Factory Lada World Touring Car driver Jaap van Lagen has broken his collarbone in a mountain bike accident.

The Dutchman, who partnered James Thompson at the Russian team in 2009, was riding off-road when he was thrown from his bike while jumping tree trunks.

“I immediately knew something was wrong,” he said.

He landed on a tree trunk and had to cycle 3km to the nearest village before being taken to hospital, where x-rays revealed multiple fractures to his left collarbone.

Van Lagen underwent surgery to have a metal plate inserted to support to broken bone and he is now recovering in hospital. He is confident that he will be fully fit for the start of the 2010 season in March.

“The operation was successful,” he added. “After six weeks the bone will be fully repaired, but well before that I will be able to practice.

“By the start of the WTCC season I will be in great shape again.”

Factory Lada World Touring Car driver Jaap van Lagen has broken his collarbone in a mountain bike accident.

The Dutchman, who partnered James Thompson at the Russian team in 2009, was riding off-road when he was thrown from his bike while jumping tree trunks.

“I immediately knew something was wrong,” he said.

He landed on a tree trunk and had to cycle 3km to the nearest village before being taken to hospital, where x-rays revealed multiple fractures to his left collarbone.

Van Lagen underwent surgery to have a metal plate inserted to support to broken bone and he is now recovering in hospital. He is confident that he will be fully fit for the start of the 2010 season in March.

“The operation was successful,” he added. “After six weeks the bone will be fully repaired, but well before that I will be able to practice.

“By the start of the WTCC season I will be in great shape again.”

Abu Dhabi is targeting a World Rally Championship round in 2011, and will hold a candidate event in December 2010 using Super 2000-spec cars.

Rally Abu Dhabi will be run next year as a non-championship rally under FIA supervision as one of several candidate events, and its bosses are hopeful of a place on the 2011 WRC calendar, when the Super 2000 regulations come info force.

The emirate is the title sponsor of the factory Ford WRC team, which runs UAE driver Sheikh Khalid al Qassimi alongside Finns Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

“While sponsorship of the Ford team and the inclusion of Al-Qassimi in the outfit’s ranks have proven successful, staging a round of the off-road series in the UAE was always the long-term plan,” Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), told UAE newspaper The National.

“This is a major leap forward in Abu Dhabi’s motorsport ambitions. We are confident we have the right experience, pedigree, determination and skills to deliver a unique and highly successful round of the WRC, and that our 2011 ambitions can be fully realised.”

The candidate event will comprise stages outside of Abu Dhabi, in Al-Ain and Qasr-al-Sarab in the Liwa Desert in the Empty Quarter. Its December date will ensure that it is after the conclusion of both the WRC and Middle East Rally Championship seasons.

Ahmed Hussain, of the ADTA, believes that running the event to Super 2000 regulations just weeks before the first S2000 WRC round will ensure that WRC competitors enter the non-championship event.

“It’s going to be Super 2000s with the new regulations, it will be interesting,” he told The National. “New cars in, a new rally, with new stages – it will be very appealing for everyone.

“It’s not about pricing or appearance fees, there will be no payments. The rally will be a surprise for all drivers around the world – they will all want to come. The relationship with the teams, drivers, manufacturers has developed in the last couple of years and they want to support us by being part of Rally Abu Dhabi in 2010.

“Of course they will come, participation will be strong and the vast variation of the terrain will be one of the attractive issues.”

Abu Dhabi is targeting a World Rally Championship round in 2011, and will hold a candidate event in December 2010 using Super 2000-spec cars.

Rally Abu Dhabi will be run next year as a non-championship rally under FIA supervision as one of several candidate events, and its bosses are hopeful of a place on the 2011 WRC calendar, when the Super 2000 regulations come info force.

The emirate is the title sponsor of the factory Ford WRC team, which runs UAE driver Sheikh Khalid al Qassimi alongside Finns Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

“While sponsorship of the Ford team and the inclusion of Al-Qassimi in the outfit’s ranks have proven successful, staging a round of the off-road series in the UAE was always the long-term plan,” Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), told UAE newspaper The National.

“This is a major leap forward in Abu Dhabi’s motorsport ambitions. We are confident we have the right experience, pedigree, determination and skills to deliver a unique and highly successful round of the WRC, and that our 2011 ambitions can be fully realised.”

The candidate event will comprise stages outside of Abu Dhabi, in Al-Ain and Qasr-al-Sarab in the Liwa Desert in the Empty Quarter. Its December date will ensure that it is after the conclusion of both the WRC and Middle East Rally Championship seasons.

