Wheels: Monday Motorsports: Ed Carpenter Qualifies for Indy 500 Pole Position

Geoff Miller/Reuters The 2013 Indianapolis 500’s first row: (left to right) Marco Andretti, Ed Carpenter (pole) and Carlos Munoz.

Ed Carpenter, whose family owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, qualified for the pole position for the Indianapolis 500 on May 26. The top qualifying position was worth a $100,000 prize, but Carpenter says the boost for his team, which he owns, was worth more.

“This is awesome, and it’s bigger than our wins, and it’s huge for the team,” said Carpenter, after posting his four-lap average speed of 228.762 miles per hour on Saturday. “It’s definitely a landmark day.”

He is the first team owner/driver to win the coveted No. 1 starting position since 1975. The rookie Carlos Munoz qualified second at 228.342 m.p.h. His teammate, Marco Andretti, earned the other starting spot on the outside of the front row in the 11-row lineup with an average speed of 228.261 m.p.h.

E.J. Viso, A.J. Allmendinger and Will Power will be in the second row, the reigning IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, the three-time Indy winner Helio Castroneves and James Hinchcliffe will be in the third. Michel Jourdain Jr. was the only entrant in the race who did not make the lineup.

In other motorsports news from a busy week:

• Jimmie Johnson won the All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday night and collected the $1 million prize that went with it.

Johnson, who has won the event a record four times, was the leader on the track for the last 10 laps, after starting the event in 18th place. Johnson had a comfortable margin over Joey Logano, the runner-up. Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne and Kurt Busch rounded out the top five; the Busch brothers won four of the five segments in the unique All-Star format, but Johnson won the final one, which was the segment that mattered most.

Despite its sizable payout, the All-Star event, which is limited to 22 starters and does not pay points toward the Nascar Sprint Cup title, is considered something of a tune-up for the regular 600-mile series event at the track on May 26.

• Shawn Langdon beat Tony Schumacher in a razor-close duel that decided the Top Fuel category in Sunday’s Kansas Nationals drag races in Topeka. Langdon made his run in 3.75 seconds, while Schumacher was clocked at 3.78. Schumacher actually hit a higher top speed, 327.27 m.p.h., than Langdon, who turned in 324.20 m.p.h., but Langdon won the race with a quicker reaction time off the starting line.

As close as that race was, the Pro Stock final was even closer. Jeg Coughlin took his first final round victory in two years, beating his teammate Allen Johnson by 0.018 of a second.

Johnny Gray won the Funny Car final when his rival Robert Hight lost traction at the starting light.

• Dani Pedrosa, riding a Honda, won the French Grand Prix Moto GP event on Sunday, defying a rain-soaked Le Mans racecourse to beat Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow. Pedrosa also took over the top spot in the world championship MotoGP standings with his victory. He leads his teammate Marc Marquez, who finished third, by six points.

Pedrosa has 83 points through the fourth leg of the 18-race championship. Jorge Lorenza, who finished seventh, is in third with 66 points.

• Jamie Whincup won three of the four 100-kilometer sprint races in the Austin 400 for Australian V8 Supercars over the weekend at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas. He finished ahead of Fabian Coulthard, a second cousin of the former F1 driver David Coulthard. Fabian Coulthard was the winner of the one event in which Whincup failed to take the checkered flag.

Whincup, the series points leader, drove a Holden Commodore, a product of the Australian subsidiary of General Motors.

The weekend’s program also included a round of the Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car series, which was won by Brett Sandberg, in a Honda Civic Si.

• At just shy of 58 years old, Ken Schrader won the ARCA stock car series event Sunday in Toledo, Ohio, becoming the oldest driver to win in the series.

He broke a record set in 1974 by the legendary Iggy Katona, who was 57 when he won an event at Daytona International Speedway. Katona, who died in 2003 at age 87, is remembered as for racing into his 70s.

Thomas Frey/European Pressphoto Agency The Black Falcon Mercedes SLS in action during the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring circuit on Monday.

• Black Falcon Racing’s Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 entry, driven by the team of Bernd Schneider, Sean Edwards, Jeroen Bleekemolen and Niki Thiim, won the epic 41st running of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring in Germany. Their margin over the second-place car was two minutes and 39 seconds.

