MOTORSPORT: Rallying at record speed

The eighth and latest round of the World Rally Championship was the fastest in history.

Finnish driver Jari-Matti Latvala won his home rally for the third time – at an average speed of 125.44kmh in a 318-horsepower, four-wheel-drive Volkswagen Polo R WRC, eclipsing French great Sebastien Loeb's 122.89kmh in a Citroen in 2012.

Reigning Australian rally champion Scott Pedder exceeded his wildest expectations on the rollercoaster gravel roads of the Finnish event, ending up fourth in WRC2 and 14th outright in a Ford Fiesta R5.

Pedder is now likely to bring the Fiesta and its crew to Australia for him and co-driver Dale Moscatt to compete in at Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour in mid-September.

Elsewhere overseas at the weekend, James Davison finished second, and set the fastest race lap, in a round of the Pirelli World Challenge at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in his Nissan GT-R.

Will Power and Ryan Briscoe were 14th and 18th in the IndyCar round at Mid-Ohio, and reigning series champion Power now finds himself a distant fifth, 61 points behind leader and Penske-Chevrolet teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, with only two rounds to go. However, American Graham Rahal has closed to just nine points behind the Colombian after his Honda-powered victory overnight, while New Zealander Scott Dixon remains in the hunt – 25 points in arrears of Rahal.

The remaining IndyCar rounds are at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania on August 23 and the Sonoma road course in California on August 30 – with that race carrying double points.

Brit Justin Wilson was second at Mid-Ohio in another Honda-powered Dallara, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud notched his best finish of the year and first podium as Roger Penske's fourth IndyCar driver, and Montoya was an unlucky 11th, badly caught out by a safety car.

In NASCAR, Penske-Ford driver Joey Logano ran out of fuel when on course for victory in the latest round of the Sprint Cup on the tricky triangular speedway at Pocono, as did Kyle Busch when it seemed he had inherited a fourth straight win. Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota teammate Matt Kenseth collected his second win of the season ahead of Penske's 2012 Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski, who hit three of his crew – without serious injury – during a pitstop.

A "war" has erupted in the DTM – the German Touring Car Championship – after Audi motorsport boss Wolfgang Ullrich urged an Audi driver to push a Mercedes rival off the Red Bull Ring in Austria on the last lap of a race. Two Mercs ended up in a gravel trap, including that of German Pascal Wehrlein, the Mercedes Formula 1 team's reserve driver who had taken the points lead in the DTM the previous day. Brilliant and versatile Swede Mattias Ekstrom now leads after victory in the latest race.

At home, Toowoomba 19-year-old Jordan Lloyd has won both rounds – and four of the six races – in the new Australian Formula 4 Championship, now Australia's premier open-wheeler championship, for Team BRM.

Victorian Thomas Randle won the second of the three F4 races at Queensland Raceway at the weekend, for which the top six from race one lined up in reverse order on the grid. Driving for Dream Motorsport, Randle wound up second overall for the round, while one of Lloyd's teammates, Harry Hayek from NSW, was third.

VW closes on third straight WRC titles at the double
VW's dual world rally champion Sebastien Ogier had no worries about coming second to teammate Jari-Matti Latvala in the super-fast Rally Finland.

The Frenchman finished 13.7 seconds behind Latvala, won the Power Stage at an average speed of 135.25kmh – a record for WRC power stages – and could clinch his third straight world title at the next round on August 20-23 in Germany, the first pure asphalt rally of the season.

Ogier leads the championship by 89 points with Latvala now second after the third VW factory driver, Norwegian Andreas Mikkelson, rolled out of the Finnish event.

VW leads the manufacturer championship by 116 points from Citroen, with Hyundai another two points back.

There are four more rounds after Germany – in Australia on September 10-13, then in France, Spain and Britain.

Latvala's third win in Finland is the most of any driver now competing full-time in the WRC and the 14th victory of his WRC career.

It was VW's 29th triumph in 34 events since it entered the WRC in 2013 – and its 13th one-two finish.

Latvala won half of the 20 stages after Ogier and Citroen's Northern Irishman Kris Meeke led early in Finland.

VW has not been beaten there in its three years, nor in the other highest-speed rallies in the championship.

VW motorsport director Jost Capito said Latvala and his countryman co-driver Miikka Anttila "are without any doubt the 'Kings of Speed' – nobody has ever been as fast as them on either asphalt or gravel".

The often-inconsistent Latvala reckoned that success in his home event again was "like winning half a world championship".

"My motivation coming into this rally and my desire to win were immense," he said.

