Mark Webber believes his win in the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix will be a “good tonic” for him to return stronger in the 2012 Formula One world championship.
The 35-year-old Australian was overshadowed by Red Bull teammate and double world champion Sebastian Vettel this year, with the German enjoying 11 wins and 15 poles on his way to a second title.
Webber’s victory meant he finished third in the 2011 championship behind Jenson Button.
“I think I will have a stronger season than this year,” Webber said.
“I started off poorly for different reasons, but we will look at all areas to get to the highest level. When the bar is at the highest level, I don’t just look at Seb.
“There is Jenson (Button), Fernando (Alonso) – these guys are on the top pace. It is a good tonic for me, this race. It’s good to sign off like this.”
Webber took the lead after 30 laps when Vettel was hit by gearbox problems.
After Webber passed him, though, Vettel again increased his pace and had no problem staying behind his teammate.
He even set fastest laps a couple of times. Webber eventually finished with the race’s best lap.
Vettel dismissed suggestions that team orders might have come into play to try to help Webber finish second in the points standings.
“We had no choice,” Vettel said.
“More and more, I was forced to slow down and, at the end, I was not using second gear.”
Fernando Alonso of Ferrari was fourth and crowd favourite Felipe Massa, in his 100th race for Ferrari, was fifth.
Adrian Sutil of Force India finished sixth and Nico Rosberg of Mercedes was seventh.
Lewis Hamilton, the winner in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, also had a gearbox problem in his McLaren and eventually retired on lap 48.
Seven-time champion Michael Schumacher of Mercedes had a punctured left-rear tyre while trying to pass Bruno Senna of Renault at the end of the main straight.
Schumacher had already passed Senna when the Brazilian’s car touched his tyre and forced him to make an unscheduled pitstop that led to a 15th-place finish.
Senna also had to make a stop because of damage to his car and eventually received a drive-through penalty for the incident and finished 17th.
Veteran Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello, who is yet to secure a drive for next year and could have driven his last F1 race after an 18-year career, made a slow start from 12th position and finished only 14th.
Smart shoppers know that the best deals on new cars emerge before and after January 1. In less than a month’s time, anything built in 2011 will be immediately deemed, like, so last year. Literally. That means dealers are become desperate to clear stocks to avoid hanging onto an ‘old’ model.
But what new cars are attracting the biggest discounts? We’ve trawled through dealer ads and special promotions to bring you the keenest deals around, and put a new-car in your driveway for the new year.
Let’s start with the sub-$20K light car class. Although we reckon the Polo 77TSI is the best car in its category, VW are having supply issues so don’t expect major discounts off the $23K driveaway retail price. Our pick is the Ford Fiesta, which in mid-range LX spec (with alloys, cruise and side/curtain airbags) is advertised at one Queensland dealership for $17,785 driveaway. If you can’t stretch to a Fiesta LX, Mazda will give you side/curtains and cruise in the facelifted 2 Neo for $16,490 driveaway.
Step one rung up to the small car class and the choice is again between Volkswagen and Ford. A Golf 77TSI manual advertised for $21,990 driveaway is superb value. If you can’t stretch above $20K, however, we’ve seen the all-new Focus Ambiente advertised for $19,990 driveaway. Especially at these prices, the two Euro-hatches render everything else in the class (Corolla, Cruze, Mazda 3, Lancer) irrelevant.
Don’t be lured by $23,990 driveaway run-out deals on the mid-sized Holden Epica – it was mediocre when it launched four years ago. For the same price, a Skoda Octavia 90TSI rates as both outstanding value and an excellent mid-sized car. Stretch towards $30K, and a Honda Accord Euro manual advertised for $29,990 driveaway, or a packed-to-the-rafters Mazda 6 Touring auto for $31,990 driveaway, are better options again.
Compact SUVs? Difficult to go past the big, honest Mitsubishi Outlander LS for a target-price of $26K driveaway. More inspiring choices will cost you, with the class-leading, and now front-drive Volkswagen Tiguan pushing past thirty-large. A base CR-V for a target price of $27,990 driveaway treads a happy middle ground – it’s better than the Mitsu, not quite as good as the VW.
Big Aussie sixes might lose a bomb in resale value, but there’s no breed of car you’ll get bigger discounts on. Entry-level variants like the Commodore Omega and Falcon XT should be haggled down to around $28K driveaway, while we’ve seen demonstrator Calais and G6E sedans for around $36K on-road.
