Australian Car Advice | News Blog

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Source: NAGTROC via GTRBlog

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Toyota Australia motorsport manager Todd Connolly said Aussie Racing Cars are an exciting category that offer thrilling wheel-to-wheel racing.

“We’re really pleased to join such a competitive, popular and entertaining series,” he said. “Toyota sees it as an ideal grass-roots category for young drivers to learn and make their way up the ladder in motor sport.”

The 450kg Aussie Racing Cars have identical mechanical specification to ensure close competition and to put the emphasis on driver skill. They have a moulded body (a caricature of the vehicle on which it is based), a space-frame chassis and 1.2-litre Yamaha engine that delivers 91kW at 11,500rpm.

Todd Connolly identified two synergies with the new TRD Aurion Aussie Racing Cars and Toyota.

“Yamaha has been a Toyota technical partner for the last four decades and developed the latest Corolla dual-VVT-i-equipped engine,” he said. “CATIA, who sponsor our Formula One team and Australian rally team, provided the software to design the TRD Aurion look-alike body for the four new cars.”

The first TRD Aurion Aussie Racing Car to hit the circuit has been nominated as a “guest” car that will feature different motor sport personalities at each event. It is finished in the same livery as TRD’s 2008 Targa Tasmania class-winning TRD Aurion.

Race commentator and V8 race driver Neil Crompton will debut this car at Surfer’s Paradise, with an added exterior feature. The car will have its roof painted as a bandanna to support CanTeen’s October 31 National Bandanna Day for young people living with cancer.

Todd Connolly said he hopes the car’s appearance at the Nikon Indy 300 event would help raise awareness of CanTeen’s largest annual fund-raising day, when it aimed to sell one million bandannas. There will be a hospitality area at the circuit for CanTeen families from South-East Queensland.

Indy gets under way this Thursday with further information available at www.indy.com.au

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“We came here to Goondiwindi with the title already in the bag having wrapped that up at the previous round in Millicent”, said Pickering, “but the Championship is more than simply one round, is a season long battle around the country which starts in Western Australian at Easter each year and wraps up seven months later here in outback Queensland.”

Pickering and Henderson didn’t have it all their own way as the year progressed with several Mitsubishis featuring high on the results board. In particular young gun Clayton Chapman shone through as the driver most likely to challenge Pickering in the years ahead. Driving his Mitsubishi Triton, the fellow Queenslander took the fight right up to Pickering as the season marched on but his weekend in Goondiwindi amounted to little when he retired during the second section on Sunday.

In another surprise result, the production 4×4 class at the Goondiwindi 400, the final stage of the championship, was actually won by Michael and Linda Topfer in their short wheel base Pajero V6 after Pickering suffered rare mechanical troubles on the first section.

“The entry was strong here at Goondiwindi, with 10 cars entered in the 4×4 classes, one of the best we had seen all year”, said Pickering. “We started in a good position after the prologue but the first section on Saturday left us with a lot of work to do for the remaining 280km we had ahead of us on Sunday. Around 20km into the first lap we damaged the rear differential which left us with only front wheel drive, then a little further on we had puncture and stopped to change it. From then on, we were playing catch up all weekend!”

Starting from the back of the field for section two on Sunday, Pickering and Henderson carved up the contenders, passing 18 cars on the first lap of 70km through the rough dusty ‘melon hole’ terrain. As crews dropped by the wayside, Pickering concentrated on the task at hand that had brought him all eight titles and worked away at maintaining consistency, improving their time with every lap. With the title already secure, a strong outright place was their objective making up 43 places along the way.

“That’s the hardest work I’ve had to do on the Championship for a long time,” remarked Pickering at the finish. “Our Mitsubishi Pajero has brought us home once again. Passing all those cars along the way in the choking dust is a just reward for our effort and a proud moment for all the team. It’s been a wonderful season, Mark has scored his first Championship with the team and his navigation has been faultless all year. Team Technician, Bernard Grant has given us the very best car to do the job. Our Pajero is again top of the tracks for 2008.”

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All a walk in the park for the X-Bow, which was reportedly raced in a near standard road specification. The KTM X-Bow weighs in at 700kg and is good for 224kW (300hp) thanks to a four-cylinder TFSI engine taken from the Volkswagen Gruop.

The power is driven via the rear-wheels through a manual 6-gear transmission, which is also made by VW/Audi-group. The X-Bow can be optioned with a limited-slip differential. KTM’s ‘International’ price for the X-Bow is $AU96,000.

You can read more about the KTM X-Bow here.

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All of a sudden, in the time it took for my synapses to register that statement, my plans for that week changed. I had a clean slate. “When did you want to get together for it?” Jones asked.