The race started Saturday and didn’t end until Monday afternoon – it had been scheduled to end Sunday evening – after an all-night delay for torrential rains and fog on the Eifel Mountain course. The annual race attracts a huge and varied entry – more than 200 cars and some 700 drivers – and a huge crowd.

The weather was abominable for a good portion of the race, but by Sunday afternoon it became diabolical. Officials decided to red flag the race and, ultimately, restart it at 8 a.m. on Monday.

A footnote in the event was that among the entries still running at the end was an Aston Martin Hydrogen Hybrid Rapide S. The company said it was the first time a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered car had competed in an international motor race.

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Ford Plans to Shut Its 2 Plants in Australia

The U.S. automaker’s Australian unit will close its engine plant in Geelong and its vehicle assembly plant in Broadmeadows, both in the state of Victoria, with the loss of 1,200 jobs, Bob Graziano, chief executive of Ford Australia, said Thursday.

Ford, which built 37,000 vehicles in Australia last year, has been in the country since 1925 and employs more than 3,000 people. But it has been battling sliding sales, high costs and an Australian dollar trading above the U.S. currency.

“Our costs are double that of Europe and nearly four times Ford in Asia,” Mr. Graziano said. “The business case simply did not stack up. Manufacturing is not viable for Ford in Australia.”

Ford’s decision to end its local production highlights the challenges the country faces as a near decade-long mining boom begins to fade. Policy makers hope other sectors of the economy like manufacturing, construction and retail will start to pick up the slack, but evidence has been scant so far.

The Australian dollar has traded above parity with the U.S. dollar for most of the past two years — it fell to about 97 cents only this week — making it more difficult for local manufacturers to compete globally.

Mr. Graziano said Ford had lost 600 million Australian dollars, or $581 million, in the past five years in Australia, and 141 million dollars in the last financial year, as customers turned to smaller imported vehicles built by Mazda of Japan and Hyundai of South Korea.

The country’s performance of manufacturing index fell to a four-year low in April, indicating continuing contraction in the sector despite record low interest rates of 2.75 percent.

“Australia’s manufacturing sector continues to underperform other parts of the globe,” Savanth Sebastian, a CommSec economist, said in a research note this month.

“The main difference is the strength of the Aussie dollar, which clearly is causing businesses to markedly reassess the viability of ongoing operations as well as strategic direction,” Mr. Sebastian said.

General Motors Holden, the local unit of G.M., said last month that it was cutting 500 jobs, or 18 percent of its work force. It also cited the damage to its competitiveness from the strength of the Australian dollar.

Ford’s decision is likely to lead to a dispute over state assistance to the auto industry ahead of elections in September.

Opinion polls suggest that the minority Labor government is heading for a bruising defeat, largely because of its perceived mismanagement of the economy.

Labor has earmarked about 5.4 billion dollars for car industry assistance until 2020, pointing to the sector’s importance in maintaining heavy-industry skills and employment.

The Australian automotive industry employs about 55,000 people and supports 200,000 other manufacturing jobs. Ford’s closure is likely to affect the economies of scale at other local builders, G.M. and Toyota Motor.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the government’s immediate priority would be to support workers affected by the closures, who are likely to include employees of parts makers already hurt by Mitsubishi Motors’ closure of its Australian plants in 2008.

“The economy that we have today has many sources of strength, but the high Australian dollar is putting a lot of pressure on some industries, particularly manufacturing,” Ms. Gillard said.

Australia’s Reserve Bank expects the 1.5 trillion dollar economy to grow slightly below trend at 2.5 percent this year, returning to average or trend rates in 2014. Unemployment is expected to rise slightly to 5.75 percent.

Australia has annual sales of approximately 1.1 million new vehicles, and deliveries were up 7.6 percent, to 85,117, in April. But annual sales of locally manufactured vehicles have fallen to about 221,000 in recent years, from almost 389,000 in 2005.

At home in North America, Ford is faring better and announced Wednesday that it was adding a week of production at most of its factories to build an extra 40,000 vehicles.

