Cotman is a Kiwi who worked as a race mechanic for many years before becoming Team Green’s team manager and then Andretti-Green’s vice-president of operations. He joined Champ Car in 2005 as vice-president of operations and race director. He worked for the series for three years, overseeing the introduction of the Panoz DP-01 spec car for 2007, its final season. During his time at Champ Car, Cotman joined the FIA’s circuits and safety commission.

After Champ Car’s failure and absorption by the IRL, Cotman (below with Paul Tracy) became that series’ vice-president of competition before leaving in 2009 to form his own consulting company, focusing on race track design and safety. This year he was appointed by Bernard to be a member of the ‘Iconic’ committee that determined the 2012 IndyCar formula. He is also race director for the Indy Lights series.

So again, I have no doubt Cotman will do a great job in writing the 2012 rules. But IndyCar still needs an experienced racing engineer who’s designed many different and successful cars, somebody like John Barnard, Gordon Murray or former Eagle designer John Ward. To attract ‘aero kit’ builders and other engine manufacturers to compete against Honda and help develop the new formula over time to produce the leading edge IndyCar deserves, the organisation needs a man like Barnard, Murray or Ward.

Bernard has a near-revolt on his hands from some team owners who financed and supported the spurned Delta Wing concept. They believe the Delta Wing was a lost opportunity that could have provided IndyCar with a unique identity.

None have made any public comment, but behind the scenes they are not happy campers. They respect Cotman and can work with him but would feel more encouraged with the additional hiring of an experienced engineer with big-picture thinking, capable of fully understanding and embracing energy recovery systems, alternative fuels and the wave of new technology that’s beginning to move through the global automobile industry.

But IndyCar’s biggest issue remains its dwindling TV ratings and race day crowds, and an extremely weak footprint in the USA’s national media as a whole. TV ratings have been in decline for many years and have reached the point of being barely measurable for most races. Nor do many of the races draw much of a crowd, and the oval races are merely one-day events with no crowds at all for practice and qualifying.

These are not new problems. They’ve been there for years and have resulted in it being darn near impossible to sell sponsorship. Most teams are struggling to stay afloat and even Roger Penske is feeling the pinch. Despite dominating this year’s IndyCar Series Penske has been having a tough time selling sponsorship and his team faces the prospect of cutting back from three to two cars next year.

So most people expect Tony Cotman to do a great job for IndyCar. But everyone acknowledges that American open-wheel racing faces much bigger challenges.

Pedro’s Twin Peaks
The Mexican’s legend is built on great wins in 1970 at Spa and Brands Hatch

They created a monster!
Richard Attwood and Jackie Oliver on how the fearsome 917 was tamed

Breakfast with…Roger Penske
The Indycar team owner and business tycoon is not normally one for reflection

A year of living dangerously
The risks associated with motor racing in the 1970’s

Mercedes’ Indy Special
Penske’s most dominant Indy win was a result of some clever engine design

Mille Miglia in a Merc SLR
Who knew there were two Uhlenhaut Coupes? Doug Nye drives ‘Red’

Road Test – Bentley Mulsanne
Drives better than its Rolls Royce rival,in case you’ve got £220k to spend

Wolfgang Von Trips Museum
An eccentric tribute to the late, great German F1 driver is well worth a visit

World Cup Rally
The London – Mexico race with a footie twist, billed as the world’s touchest rally

Did he lose the plot?
His Le Mans epic – and why it failed to light up the silver screen

Favourite Team Lotus moments
Nigel Roebuck’s highlights

The new F1 team
Mike Gascoyne reveals aims for 2010 ‘comeback’

Voices of Team Lotus
Predictions and reflections from Colin’s men

Lotus 79 track test
Andrew Frankel drives Andretti’s title winner

Other Features

Virgin Racing
How Manor Motorsport teamed up with Nick Wirth to win vital Virgin deal in F1 bid

Broadspeed Jaguar
The big XJC carried British hopes in the 1977 ETCC, but it was weighed down by PR hype

Lunch with… Robin Herd
The F1 designer and March co-founder talks motor racing, football and high-tech recycling

Audi E-Tron
Prototype has an electric motor at each wheel

Brian Shawe-Taylor
He raced against the stars of the ’50s – now we publish his memoirs for the first time

Track visit
Ollon-Villars, the mountain hillclimb that helped keep motor racing alive in Switzerland