No one would give up a chance to go along with Steve Jones, who, along with his navigator, Ruari Sauter-Dawson, recently won the 2008 Quit TargaWest tarmac rally in Perth. Working for Fabcar, a dealership in Perth that imports GT-Rs for private buyers, Jones is possibly the best qualified person in Australia to run us through the capabilities of a GT-R.

With that, we booked ourselves a time and a place.

Jones suggested that the best place to test Nissan’s latest and greatest car, was the very spot that its mettle was tested. A TargaWest stage? There couldn’t be a better location. As they say on Millionare, “Lock it in, Eddie.”

There was a problem looming though. The period we had set for the drive coincided with a gloomy weather forecast. The prediction was showers, with an afternoon thunderstorm risk. Perfect, if you’re wanting to test out grip levels in the wet.

However, on a road where rocks, trees and branches are being cleared by only centimetres, and in a car that costs more than $180,000, and goes from 0-100km/h in just 3.5 seconds, sitting on what can only be described as loose bitumen - well, let’s say we weren’t too keen to add water to the equation.

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“We just set history. Three years in a row. It’s crazy,” Lowndes said. “You cannot dream of it. For us it’s just been a really clean weekend.”

Runners-up Greg Murphy and Jason Richards in a Holden Commodore were followed by James Courtney and David Besnard who overcame tyre issues to take third place.

Both HRT (Holden Racing Team) cars failed to finish, while Mark Winterbottom and Steve Richards came in fourth with Richards blaming tyres for the result.

With attendance figures for the four-day crowd at 187,000 the legendary event has now been put to bed for another year. With four rounds to go the Championship Board reads as follows:

• 1 - Jamie Whincup (2316 points)
• 2 - Mark Winterbottom (2283 points)
• 3- Garth Tander (2234 points)
• 4 - Craig Lowndes (1923 points)
• 5 - Will Davison (1865 points)

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The electrical fault was caused by Xede, the car’s on board electronic tuning tool, which coincidentally was the only non-Mazda part on the car, once resolved though the car was back on pace even finishing one stage 20 seconds faster than the previous day’s time.

Beaten only by full blown AWD rally cars, and managing to finish faster than Jim Richard’s Porsche 911 GT2, the result speaks for itself.

The ARC concludes on the NSW central coast with the Coffs Harbour Rally, November 15 - 16 with Neal Bates’ TRD Corolla S2000 heading the round on 81 points.

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Unveiled at the Paris Auto Show overnight as a concept, the new car boasts a split livery portraying its familiar competition war paint on one side and a more ‘restful’ colour scheme on the other.

The system recovers energy produced during braking and stores it in a pack of lithium-ion batteries positioned over the fuel tank.

When required, this energy can be used to power a 125kW electric motor which is connected to the rear differential, providing an instant torque boost.

The driver can select one of four operating modes for the hybrid system, depending on the situation.

• Internal combustion engine mode: the most frequently-used mode for the C4 WRC (used on stages and some on road sections).
• Internal combustion engine mode with energy recovery: activated on stages; improves the brakes’ resistance to fade and charges the batteries.
• Electric motor mode with energy recovery: used on road sections (untimed), in built-up areas or in the service park; contributes to increasing the car’s range, reduces noise in built-up areas, and permits the internal combustion engine not to be used when it is not indispensable.
• Boost mode (internal combustion engine and electric modes combined): can be selected at the desired moment on a stage to benefit from an additional 300Nm of torque for a limited time.

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At just 20 years old, Brendan Reeves will become the youngest driver in Mazda Motorsport history, having won the Victorian Autocross Championship at the age of 16 and participating in an exclusive three-year Rally Development Program by the Australian Institute of Sport.

“Driving for a factory team is exactly what you set out to achieve in a motorsport career, so I feel very privileged to be given this opportunity,” said Brendan “As a road car the Mazda3 MPS is a fantastic car to drive. It’s sporty, nimble and fun to drive. I can’t wait to get into its rally sibling on Wednesday for some pre-event testing.”

If successful, 2009 will mark the first time Mazda has competed in a full ARC season since it won the Championship in 1989 with the Mazda 323 4WD Turbo driven by Murray Coote.

However Mazda has no plans to establish a full rally sport division and instead intends to compete with a near showroom spec iteration of its front-wheel drive Mazda3 MPS.

“Over the past 12 months we’ve been in heavy discussion with CAMS over the introduction of the new ARC regulations, and the introduction of a separate championship for production based two-wheel-drive cars,”

Mazda is seeking to convince CAMS officials to consider a two-wheel-drive class which would see the MPS on equal footing with highly-modified, four-wheel-drive cars.

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