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Behind the Wheel | 2014 Subaru Forester: Subaru Forester: A Crossover Jostling to Fit in Showrooms Already Full

Not that Subaru is doing badly. Sales in the United States have increased in each of the last four years, setting records. But the Forester — last reworked in 2008 — has not been part of that growth, with sales shrinking some 10 percent in 2011 and stalling at that level last year.

The Forester has, in part, been a casualty of the brawl in the compact sport utility market in recent years, with automakers landing blow and counterblow by improving fuel economy while adding luxury, performance and safety features previously unseen in this class. Chasing market leaders like the Honda CR-V and Ford Escape, the major automakers are updating or introducing new models very quickly, said Tom Libby, senior forecasting analyst at Polk, the automotive data firm.

Now Subaru joins that melee with a Forester that offers more room, new features and better fuel economy, all based on the underpinnings of the redesigned Impreza introduced in 2011. Subaru’s two-pronged market strategy continues: there’s the standard Forester 2.5i and then the 2.0XT, a sportier turbocharged model.

Prices start at $22,820 for a 2.5i with a 6-speed manual transmission; a continuously variable automatic is $1,000 extra. The least expensive sport model is the 2.0XT Premium, priced at $28,820.

But picking the fancier 2.0XT Touring version and adding a package of high-tech features that includes lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise control, high-intensity-discharge low-beam headlights and precollision braking can push the price past $36,000. That figure suggests high hubris, given that Foresters have never been considered prestige models, but a richly optioned Escape can also reach that level.

I tested both a 2.5i Premium, which had a sticker price of $26,320, and a 2.0XT Touring ($36,220).

The 2014 Forester is 1.4 inches longer and gets a new look — lauded by company officials — that drew little attention in two weeks of driving around northern New Hampshire, a prime habitat of Subaru enthusiasts. But settle inside and the all-around visibility is good; a huge panoramic sunroof, standard on many models, furthers the sense of openness.

Core Subaru values like practicality have not been forsaken. The basic controls for heating, cooling and ventilation rely on an increasingly forgotten and simple pleasure: large, easy-to-use knobs. However, an optional touch screen for functions like the stereo is frustrating, with tiny boxes best suited to dainty little fingers.

An important change is the addition of 3.7 inches more legroom in the rear, which Subaru justifiably felt was needed to attract families with children. That increase means the Forester now has more rear legroom than major competitors like the CR-V, Escape and Toyota RAV4. Behind the second row there’s a competitive 34.4 cubic feet of space (31.5 when equipped with a sunroof).

There are also important mechanical upgrades. The quaint 4-speed automatic that hobbled the previous generation’s acceleration and fuel economy is gone. It has been replaced with an utterly agreeable C.V.T. that offers a strong and instant response to the accelerator. Fuel economy is greatly improved, by up to 5 m.p.g on the highway and 3 m.p.g. in town.

A 6-speed manual transmission is standard on the two least expensive 2.5i trim levels, replacing a 5-speed manual. All other models get the C.V.T.

The entry-level engine is a 170-horsepower 2.5-liter flat 4-cylinder introduced in the 2012 Forester and then added to the 2013 Outback and Legacy models. With the automatic, it is rated at 24 m.p.g. city and 32 m.p.g. highway. Pick the 6-speed manual and the fuel economy drops to 22 city and 29 highway.

The other engine choice is the turbocharged direct-injection 4 rated at 250 horsepower at 5,600 r.p.m. Available only on the 2.0XT, it is making its North American debut. Mileage with the turbo engine is rated at 23/28, one mile per gallon less in the city and four on the highway than the 2.5-liter engine.

That 250 horsepower is up from the 224 produced by last year’s 2.5-liter turbo. However, that gain is offset somewhat by extra pounds. The 2.0XT’s curb weight of 3,622 pounds reflects an increase of about 172 pounds, in part a result of bigger wheels and brakes.

Subaru says the base 2.5-liter Forester will go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 9.3 seconds with the C.V.T. The turbocharged 2.0XT is 3.1 seconds quicker.

During two weeks of driving in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, what the 2.5i and 2.0XT proved to have in common was driving satisfaction, albeit in different amounts.

The electric power steering, new for 2014, is predictable and properly weighted, and for an all-wheel-drive vehicle the Forester is pleasingly quick to dig into a turn.

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