sacked Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers, Jaime Alguersuari and Sébastien Buemi – because towards the latter half of this season in particular, they both did a pretty decent job of getting the most out of a car that was far from the fastest on the Formula 1 grid.

The trouble is, neither of them quite gelled with the Red Bull way of life. Unfairly or otherwise, Alguersuari was regarded by his team as being keener to be DJ-ing back in Ibiza than trying to understand the finer details of his car technically, while poor old Buemi, you suspect, was always perceived as being a nearly man internally – and therefore not quite the next big thing. That much was confirmed this week when the pair was replaced at Torro Rosso by Daniel Ricciardo and Frenchman Jean –Eric Vergne for next year.

Buemi and Alguersuari have been dropped

But it’s what happens next at Red Bull/Toro Rosso that will be most intriguing to observe – because if the masterplan unfolds in the way you suspect it might, put it this way, you wouldn’t want to be in Mark Webber’s shoes when the music stops this time next year.

I’ll never forget what Ricciardo’s former F3 team manager, Gary Bonnor from Carlin Motorsport, said to me when I drove the car Ricciardo won the championship driving in 2009. ‘That boy is something else – every time he drove the car he was blinding. And he was on it from the moment he turned up at the circuit, much more so than some of the other drivers we’ve run’ said Bonnor – the very clear intimation being that Ricciardo was in a different league from one J Alguersuari, who’d driven for the team the year before.

And guess who drove and won for the exact same team the year after Ricciardo? You guessed it, Jean-Eric Vergne, who was ‘seriously quick and incredibly professional to go with it’ according to Bonnor.

What happens now if you are Sébastien Buemi or Jaime Alguesuari? Don’t know, don’t care – is the way the Red Bull management seems to feel about its former protoges. They got their chances and they didn’t so much blow them as ‘fail to smash it’ as the team might say.

In reality it’s probably a case of scratching around on the edges of F1, trying to secure a third driver deal, or decamping to DTM and/or Le Mans. Either way, there’s no longer a place for Buemi and Alguersuari at the table with the big red bull above the door.

What happens now if you are Daniel Ricciardo or Jean-Eric Vergne is another proposition altogether, of course. They both have their chances to shine, and shine they no doubt will. Mark Webber is not going to be around forever in the main team, after all, and both of them will fancy themselves to replace him this time next year.

But they better deliver in the meantime. In fact, according to the manuscript they will need to over-deliver next year, with the donation of at least one testicle towards the good of the team being a very possible requirement, too – otherwise it’ll be ‘thank you for calling, who’s next?’

At which point one or both of them will be removed from the merry go-round, and they’ll be back in the hunt for a new job. And so it goes on, it seems, if you’re ever lucky enough to be invited to live on planet Red Bull… for a while.

Great rally news from Ford
Today has brought two pieces of good news for the price of one as far as the World Rally Championship is concerned.

The first is that Ford has recommitted for another two seasons of rally competition after several weeks of internal deliberation over whether it would carry on.

It’s a positive development for a championship that would be poorer without the presence of its longest-standing manufacturer. Ford’s withdrawal would also have left the WRC with just Citroën and Mini/Prodrive in the championship as high-profile teams, at least until Volkswagen comes in for 2013.

Ford World Rally Team's 2012 livery

Today’s announcement is also great for Britain’s motorsport industry, because it brings added security to Malcolm Wilson’s Cumbria-based M-Sport firm, which has operated Ford of Europe’s rally attack since 1997. Although Wilson recently made positive noises about carrying on as an independent if Ford decided not to continue, he’ll sleep easier with the might of the Blue Oval still behind him.

The other welcome aspect of the new deal is that former champion Petter Solberg has signed to partner Jari-Matti Latvala in the team’s Fiesta World Rally Cars.