Some premium brands are also more inclined to haggle than others. We’ve seen an Alfa Romeo 159 – with the new 1.7 turbo – for $42K driveaway. A Volvo S60 T4 should hand you back plenty of change from $50K. Neither will hold their value as well as German, however, so it’s worth stretching to an Audi A4 – just over fifty driveaway is the target for a 1.8T with CVT – or a runout BMW 323i at closer to sixty on-road. Remember: the Germans love exorbitantly-priced options, so stay away from the options list unless the dealer will throw them in for close to nothing.
Other luxe-sports recommendations include the Lexus IS350 (target $60K on-road for a Prestige), Audi TT 2.0 quattro S-tronic (aim: $70K on-road), and Jaguar XF 3.0D (less than six figures driveaway).
Many mediocre models (like the previously mentioned Holden Epica) are soft targets for big discounts, but it’s the excellent models recommended here that also get major cuts that hand buyers a real win-win – top deal, great car.
For a boy from the western suburbs of Sydney, Mark Winterbottom’s victory in the season-ending V8 Supercar race on the Olympic Park street circuit was a great way to bow out in 2011.
The Doonside product took out the 250km race on Sunday to end his championship on a high and snatch third place in the overall standings from New Zealand youngster Shane van Gisbergen.
It capped a dominant end to the year for Winterbottom, who claimed the most points of any driver from the annual Bathurst 1000 endurance race onwards to come home with a very wet sail.
And the 30-year-old is hopeful the strong end to the season is just the beginning for his historically under-performing Ford Performance Racing (FPR) outfit.
“I’m just so proud of my team and the way we’ve turned it around this season,” Winterbottom said.
“We were sitting in the press conference after we’d won Gold Coast wondering if we were going to back it up and we’ve done that pretty well for the rest of the year.”
As much as there were highs for FPR in Sunday’s race as Winterbottom came in ahead of Holden’s Craig Lowndes and van Gisbergen, it could have been so much better.
Teammate Paul Dumbrell, in his last outing before retiring as a full-time driver, was running second for most of the 74-lap race.
With a possible podium finish looming, Dumbrell spun out and, as he tried to get his car back into the race, his stricken Ford was collected by Holden driver Lee Holdsworth to end his career in deflating fashion.
That crash was one of several to mar Sunday’s racing, with another Ford pilot in Tony D’Alberto collecting a concrete wall front-on at speed after a suspension failure left him a passenger.
While Winterbottom was upset for his stablemate he is hopeful his own good form shows FPR are finally ready to challenge the dominant TeamVodafone outfit of Lowndes and 2011 champion Jamie Whincup.
“I’m disappointed for PD. That was his last race and he deserved a better result than what he got,” he said.
“Disappointed for him but as a team we should hold our head up high and be proud of how we’ve come home and look forward to next year.”
He’s got his number back.
All year Jamie Whincup has been desperately trying to regain the No.1 sticker he had to relinquish at the end of last year’s V8 Supercar championship.
On Sunday he did what was needed to secure his third title.
The TeamVodafone driver finished eighth in the last race of the season on the Sydney Olympic Park street circuit, enough to deliver the championship 35 points clear of teammate Craig Lowndes.
Lowndes, the 37-year-old veteran needing to overhaul a 188-point deficit over the weekend to claim a fourth title, did all he could, finishing second behind Ford’s Mark Winterbottom in the incident-packed 250km race.
But it wasn’t enough, Whincup holding on despite a sub-par weekend to ensure he’ll have that precious No.1 back on the side of his Commodore in 2012.
“It’s just a money-can’t-buy experience,” the 28-year-old said.
“It’s massive relief at the moment. It’s been quite stressful all weekend, especially after yesterday.
“Lowndesy and I came into today with the championship, the whole year’s work, swaying in the wind.
“We knew with the weather conditions, we knew with the track the way it is, that it was going to be a tough battle to the end. We played it soft but we played it smart as well.”
Whincup had been the dominant force over the year, securing 10 race wins in the season, but he acknowledged challenges from rivals such as Lowndes, Winterbottom and Holden pair Jason Bright and Rick Kelly had made it a hard slog.
“The run home was unbelievably tough with the FPR guys going really good,” he said.
“Had some cracker battles with Brighty in the middle of the year and with Ricko in the wet, it goes on and on and on.
“To get through all of that and to come up with the best average score is, for me, the grand prize of the year.”
