While the Australian racing community’s focus is on this weekend’s Bathurst 12-Hour, there’s news from abroad on the world’s biggest endurance race and a man who won five enduros at Mt Panorama.Toyota, devastated at having victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans slip away from it in the last minutes 7½ months ago, has stepped up its efforts to capture its first win in the French classic by announcing it will take a third hybrid prototype there this June.
Across the Tasman Sea, Greg Murphy – four-time winner of the Bathurst 1000 as well as the 24-Hour at The Mountain in 2003 – is going rallying this year in the New Zealand Rally Championship in a Holden Barina.
Meanwhile, Mark Webber has been named the grand marshal for Le Mans and, without having won sports car racing’s crown jewel in his five attempts, is feeling humble at taking on the ceremonial role in the footsteps of several multiple victors.
Ford will defend the GT Pro title it won there last year on the 50th anniversary of the first outright victory by its famous GT40 with four entries again, one of them likely to include Australian Ryan Briscoe.
The Blue Oval also is warming to the World Rally Championship again after Sebastien Ogier’s Monte Carlo victory in one of its Fiestas for Malcolm Wilson’s factory-supported M-Sport organisation last month against works Hyundais, Toyotas and Citroens.
Ford has not been directly involved as a WRC manufacturer since 2012, but Ford Performance head Dave Pericak has said ahead of next weekend’s second round of this year’s championship in Sweden that “we’re going to make this part of our plan going forward”.
However, Formula 1 holds no lure for the Detroit-based manufacturer, despite the takeover of that business by US television, sports and entertainment company Liberty and its connection now to US F1 team owner Gene Haas through the NASCAR team he co-owns with Tony Stewart and which will race Ford Fusions this year.
Ford has been out of F1 since offloading the Jaguar team in 2004, but the record books show that only Ferrari has powered more drivers to world championships in grand prix racing than Ford’s 13 titles with V8s in its long-time partnership with Cosworth.
Pericak said F1 was too expensive and, while IndyCar is reputed to have a third engine manufacturer interested in competing against Chevrolet and Honda, Ford won’t be returning to the top level of North American open-wheeler racing any time soon.
“If you look at every series we are in right now there is a relevance to all the goals and objectives we have, in developing our tools, technology and people and translating that into road cars,” Pericak said.
Audi, the dominant manufacturer at Le Mans this century, is out of prototype sports car racing and Porsche cut back to two 919 Hybrids at Le Mans last year, but Toyota will go to the famous 13.469-kilometre French circuit this year with three of its revised TS050s.
The Japanese manufacturer is intent on scoring its first win in what in so many ways is the world’s greatest race.
It has been runner-up in it in 1992, 1999 and 2013, while last year it was poised for victory when a connector between a turbocharger and an intercooler caused a loss of boost pressure, stranding Kazuki Nakajima on the start-finish straight.
Although fiddling with the control settings eventually restored power, the car did not compete the last lap in less than the required six minutes and was not even classified in the final results.
Toyota’s three-car assault this year will be its first this century as it tries to emulate the only success by a Japanese manufacturer in the event by Mazda in 1991.
It also will race the third car in May at Belgium’s Spa Francorchamps in one of the eight six-hour races that comprise the World Endurance Championship (WEC) along with the four-times-longer race at Le Mans on June 17-18.
While Toyota had announced driver line-ups for its two full-time WEC entries, it has now transferred French veteran Stephane Sarrazin to the third car.
It has installed Argentinian and Citroen triple world touring car champion Jose Maria Lopez in place of Sarrazin with Japanese ex-F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi and Britain’s Mike Conway.
Its primary combination comprises Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland), Anthony Davidson (Britain) and Nakajima.
Sarrazin’s co-drivers in the third 2.4-litre, twin-turbo, petrol V6-engined TS050 with twin-axle kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) and battery storage will be named later, although Japan’s Ryo Hirakawa is expected to be one.
Brazilian Pipo Derani, winner of America’s Daytona 24-Hour and Sebring 12-Hour last year at just 22, had been touted as a possibility, but he has joined the Ford squad in the GT class.