It’s quite a development: Solberg’s emerging talent was first spotted by Ford back in 1999 and the team gave the Norwegian his break, before he was ‘pinched’ by Subaru in 2000. That didn’t sit well with Ford top brass, including Wilson, who suggested in rather forthright terms that Solberg would never again be welcome in one of his rally cars.

Petter Solberg drove for Ford in 1999

But the new deal makes sense for Ford, which needs an experienced driver as a foil for young, lightning-bolt-fast Latvala. It also serves up the prospect of a re-energised Solberg – who hasn’t won a WRC round since 2005 – going up against WRC dominator Sébastien Loeb, who has won every world title since the Norwegian’s 2003 triumph.

The WRC has taken a bit of a battering in recent weeks, mainly down to uncertainty over Ford’s continued participation and worries over series rights holder North One Sport after its parent company, Convers Sports Initiatives (CSI), went into administration earlier this month.

Now that Ford’s rally future is secured, all we need is for the behind-the-scenes situation to be ironed out before the season blasts off in Monte Carlo next month. Better start plotting the route down to the French Alps...

Sky blitzes the Beeb with F1 2012
Sounds like Sky has officially blown the BBC out of the water with its F1 coverage next year.

Not only has it confirmed that Martin Brundle will head the presenting team, but he’ll also be joined by the excellent former BBC Radio 5 live pairing of David Croft and Anthony Davidson in the commentary box.

Davidson will present throughout the weekend's practice sessions. Croft will partner Brundle during the races themselves. And they’ll be joined by pitlane reporters Natalie Pinkham and Ted Kravitz, the latter co-presenting an F1 magazine-style show on Sky Sports with Georgie Thompson.

Sky has also announced that the F1 race weekend programmes will be presented by Simon Lazenby, with veteran broadcaster Steve Rider being used for interviews with F1 legends.

All in all, it does make you wonder; why is the BBC even bothering to try to compete?

Fond memories of Peter Gethin
Heard with much sadness on Monday of the death of Peter Gethin at the age of 71 following a brief illness.

This chirpy and popular pint-sized son of a successful jockey hit the F1 headlines in 1971 when he won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, forcing his BRM P160 into the lead on the final corner to win by one-hundredth of a second from Ronnie Peterson’s March at a then-record average speed of 151.634mph.

Gethin started racing in a Lotus Seven in the early 1960s and was one of the most successful F3 rising stars of that close-fought decade. In 1969 he won the inaugural British Formula 5000 championship at the wheel of a McLaren M10A fielded by Church Farm Racing and in 1970 was promoted to the McLaren F1 team after Bruce McLaren’s death in a testing accident at Goodwood.

In 1971 he made a mid-season switch to BRM after his relationship with McLaren team principal Teddy Mayer broke down irretrievably. He switched teams only weeks before scoring that memorable victory at Monza.

Gethin always recounted with much amusement the fact that BRM boss Louis Stanley spent the Italian GP weekend trying to recruit Jackie Stewart’s team-mate François Cevert to drive for the team in 1972 and, on the evening before the race, Peter found himself moved to the bottom of the dinner table to make room for the French driver.

Barely 24 hours later, Gethin was being swept regally out of the paddock in the Stanley’s Mercedes 600, only to finish his greatest day squatting in his overalls by the side of the road back to Como changing a flat tyre. Peter was a great guy and will be sadly missed.

Riding (and crashing) with Travis Pastrana
So would I like to sit alongside American extreme sports star Travis Pastrana in a Skoda Fabia S2000 rally car during the Race of Champions? A no-brainer, and even if I’d been told beforehand that we’d end up crashing into the barriers in front of 34,000 people, I’d still have said yes.

Stunt fiend Pastrana spends most of his time leaping, flipping and spinning motorbikes and cars, and also finds time to squeeze in NASCAR races and rounds of the US rally championship.

He’s got an infectious passion for engine-powered machinery and an inspiring ‘do anything’ attitude to life. For example, I probably would have thought twice about accepting a passenger ride with him for this .

