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FINALLY THE RACING STARTS … OR DOES IT? Image: MARK HORSBURGH-EDGE PHOTGRAPHICS

THE STEWARDS SAID KOSTECKI’S SPIRITED DEFENCE IN LAST SATURDAY’S RACE WENT TOO FAR AND THAT VAN GISBERGEN’S BUMPING PASS WAS OK. SOME DRIVERS WERE CONFUSED, AND OTHERS WEREN’T. BUT WHAT IS CLEAR IS THAT SOME BELIEVE THE DEFINITION OF RACING HAS CHANGED ...

THE RACING rules came under fire in Perth after Brodie Kostecki was warned for blocking Shane van Gisbergen, whose bumping pass to win the race on the next lap was given the all-clear by the race stewards.

For his part, Supercars Driving Standards Observer, Craig Baird, said that the decisions during the Saturday race do not redefine the racing rules as some claimed; rather, they reinforce the previously accepted standards.

To clear up confusion, Erebus Motorsport protested the van Gisbergen move that took the lead and the race win from its driver while seeking clarity around the blocking warning for Kostecki.

“The grounds are pretty simple. We want to see hard racing and don’t want to win in the Stewards room, but the rules are pretty clear,” Erebus boss Barry Ryan said on the Fox Sports broadcast.

“You can’t get an unfair advantage when making contact with another car. So while the rules are written like that, what Shane did is wrong.

“So we thought we want to go to the Stewards and see what their opinion is.”

When asked what Erebus sought from the process, Ryan reiterated that the team was searching for ‘consistency’ from the Stewards.

“We just want consistency,” he said.

“There has been a lot of that already this

year, and there has usually been a penalty, so we just want consistency in the rules.

“The way the rules are written, Shane did something wrong,” he asserted.

Moments before the Turn 6 flashpoint, Kostecki was warned for excessive blocking despite appearing to most outside observers to have not overstepped the line.

The warning left the championship leader “confused” post-race, while van Gisbergen described the battle as “on the edge of what was legal.”

Van Gisbergen’s engineer, Andrew Edwards, presented Triple Eight’s version of events, saying he believed Kostecki’s blocking was extreme and that he thought his driver’s pass was ‘clean’ at Turn 6.

“I think they (Erebus) have got their opinion, and I can see where they are coming from,” he said on the Fox Sports broadcast.

“But from the other point of view, they gave it back and forth.

“In my personal opinion, Brodie’s level of blocking was extreme, and Shane’s move was clean enough.

“He left a gap, and Shane did not nudge him to get in there, then Brodie came across him.

“I hope it is not a year of protests at every round.”

Erebus’s protest was dismissed after a Sunday morning hearing, with Baird – who

was not part of the hearing – adding that nothing has changed with regard to the rules of combat. The hearing lasted 35 minutes, and the decision was handed down more than an hour after it finished.

The report on the decision said: “Following the publication of the Provisional Classifications for Race 7 the Stewards received a Notice of Protest from Erebus Motorsport regarding an incident on Lap 41 of Race 7 at Turn 6 involving Car 99, Brodie Kostecki, and Car 97, Shane van Gisbergen.

“The Stewards heard the protest earlier today and have since issued their decision dismissing the protest.

“The footage demonstrably showed that there was no contact by Car 97 with the rear bumper or right rear wheel of Car 99 as had been suggested. Rather, it showed that on the entry to Turn 6, Car 99 had been defending by staying to the right side of the race track and had then moved left, back to the racing line, for the turn-in for Turn 6.

“As Car 99 did do, Car 97 moved up into the space left by Car 99 on the inside of the approach to Turn 6. Just prior to the apex to Turn 6, slight contact occurred between the two cars at a point when Car 97 had a significant overlap on Car 99.

“The Authorised Representative of Triple Eight submitted that as Car 99 turned-in for Turn 6, it did not leave a car’s width of

racing room on the inside and Car 99 made avoidable contact with Car 97.”

Baird expressed the same view and explained that it was for this reason that he had recommended to the race director that the matter not be referred to the Stewards.

“The Stewards reject the contention that the Driver of Car 97 breached Article 3.9 of Schedule B2.

“Car 97 did not cause contact with Car 99.”

Baird added that he was happy with 95% of Kostecki’s defence but that he overstepped the lines a couple of times, and that is why the warning was issued.

Kostecki said he was “confused” by the bad sportsmanship flag.

“The last time I remember doing something like that was probably go-karts,” the Erebus driver said. “It’s not as fun for me coming second, but I had a lot of fun racing him.

“I was pretty confused [by the bad sportsmanship flag] afterwards. I will have to go through it and see what is allowed and what is not.

“He was coming at me with a lot of pace – probably a few things I could’ve done differently earlier in the race that wouldn’t have put me in that scenario.

“As far as the last few laps, I did what I could.”

Thomas Miles with Andrew Clarke.

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SHANE VAN GISBERGEN

OPENS UP ON HIS FUTURE SHANE VAN GISBERGEN HAS DROPPED SOME HINTS ABOUT HIS FUTURE, INCLUDING HIS WANING INTEREST IN THE POLITICS OF THE SPORT IN AUSTRALIA. ANDREW CLARKE REPORTS ...

FRESH OFF the back of signing a contract extension with Triple Eight Race Engineering, Shane van Gisbergen has hinted that all may not be as it seems. It appears the contract extension ties him only to Triple Eight if he remains in Supercars, with an apparent ‘out clause’ should he decide to pursue something overseas, with the States appearing as the most likely option for the three-time Supercars champion.

Van Gisbergen earlier this year indicated to Auto Action that he was trying to organise a run in NASCAR’s inaugural Chicago street race despite it being the week before the Townsville round of the Supercars series.

Rumours in Perth have tied him to Trackhouse Racing’s PROJECT91 for Chicago. Project 91 has run Kimi Raikkonen in road course races at Watkins Glen (2022) and Circuit of the Americas (2023).

Van Gisbergen may also run the Sonoma road course meeting two weeks earlier.

Speaking with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio last month,

Trackhouse Racing’s Justin Marks revealed that there would be a new driver for the #91 Chevrolet Camaro later this year.

“It’s going to be somebody that has got very, very different experience from NASCAR but in some ways is actually perfectly suited for a Cup race,” Marks said. “This is somebody who has not raced in America very much at all, but I think is going to be able to go to this particular race and make some real noise. I’m excited about that.”

Trackhouse says Project 91 represents ‘the intersection of NASCAR and global motorsports culture’ and is designed to expose stars from other series to NASCAR. With the cat out of the bag, expect an announcement soon.

Auto Action will be at the Grant Park 220 in Chicago during the first weekend of July.

Back home, though, van Gisbergen has spoken with Fox’s Jess Yates, and he explained the motivations behind his contract signing and his frustrations with the sport that publicly bubbled over at Newcastle.

“Yeah, it was pretty awesome, like ... easy chats with Jamie. So at least one more year here, which is cool,” van Gisbergen said of his contract extension before talking about negotiating with Jamie Whincup.

“It was pretty awesome, actually. He was great to speak to about it. Obviously, when you win and you’re doing the same thing the next year, you’ve got to find ways of keeping motivated, I guess. Driving the cars was never an issue, but it’s the new challenges and stuff. He did it for longer than anyone and won more than anyone, so he was really good to talk to about it as a mate.

“Then I let him and Dad, who manages me, sort out the business side.”