Tour of Britain
We recall the touring event in a Camaro similar to the one James Hunt drove to victory in ’73

A day at the races
The 1949 Jersey Road Race was a lifeline for drivers in the years following World War II

Parnelli Jones
Not many drivers have humbled Clark and Penske, and run a successful race team to boot

Classic Racing Cars
The Ford Escort Mk1 – in all its variations

Thursday’s first qualifying race saw four-time champion Jeff Gordon score his first win in sixteen months. Gordon ran among the first three all the way and was able to leap to the front on the final restart and out-duel Tony Stewart, defending champion Jimmie Johnson and highly-touted rookie Joey Logano. Kyle Busch looked equally strong in the second sprint race defeating Mark Martin (below), Brian Vickers and Juan-Pablo Montoya.

Race favourites? It’s hard to say, but Gordon, Busch and Martin looked particularly strong and if the race is clean, these three will be major contenders. As we all know however, anything can and has happened in Daytona’s infamous horsepower-choked ‘restrictor plate’ races. Tortuous, multi-car accidents are a fact of life in this environment and eleventh-hour yellows and gambles on pitstop strategies often mix up the field for the final dash to the chequered flag. The fastest car rarely seems to win at Daytona. “This race really is all about luck,” Montoya remarked yesterday morning. “It’s just a big crapshoot.”

Still, the cars and drivers to beat on Sunday include all four Hendrick Chevrolets driven by Gordon, current champion Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. (who was seventh in Thursday’s second 150) and Martin. The latter, now 50 years old, has replaced Casey Mears in Hendrick’s fourth car and will start the 500 from the outside of the front row. The Hendrick Chevrolets are always quick at Daytona and this year all four cars look very strong.

On the pole will be Martin Truex’s Ganassi/Earnhardt Racing Chevrolet. Truex led half of Thursday’s first qualifying race only to spin and fall to 21st, but Truex is guaranteed the pole from last Sunday’s qualifying runs which also guaranteed the outside of the front row to the veteran Martin. Other top contenders include Truex’s new team-mate Montoya and Ganassi/Earnhardt’s third Chevy driven by Aric Almirola who finished in fifth place in Thursday’s first qualifying race.

Also looking good on Thursday were Tony Stewart and last year’s Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman. Two-time NASCAR champion Stewart has left Joe Gibbs Racing after ten years to start his own team with his buddy Newman joining him in the new venture after eight years with Roger Penske’s NASCAR team. Stewart and Newman are racing Chevrolet cars with engines built by Hendrick and the new team has hit the ground at speed, running right on the pace at Daytona. Stewart will start from the third row while Newman will start at the back after he was knocked out of his qualifying race in an accident with David Reutimann.

Most likely to beat the many quick Chevrolets is Kyle Busch, winner of Thursday’s second sprint race aboard one of Joe Gibbs’s trio of Toyotas. Busch is the guy most NASCAR fans love to hate, but he’s also shown he’s one of the fastest stock car drivers and looks entirely capable of winning on Sunday. Team-mates Denny Hamlin who finished fifth in the second 150 and rookie Joey Logano who impressed everyone with a great drive to fourth place in the first 150 should also feature among the leaders on Sunday.

For the rest of the field, it’s all about staying out of trouble, avoiding accidents and hoping the big crapshoot comes your way.

Porsche factory drivers Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas will be Penske’s primary drivers as they have been over the past three years in the ALMS. In that time, Bernhard and Dumas shared fourteen wins and took two LMP2 drivers’ championships with Penske. Both have raced multiple times at Daytona aboard factory Porsches with Bernhard scoring an overall win in 2003.

“We are proud to continue our long-standing relationship with Porsche,” Penske said. “We look forward to continue our considerable sports car success and our team is working hard to prepare for the first event at Daytona.”

Indeed, the team has been testing the 4-litre, flat-six-powered Riley with more testing planned over the next month and a half. The Penske team raced a rented Grand-Am car in last year’s Rolex 24 as a prelude to this latest Penske-Porsche combination.

Ryan Briscoe, now established as one of Penske’s two IRL drivers, is expected to join Bernhard and Dumas at Daytona. The fourth driver for the Rolex 24 will probably come from either Patrick Long, Helio Castroneves, or the latter’s replacement if Penske takes a decision to dump the Brazilian who’s in serious trouble with the USA’s federal tax authorities.