For his part Lowndes was philosophical about falling just short of pulling off the near-impossible with his race win on Saturday and the runner-up finish on Sunday.
“Second was the best we could do today,” he said.
“Not too disappointed in the sense that Jamie’s done a fantastic job this year. Coming into this weekend it was always going to be a tall order to try and peg back 188 points.”
Ford’s New Zealand youngster Shane van Gisbergen finished third in the race to complete his breakthrough season as the fourth-placed driver in the championship behind Winterbottom.
A Ferrari driver lost control on a wet road in Japan, causing a chain reaction that wrecked 14 vehicles, including seven other Ferraris, two Mercedes-Benz and a Lamborghini.
A total of 14 cars were involved in the accident on the Chugoku Expressway near the Shimonoseki junction at 10:15am in the morning. A Nissan GT-R Skyline and a Toyota Prius were also involved in the accident, and eleven people were taken to hospital, but there were no major injuries, according to the Yamaguchi prefectural police.
In next month’s Wheels we answer the year’s worst-kept secret and deliver the verdict on the first-ever four-cylinder Falcon.
Ford gave us full-day access to its You Yangs proving ground to fang the 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder prototype and directly compares its performance with the twice-the-capacity, but naturally-aspirated 4.0-litre inline six.
Despite being around 100kg heavier than its front-drive Mondeo Ecoboost sibling, and using the same engine, the Falcon Ecoboost actually proved quicker to 100km/h. So although Ford won’t yet talk specific power and torque figures, it’s guaranteed that the Falc’s outputs will be substantially higher than the Mondeo’s 149kW/300Nm; the same engine in the Focus ST produces 184kW/360Nm, which sounds bang-on the money.
Besides the strange feeling of hearing a zingy turbo-four rev from under the bonnet of a Falcon, the Ecoboost proved no dunger to drive. In fact there’s a whole lot less weight over the front wheels, improving front-end sharpness. Could this lightest Falcon also be the sweetest-handling variant? For drive impressions, check out Wheels January issue, on-sale December 21.
Mark Webber is confident he can take the momentum of his Brazilian Grand Prix victory into 2012 when he tries again to knock team-mate Sebastian Vettel from his perch.
Webber recorded his only win of the season in Sao Paulo, four weeks after 24-year-old Vettel had stormed to a second straight world drivers championship.
The Red Bull team-mates have not always seen eye-to-eye, most spectacularly after a crash in Turkey last year, while Webber has in the past hinted at team bosses favouring the young German.
The pair have conceded they don’t need to be friends to work together and the Australian is at pains to not single out Vettel as he plans another campaign, which will begin in Melbourne next March.
But Webber believes the pair’s ding-dong battle for the 2010 crown is more likely than this year’s all-out dominance by Vettel, who drew comparisons with Michael Schumacher when he became Formula One’s youngest world champion at 23.
“In 2010 it was absolutely nip and tuck between us,” Webber told AAP on Tuesday.
“This year it wasn’t, Seb got a phenomenal momentum over all of us.
“But the encouraging thing is that we all know the margins are so fine for this sport.
“Before you know it you get that one or two 10ths (of a second) consistently coming back your way for whatever reasons and all of a sudden some momentum starts to come your way.
“We’re not sure who’s going to be doing the business next year but for sure the way I finished the year, that’s very positive for me.
“I need to carry that into 2012.”
Webber says his qualifying performances need to improve if he is to seriously challenge Vettel – and others – in 2012.
“It has been a strength for me in the past and wasn’t as strong this year for me,” said the 35-year-old, who is in Tasmania for the charity adventure race he supports.
“It was getting better for me towards the end of the year, I had some much closer fights with Sebastian – irrespective of who it is, most of the time Seb was on pole, but I’m not just earmarking him.
“You don’t want to be leaving yourself too much work to do late in a race which was in many cases this year my situation.”
Webber, who finished third in the drivers’ standings this year, said driving in Melbourne was always special, but that didn’t make it any easier to win.
“There’s a bit of a form card there,” he said.
“A lot of drivers struggle with their home races because obviously the focus is not as easy as other races where there’s not as much demand on you.
“That’s something you’ve got to mange each year.”
For the first time ever, the Ford Territory SUV outsold its Falcon sedan sibling. For the single month of November, the difference between the pair was almost 300 units – 1776 sales versus 1483.