Thanks to his success in the X-Games extreme sports competition, he’s a huge star in his home country, and came to the Race of Champions at the Esprit Arena in Düsseldorf, Germany, as part of Team USA with fellow action sports competitor Brian Deegan.

Pastrana, who hails from Maryland, was “pumped” after beating DTM racer Timo Scheider when they battled in Audi R8s, but needed to win our race ensure Team USA progressed to the next round of the knock-out Nations Cup competition.

Unfortunately we were drawn against Finnish rally driver Juho Hänninen, who is a factory Skoda driver and knows the Fabia S2000 intimately. I’ve had a ride alongside Hänninen, and as I tried to settle my pre-race nerves I thought it would be a good idea to tell Pastrana that the Finn “is pretty good”.

Talk about stating the bleedin’ obvious. Mind you, Pastrana had his own challenges, because he’s recovering from a serious ankle injury sustained in this year’s X-Games. “Breaking myself is a theme of my life,” he says. “The doctors say I probably should not be driving this time…”

We get strapped into the Fabia in an underground car park. Bursting out into a stadium full of fans could be an overwhelming experience, but I’m more focused on ensuring my belts are fully tightened as Pastrana wrenches the wheel from side-to-side to generate some heat in the tyres. I wedge my backside deep into a seat designed for a svelte rally co-driver just as the lights go green and we rocket towards a tight right-hand bend.

The ROC circuit is an oversized Scalextric track, and even at the end of the short back straight the Fabia can only pull third gear, so the speed doesn’t feel particularly high. What strikes me is how narrow the useable part of the circuit looks from here and how frantically busy the drivers are on this compact layout, twirling the wheel, changing gear and stamping the pedals.

Then, as we negotiate a nadgery left-right-left bend, Pastrana clips a tyre barrier on my side. The impact is light, but it is enough to pitch us onto two wheels. He corrects the moment but we gently nose into the tyre barrier on the other side of the track.

The Skoda’s engine cuts and I can hear the fans cheering as Pastrana tries to restart. By the time he’s reversed out of the barrier and got going, Hänninen is almost a full lap ahead.

The race is lost but my taxi driver from Hell doesn’t stop pushing hard – we have another two-wheeled moment near the end of the race. Pastrana apologises after the chequered flag, but I’m glad I had a wild losing ride than a ruthlessly efficient winning one.

So I played a very minor role in the elimination of Team USA from the Nations Cup. No surprises that a duo with nine F1 world titles between them, Messrs Schumacher and Vettel, earned Team Germany the spoils for the fifth year in succession, sending the partisan fans into the damp Düsseldorf night with smiles on their faces.

Schumacher and Vettel will turn from team-mates to adversaries for this afternoon’s main individual event, where they’ll take on 14 other stars including Jenson Button, David Coulthard and Volkswagen’s new world rally signing, Sébastien Ogier, who revved up the crowd with his tyre-smoking demonstration runs in the new Polo R WRC yesterday. You can follow the event live at raceofchampions.com, and I’ll be tweeting during the day @Matt_Burt_

Which Kimi will we see in F1 next year?
So, the ‘Kimster’ is returning to F1 after all. After two years away comprehensively failing to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with on the World Rally Championship stage, 2007 F1 champ Kimi Räikkönen is returning to the Grand Prix grid in 2012, having signed a two year contract with the Lotus-Renault squad.

It remains to be seen whether this is a truly inspired driver choice by the Enstone-based team or an horrific misjudgement which will leave McLaren and Ferrari – Kimi’s two previous F1 teams – chortling to themselves like Precious Pup.

Because, make no mistake, Raikkonen is like the little girl in the nursery rhyme who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid!

The McLaren and Ferrari crews always said they always knew what the weekend would bring as early as 10.30am on a Friday morning on the strength of his mood. Some days they knew he would be blissfully inspired, on others they just felt like loading up the transporter and pushing off home. Yet with 18 wins, 62 podiums and 16 pole positions under his belt the 32-year old Finn is unquestionably a serious contender.