The reigning champion then expanded on his frustrations with the politics of the sport, which bubbled over with his obstinance in Newcastle that made headlines.

“It’s weird because the series is worse than ever. All the background stuff is really bad, but the team is awesome,” van Gisbergen said. “I love being part of the team, I’ve loved the challenge this year of the car. The car is difficult but as a driver, it’s the same for everyone.

“It’s a real engineer’s car. You have to make it better than everyone else’s and as the driver you feel like you have less input over it, which is good. I’ve had to get better at my offtrack stuff; understand the car more and think about what makes it tick more.”

“I have to be careful what I say because it gets taken out of context sometimes. But this …”

Yates interjected, telling him it was his opportunity to express his feelings.

“Yeah, I dunno, it’s weird, in the series, all the stuff that goes on. Especially not going to New Zealand, which I guess is a personal gripe. “(Talk of) going overseas to Singapore and the Middle East ... what is the point? We have new cars which are awesome; we should be going to places like Winton and QR (Queensland Raceway) and taking them to the people and make them fall in love with the sport again.

“We have this awesome new product – why are we going overseas with it?”

“You just read all the stuff, and when you speak to people, they’re trying to do all these races. You watch us at the F1, it’s cool to be there, but the races are a bit average.”

He admitted that being a spiritual leader for the sport was difficult.

“That’s the thing I always battle with. You want to please everyone and make it better. I’ve been trying a lot off track, setting up this driver’s group and trying to make it better for everyone, but you can lose focus easily. I want to help everyone, and I enjoy it, but sometimes you have to be selfish; you’re there for yourself too.”

Echoing Barclay Nettlefold’s view from AA1859, he said one of the issues for the sport, to him, is the low number of race weekends which forces him to look overseas for more opportunities to race.

“We simply don’t race enough. This year we’re doing less.

We’re doing 12 races ... now, it’s four weeks since we’ve raced. So getting to drive stuff, you stay sharp. It’s not like other sports; we can’t just go and play with the ball or whatever. We have testing restrictions, which is fine, but I find when I don’t drive for two or three weeks, and I jump back in the car, everything feels so fast.

“I would love to race every weekend, but you have to make it sustainable. I’d love to go back to more of the conventional tracks, too, I think we’ve got some good tracks we can have good events at. The street circuits have their place too, and most of them are pretty awesome, but I think more races would be good.

“I think we had 15 or 16 a few years ago, and as long as they’re spread out evenly and not too hard on the teams I think it’s cool.”

Image: MARK HORSBURGH

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Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

TRIPLE EIGHT DIDN’T BACK NEW ZEALAND HOT ON the heels of Supercars Chairman Barclay Nettlefold’s bombshell in Auto Action #1859 that Supercars loses money to race in New Zealand is the news that 10 of the 11 teams took a financial hit to race there in 2022.

It has been revealed that the teams had to make a choice between a race at Sandown or Pukekohe, but it was decided that teams wanted to do both. But a financial compromise was required by Supercars and the Teams to make it happen.

Talking to several team owners and an un-named ‘Supercars heavyweight’, AA has been told that Triple Eight Racing Engineering was the only team that didn’t make a financial sacrifice to race in New Zealand last year.

While no team owner would go on the record, we understand the teams took a revenue cut from Supercars of around $10,000 a car, representing a collective drop of nearly $230,000 to cross-the-ditch.

Supercars’ final weekend at Pukekohe in front of a massive crowd was touch-and-go for a while, and the teams’ revenue reduction – at least 10 of 11 – was the final piece in the puzzle that allowed the visit to proceed.

While the financial model for racing in New Zealand extends beyond cash in hand, with both teams and series sponsors wanting a presence across the ditch, the reduced revenue was still required to get the meeting across the line.

Racing in New Zealand is not believed to be a blockage to any

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other overseas events being held.

“New Zealand is a real focus for us – 20 percent of our fan base is there, which is very important for our sponsors and our teams,” Nettlefold said. “We are also one of the largest annual sporting events on the calendar outside of the All Blacks.

“So if you look at it through those eyes, Supercars has enormous DNA there, especially with the older drivers like Murph and our current drivers with Van Gisbergen.

We’ve got a long history there, and we’ve got great driving talent, and the New Zealanders love motorsport.

“Our aim is to try and get back next year. We really are focused and committed to getting back to New Zealand.”

Several team owners are known to be miffed at Shane van Gisbergen’s comments during his Fox Sport’s interview with Jess Yates that was aired during Sunday’s telecast from Perth, given the lack of support to racing there from the team to which he has just signed a contract extension.

Supercars’ absence from New Zealand in 2023 was mainly due to the short time frames and some of the regulatory hurdles required for such a major event.

Three circuits are in the running to host the series next year, all owned by Triple Eight co-owner Tony Quinn, and Nettlefold indicated he was hoping for an announcement soon.

Triple Eight was approached for comment but had not responded when we closed for print.

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Tickford’s Thomas Randle leads a battle in the ‘Mustang Cup’ Image: MARK HORSBURGH

MORE PARITY CHANGES EXPECTED

BY ANDREW CLARKE

TWO PARITY adjustments were made in the lead-up to the Perth round of the Supercar Series, but the data says more may be needed to provide an even playing field. Although some teams want sporting parity might not be technical parity.

The Mustang had a new engine map, and there was a minor centre of gravity adjustment to the rear of the Camaros.

The engine map change was more about driveability than sorting out a deficit, with more significant changes expected in the coming weeks.

The change to the Ford engine mapping comes on top the change to the ‘Centre of Gravity’ (COG) position on the Chevrolet Camaro, which saw a 2.3mm average variance between the Mustang and the Camaro-with the Mustang having the higher average COG. Following testing of Gen3 Supercars at Tickford Racing’s facility and evaluation of the results, it was concluded that all 14 Camaros would have weight redistributed in a move designed to raise their centre of gravity to match that of the Mustangs.

A total of 4.97kg of ballast was redistributed to the rear of the Camaros, slightly above and forward of the rear axle line-roughly in the area of the rear bulkhead.

As has been reported in Auto Action for the past couple of months, the power delivery characteristics of the Ford engine have caused issues for the Gen3 Mustang drivers, who have complained about an inability to maintain traction out of low and medium-speed corners once

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rear tyres have heated up.

Changes to improve the low-down power delivery has been a focus for Ford’s engine developers, Herrod Performance Engines, who have been working on the issue since the February Supercars test day.

Prior to the Perth round Ford’s head of motorsport in Australia, Ben Nightingale, spoke to Auto Action and confirmed that process was underway and was hopeful the proposed changes would be rolled out for Perth.

“We’ve got our engines on the dyno at HPE all the time, trialling things, trying to understand these engines more as the work goes on, then we’ve got to go through the process of applying to Supercars to implement it.”

“Sometimes the simplest answer is the simplest answer, and we have been working through it all with Shane Howard and his team at Supercars.”

It is believed that late changes to the Coyote engine mapping by the Supercars technical department caused the issue which created a ‘low throttle position stumble’ which drivers would have to ‘drive through’ and this was seen as a cause of rear drive instability.

The lack of rear traction or ‘power-down’ has been a major ongoing issue for parity between the two makes.

Despite a revised engine map being available to Ford teams since before the AGP round, under the rules of Gen3, Ford could not release a new engine map to the Ford teams’ cars until Supercars had run a 28-day test program prior to its approval.