Those figures speak as much about the rapid decline of Falcon as the increasing strength of Territory, although the figures may complement each other – Falc buyers swayed by turbo-diesel economy in the facelifted Tezza. Combined Falcon/Territory sales of 3259 units easily eclipsed Commodore sedan and Sportwagon’s 2808 total for the month.
The end of 2011 can’t come soon enough for Falcon, which has lost 10,000 sales compared with last year, a 37% year-to-date decline. The liquid-injected gas EcoLPI hasn’t yet fired, and it’s unclear whether the turbo-four Ecoboost will prove a meaningful addition next year.
Conversely, turbo-diesel power is proving a winning formula for the Territory. If momentum can be maintained, then 15-20,000 sales is possible for full-year 2012 – well above the previous few year’s circa-10K performances.
The general motoring media pick Falcon as a soft target – the new Mitsubishi 380? – but it appears that while buyers have deserted the big sedan, they haven’t completely deserted Ford showrooms.
Mercedes-Benz has unveiled the fifth generation of its oldest continuously-running model, the SL-Class.
Although the SL has been neither ‘sporty’ or ‘lightweight’ for many years – despite M-B still championing the famous designation – this all-new mega-luxe roadster is the first to feature a body made entirely of aluminium, helping reduce weight by 140kg compared with its predecessor. Despite the weight-loss diet, the new SL is a full 57mm wider and 50mm longer than the outgoing fourth-gen model. Beyond the lavish SLS-inspired cabin and sharp-edged big-SLK styling, buyers can now choose between a metal hard-top, hard-top with sunroof, or a glass roof. Each drops in 20 seconds.
The flagship (for now) SL500 scores a new 4.7-litre twin-turbo V8 that, compared with the old atmo 5.5-litre, is more powerful (kiloWatt count is up 12 percent to 320, while Newton’s finest increases by 32 percent to 700) and frugal (emissions down 22 percent). The entry-level SL350 gets the same 225kW 3.5-litre direct-injected V6 that recently debuted in the CLS, its 6.8L/100km combined fuel sticker rivalling the low consumption of many performance diesels. Both V6 and V8 engines team with a seven-speed 7G-TRONIC automatic.
In the US, SL-Class sales dropped from 13,717 in 2002 to just 2385 last year. With GFC nightmares fading, it will be interesting to see whether this bigger, lighter, more powerful SL will lure the mega-wealthy business elite back into Mercedes-Benz showrooms…
Jason Richards never won Bathurst, nor a V8 Supercar championship.
But those closest to the New Zealand motor racing driver, who died in Melbourne on Thursday night after a 14-month battle with cancer, say the record books didn’t do him justice.
The death of Richards, a three-time Bathurst 1000 runner-up and a much-loved figure in the competitive environment of Australasian motor racing, has deeply saddened all involved with the sport.
Richards was 35.
Tributes came from officials, rival drivers and his grief-stricken race team Brad Jones Racing – the most recent of a succession of winning associations with Holden outfits since joining the Australian V8 series in 2001.
Richards won three New Zealand touring car championships prior to moving into V8 Supercars.
“The history books will not do him justice,” owner Brad Jones said in a statement from Richards’ race team.
“Given the right equipment JR was easily a frontrunner but chose team loyalty over personal gain, determined to work with his crew to reach the front of the grid together.”
Ex-Brad Jones Racing teammate John Bowe led a long list of tributes from drivers.
“Awesome dad, wonderful husband, loving son, a brilliant racer and a hero to all,” Bowe said of Richards.
“Our hearts are broken – such a tragic loss.”
V8 Supercar chairman Tony Cochrane said Richards’ fight against adrenocortical carcinoma – a rare form of cancer in Australia – had won universal admiration from all involved in the sport.
“Jason will be remembered for his great grin and his love and loyalty to his family – both of which made him an immensely admired figure in pit lane,” Cochrane said.
“There was not a single person in Australian sport, or indeed Australia and his native New Zealand, who did not admire his enormous courage as he battled the last 14 months and his determination to fight in every way he could.
“He will be dearly missed by all in the V8 Supercar family.”
Richards was diagnosed with cancer late last year and was forced to step away from fulltime V8 driving.
But he still managed to race part-time despite his illness, winning a second-tier development series race in Adelaide in March.
A memorial service to honour Richards and his career will be held at Melbourne’s Sandown Raceway in the next few weeks.
Richards is survived by his wife Charlotte and children Sienna and Olivia.