“I’m delighted to be coming back to Formula 1 after a two-year break, and I’m grateful to Lotus Renault GP for offering me this opportunity,” said Kimi.

“My time in the World Rally Championship has been a useful stage in my career as a driver, but I can’t deny the fact that my hunger for F1 has recently become overwhelming. It was an easy choice to return with Lotus Renault GP as I have been impressed by the scope of the team’s ambition Now I’m looking forward to playing an important role in pushing the team to the very front of the grid.”

Well, he just might. Or then again, he just might not.

Sky sees the light by signing Brundle
After several developments in the past week, we’ve got a fair idea how next year’s Formula One season will shape up from a broadcasting point-of-view.

We already knew that Sky Sports will show all 20 races (or possibly 19), while the BBC will get to broadcast half of them live and the other half on an extended highlights programme.

The races the Beeb will show live are: China, Spain, Monaco, Europe, Britain, Belgium, Singapore, Korea, Abu Dhabi and Brazil.

We also now know that Sky won’t interrupt the races with adverts – so there’s no chance of frustrating blunders such as the 2005 San Marino GP, when ITV cut away from a thrilling dice between Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso in the dying laps.

That’s a welcome move by a broadcaster that makes no apology of its commercial leanings, as is the confirmation of a standalone F1 channel, Sky Sports F1 HD, which will launch in March.

Quite what they’ll fill all the non-race weekends with is anyone’s guess, although Sky certainly does a good job of padding out its football shows with more banter and analysis than all but the most hardcore fan can stomach.

As far as commentators and presenters are concerned, Martin Brundle is switching to Sky. It’s rumoured that he’ll be joined by David Croft, who does an excellent job of calling the races on BBC Radio 5 Live at present.

One thing I admire about Brundle is his matter-of-fact honesty. Explaining his switch away from the Beeb in his column in The Times, he wrote: "The fact that their newly-announced and dedicated F1 channel will have no in-race advertising was a key factor, but most importantly I need to commentate on every race live. Recorded and delayed sports television doesn't give me the adrenalin fix I crave.”

Jake Humphrey, David Coulthard and Lee Mackenzie will all remain with the BBC, but there’s no news on Eddie Jordan or Ted Kravitz as yet.

Like most F1 fans, I was disappointed when the Sky/BBC joint-rights deal was announced. I understood the Beeb’s need to save cash, but couldn’t fathom why it was the channel’s motorsport coverage that had to suffer.

In 2009, it was reported that the broadcaster allegedly spent £5m covering the Glastonbury music festival. If that really was the case, 19 F1 weekends for £60m represents much better value…

Now I’m warming to the Sky concept. The fact it has the nous to sign Brundle – the best thing to happen to British F1 commentary for years – and has pledged not to interrupt the races with adverts suggests it understands what is needed to put on a good show.

Now if Sky can secure the rights to some classic 1970s and 1980s F1 to broadcast in the weeks between the races…

Ten years since Richard Burns won the WRC title
On this day a decade ago I was slithering about in a quagmire in Margam Park in south Wales, wearing a pair of Tesco carrier bags inside my walking boots in a vain attempt to prevent muddy slop from penetrating my socks.

It was Sunday, the final day of the 2001 Wales Rally GB, and after three days following the World Rally Championship decider, I was longing for a hot bath and a change of underwear.

Me and my mates were following the rally the proper way, haring around the Welsh countryside from stage to stage, then driving deep into the forests at night and sleeping in our cars to ensure we could grab a prime vantage point on the first stage of the next day.

Our convoy comprised a pair of Peugeot 306 D-Turbos and a Range Rover, all of which by the end of night one were ripe with a distinctive smell that can only be described as ‘rally odour’.