Penske and Porsche’s departure from the ALMS comes after three very successful years. The contract called for a three-year program and the combination won both the P2 drivers and engine manufacturers championships the last two years despite strong competition from Acura. Mission accomplished, Penske and Porsche now take on the rival Grand-Am series amid rumours of a return to the ALMS in two or three years with a hybrid-powered car.

Another factor in the conclusion of the ALMS program was the departure from the American market of sponsor DHL. The German-based international freight company was the primary sponsor of Penske’s Porsche Spyders for the last three years but amid the global financial crisis DHL ceased all operations in the United States last month and closed its headquarters in Ohio.

As Alex Gurney said in this space last week the Daytona Prototype category is looking a little healthier than it appeared earlier in the autumn following the early days of the market meltdown. Penske’s formal announcement of his new partnership with Porsche is a shot in the arm for the Grand-Am series while the ALMS will surely feel the loss of Penske and Porsche. The ALMS folks in Braselton, Georgia, where the ALMS is headquartered, will be hoping there’s substance to the rumours about a future Penske/Porsche hybrid ALMS car.

The men from Ingolstadt were in sombre mood at the end of the 2008 Sebring 12 Hours. For the first time this century they failed to win. Worse still, it was the men from Stuttgart who were first to reach the chequered flag. It could have been worse, it could have been the men from France.

Yes, there were chinks in the Audi armour at Sebring. But it could have been worse, it could have been Le Mans.

There is much to be done before June. And it will be done. Words were not minced in the debrief on Saturday night, nor in those that followed on Sunday. On Monday morning they were back at the circuit, gearing up for a 12-hour test. There will be no rest.

“There were technical problems, ones we had never had before,” said Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, “and there were some driver errors. We had to change the front discs on one car – that’s never happened before. We had to change a turbo on the other car, and there were issues with the front suspension. All these problems came our way this weekend and there is already a full investigation into why this happened.”

When a car has a major problem at Sebring, it passes through the pits and “goes behind the wall” as they say down Florida way. When Marco Werner’s Audi went behind the wall, and into its paddock garage, I went to watch the mechanics go to work on changing the turbo on the engine’s right bank. After a few minutes I was aware of a person standing very close behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I came face to face with a man dressed in Peugeot fireproof overalls. This man proceeded to take a video camera from his pocket and record the surgery to the back of the R10, pausing only to jot some notes onto a small pad. The atmosphere was somewhat tense but he remained expressionless as he filmed over my shoulder. As soon as the work was done, and a swarm of mechanics began to re-fit the bodywork, the Frenchman sidled away. Espionage is alive and well. “It happens,” an engineer told me afterwards. “It is very open house in the paddock here and you can waste a lot of time and effort in trying to stop this kind of thing.” There were a lot of people working on that car, all highly focused on not losing too many laps. Maybe one extra person, looking at the onlookers, might just be a worthwhile idea.

Both Audi and Peugeot went to Sebring to try and break the cars ahead of Le Mans. And both teams succeeded. “If something is going to fail, it will fail at Sebring,” said Dr Ullrich. “It is the toughest race we do. So, we go away, we learn, and we get it right.”

And then, of course, there is Peugeot to worry about. The new car was very quick all week in Florida, not reliable, but very fast. The duel of the diesels – Audi TDI versus Peugeot HDI – is well and truly on. We are on the cusp of a classic battle in sports car racing. If both teams have reliability at La Sarthe in June, the race will be sensational.

On Friday, in the heat of the Sunshine State, the Peugeot was fastest in qualifying but was not awarded pole. What? How so? Well, the session was red-flagged after a huge shunt that damaged the concrete barriers that surround much of this airfield circuit. Nothing unusual so far. But then IMSA decided not to re-start, and instead of giving pole to the quickest car so far (Peugeot) they averaged out all the times from Thursday and Friday and it was the Audi of Allan McNish that came out on top. Had the qualifying run its course, the story may have been different, but probably not.

“There’s no question the Peugeot has outright speed over one lap,” said McNish, “and really they should have had pole. But we are confident of our race pace and our strategy. The battle is on, though, you’d better believe it, and we have work still to do.” He was right about the race pace. Despite losing time in the pits, McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen climbed back through the field in the evening and into the night, taking second place behind the Penske Porsche, which ran like clockwork. The Peugeot led from the start but was soon in the garage, finishing this gruelling test of endurance many laps down on the leaders.

