Some big question marks have been raised over Australian motorsport in the past 48 hours. There's no doubt motorsport will continue, but these are questions about what direction it will take for Aussies at the highest levels.

V8 Supercars Australia (V8SA) has unveiled what it calls its Car of the Future.

It's an attempt to extend the long-established Holden versus Ford battle while trying to woo other makes of car into the major national series - at the same time, supposedly, containing the costs by standardising even more of the parts under the bodywork.

At the launch of this Car of the Future, Mark Skaife (pictured, above) - five-time victor in the Bathurst 1000 and winner of more touring car races than even Peter Brock - featured large, at one point crouching beside a car covered by a black cloth with a large white question mark over it.

Skaife is a man of many parts these days. Some would say too many.

Elbowed out of the Holden Racing Team as driver and owner a couple of years back, he remains a part-time racer at the endurance events with a rival Holden outfit.

He's also the regular special comments man on the Seven Network's V8 Supercar telecasts.

As well he is a member of the board of V8SA - repeatedly referred to by that organisation as an independent director, although he's also meant to be an ambassador for Holden Special Vehicles, as well driving a Commodore when racing.

And V8SA has put him in charge of this Car of the Future project.

Skaife and V8SA are having an each-way bet here.

"We want other manufacturers to come and play," Skaife says.

It will have to be with a rear-wheel-drive car, retaining a strong resemblance to the road version, and with a V8 engine - something environmentalists might doubt has much of a future, although it's unquestionably in the DNA of a Supercar.

V8SA is wise to be thinking about the future of its category. It's a big business, with a substantial following and lots of free-to-air television.

Australian motorsport fans have always loved V8 sedans and, for 17 years, the premier national championship has been solely for 5-litre Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons.

Before he became a V8 superstar and flag-bearer, Skaife felt the wrath of Bathurst fans for winning the Great Race there in the early 1990s in a high-tech, four-wheel-drive, turbocharged Nissan. His co-driver that day, Jim Richards, was so incensed at the reception he branded the booing crowd "a pack of arseholes".

But the popularity of V8 road cars has dwindled over the decades and the racing Commodore and Falcons, with pushrod engines, are considered by technoheads to be dinosaurs.

Yet the public which shares its affections and dollars on a broad range of other brands for its everyday motoring still loves the track battles between the Red (Holden) and the Blue (Ford).

However, these two participating manufacturers have curbed their spending on racing in recent years as they have seen their new-car-sales market shares shrink. Japanese brand Toyota now sells as many vehicles in Australia as Holden and Ford together, and Korea's Hyundai is now outselling Ford.

V8SA has wanted Toyota to join its championship for several years, and teased its fans that it might, but the company has not seen any need or reason.

At Monday's launch V8SA displayed artwork of a Hyundai Grandeur and a Nissan Maxima mocked up as racing cars.

V8SA chairman Tony Cochrane boldly predicted a while back that the category would have four new makes of car when the Car of the Future rules take effect in 2012.

Cochrane is now much less gung-ho publicly.

Apart from Holden and Ford, Japan's Nissan and America's Chrysler were the only car brands with executives at Monday's launch, and their representatives made it clear they were only observing.

No sign at all of snoops from German manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi which recently have been the subject of speculation in the motorsport trade press.

"The Red versus Blue battle has served us well ... our rules and regulations have served us very well over the past 17 years," Skaife says.

"(Now) We want to open the door up to genuine high-volume production, four-door sedans which will be configured as V8 rear-wheel-drive race cars under strict parity arrangements to compete equally against Falcons and Commodores.

"Any V8 engine can potentially be used where a manufacturer can modify one of its family V8 powerplants or utilise an existing category V8 Supercar engine.

"Who knows, this may open the door to teams fielding Nissans, Toyotas, Hyundais, Mazdas ... whatever!"

Skaife and Cochrane's theme is now evolution rather than revolution, and a lot of the detail is still some months away.

The greater uncertainty is whether spectators and TV viewers will be turned on even if one or more other makes can be enticed to play the game.

On a broader stage, Australia's place in the world of Formula One is in sharper focus right now.

The Australian Grand Prix, running at whopping losses in Melbourne, may have got something of a second wind after turning on its most exciting race last Sunday, courtesy of a welcome shower of rain.

The lesson might have been that sprinklers could add a lot more to the event than the lights F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone wants installed to make it a night race.

The NSW government's play to woo the GP to Sydney is a long shot.

The Homebush Olympic site where it ran the V8 Supercar season finale on a temporary circuit last December is hardly suitable, and the government has lost interest in the permanent Eastern Creek track it owns.

What, a third motor racing venue in metropolitan Sydney? Madness.

And what needs to be understood in this "arm wrestle" between states is that there is really only one winner at any GP around the world - that little chap over in London, Ecclestone, who banks hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the pleasure of allowing promoters the privilege of staging a race in the F1 world championship.

Of more immediate consequence, and concern, to Australian motorsport fans must be Mark Webber's results with Red Bull Racing this season.

Qualifying at Melbourne's Albert Park track last Saturday afternoon confirmed what we said here a day or so earlier - that the Red Bull Racing RB6 car is the best in the sport right now.

Webber's young German teammate Sebastian Vettel should have won the two GPs this season. He led both, only to be let down by little mechanical gremlins each time.

Webber qualified alongside Vettel on the front row in Melbourne - precisely where he needed to be.

Yet in the race, admittedly in tricky conditions, he made at least three mistakes that relegated him to ninth at the finish.

Spared the technical woes that have afflicted Vettel, Webber has only been able to produce eighth and ninth place finishes in two races in the quickest car in the field.

On Sunday morning he allowed himself to be drawn into the controversy in Victoria about hooning and came out with his now infamous "nanny state" remark, perhaps a sign that his mind wasn't as focused as it ought to have been on what should have mattered most to him at that stage - his performance on the track that afternoon.

Webber may yet get his season on course, even as early as this week's Malaysian GP.

He needs to, if he's to get a contract extension to stay in F1 next year - certainly with Red Bull Racing, which ought to be heading the constructors' championship but already finds itself trailing Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.

Irrespective of Webber's future, still little known is that Red Bull has another Australian in its wings.

Daniel Ricciardo, 20, of Perth, is its reserve driver this season - not getting any experience on the circuits, but sitting in on important technical talks and getting a "fast-track" education.

Ricciardo has won 21 races and two titles in junior formulae in Europe in the past two years and topped a trial for F1 hopefuls in Spain late last year.

His main gig this year is to race in Europe's Formula Renault 3.5 Championship through which Vettel and Robert Kubica, runner-up to victor Jenson Button in last Sunday's GP, emerged.

Even if Ricciardo gets to race in F1 this year or next, it's not likely to be in Webber's seat.

More likely it would be in Red Bull's smaller sister team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, the former Minardi with which Webber started.