The revised map did not have any of the information from the Grand Prix meeting, where the Ford drivers said they could watch the Chevs run away from them when the cars got beyond fourth gear.

Ford has yet to greet the chequered flag first in the nine races so far this season and has only 26 per cent of all the podiums decided. Chevrolet also has seven of the nine pole positions.

THE ON TRACK RESULTS MANUFACTURER Chevrolet Ford

Wins 9 0

Podiums 20 7

% Wins 100% 0%

% Podium 74% 26%

TEAM Triple 8 Erebus Tickford BJR Grove DJR WAU

Wins 6 3 0 0 0 0 0

Podiums 8 10 3 2 2 1 1

% Wins 67% 33% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

% Podium 30% 37% 11% 7% 7% 4% 4%

DRIVER van Gisbergen Kostecki Feeney Brown Courtney Reynolds Heimgartner Waters Mostert Fullwood Davison

Wins 4 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Podiums 5 7 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

% Wins 44% 22% 22% 11% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

% Podium 19% 26% 11% 11% 7% 7% 4% 4% 4% 4% 4%

Tickford’s J Courtney is their leading driver...

Images: MARK HORSBURGH

TICKFORD RIDING THE GEN3 ROLLERCOASTER WITH FOUR CARS, TICKFORD RACING IS ENJOYING A RIDE ON THE GEN3 ROLLERCOASTER MORE THAN OTHER TEAMS AS IT WORKS OUT TO GET A HANDLE ON THE NEW RACERS. TIM EDWARDS SPOKE WITH ANDREW CLARKE TICKFORD RACING is Ford’s most successful team in 2023, with three podiums from nine races, and team principal Tim Edwards (right) says the team is working its way through the ups and downs of the new Gen3 cars.

Getting the right setup is one part of the game, but crashes and component failures have added to the challenges being endured by his team. He said the Perth weekend was typical of the season so far and not that unexpected.

“Very up and down is probably the best way to describe it. We had glimpses of speed and glimpses of no speed,” he said after the third round of the 2023 series.

“Our race pace was so consistent, so it came down to where you qualified, and that was our biggest struggle on the weekend.

“There were certainly some positives from it, like JC’s podium and the pace Cam showed on Sunday, which was much improved over the previous day.

We’re still learning this car, and clearly, some teams have certainly got there ahead of us at that track anyway.

“It’s a completely new car, and our playbook from last year doesn’t exist.

So it’s just a case of every engineer and every driver up and down the pit lane exploring. And to be honest, it’s what I expected would happen in the first half of

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this year, and I’m not talking about us as a team but the entire category.

“Everybody’s exploring, and people are having good sessions and bad sessions.

You can see that in almost every team, apart from probably Erebus. You have a good qualifying session, then a bad one, and you sit there scratching your head about what happened.

Sometimes you say, ‘hang on, I didn’t actually change the car very much’ yet there is a big change in grid position.

“Then you’ve only got to make a small mistake at one corner, particularly at a track like Perth where the grids are separated by minuscule amounts, to have a big loss. You’ve got to do a perfect lap all the time, which is difficult.

“When you’re trying to find hundredths and tenths, we’re talking small amounts of gain or loss having a big impact on your starting position.”

He said the argument that having now run at three different tracks means the teams will have learnt what makes the cars work is a foolhardy suggestion.

“Every track has its peculiarities, so it doesn’t matter where we’ve been. Only when we get to the end of this season will we have catalogued enough information to say, ‘All right, that works at this track’.

Unfortunately, when you go back to, for instance, Newcastle at the beginning of

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next year, we’ll have learnt so much with these cars over the 12 months that the setup we ran on the car in 2023 will be useless.

“There is huge scope for adjustments on these cars, so you can either get it horribly right or wrong. It might be a tenth of a second, but it’s horribly wrong. We’re a long way off having a solid understanding, and we saw the same thing in 2013 when we had nine different race winners in the first nine races.”

Of his four drivers, James Courtney seems to have adapted best and is enjoying a new lease of life as one of only two Ford drivers to finish in the top three more than once, although he lost one on the back end of a penalty. He’s also had his battles with fires and minor crash damage keeping him out of a race that last year he would have made.

Waters won the season’s first race after the penalties were handed out to the Triple Eight cars, but he has not troubled

the champagne makers since.

Thomas Randle was looking good in the final race in Perth when a gear shift tower broke (as happened with three other cars during the weekend), which is a control component his team has no input into.

According to Edwards, Declan Fraser is tracking well but has just had a few challenges during the races and is gradually finding his speed.

Edwards didn’t want to talk about the elephant in the room – parity (see separate story) – and instead just wanted to worry about what Tickford could control and working the Technical Working Group to fix problems as they arise, such as the gear shift tower.

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FEENEY “PLAYED GAMES” WITH EREBUS IN BIG WIN BROC FEENEY finished the Perth SuperSprint in style by recording a big win in the third and final race of the weekend.

Feeney converted pole to a crushing lights-to-flag win, finishing 7s ahead of Will Brown to claim the third win of his Supercars career, which have all arrived on Sundays.

Although the #88 Camaro was never challenged on his way to victory lane, the youngster overcame two major threats throughout the 42-lap race.

The first was off the line, where Feeney beat the fast-starting Brodie Kostecki on the inside of Turn 1.

By mid race, Feeney’s nearest challenger was Brown, who got by Erebus teammate Kostecki on Lap 3 and tried to perform the undercut on the Triple Eight leader.

Brown pitted on Lap 24 and car #88 stayed out until Lap 29. Despite having fivelap fresher tyres the car #9 could not make up enough time to even threaten Feeney when he rejoined the track.

After a swift pit stop by the Triple Eight crew, Feeney rejoined with a 2.3s lead and cruised his way to a crushing 7s win, easily the most dominant of his growing career.

Feeney admitted he was unsure what Sunday had in store, but knew he could “put the hammer down” after reading the “games” Erebus tried to play.

“I didn’t know what Sunday was going to be like. The Erebus cars have been so fast, and we’ve struggled being in the pack this weekend,” Feeney said.

“In the first five laps, I could tell what games they (Erebus) were trying to play, so I sort of played them back and just cruised.

“I had so much fun. I could manage the tyres as best as I could and at the end of the race I could put the hammer down and let loose with a bit of speed – it was bloody awesome.”

Image: MARK HORSBURGH The win ensured Feeney ended the rollercoaster day on a high having earlier qualified 21st and finished 13th in what was his first finish outside the top 10 on track all year. Now sitting fifth in the championship, Feeney nailing the consistency in his #88

Camaro ZL1 will be critical as he heads to the scene of his maiden Supercars podium, Symmons Plains.

“It was a crazy day qualifying P21 in one race, then pole the next. The ups-and-downs are the things we just need to work on,” he said.

“When we qualify well here, we can certainly take it to the other teams, so hopefully we can fix our qualifying results and be up on the podium and keep the battle going.”

Thomas Miles

FROSTY DEFLATED DESPITE HITTING 600 MILESTONE TEAM 18’S Mark Winterbottom was left feeling deflated after the Perth SuperSprint, a round where he became just the third Supercars/ATCC driver in history to crack the 600-race barrier.

The 2015 series champion joined a short list of V8 legends – Garth Tander and Craig Lowndes – reaching the milestone.

Although he was proud to join those names, he put the milestone into perspective as he tried to kickstart Team 18’s year with the new Gen3 Camaro.

