Red Bull To Charge If High-spirited Montoya Released

Sun Herald

Sunday April 2, 2006

Peter McKay

JUAN Pablo Montoya may feel unloved at times at McLaren but free-spending Red Bull Racing, one of the newer teams on the formula one block - is interested in the volatile Columbian should he become a free agent next season.

Montoya is in his second year at McLaren but, due to the impending arrival of world champ Fernando Alonso, only one seat is available at McLaren next year.

While Montoya's teammate Kimi Raikkonen has been linked to Ferrari next year, if the Finn stays one of the incumbents will be headed for the exit.

Enter Christian Horner, the Red Bull team boss, who has indicated he's an admirer of Montoya and a believer that he can be motivated to do better with the right guidance.

Red Bull is seen as a team on the rise. It has a healthy budget and recently recruited design genius Adrian Newey.

Ford should lose Focus

DESPITE the positive noises from Ford on the future of its rear-drive Focus rally car, which debuted in the opening round of the NEC Australian Rally Championship, it's hard to find anyone else in rallying circles with anything like the same optimism.

After a significant rear suspension breakage during the media run on Friday morning, the Focus reappeared for the start of the rally, looking and sounding rather nice, but rarely running in the top 10 on the stages.

It failed to finish in the two heats, which probably isn't all that unusual for a new car. The decision to build a modern rear-wheel-drive rally car suggests someone is jammed in a time warp. The Focus cannot hope to compete with the tough all-wheel-drive opposition from Toyota, Mitsubishi and Subaru.

A front-wheel-drive Focus would out-perform the rear-drive version. Ford should create a new car to the new Super 2000 regulations which will be introduced soon to run with the present ARC cars. The aim of Super 2000 is to attract more brands to the Australian and the world titles.

Spotlight on porky pilots

ENGINEERS will tell you they spend up big to reduce the weight of cars, either through the use of exotic materials like Kevlar and carbon fibre, or with smart design.

So we wonder how Dick Johnson Racing's technical guys reacted when they saw the official driver weights last weekend at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide. Driver Steve "Junior" Johnson weighed in at 122 kilograms in his race gear.

Paul Radisich and Dean Canto were the lightweights among the V8 supercars pilots, each topping the scales at 68.5kg.

Muggeridge tumbles

AUSTRALIAN Karl Muggeridge's World Superbike Championship push received a setback during the week when he was injured in a crash at testing in Valencia, Spain.

The Ten Kate Honda rider fractured his second vertebra in the spill. The news was better for Ducati's Troy Bayliss, who topped the official world superbike test times.