Ahmed Hussain, of the ADTA, believes that running the event to Super 2000 regulations just weeks before the first S2000 WRC round will ensure that WRC competitors enter the non-championship event.

“It’s going to be Super 2000s with the new regulations, it will be interesting,” he told The National. “New cars in, a new rally, with new stages – it will be very appealing for everyone.

“It’s not about pricing or appearance fees, there will be no payments. The rally will be a surprise for all drivers around the world – they will all want to come. The relationship with the teams, drivers, manufacturers has developed in the last couple of years and they want to support us by being part of Rally Abu Dhabi in 2010.

“Of course they will come, participation will be strong and the vast variation of the terrain will be one of the attractive issues.”

Abu Dhabi is targeting a World Rally Championship round in 2011, and will hold a candidate event in December 2010 using Super 2000-spec cars.

Rally Abu Dhabi will be run next year as a non-championship rally under FIA supervision as one of several candidate events, and its bosses are hopeful of a place on the 2011 WRC calendar, when the Super 2000 regulations come info force.

The emirate is the title sponsor of the factory Ford WRC team, which runs UAE driver Sheikh Khalid al Qassimi alongside Finns Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

“While sponsorship of the Ford team and the inclusion of Al-Qassimi in the outfit’s ranks have proven successful, staging a round of the off-road series in the UAE was always the long-term plan,” Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon al Nahyan, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), told UAE newspaper The National.

“This is a major leap forward in Abu Dhabi’s motorsport ambitions. We are confident we have the right experience, pedigree, determination and skills to deliver a unique and highly successful round of the WRC, and that our 2011 ambitions can be fully realised.”

The candidate event will comprise stages outside of Abu Dhabi, in Al-Ain and Qasr-al-Sarab in the Liwa Desert in the Empty Quarter. Its December date will ensure that it is after the conclusion of both the WRC and Middle East Rally Championship seasons.

Ahmed Hussain, of the ADTA, believes that running the event to Super 2000 regulations just weeks before the first S2000 WRC round will ensure that WRC competitors enter the non-championship event.

“It’s going to be Super 2000s with the new regulations, it will be interesting,” he told The National. “New cars in, a new rally, with new stages – it will be very appealing for everyone.

“It’s not about pricing or appearance fees, there will be no payments. The rally will be a surprise for all drivers around the world – they will all want to come. The relationship with the teams, drivers, manufacturers has developed in the last couple of years and they want to support us by being part of Rally Abu Dhabi in 2010.

“Of course they will come, participation will be strong and the vast variation of the terrain will be one of the attractive issues.”

World Rally Championship promoter ISC believes rallying is the ideal sport for the digital media age and that new broadcast technology will be crucial to the sport’s growth.

In a presentation at the Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco today, ISC’s Neil Duncanson and Simon Long revealed plans for more access to live on-board footage and service park webcams on the internet, plus high definition and 3D television coverage in the future, as well as a new WRC video game into which live action from the stages could be integrated.

“Only a luddite few still the internet, mobile, social networking and interactive gaming ‘new media’. Today it’s all just media. We think WRC is tailor made for this next generation,” said Duncanson.

“When we began as a TV partner, we created 250 hours of material at every event and used less than 10. We now have the technology to use every second – live, in highlight form, on the internet, mobile, even involving a global gaming audience driving from their homes in real time in a real WRC event.”

Long explained that as ISC also provides the WRC’s timing and satellite tracking systems, it can transfer live data from the stages to online gaming.

“From September next year we’ll be back in the gaming marketplace,” he said. “We haven’t been there since 2005. For the rally fans, they’ve been short-changed. There is no definitive rally video game out there right now, so we’re going to come back with a bang, delivering the ultimate in off-road racing.

“This will be all of the official cars on all of the official tracks, and because we own and deliver the timing systems and all of the satellite GPRS solutions, we’re able to give you the real version of rallying, delivered to your gaming platform.

“The holy grail is to deliver a real, simultaneous live race experience where you’ll be able to go after Sebastien Loeb at the same time on the same stage, and compare your performance against his. In addition you’ll be able to have his live on-board camera footage integrated into the live game-play experience.”

Paul Hembery, motorsport boss of WRC tyre partner Pirelli, believes the video game plans fit well with ISC’s ambitions to restructure rallying’s feeder series.

“We believe that one day a future champion will come into contact with world rallying for the first time via new media,” said Hembery. “We then need to provide a platform for those people to go on in the sport, so once they’ve touched it and got excited by it, they will then go out in those buggies, start driving the cars, and come through to the top level.”