Another prospect was 34-year-old Frenchman Loic Duval, who won Le Mans in 2013 with Dane Tom Kristensen and Scotsman Allan McNish in an Audi R18 e-tron quattro.
However, Duval has landed an Audi drive in the DTM – the German touring car championship – which has a round at the Hungaroring in Budapest that clashes with Le Mans.
Kristensen and McNish have had a dozen Le Mans victories between them and, now retired, have since had the grand marshal role that Webber will fulfil this year after his retirement at the end of last season’s WEC.
Webber’s best finish at Le Mans was second in 2015, although he, New Zealander Brendon Hartley and German Timo Bernhard went on to win the WEC drivers’ title that year.
Porsche’s victory in the twice-round-the-clock marathon that season came in a third entry driven by Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg, New Zealander Earl Bamber (in a Walkinshaw Porsche 911 GT R at Bathurst this weekend) and Brit Nick Tandy.
Webber has admitted he does not have the “tremendous record” of some other drivers at Le Mans and is humbled to have been chosen as grand marshal, barely a week after he was awarded as Order of Australia.
“Of course, I will be favouring my beloved Porsche, but Toyota will be very hungry to get the outright victory this year,” Webber said.
Toyota will unveil its upgraded TS050 to take on the 2.0-litre, single-turbo V4 petrol 919 Porsches with front-axle KERS and exhaust energy recovery and battery storage at the end of next month ahead of a two-day official WEC test at Italy’s Monza.
Bamber has replaced Webber in one of 919s with countryman Hartley and Bernhard, while one of its 2016 Le Mans winners Neel Jani (Switzerland), Andre Lotterer (Germany) and Tandy are in the other.
German Marc Lieb (at Bathurst in a 991 GT3 R) and Frenchman Romain Dumas, who partnered Jani to Le Mans success at Toyota’s expense last year, are out of Porsche’s prototype line-up this year.
Apart from the Toyotas and Porsches, the only other LMP1 entry for Le Mans is a non-hybrid entered by Romanian-born, German-based former F1 team principal Colin Kolles.
One of the drivers in that car will be Robert Kubica, the hugely-talented Pole who won the 2008 Canadian GP.
Kubica’s career was largely ruined by a rally testing crash in 2011 but, since dabbling in the WRC, he has turned to sports cars now because “I have been looking for something as close to F1 as possible”.
Another Le Mans rookie will be Brazilian 11-time GP winner Rubens Barrichello, partnering Dutchman Jan Lammers in an LMP2 entry – a Dallara-Gibson P217.
Murph’s ‘mid-life crisis’ – in a 300hp Barina
Greg Murphy jokes that, at 44, it’s “a mid-life crisis”, but the Supercars driving great turned commentator is to compete in this year’s New Zealand Rally Championship in a Holden Barina.
Murphy has had a taste of rallying in a Ford Escort Mk1 and a Vauxhall Chevette in classic events in his homeland and said he “couldn’t help myself” when presented with the opportunity to rally the 300-horsepower AP4 (Asia-Pacific four-wheel-drive) Barina.
The car – a ‘sister’ of which will be driven by younger fellow New Zealander Josh Marston – was unveiled this week on the skid pad at the Hampton Downs circuit between Auckland and Hamilton.
Supported by Holden NZ, Murphy will demonstrate the Barina at this weekend’s Leadfoot Festival up the driveway of NZ’s renowned hillclimb and rally competitor Rod Millen’s property on the Coromandel Peninsula east of Auckland.
Murphy, revered for his ‘Lap of the Gods’ qualifying at the 2003 Bathurst 1000, will miss the opening round of the NZ rally championship in the Otago region of the South Island in early April because of his commentary commitments at the Supercars round at Symmons Plains in Tasmania.
However, he is a keen advocate of the AP4 ‘formula’ that also has attracted two Toyotas, three Mazdas, a Suzuki, a Skoda, a Mitsubishi, a Ford and a Volkswagen to the NZ championship, with talk of Kia and Audi entries too.