It was a thrilling event, which had been dubbed ‘the Battle of Britain’ because Colin McRae (Ford) and Richard Burns (Subaru) were vying for the world championship. Even the mainstream media was bigging up the fight. Former champions Carlos Sainz and Tommi Mäkinen were also in contention.

During the event, keeping up with the leaderboard in those days before smartphones was a case of picking up whatever snippets of information you could via radio, text or better-informed fans.

We’d watched McRae win Thursday night’s superspecial at a windy Cardiff Bay. When we witnessed him through Tyle, the second proper forest stage on Friday morning, he was on another planet to the other drivers in terms of pace and we were left in no doubt who was leading the rally.

What we didn’t find out until later that day was that Colin rolled his Ford Focus WRC out of the rally on the very next stage.

Mäkinen and Sainz hit trouble and canny Burns needed to finish fourth or better to win the world title. As he and navigator Robert Reid splashed past us in Margam, to a deservedly loud cheer, he was on his way to a solid third place behind the Peugeots of Marcus Grönholm and Harri Rovanperä.

Four years to the day after he won rallying’s biggest prize, Burns passed away following a fight against a brain tumour. So it is that November 25 remains a bittersweet day for his family, friends and many fans.

The richardburnsfoundation.com website is well worth five minutes of your time.

Once a racer, always a racer
Martin Brundle may have been away from an F1 cockpit for many years, but the 52-year-old is still painfully competitive and motivated. This is demonstrated by today’s news that he will be joining his 21-year-old son Alex at the wheel of the Nissan-powered Greaves Motorsport LMP2 prototype at next year’s Le Mans 24-hour epic.

Martin, a previous winner for Jaguar, will thus be reunited with Nissan after the Norfolk driver spearheaded the Japanese company’s official works effort at Le Mans in 1997. Alex, who is a chip off the old block if ever I saw one, will be out to show his Old Man a thing or two in what is one of the most famous events in the motorsport world.

They will also be following Michael and Mario Andretti, Derek and Justin Bell, and Nigel, Greg and Leo Mansell, as the latest father-and-son combination to tackle the gruelling French classic.

Martin commented: “I’m very much looking forward to returning to the Le Mans 24 Hour race with Nissan and the Greaves Motorsport LMP2 team. This is an unexpected pleasure, heightened by the fact I will be team-mates with my son.

“I’m eagerly anticipating a very special feeling when handing the car over to Alex during one of the world’s greatest motor races. Class victory in front of the fanatical Le Mans spectators is the goal.”

Alex added: “I loved driving the Le Mans circuit at this year’s official test day and a chance to compete in the full Le Mans Series, as well as the Le Mans 24 Hours, along with my single-seater activities in 2012 is brilliant for my career.

“At Le Mans, my father has been on pole position, led many times and been part of the winning team; this can fast-track my learning process. My thanks go to Nissan and Greaves Motorsport for creating this important opportunity, which I will seize and maximise.”

Austin's grand prix dream hangs in the balance

Almost a year before it is scheduled to join the F1 world championship schedule the planned new race at Austin, Texas, looks like earning itself a rare distinction, namely that of being wiped off the calendar even before the first such event takes place.

Last week the people behind the Circuit of The Americas, where the race was due to be held, took the decision to suspend further construction of the project “until a contract assuring the F1 United States Grand Prix will be held (there) is complete".

Red Bull PR drive could be Austin track's only F1 taste

They added: “The race contract between Formula 1 and the Circuit of The Americas has not been conveyed to the Circuit of The Americas per a previously agreed upon timetable.

“We have spent tremendous resources preparing for the Formula One and MotoGP races, but the failure to deliver race contracts gives us great concern,” said Bobby Epstein, founding partner of Circuit of The Americas.