Sebring is a four-day party for the 100,000 fans who travel from all over the USA to make this event a most extraordinary happening. Camped out in tents and motorhomes, they make the Sebring infield their own for the best part of a week. It is surely the rowdiest and most bizarre motor racing party on the planet, smoke from the hundreds of barbecues drifting across the circuit, a cacophony of rock and country music sometimes drowning out the cars, and a lot of whooping and hollering from the rooftops of trucks, campers and enormous jeeps. This is down-home America. Forget Boston or Manhattan, this is party time down South. Creedence Clearwater Revival blasts out into the night, very scantily clad girls get them well revved up for the annual bikini contest, and there is beer, a very great deal of beer. “Helps ugly people have sex,” one fan told me. “There’s 24 cans in a pack, one for each hour of the day, man.” And in among this mayhem is a motor race. Down in the ‘zoo’ – otherwise known as Turn 10 – there is some serious frolicking, not all of it fully clothed. They have fun, these people, and they love their racing, especially the throaty roar of the Corvettes. They’re not so sure about the whooshing, whispering diesels and Peugeot fans seemed to be thin on the ground. “We hate the French, you know,” one group of ZZ Top lookalikes told me. Right, I see, I said.

Team Audi does not hate the French. But they do respect them right now. We are in for a very exciting Le Mans. The R10 will take a lot of beating – it is a supremely good racing car – but Peugeot is coming.

Sebring 2008, the 56th running of this classic contest, resulted in Hans Stuck, Derek Bell and Roger Penske being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Everybody was very happy about that. And Roger Penske was the happiest of them all on Saturday night.

Sir Jackie Stewart and Nigel Roebuck’s predictions for the new season, plus profiles of all the teams and drivers

Roger Penske

He’s a legendary team boss, but in the early ’60s he was also a very successful racer

Gil de Ferran

His return to the driving seat and his new challenge as a team boss in the ALMS

Bentley Brooklands

Hefty coupé packs a punch but is limited in number

Lunch with… Alan Jones

The 1980 World Champion is renowned for his success at Williams, but there was a time when Ferrari came calling

Parnelli Jones Collection

We lift the lid on this private assemblage of classic cars from the famous US race team

A history of Brands Hatch

A new book tracks the history of the beloved Kent circuit; we have selected some fascinating images from the 1950s

Is the WRC in crisis?

Global rallying certainly has its problems – we look at what they are and the possible fixes

Grand Designs: BMW LMR V12

The birth of a Le Mans winner – and its swift demise

Rallye Monte Carlo Historique

Not everyone played to the rules in this classic event

Ferrari 288 GTO

In the ’80s boom one of these cars reportedly sold for £1.2m. Our writer can see why

But for all the sad controversy of the spy scandal, there was a lot to excite and inspire on track last season, and there’s the potential for more of the same this time around – hopefully without the off-track distractions.

In this month’s issue we focus on the F1 season with a bumper preview that includes profiles of all the teams and drivers. Meanwhile, Nigel Roebuck talks to Sir Jackie Stewart about what to expect, and as ever JYS is thought provoking and frank in his opinions. Stewart’s a signed-up fan of Lewis Hamilton, but that doesn’t mean he’s certain that the bright young star of last year is going to have everything his own way this time…

Aside from modern F1, there is plenty in this month’s issue to keep you entertained for the next month. Gordon Kirby’s exclusive Roger Penske interview on The Captain’s early career as a promising driver is not to be missed, and neither is Simon Taylor’s latest Lunch with… His guest this time? Alan Jones. Entertainment guaranteed, then.

Putting together Motor Sport every month is a joy, but sometimes there are tough decisions to make. Here’s an example.

When we heard Derek Bell planned to race in the Daytona 24 Hours one last time in what would be his final appearance in international motor sport we thought it was a ripe topic for a feature. So I commissioned Rob Widdows to speak to Derek after the race to talk through how it went and reminisce about his good times and bad times at ‘the other’ great 24-hour enduro.

Rob duly carried out the interview and filed an entertaining story in typically double-quick time. Unfortunately, the article had lost its relevance. Poor Derek had missed out on racing because the Riley-Pontiac he was supposed to drive retired early on. Deeply disappointing for the three-time Daytona winner – and a little bit frustrating for us. Without the ‘hook’ of the story, I couldn’t justify running it in the magazine.

But we’ve pieced it together from the cutting room floor for you to read online instead. It was too good to waste, after all.

I hope you enjoy Rob’s article – and this month’s magazine, too.