“When you’re racing, you’re looking forward, but you’re not necessarily looking at the numbers,” he started.

“But to know there’s only two other people that have 600 starts is a pretty cool achievement to be part of that club.”

“If it wasn’t for stat guys at the team and stuff like that, you don’t keep track of what number your race is.

“I could tell you where my last race win was, not where my 500th race was.”

But on a weekend that began with

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Image: MARK HORSBURGH celebrations and a fitting amount of tributes from the pit lane and beyond, they weren’t enough to soften the blow of a disappointing round of results for both he and the team.

With both practice and qualifying being decided by extremely tight

splits, the #600 Camaro veteran started with a P5 in the 90 minute practice session, and missed the topten in Q1 by a meagre 0.218s.

He dropped five spots in the opener however, finishing in P18, which unfortunately would be as good as

Perth would get for him, qualifying in P20 and P25 on the Sunday, and ending up in P18 and P19 for the final races.

“It’s been a tough weekend. We just struggled for pace, both cars, all weekend,” a dejected Winterbottom related.

“My 600th … I think that was the highlight of the weekend, obviously to hit that milestone; but I’m not going to beat around the bush – we just have to work harder, make the cars faster and go again.

“The good thing about motorsport is it’s three weeks between a bad and a good weekend. We’ll get back to work, we’ve got a great team, great sponsors and great supporters.

“These weekends do hurt and they get you down, but we’ll bounce back, go home, regroup, and come back stronger in Tasmania.”

To make a frustrating weekend worse, his team-mate also leapt him in the point standings with Frosty ending the weekend in 18th, Scott Pye going into 16th.

TW Neal

EREBUS KEEPING FOCUS AFTER HISTORIC 1-2 KOSTECKI EXTENDS DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP AND EREBUS IS THE TEAMS’ LEADER EREBUS MOTORSPORT’S stunning start to the Gen3 Supercars era hit new heights in Perth when Will Brown led Brodie Kostecki home to the team’s maiden 1-2 finish.

Erebus has experienced many ups and downs in its decade-long journey in the sport since it took over Stone Brothers Racing and brought Mercedes into the sport.

In 2013 the team could only manage a top result of 14th at Wanneroo, but fast-forward 10 years and no one could stop them.

Brown’s masterclass on the second 42-lap race of the weekend gave the Coke Camaros their third win of the year and the team’s 11th overall, but the first with a 1-2 formation finish.

The man steering the ship, Barry Ryan, cut an emotional figure in the pits after watching his two cars dominate the second 42-lap race of the weekend.

“It is bloody awesome and hard to explain. The team has just done an awesome job,” Ryan told Fox Sports.

“Will had a down day yesterday and qualified 22nd, but to bounce back to get pole and dominate like that is brilliant.

“Brodie is just happy for Will which is the best part about our team.”

Brown’s dominant win helped him jump into the top four in the championship standings, which is led by Kostecki, who now enjoys an 100-point lead over Chaz Mostert.

To give Ryan an even bigger reason to smile Erebus leads the teams’ table by 101 points over Triple Eight.

Brown understood Ryan’s and the entire team’s emotions after the success, with himself and Kostecki coming on board during a major reset in 2021.

Erebus lost drivers David Reynolds and Anton De Pasquale, plus its major sponsor after two winless years and brought in rookies Brown and Kostecki.

The pair impressed immediately and have helped the team on a three-year journey to unmatched success.

After finding their feet in seasons 2021 and 2022, Erebus has risen from an underdog to a superpower at the dawn of the Gen3 era.

Brown said the current success is a testament to Erebus’ hard-working attitude.

“This is pretty surreal,” Brown said.

“I think he (Barry) is just really excited. He obviously took us on two years ago as rookies.

“So to see us come through and get a 1-2, plus to see the whole team doing so well is brilliant.

“They all just want to win so much and have put in so many hours, and for us it is awesome to repay them.”

Brown could not wipe the smile off his face having returned to victory lane for the first time since his maiden success at Sydney Motorsport Park in 2021.

Car #9 had chances of glory at the Melbourne SuperSprint, but bad luck and a mistake meant victory slipped away.

Brown also bounced back from a tough Saturday where he qualified 22nd and finished 16th as Kostecki took pole and fought for the win.

However, Brown was an untouchable figure in Sunday’s opening 42-lap race and he said keeping the tyres intact was one of the keys.

“I just had a bloody fast car,” he said.

“I was worried I was pushing too hard and not conserving the tyres, but we had awesome car pace.

“I was trying to keep it straight coming out of the Bowl and manage the left-rear and not overexcite it too much, which really helped me towards the end.”

Having shown pace at all three tracks so far, the prospect of both Brown and Kostecki fighting for wins is highly likely going forward.

But Brown does not see his and Kostecki’s intra-team rivalry getting messy, with the respect and friendship clear for all to see in and out of the car.

“I guess we just have to race hard and try not to run into each other, but we have a lot of respect for each other and the team,” he said.

“If we are racing 1-2, we will work it out between us to make sure the team gets the best result they deserve.”

Kostecki has been leading Erebus’ charge and hardly been away from the podium, collecting trophies in eight of the nine races so far.

Despite the dream start, Kostecki knows things will only get harder.

“It was a fantastic weekend for Erebus, it was great to see Will get a win and get the team’s first 1-2,” he said.

“I would love for the success to continue, but I don’t live in a perfect world and there will be harsh times coming.

“But we just seem to be hitting our stride at the moment and will keep digging deep.” Thomas Miles

Image: MARK HORSBURGH

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GEAR SHIFT ISSUES STRIKE GEN3 BROKEN GEAR shifting mounts are now under the microscope after Cameron Hill, Thomas Randle and Tim Slade all suffered issues on the Sunday of the Perth SuperSprint.

Both Hill and Slade suffered the issue in Race 2 and lost a handful of laps trying to fix it.

The PremiAir car pulled off into the infield, but Slade used his experience to still find a way to finish the race with the issue.

The gear-shifting drama then creeped into the Ford camp with Randle’s #55 Mustang forced to retire from P7 just 10 laps from home.

BJR HITTING THE RESET BUTTON BRAD JONES Racing is heading back to the drawing board after its early-season pace disappeared at the Perth SuperSprint.

All four BJR Camaros struggled to unlock speed at the 2.4km circuit with Andre Heimgartner’s P10 in Race 8 the only high point from the three-race weekend.

That was the only time Heimgartner finished in the top 20, while Bryce Fullwood, Jack Smith and Macauley Jones in the ‘Goldmember’ Camaro never went higher than 12th.

It was a far cry from the Australian Grand Prix where car #8 ventured up to the podium and Bryce Fullwood was in podium contention.

The wash-up saw BJR’s main man Heimgartner slip from fourth to eighth in the championship, while the Smith and Jones combination are the lowest multi-car squad in the teams standings.

BJR team owner Brad Jones revealed the team started with a similar set-up to the Australian Grand

Prix, which did not translate the car pace at Perth.

“The cars were bad for all of them,” he told Auto Action.

“We started with something close to what we had at the AGP and it did not work for us.”

The biggest issue for BJR was its battle to get the car to rotate.

The Albury based team thought it struck gold in Race 8 where Heimgartner cracked the top 10, only for the pace to disappear once again.

“In Race 2 we were making some progress,” Jones said.

“Andre was the first to go back to the set-up we used at testing prior, which was a little bit better.