He also pointed out that Colin McRae’s highly successful range of video games had massively increased the 1995 world champion’s public profile.

“Colin McRae became so famous in America that everyone thought he was Lara Croft – they thought he was virtual, not a real person,” Hembery joked.

“That got all of us stakeholders here thinking. We thought, ‘hold on, people really like the product, they love playing it’. It is probably the prime motorsport gaming platform for around the world. It’s about bringing new people into the sport and getting them to feel rallying, and understand how exciting the sport is.”

Aprilia has announced it will not be competing in the Moto2 championship next year, as it believes it would be detrimental to its image.

The Piaggio Group marque also said it will not supply bikes to privateer teams either.

Moto2, where bikes will use 600cc engines, replaces the 250cc category.

All bikes will have to use Honda engines and Dunlop tyres.

“The Moto2 championship does not present, in the Group’s view, technological and sporting characteristics that make Aprilia’s participation strategic for this type of competition,” said the Piaggio Group in a statement.

“Therefore the Group feels it unnecessary and damaging for the image of a great Italian and European motorcycle manufacturer – who has won 43 world titles in road racing and off-road – to take part in competitions forcibly centered around the engine technology of a rival constructor.”

Aprilia had six bikes in the top ten in last year’s championship and supplied bikes to the majority of the field.

The Italian manufacturer had a test planned for next month.

Augusto Farfus kept his slim World Touring Car title chances alive with his fifth win of the season in Sunday’s second wet race at Okayama.

Farfus made a sound getaway from pole and had BMW team-mate Andy Priaulx riding shotgun for him – from eighth on the grid – by the exit of the first corner, thanks to carnage off the line.

Jorg Muller’s fast starting BMW shot up to the front off the line and he tried to move inside Tiago Monteiro’s SEAT for second place on the main straight. Monteiro squeezed Muller onto the wet grass, where the German lost control of his car and speared into the side of the SEAT. Muller was later given a drive-through penalty for his part in the incident.

Both cars spun off at the first corner, taking the SEATs of Jordi Gene and championship leader Gabriele Tarquini with them. Countless cars then flew off the road in all directions at the treacherous Turn 2, where aqua-planing was a problem all day.

That left a jumbled order at the end of the first lap, with Priaulx second, Tarquini’s main title rival Yvan Muller surviving in third and Alain Menu – who had only missed out on the race two pole in the final corners of race one – up to fourth from eighth. Felix Porteiro was fifth, ahead of Jaap van Lagen, Stefano D’Aste, James Thompson, Tom Boardman, Nicola Larini and Kristian Poulsen.

The best of the charges back to the front came from Rickard Rydell, who peaked at seventh (from 13th) and Rob Huff, who made it up to sixth from 17th.

Farfus and Priaulx ran a controlled race up front – the only drama coming when Poulsen spun his car in front of the lead pack on the main straight.

Muller was grateful just to take a handful of points back from Tarquini in third, with Menu unable to make any impression on him from behind.

Jordi Gene had escaped the first corner in fifth, but carried damage with his rear bumper falling off during the race. The Spaniard once again played a team role and gave away four places – two to Chevrolets – in the last two laps to allow Tarquini through.

Rydell also moved over to give Tarquini two points for seventh, behind the Cruzes of Larini and Huff.

D’Aste claimed the independent class win in 10th after Tom Coronel was delayed by the spate of off-road excursions at Turn 2 on the first lap, and Porteiro went backwards from his early fifth to 11th. Coronel finished 13th, behind the BMW of Sergio Hernandez.

Lada had looked to be in for a good points haul with van Lagen sixth and Thompson eighth, but both pulled into the pits to retire within a lap of each other.

The charity of his team-mates means Tarquini is two points ahead of Muller heading to the season finale in Macau, with Farfus a further 11 back.

