SURFERS PARADISE, Australia — The Champ Car World Series found a way to stay in the news during a six-week break in its schedule: Driver changes on a weekly basis.
In the run-up to the Lexmark Indy 300, it was revealed that “unresolved business issues” would keep Tristan Gommendy from competing for PKV Racing at Surfers Paradise. Most observers took “unresolved business issues” to mean “non-payment of sponsorship funds.”
PKV, owned by series co-principal Kevin Kalkhoven and 1996 CART champion Jimmy Vasser, quickly found a replacement: Oriol Servia, who drove for PKV in 2006 and spent most of 2007 with Forsythe Championship Racing before being released in late December in favor of Mexican David Martinez.
Servia’s ouster from Forsythe to ensure that Champ Car met contractual requirements for the season finale in Mexico City, created outrage among the series’ fan base. But the Spaniard gratefully accepted the chance to continue his season with PKV.
Servia provided one of the best stories of the weekend by taking the provisional pole on Friday in the PKV/Pay-By-Touch car. That earned him a guaranteed front row start for Sunday’s race.
Servia got excellent fuel mileage to lead lap 33 before pitting. He was running third when he hit a wall and broke his car’s suspension on his out lap. The 14th-place finish dropped him to ninth in the standings.

• Team Australia’s Will Power claimed the pole with a record lap of 1:30.204 for an average speed of 127.895 miles per hour. The native of Toowoomba, about two hours from Surfers Paradise, scraped several walls during his pole lap. But his Team Australia Panoz completed the lap.
“That’s probably the hardest four laps I’ve ever done in my life,” Power said. “I pushed super hard because I knew we had the car to do it. Just had to get the lap together. I was even on a quicker one in the last lap, but (Mario) Dominguez blocked me.”
Power won the Surfers Paradise pole for the second year in a row. Unfortunately, he also crashed out after leading for the second consecutive year.

• Power was one of five drivers penalized at Surfers for illegally using the Power-To-Pass overboost feature in the last race at TT Circuit Assen.
Cosworth had a software problem that affected series champion Sebastien Bourdais and several other drivers. Race officials asked teams to radio their drivers to order them not to use the feature, which provides short bursts of an additional 50 horsepower.
Power, along with teammate Simon Pagenaud, Neel Jani (PKV Racing), Bruno Junqueira (Dale Coyne Racing) and Dan Clarke (Minardi Team USA) had their P2P allotment at Australia reduced from 60 to 35 seconds.
Two other drivers also failed to comply, but they lost their rides between races and the replacement drivers were not assessed the penalty.
 
• Defending Surfers Paradise champion Nelson Philippe was impressive in his 2007 Champ Car debut. He finished sixth for Conquest Racing after a race marred only by a clumsy pass attempt that spun out Graham Rahal.

• Team Australia co-owner Craig Gore was forced to miss the Surfers Paradise race after suffering a significant inner ear injury days before the event. Doctors ordered the outspoken Australian businessman to remain in a quiet environment for a week.
Gore was still able to trash rumors that Champ Car is seeking a merger with the popular Australian V-8 Supercar championship. The talk started when AVESCO chairman Tony Cochrane was spotted at Champ Car’s Assen race.

• The Surfers Paradise event is the best attended on the Champ Car schedule. Since becoming an official round of the V-8 Supercar championship rather than an exhibition race, the Gold Coast event has also become one of the top V-8 weekends as well. A record attendance of more than 314,000 was announced for this year’s 17th running of the event.

• Champ Car announced dates for its official preseason open tests: Feb. 2-6 at Sebring Int’l Raceway and March 10-14 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.