“That was the direction we had on Sunday, so by Race 2 we were like ‘OK, we just need to tune these things up a little bit more and we will be good.’

“But we tried to tune them up more and they were slower again.”

Heimgartner echoed the thoughts of his boss.

“Race 2 wasn’t too bad. I felt like we made some gains and raced to 10th which was solid from where we started,” he said.

“Unfortunately that last race we really struggled to get speed throughout the race and I finished nearly last ... so very frustrating.

“Hopefully we have some things to learn from this weekend.”

Perth has been the scene of some of BJR’s happiest of memories, with Jason Bright ending an 11-year wait for its first win in 2011.

However, 2023 will certainly not be remembered fondly by Jones, saying it was one of the “toughest” rounds the team has endured in a long time.

“I am glad its over. It was just one of the toughest weekends we have had for a long time,” he said.

“We actually had a reasonable turn of speed in Race 2, so we will go through it all the data and regroup for Tasmania.”

Thomas Miles with Bruce Williams.

DE PASQUALE LOSES TIME FOR COSTLY MOVE ANTON DE Pasquale was forced to serve a 15-second time penalty after his move on David Reynolds went wrong.

The two Ford Mustangs were fighting for this spot when De Pasquale made a big lunge down the inside of Reynolds at the final corner.

The DJR driver locked up and ran wide, forcing Reynolds off even further and causing a brief trip to the sand.

The Grove Racing driver dropped from third to 11th after the incident, but De Pasquale eventually received a 15-second penalty and finished five places behind Reynolds.

BJR DOCKED POINTS FOR PIT DRAMA BRAD JONES Racing’s tough Perth SuperSprint was characterised by one major pit blunder where Jack Smith’s left-rear wheel came off.

Smith dived into the pits from P15 on Lap 23, but his #4 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was dropped before the left-rear was fitted properly.

The end result saw the wheel immediately depart the car as he left the box and Smith was stranded at the end of the pit lane.

Due to the incident, BJR was fined $1500 and lost 30 teams championship points for the breach of Rule D 11.2.3.2.

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Images: MARK HORSBURGH-EDGE PHOTOGRAPHICS

WATERS SALVAGES TOUGH WEEKEND THE PERTH SuperSprint was shaping up to be one to forget for Cameron Waters.

After being one of the leading Fords at Newcastle, Waters lost some ground with a middling Melbourne SuperSprint and hoped to fire back to life at Wanneroo.

But he struggled to unlock speed from the #6 Monster Mustang as soon as cars hit the track for the extra-long Friday practice session.

After 90 minutes of running, Waters could only manage P22 as the lowest of the four Tickford cars.

Things did not get much better in qualifying when he was knocked out in Q2 – in 19th.

Waters’ hopes of fighting further up the leaderboard in Race 1 took a hit when he was spun by Andre Heimgartner at the final corner and came home 22nd.

Despite the painful start, things turned in the right direction on Sunday when Waters climbed from 15th to eighth in Race 2 where Tickford teammate James Courtney finished on the podium.

He made further inroads in the finale,

making up three places to take sixth.

Waters revealed an early set-up direction was the reason behind the early-weekend battles.

But the secret behind the turnaround was following the path the #5 side of the garage took.

“It was terrible to start with. We had a set-up direction which was not working,” Waters said post round.

“On Saturday we went over everything and put Courtney’s set-up in overnight.

“It was way different in quali, just didn’t maximise it in the races – we were speedy and moved forward.

“Pretty happy with the progress we made and happy that JC got a podium.”

The Sunday comeback ensured Waters only dropped one spot in the championship standings to seventh, 261 points away from leader Brodie Kostecki.

Now he heads to Tasmania, a place Waters has never won at, but knows Tickford’s pedigree is too strong to simply be written off.

“We will be back. we’re a good team with good drivers,” he said.

“We will keep putting our heads together and make sure we are the first Fords.” Thomas Miles

GROVE VYING FOR TOP MUSTANG STABLE

AFTER A STRONG WEEKEND FROM BOTH ITS DRIVERS, ONE TEAM MAY HAVE QUIETLY LEFT THE PERTH SUPERSPRINT AS THE TEAM TO HEAD-UP THE MUSTANG STABLES, WITH ITS VETERAN STANDING UP, AND A ROOKIE ON THE RISE... AUTO ACTION’S TW NEAL TAKES A LOOK. GROVE RACING left Wanneroo after closing the gap to Walkinshaw Andretti United as the top Mustang team in a year where podiums have been scarce for the Ford garages.

Prior to the round, David Reynolds confidently stated that the pace would be there, and in a weekend of very tight margins, it was!

Not only did Reynolds score a podium in Race 1, he sniffed around the pointy end of the timing sheets all weekend after topping Practice, and narrowly missed out on getting a few pole positions, starting Races 1 and 3 on the second row and Race 2 on the front row.

“I had a pretty good weekend; rolled out the truck really fast and stayed pretty quick in Qualifying,” Reynolds said about his weekend.

“I was one of the highest placed qualifiers over the weekend in the average of three, and I was always the dominant force in each. In the first race yesterday, we got a podium which was fantastic for the team.

“Sunday’s race we had a little drama, I got pushed off the track and got some sand in my brake duct and that literally destroyed the front of the car … it was very difficult to win the race after that.

“The last race I started fourth and drove the wheels off it. I was flat out the whole time and finished fourth – there was not a lot of pace left in the car.

“All in all it was a great weekend from the team. Everything was generally working well so the wins aren’t too far away – we just

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Matt Payne. Images: MARK HORSBURGH need to be a little bit better on race day.”

Not only was Reynolds a constant danger, his team-mate in the #19 Penrite Mustang had a career best weekend.

Rookie Matt Payne has been quietly simmering in the background and lurking around the top-10 at two extremely difficult events, as both he and his team have navigated the Mustang Gen3 birth in a Camaro dominated nursery.

Much of the rookie talk has revolved around MSR’s Cameron Hill and, although he has obvious talent, Payne is brimming with maturity in his composure behind the wheel.

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Aside from his P6 as a co-driver alongside Lee Holdsworth in the 2022 Bathurst 1000, the 20-year-old Kiwi cracked a maiden top10 as a full-time Supercars driver with a P6 in Race 1 after putting his car into P5 in Q1.

He followed that up with a fourth row start for Race 2, finishing in P9.

It’s the perfect scenario for both Payne and the team, as he’s quietly started his career with a good show of consistency and clean driving with the lively machine in a tough year for a rookie to step-in.

So with Mostert bound to score the bulk of the points at WAU, Grove is building a

solid point-scoring two-horse stable with the evergreen Reynolds to likely remain consistent, and Payne on track to become a very reliable Supercars driver.

“We had a really good day on Saturday which I was really stoked about,” the Rookie said.

“We made it through the three stages of qualifying on Saturday so I was really happy with that.

“I got a good start in the race but was hurt by tyre life in the end.

We still finished sixth and It was car #19’s first top 10 and, overall, a really good result for the team.

“We were the highest point scoring team on Saturday, so we moved up in the Teams’ championship. Really positive day for us.”

Though Q3 and Race3 was a tougher outing for Payne, those days will happen for a rookie, but there’s every chance they may be fewer in between in his future prospects.

“It’s hard racing down the back – everyone is trying to climb over each other.

It was tough work but I am pretty happy with my weekend.”