Pos Driver                     Car            Time/Gap

 1. Augusto Farfus             BMW          26m55.015s

 2. Andy Priaulx               BMW              0.761s

 3. Yvan Muller                SEAT             3.298s

 4. Alain Menu                 Chevrolet        5.878s

 5. Nicola Larini              Chevrolet       13.725s

 6. Rob Huff                   Chevrolet       17.538s

 7. Gabriele Tarquini          SEAT            24.104s

 8. Rickard Rydell             SEAT            26.212s

 9. Jordi Gene                 SEAT            27.272s

10. Stefano D’Aste             BMW             35.619s

11. Felix Porteiro             BMW             36.900s

12. Sergio Hernandez           BMW             37.866s

13. Tom Coronel                SEAT            41.110s

14. Joao Paulo de Oliveira     SEAT            49.317s

15. Tom Boardman               SEAT            58.394s

16. Franz Engstler             BMW           1m03.206s

17. Jorg Muller                BMW           1m07.306s

18. Alex Zanardi               BMW           1m10.579s

19. Seiji Ara                  BMW           1m18.816s

20. Masaki Kano                BMW           1m40.690s

Retirements
    Jaap van Lagen             Lada             9 laps

    James Thompson             Lada             8 laps

    Henry Ho                   BMW              6 laps

    Kristian Poulsen           BMW              6 laps

    Norbertu Taniguchi         BMW              3 laps

    Tiago Monteiro             SEAT             0 laps

David Gilliland will drive Robby Gordon’s car in next weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Richmond.

Gordon will hand driving duties of his team’s #7 car to Gilliland as he is set to compete in an off-road truck racing event in Nevada.

Robby Gordon Motorsports will be Gilliland’s third team in as many races, following his outing in a TRG Motorsports Chevrolet at Bristol and in a Wood Brothers Ford at Atlanta.

Gordon is also set to compete in Wednesday’s ‘Prelude to the Dream’ charity event, hosted by two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart at Eldora Speedway in Ohio.

“We had a great run in the Cup car on Sunday,” said Gordon about last weekend’s race at Atlanta. “I’m excited for Eldora and Primm later this week, and I’m also happy to have David Gilliland driving the #7 at Richmond this weekend.”

Following Sunday’s race, Gilliland is expected to swap between TRG Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing for the remainder of the season.

When the checkered flag flew, the weekend belonged to Timmy Megenbier who led each session. The Melrose Park, Ill.-native began Saturday’s action by winning his second pole position of the season after suffering a tire puncture early in the session. Even though he spent a good portion of the qualifying session in the pits, he was able to post the top lap time of the weekend, a 2:38.921 (91.698 mph), just as the clock was running out.

Megenbier continued his dominance during the race which featured two full-course cautions that limited the action to nine laps. The first caution came on lap four when Devin Cates’ car ventured off course dramatically in Turn 12 and ended up on top of the tire barrier. The second caution flag flew on lap seven when guest driver Levi LaVallee took an overly aggressive line into a turn and ended up in the tire barrier. Both drivers walked away from the incidents.

There also was a lot of action on the track during green conditions, which saw many of the title-contending drivers jockeying for position. Megenbier led all but one lap during the race, only once relinquishing his lead to eventual fourth-place finisher, Andy Lee. The podium also included AJ Nealey (second) and Joey Atterbury (third) who gained seven positions during the race.

The win is Megenbier’s series-leading third victory of the season. However, after the race, series officials penalized him 30 points for blocking Andy Lee on the last lap of the race. Despite this penalty, Megenbier walks away from this weekend with 218 points and a 20-point lead in the Championship battle. Lee was also penalized five points for on-track actions during the race. Lee (193) and Joey Atterbury (193) are tied for second in the points standings following the race.

“Today was a really crazy day with my problems during qualifying and all of the action during the race,” Megenbier said. “At the start, I got a really good jump and was able to pull away a bit, but then the caution came out and brought them up to me. Andy Lee and I had a great battle after the second caution, and he was able to get around me at one point. But thankfully, I was able to keep my head and get him back just before the final lap. Obviously, I’m disappointed with the penalty decision, but I still have the lead in the Championship and that’s what’s important. I’ll try to make up the points I lost today when we get to Mosport.”

The three guest drivers who joined the series for this weekend’s race lived the full Jetta TDI Cup experience during their two days at Road America. When the checkered flag flew, it was VWvortex.com founder, Jaime Vondruska, who finished highest in the guest category at 22nd. iRacing.com online racer, John Prather finished 23rd, while professional snocross racer and freestyle snowmobile rider, Levi LaVallee came in 24th after his on-track incident.

“This is one of the coolest opportunities that I’ve ever had,” said LaVallee who ran as high at 19th before his crash. “I have a lot of experience racing on the snow, but this is my first time racing a car on a track, so I’m really happy with how well I was able to run up until the point of my off-road adventure. The cars were awesome to drive, and all I’m thinking about now is when I can get behind the wheel again. Hopefully, it will be soon.”

The Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup series returns to action August 29-30 at Mosport for Round 7 of the season.

Read more from the original source: 
Megenbier Gets Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Win Number Three at Road America