THE V8 Supercar team owner Garry Rogers yesterday attacked the handling of the Holden Racing Team ownership wrangle and renewed calls for heavy penalties to be handed down.

One day after V8 authorities gave HRT a 14-day deadline to comply with ownership requirements Rogers said: "I think the dispute has been handled very poorly."

"HRT has been threatened with a big stick and flogged with a feather."

Rogers who runs his own Holden team in the championship was critical of TEGA, which polices the racing teams and which has led the inquiry into HRT's paperwork.

After several deadlines came and went in an inquiry which has proceeded for 12 months Rogers said: "There has not been enough discipline applied to the inquiry."

Rogers yesterday stressed he had nothing against Mark Skaife, HRT's owner and lead driver.

"I'm not being vindictive. I would have a beer with him tomorrow. But rules are rules," he said.

"I find it totally wrong they have not been punished.

"I'm not saying throw HRT out because the fans want to see them racing but if you go outside the rules you should face the penalty.

"You can't have one set of rules for one guy and another for the others. You can't conduct business that way.

"There are commercial interests to protect.

"If some teams have an advantage that affects how we compete in the market and if we can't compete what's the point of being in it?

"It's a bit like letting one football team have four times the possession of the other."

Rogers has led criticism of the "sister-team" deal between HRT and Toll HSV Racing, saying last week they had broken ownership rules for years.

"There has been a problem ever since Tom Walkinshaw's overseas business bit the dust," Rogers said.

"In the teams licence agreement there is a list of things you can and can't do. If you go outside those rules you commit a material breach.

"And there are some pretty severe punishments for breaching those."

At the heart of the inquiry is the ownership arrangement at HRT and the position of the former owner Walkinshaw.

Walkinshaw has been linked to both HRT and the Toll team although the Toll team was cleared to race last week.

Under TEGA rules one person cannot own two teams and all ownership changes must be notified.

The V8 Supercar championship starts in Adelaide tomorrow with the Clipsal 500 expected to again draw a four-day crowd approaching 300,000.

Not the first time the top Holden teams have gotten off things lighter than anyone else...
Maybe Skaife owns TEGA?

if it was a ford team they"d be gone

my thoughts exactly as i was reading in the daily telegraph day by day... ^^^^^.... if it were any other team.. GOOOOOOONE!......... seems v8s are bending over backwards to accomodate HRT not the other way around as it should be....

Both ways. If it was a Ford Team that committed the offence then they'd be gone. If it was a Ford team boss that made the same comments as Gary Rogers then he'd be gone big time too. f**k double standards.

Seriously they should throw the door open and sack all of the board members making these dodgy rules and replace them with either Toyota board members (cause they are about as neutral as it gets) or some NASCAR officials as they are known not to take s**t from any side of the fence.