The Symmons Plains SuperSprint may very well see WAU and Grove swap places in the teams’ race, with another short track likely to suit the well balanced pair of Mustangs.

Grove sits fifth in the standings on 572 points, having closed the gap to 32 points on WAU, its closest Gen3 Mustang rival, whilst being 325 points behind the Erebus Camaros at the top of the tree.

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ALLEN LEARNS FROM THE BEST KAI ALLEN was a busy boy between the opening two rounds of the 2023 Dunlop Series.

After just recovering from a broken collarbone to race at Newcastle, Allen went on his first overseas trip to England to learn from one of the most revered driver coaches in the world.

The experience of a lifetime saw the 18-year-old work one-on-one with Rob Wilson at Donington Park and Bedford.

Allen spent two days with the famed driver coach, who has worked with Formula 1 stars such as McLaren legends Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard, picking up invaluable tips across all areas of racing.

It was a far cry from Allen’s time growing up in South Australian country town Mount Gambier and the Eggleston Motorsport Super2 driver loved the “mind-blowing” experience.

“It was a really cool two days with Rob and I was grateful just to listen to him and enjoy the great experience,” Allen told Auto Action.

“It was cool – he just drove his little Ford Puma road car to the track. Even just watching him drive was cool. He drives with one hand, he does it that easy!

“It was mind-blowing, seeing things I never thought of.”

Despite travelling from the other side of the world, Allen admitted he was venturing into the unknown as Wilson wanted the session to be as raw as possible.

“We did not even know where we were going until the day. He wanted it to be straight out of the box to see where my ability was at,” he said.

“I did a few laps and he basically finetuned it from each session offering little changes to technique and by the end of

the day we were working on little tiny one percenters.

“It was almost like a brain-storming session on how we can go faster through this corner or change the steering through here. I took a lot out of it.”

Wilson kept things simple, with no fancy cars on display. Instead Allen drove a Ford Puma on the same piece of tarmac on which Ayrton Senna famously won the 1993 European Grand Prix.

Despite the change of pace, the 2022 Super3 runner-up said slowing things down simplifies things at top speed.

“It was cool to drive a road car because you have softer suspension and every little mistake shows up massively. With less power you have to be flowing the car really smoothly,” he said.

“It sounds weird, but it really helps for a fast car like a Supercar.

Everything is in slow motion, so you have more time to think about what you are doing and that will make everything more natural at greater speed.”

Reflecting on what Wilson taught him, Allen said he was introduced to a new range of “little” but vital details.

“Just the little details he picked up on were crazy,” he said.

“There were so many simple things around braking techniques to steering.

Things you would not even think of and they are all one percenters that add up.

“Hopefully I can put them into my skillset and I will be a better driver!”

After a weekend of ‘what could been’ at Perth, where he lost control of Race 2 due to a poor restart, Allen heads to the next round, at Townsville, fifth in the Super2 championship.

Thomas Miles

Images: MARK HORSBURGH-EDGE PHOTOGRAPHICS

PRE-RACE PREP HELPS WOOD STAND TALL THE SECOND round of the 2023 Dunlop Series marked the arrival of Ryan Wood, whose racecraft came to the fore at Wanneroo.

The young Kiwi showed some promise at Newcastle, taking Sunday pole, only to record a DNF after getting caught up in an incident at Turn 8. But there was no stopping Wood at Perth as he stormed to back-to-back wins.

On both occasions he charged from behind, with well-executed restarts being critical to his success on each day.

Having made a well-published jump from a confirmed Porsche Carrera Cup drive to the Dunlop Series, the maiden Supercars win meant a lot to Wood.

“It is pretty special to be honest. A lot of hard work has gone into this,” he said.

“Just a massive thanks to the team – the car was a rocket.

“It is pretty emotional and I just can’t thank WAU enough for believing in me.

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“Everybody knows the story from last year, so they can shut up now.”

The wins were not completely based on opportunistic moves, with plenty of prerace preparation making a difference.

Wood revealed his recent Super2 restarts at Perth sat in the back of his mind, while work with WAU’s current Supercars stars helped him conserve the tyres over the longer races.

“I remember the last time Super2 raced here Matt Payne was leading and Cam Hill got the run on him,” he said.

“I watched a lot of videos and it paid off, so it is pretty cool.

“The car had so much drive out of the Bowl and Nick (Percat) and Chaz (Mostert) told me about tyre conservation and they made my job easier.”

Wood’s mentor Warren Luff expanded on the discussions, which played a big role in his ability to extract as much tyre life as possible.

“We spoke about looking after the rear tyre and driving it like a wet-weather car just trying to square up the exits of the corner,” Luff said.

“We also told him not to worry about the pace early in the race and he has done a great job.”

Wood hopes to carry on his strong form at Townsville on July 7-9.

Thomas Miles

F1 DODGED A BULLET IN LAST LAP PIT INCIDENT

When Ocon pitted, he was confronted by a wall of photographers and other media. Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES FORMULA ONE was lucky to avoid a tragedy when a bunch of photographers, taking position for the podium ceremony, was nearly hit by Esteban Ocon in the pit lane, the Frenchman pitting at the end of the penultimate lap, his gamble to stay out on Hards not paying off due to lack of SC or VSC period in the second half of the race. It was by less than two seconds that some of the photographers were not taken out

by the French driver, who admitted that, “it was quite close, I had to lift off, I had to back off, so I would not have liked to have been the in the place of those that were there. I have to say, at the speed that we are arriving, especially so close to the line, if I miss the braking point it is a big disaster, so that was a crazy moment.”

Clearly still shocked by the situation, the Alpine driver

went on to explain that, “arriving at 300kph, braking very late and seeing the barriers and the people all around it was crazy. It could have been a big, big one today and, definitely something that needs to be discussed as it is something we don’t want to see.”

With the need for drivers to use two different tyre compounds during the races, it’s not so unusual that there are some gambles on a late Safety Car call, and to see cars pitting at the start of the last lap.

Alex Albon, who gambled on doing the entire 2022 Australian Grand Prix on the Hard tyre, pitting for Softs with one lap to go, scored an unexpected point for Williams, but also lived a similar situation. The FIA took action and called its own representatives to explain what had gone wrong to the Stewards of the Meeting.

While noting, “that it was not unusual for the representatives to allow such persons into the pit lane just before the end of the race, in the usual course of preparation for parc ferme and the podium ceremony”, the Stewards made it clear that, “in this case, there was one driver that had to pit in the last lap and this created a very dangerous situation for those that were in the pit lane at the time.”

Therefore, the Stewards, “considered that it was fortunate that there were no serious consequences on account of what happened today” and “stressed that the requirements of ensuring a safe and orderly event are paramount. This was acknowledged by the FIA team”, and we understand changes to the procedures are set to be introduced already for next weekend’s Miami Grand Prix.

Luis Vasconcelos

PIASTRI OVERCOMES SICKNESS TO SHOW SPEED

A NASTY stomach bug threatened to derail Oscar Piastri’s maiden Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but he showed some real Aussie grit to score the second best result of his career.

Piastri fell three seconds short of a second successive points finish at Baku and finished 11th behind Yuki Tsunoda.

Despite just missing out on a top-10 finish, the 22-year-old was simply pleased to get through his first taste of an F1 Sprint weekend.

Piastri became ill at the start of the weekend and felt so bad he could only eat four pieces of toast across the three days The Melbourne boy lost around 6kg over the course of the three-day event and was relieved to see the chequered flag.