"After all the ups and downs I've been through this season this victory means a huge amount."

Ogier said he had "no problem being beaten by Jari-Matti when he is this strong".

"As a driver you don't feel any happier or any more adrenalin than on the super-fast stages through the Finnish forests," Ogier said.

Citroen's Norwegian Mads Ostberg finished third in his DS3, 1 minute 36.8 seconds behind Latvala, Hyundai's Belgian Thierry Neuville fourth in an i20 – almost four minutes adrift of the victorious VW –and Estonian Ott Tanak another half a minute back in fifth in a Ford Fiesta RS.

The Citroen DS3 of Frenchman Stephane Lefebvre failed technical inspection and was disqualified, promoting the Australian champs to fourth.

"When I started this incredible event I imagined maybe if we had a good, clean run we could finish in the top eight, so to finish fifth, then to learn you've finished fourth, is actually quite unbelievable," Pedder said after the conclusion of what was to have been a four-event WRC campaign.

"I can't get over how many of the locals have come up and told us what an impressive job we did this weekend.

"It means an incredible lot to me, and Dale, to have that sort of recognition as a first-timer at the event."

Now Pedder, who opted for limited international competition this year rather than defend his ARC title, and Moscatt are likely to compete in the Fiesta again at next month's Rally Australia.

"The plan was always to contest Rally Australia," Pedder said.

"We're just finalising our plans because it's a long way from Europe to Australia to bring a car and team, but I'm very excited about the plans we've got and looking forward to making an announcement in the next week or so.

"Even though it's our home rally I'm not expecting things to be any easier for us. I'm expecting lots of guys who have all done that rally as many times as I have, so there really is no local advantage.

"But, as our home round, it would be terrific to achieve another result like we did this weekend in Finland in front of our local fans!"

Finns Esapekka Lappi and Pontus Tidemand, driving a pair of Skoda Fabia R5s, were first and second in WRC2 in Finland and eighth and ninth outright.

Pedder and Moscatt finished 6 minutes 45.6 seconds behind the leading Skoda after 320km of competition.

Push comes to shove then to 'war' in DTM
Audi motorsport boss Wolfgang Ullrich has accepted responsibility for the unsporting incident in the DTM for which Audi driver Timo Scheider, of the Phoenix team, was excluded from the race results.

Ullrich initially denied that he was responsible for a radio call, 'Timo, push him out", heard on the television broadcast and after which Scheider nudged the Mercedes of Canadian Robert Wickens and then German Pascal Wehrlein off the Red Bull Ring.

Scheider crossed the finish line sixth and claimed not to have heard any instruction to push a Mercedes off the track.

Ullrich said in the post-race press conference: "It [the radio message] can't be from my side, because I'm not linked to any of the drivers directly. I only talk to the heads of the teams, so it can't be me."

However, Audi later issued a statement quoting Ullrich which contradicted his earlier comment.

"That was obviously not a nice ending of an otherwise tremendous race," Ullrich said.

"What was done with Timo was not the proper way to go about things. But it was most definitely not my intention that Robert and Pascal end up in the gravel trap.

"I'm sorry that I shouted, 'Timo, push him out' in my initial emotion at the command post. I do not communicate with the drivers by radio during the race and did not know that the radio was open.

"This was not an instruction for Timo by any means. I can only apologise to Mercedes for this remark.

"An expression like that does not reflect my idea of motorsport, but was strictly due to the adrenaline at that moment.

"I'm a racer and was fuming about the way Timo was dealt with [earlier]."

A German motorsport tribunal is to review the whole incident.

Scheider claimed he had touched Wickens' Merc "slightly, which was for sure unlucky and in the end he hit Pascal and both went off".

"It's a bad situation, especially to send the championship leader into the gravel trap is bad, no question of that," Scheider said.

Wickens said: "Timo just ran into the back of me and took me and Pascal out of the race. He had orders to take us out."

Wehrlein, who led the championship before Sunday's race after second place in a race on Saturday, said: "If Audi has to win a championship like this I would say they've started a big war."

"I hope they will have big consequences. I hope that no one is buying an Audi next week."

Mercedes' DTM boss Ulrich Fritz insisted that Scheider's action "was clearly on purpose".

"We all heard the radio comment, of somebody at Audi telling Timo to push the guy in front of him off. That is not what we want to see in the DTM."

Swede Mattias Ekstrom, multiple DTM and International Race of Champions title-winner and a star of the 2013 Bathurst 1000, now leads this year's DTM for Audi after his second victory of the season.

BMW did not have a finisher in the top 10 in that race, while Audi and Mercedes have five each.