“We believe the United States is vital for the future of Formula One and its teams and sponsors. Given the purpose-built design, creating a unique fan experience and iconic challenge for drivers, we hope that Texas will not be left behind. More than 100,000 fans have expressed an interest in purchasing tickets for Formula One alone.”  “It is in the best interest of all parties to reach a timely resolution,” said Red McCombs, chairman of McCombs Enterprises and founding partner of Circuit of The Americas. “Local businesses, fans and the State of Texas are counting on us.”

David Coulthard has driven on the part-finished circuit

The F1 fraternity was first alerted to potential problems with the Austin race at last weekend’s Abu Dhabi GP when Bernie Ecclestone, the F1 commercial rights holder, advised the competing teams that there might be difficulties ahead for Austin race.

“There are two parties,” said Bernie. “One has got the track and is building it, the other has the contract for the race. But they forgot to speak to each other. We are trying to sort it out, but it is a bit of an uphill struggle.”

Motorsport, Nascar style
I fulfilled an ambition last month to watch, for the first time, some top-class motor racing in the US. With lucky timing — cheap flights available at the same time as half-term coincided with the Nascar Sprint Cup race at Talladega — off went family Rendell to the deep south.

Some say Talladega Superspeedway is the home of Nascar, and the 2.66-mile track is certainly famous for its 212mph fastest-ever lap and incident-packed racing.

For this race qualifying was 181mph, although speeds were literally bumped-up in practice to 198mph courtesy of drafting, the unusual practice of pairs of cars teaming-up to push each-other bumper-to-bumper.

Needless to say the racing was fast and furious, the lead changed constantly, and nine cautions ensured the 188 laps whizzed by in three hours or so.

Before the start there was razzmatazz aplenty — a cavalcade of ambulances, fire appliances and police interceptors with lights flashing, then army parachutists, an air-force jet flypast and a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by an army choir. Strangely the crowd didn’t join in, unlike a noisy British sporting crowd.

I also now know that ’Bama race fans don’t care for Juan Pablo Montoya and Kyle Busch – they got roundly boo-ed. ‘Busch is from out west,’ drawled a local disdainfully. Favourites are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and, of course, Dale Earnhardt Jnr.

When Tony Stewart moved into the lead for a few laps, the roar of the crowd could be heard over 40 screaming V8s. Spine-tingling.

The key point for any Brit thinking of doing the same is that attending was simplicity itself.

I booked $100 tickets from the UK, a week in advance, and coughed up another $50 for the pit-lane walkabout, which I’d say was an essential part of the experience.

On race day you even get to walk across the ‘front stretch’ to get to the pits. The track is open to spectators because there are no support races.

We picked tickets up on the morning of raceday, a doddle with no queuing. Getting into the track was equally easy. We drove west from our hotel in Atlanta, about an hour-and-a-half drive and left early to avoid traffic. By Brit standards, there wasn’t any traffic on the way in.

All in all a brilliant experience. Now a question – what are your dream motorsport events to attend?

Ecclestone’s astonishing admission
Formula 1 powerbroker Bernie Ecclestone admitted to a German court in Munich yesterday that he had paid a former BayernLB banker to stay quiet and try to keep the tax authorities at bay while acquiring the commercial rights for the multi-million dollar global sport five years ago.

Ecclestone was giving evidence at the trial of Gerhard Gribkowsky, the former risk manager of the BayernLB, who is charged with selling the F1 rights in exchange for a bribe. He is charged with bribery, embezzlement and tax evasion in a deal, which cost the bank $92m (£58m).

Ecclestone said he was worried Gribkowsky could talk to British tax authorities about his businesses and, even if he was legal and correct, a tax probe might be damaging and costly.

"I had no alternative at the time," said Ecclestone.

"The only alternative was that the British tax authorities followed a case that would have been very expensive for me," added Ecclestone, who has immunity from prosecution for his testimony but not in general for his involvement in the affair.

"The tax risk would have exceeded two billion pounds.

"I paid him (Gribkowsky) to keep calm and not to do silly things. I knew he wanted to start a business."