“Its a shame to miss out on points, but I am just happy to get through this weekend to be honest,” Piastri said post race.

“It’s been very difficult, physically.

Saturday was pretty rough especially.

“I think I’ve had about four pieces of toast for the whole weekend, so I need to get some food in me before Miami.”

Despite the battles outside of the car, Piastri still showed plenty of speed in his #81 MCL60.

McLaren’s anticipated upgrade package delivered on its promise and pushed the team from a regular Q1 knockout to a

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genuine Q3 contender.

After starting 18th in Australia, Piastri surprised himself by qualifying 10th for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Friday.

He just missed out on doing the same in the Sprint Shootout, but kept his nerve in the 30-minute race to come home 10th.

In the Grand Prix, Piastri survived a lap one hit from Alex Albon, but was one of the

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unlucky drivers to pit moments before the Safety Car arrived.

The Aussie was in Tsunoda’s wheeltracks all race, but did not have enough to challenge the AlphaTauri.

Although Piastri believed it was a “shame” to come so close, his fighting drive was not lost on the team.

“We were highly impressed with Oscar,”

said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.

“He’s been unwell this weekend but managed to focus on the job, also delivering a clean weekend with no mistakes.

“Thank you to our excellent medical staff for their continuous support throughout the weekend. “We hope he’ll be feeling better in a few days when we start again in Miami.”

Piastri is now excited for the challenges ahead, with a much faster car at his disposal.

“In terms of balance and behaviour it is pretty similar to what we had previously, but just faster, which is a good place to be in,” he said.

“I don’t know if the car is working well here with the new tarmac or these upgrades are working better than we thought, but it seems to be a good step forward.

“It is encouraging the first step has worked, but to challenge the top four teams we need a couple of more steps like this.

“I know the team is pushing as hard as possible, so I am excited for what the future holds.”

Piastri hopes to fight at full fitness at the Miami Grand Prix this weekend.

Thomas Miles

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THE BATTLE OF BARBER

LYNK & CO TCR CUTS ISLAND LAPS

TOM OLIPHANT and the Ashley Seward motorsport team have taken possession of its new Lynk & Co 03 TCR car, taking it through a test ahead of the cars first Oz debut on May 12-14.

The former British Touring Car racer, who raced at Alfa Romeo in Round 1, cut laps at Phillip Island, giving a glowing assessment of the new turbocharged 350 hp machine.

“It feels awesome, the differences between this and the Alfa Romeo are night and day,” Oliphant compared. “It’s a proper race car; it’s really responsive and you can feel everything the car is going to do.”

GARDNER’S SBK CONFIDENCE GROWS AT ASSEN Remy Gardner and his new GYTR GRT Yamaha team took a big step forward, scoring double points at Assen’s Cathedral of Speed in the World SBK Championship in the Netherlands.

Coming from outside the top-10, the MotoGP stricken Aussie charged in for a P8 in Race 1, before taking a season high P6 in the finale, joining teammate Dominique Aegerter in making it a team double. With him and the team growing in confidence after a difficult start, Round 4 at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend is shaping as an exciting prospect.

Will Power watches on as the two rivals do their best to be buddies! Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN has hailed his Round 4 victory at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama as his most complete drive in IndyCar. It couldn’t have come at a more perfect time ahead of the Indy road Course and Indy 500 rounds, finding himself fourth in the championship in the most hotly contested race series on the planet.

One of the highlights at Barber was the developing Chevrolet vs Honda duel between him and Romain Grosjean that is starting to grow legs.

Following their on-track bust-up at the opening round, the pair again made contact in Alabama as they fought it out for the win.

On the growing rivalry between the two, the Kiwi superstar had this to say: “We racers just get on with it. You’re only as good as your last race and you get on with it,” the Penske driver said.

“We talked man-to-man and, as far as I am concerned, that’s it … we race hard and press on.

“There’s no hard feelings between the two of us, but I am

glad to get a win here.”

The pair exchanged the lead a few times in a tantalising battle, with some slight contact drawing comparison to the St Petersburg disaster.

“We touched when he passed me a little bit, but it was fair game and It was awesome racing, but I thought if I hit him this time, it would be bad … I knew it was going to be hard passing him, It was a matter of me biding my time.

“He’s got a never-give-up attitude. I think that he was able to be in F1 for so long, then come over here and be quite successful.

“At the end of the day you know you’re going to have a hard battle with him, and I feel that it’s give or take. If you give him nothing, he’ll give you nothing. It’s the whole titfor-tat.

“I really enjoy racing him, there’s no hard feelings, and we spoke about what happened.

“I’ve had great battles with him.

I actually really enjoyed the battle today. Obviously, I came out on top, but it’s still a lot of fun.”

With May being an Indianapolis-

focused month, McLaughlin is chomping at the bit: “May is going to be an awesome time for us and I can’t wait, the best race in the world is coming up soon (Indy 500). We ended April on a good note so Just happy for my team, for Chevy, and for the fuel mileage.”

The three-time Supercars champion also gave his opinion on the healthy state of the series and what makes it so good to drive in, explaining that consistency is the key to taking the title.

“I think we’re very lucky with the level of drivers, and with how hard we can race these cars, they’re very strong,” he continued.

“The tyres are really good with the compound difference, and Firestone have built a really good tyre that’s able to race in hard conditions all the time. The addition of the push-topass as well is such a good thing, it’s a great racing product.

“Also, It’s not about winning every race in this series, it’s all about just being consistent in the championship, which is exactly what our goal has been since the start.”

TW Neal

ROBOTHAM TAKES THAI TRIUMPH

NEW CHASSIS FOR GRICE BEN GRICE will be racing a new Ford Mustang when Trans Am returns at Phillip Island on May 12-14.

Grice has a new chassis for the remainder of the 2023 season after his old Mustang was deemed unrepairable following the huge crash at Tasmania with James Simpson.

The #03 driver put his new car to the test at a recent Phillip Island test session.

After the bruising start to the year, Grice hopes luck will be on his side at the second round at the seaside venue where he scored two podiums last year..

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JAYLYN ROBOTHAM has made the most of a last-minute call up by taking victory in a dramatic opening round of the 2023 Thailand Super Series.

Robotham emerged victorious in the Supercar GTC Class behind the wheel of a Corliss Race Engineering Ford Mustang at the CHANG International Circuit.

The Aussie young gun also drove a Ford Ranger in the Super Pickup category and finished 11th in the opener, but was forced to retire after encountering problems.

Robotham bounced back in impressive fashion in the second race, by overcoming a mid-race red flag to take victory.

Overall Robotham was thrilled to be walking away with victory from the Thai experience.

“I had a really good race with the

win in Race 2 of the GTC Class,” he said.

“In the Ranger Super Pickup we were finding our speed, but we had a few problems.

“Hopefully, next round, we can solve them and move forward to show them

what we really have to offer.”

Robotham now turns his attention to Trans Am, which resumes at Phillip Island on May 12-14, while the next round of the Thailand Super Series is on May 26-28.

Thomas Miles

DOOHAN IT TOUGH

JACK DOOHAN has endured another tough F2 round, at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, finding himself on the cusp of being on the outer in terms of contending for the Formula 2 championship.

His weekend at Baku for British team Virtuosi couldn’t have gone any worse as he looked to pick himself up from the disappointment of Melbourne, with further evidence that he’s certainly not gelling with his car in 2023.

The weekend started out slowly for the #14 F2 Aussie, and got even worse by the end of it.

A P13 in the sole practice session had him 0.981 off the benchmark, before he struggled to make any penetration in the qualifying session, despite climbing into the lower end of the top-10 early.

He finished in P15, 1.488s off the mark – a highly difficult place to score points from in F2, especially on a street track like Baku where the passing points are limited.

The opening Sprint Race saw the Alpine F1 Reserve Driver end with a DNF as chaos unfolded all through the field, as Oliver Bearman took the first of his two wins for the weekend.

In the closing stages and running in a tight pack in a late race Safety Car restart, a big lock-up sent Doohan spinning through the field before Turn 1, where he was lucky not to wreck – however, the race was called with Doohan stranded.

The pre-season championship hopeful was then nowhere to be seen in the Feature as he struggled for pace with his tyres, finishing 40.007s off the mark.

That leaves the Gold Coast born driver languishing on 24 points with only three top-10s and a podium after the first four rounds of action – not terrible, but he would certainly have been expecting more.

Going into Melbourne, he was open about lacking

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES confidence with the car saying that: “I’ve been struggling to find confidence with the car.

We’ve had quite a few fundamental issues so far this season, which has been quite a big shock to the system for all of us because it hasn’t been in our control.”

At the Melbourne Grand Prix, despite things looking up after a blistering first practice, Doohan told Auto Action that there were some things not adding up, as he and the team attempted to find some parity with their strong 2022 performance numbers.

“To be honest, most of the confidence issue isn’t coming from the engineering side of things, from both angles we know what we’re doing, but we’ve been trying to run exactly as we did last year,” Doohan told AA.

“Fundamentally things just aren’t adding up, so we’re having to change parts, and to change other things from session to session … it’s just a little bit of a lottery at the moment.”

The proof of the performance issues is in the pudding for Doohan and Virtuosi, with his highly rated teammate, Amaury Cordeel, also struggling near the foot of the table, on zero points.

As it stands, Doohan is a distant 44 points from championship leader Theo Pourchaire. There’s still 10 rounds remaining however, with 20 races to score points in and, realistically, those points need to start coming at Imola on May 19-21.

TW Neal

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www.autoaction.com.au I 15

DRAG RACING

CHAMPIONSHIP BATTLES TO HEAT UP AT SYDNEY

INTENSITY IS set to reach boiling point at the penultimate round of the Burson Auto Parts Australian Top Fuel Championship in Sydney this weekend.

The 2023 Nitro Championships will be a high-octane affair with the Australian Drag Racing Championship, Top Doorslammer and Top Fuel Motorcycle series also hosting the second to last event of their seasons.

More than 200 racers will take on Sydney Dragway for the May 5-6 showdown, where a wide range of categories will be on show.

Leading the charge will be seven 12,000hp+ flame-throwing Top Fuel dragsters chasing glory.

They return after a two-month break since the previous round at Perth where a photo finish was required to separate Phil Read and Peter Xiberras.

The 52nd MacTrack Westernationals at the Perth Motorplex was a thrilling affair with Read and Xiberras giving it everything in the final.

Eventually Read was awarded victory and Xiberras had to settle for second, but was able to cut Damien Harris’ lead in the championship.

Harris needs to respond with both Read and Xiberras in top form.

In addition to his near miss at Perth, the PremiAir Racing driver won an emotionallycharged Atlantic Oils Top Fuel Slam back in January.

With his previous win also at Sydney Dragway, Xiberras hopes to show similar speed at the New South Wales venue.

With a big fight brewing between Read, Harris and Xiberras, Burson Auto Parts Australian Top Fuel Championship and ADRC promoter Andy Lopez believes the championship fight is wide open.

“The title battles are really exciting right now,” Lopez said.

“In Top Fuel, up until now Damian Harris has had a good grip on the top, but following our last event in Perth he has former champion Phil Read and reigning champion

16 I www.autoaction.com.au

Damian Harris heads to Sydney as the Top Fuel points leader. Image: CACKLING PIPES PHOTOGRAPHY Rob Casssar is hoping to extend his Top Fuel Motorcycle points lead.

Peter Xiberras nipping furiously at his heels.

“It really could go either way.”

There will be nine 3500hp/400kph Top Doorslammers on show with Kelvin Lyle the hunted.

Lyle has held sway in the championship standings for the majority of the season, but the man in form is Daniel Gregorini.

Gregorini backed up his previous year’s Westernationals and Goldenstates wins with another Perth success in the most recent round.

After beating Lyle in the WA final, he enters the Sydney Nitro with momentum

and Lopez believes the leader cannot afford the slightest slip.

“In Top Doorslammer, Kelvin Lyle has a bit of a buffer ahead of his closest rivals after a really strong season to date,” he said.

“But with names like reigning champ Daniel Gregorini and 10-time title winner John Zappia right behind him, there is absolutely no room for complacency.”

There will also be seven wild 1500hp+ nitro-powered Top Fuel Motorcycles going for glory.

Rob Cassar heads into the penultimate round as the mad to beat with a solid

advantage at the top of the points table.

But he needs to bounce back from Perth where he had to settle for the C Final as Benny Stevens found the ultimate pace.

Stevens won the Westernationals with a 7.74s pass in the final to overcome Kevin Gummow.

Although Cassar still holds the high ground in the championship, Lopez is certain Sevens will continue his unrelenting charge.

“Rob Cassar has a bit of a points cushion ahead of Benny Stevens, but what we have seen time and time again is that absolutely anything can happen on these absolutely insane two-wheeled machines,” Lopez said.

“There is no question that Stevens will be gunning to do all he can to launch a championship attack in this late stage of the game.”

In addition to the headline acts Pro Mods and Sportsman racers will also take on Sydney Dragway.

The Nitro Champs takw place this weekend and is the last chance to pick up points before the season finale at the Darwin Triple Crown on June 16-17.

Thomas Miles

NASCAR

BUSCH SLIDES THROUGH TALLADEGA CHAOS

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES A FINAL lap multi-car wreck at the Talladega SuperSpeedway involving race leader Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney, saw Kyle Busch emerge in the lead for his second NASCAR Cup Series win of the season during a double overtime finish.

The #8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet found himself ahead after starting the final lap in P3, with Blaney holding onto second over Chris Buescher after getting past Wallace’s out of control #23 Toyota.

Whilst Wallace took responsibility, and Blaney didn’t lay blame for the attempted blocks to keep the lead, Blaney also said it was one time too many.

But It was a 62nd career victory for Nevada native and NASCAR veteran Busch, who led for only three laps including the last, narrowly avoiding Wallace as he careened down the slope.

“Sometimes you gotta be lucky – some of these races come down to that,” Busch said.

“You have to take them when they come your way.

The seas kind of parted there when they went up the racetrack. They were trying to push-draft. These

cars are just not stable enough to do that.

“I saw Wallace just turn a little bit sideways. I was like, ‘Get out of the way, just miss it’, then tried to see if I was ahead of Blaney by the time it was called.”

Wallace had tried blocking Blaney several times before the crash, and third attempt proved one too many, with the There was plenty of action for the Round 10 clash, with eight cautions and two stage breaks, as well as the race seeing 21 leaders and 57 lead changes, with Chase Elliot and Aric Almirola claiming the two prior stage wins respectively.

Another driver that was lucky to escape serious injury was Kyle Larson, with the Hendricks driver getting turned onto the Apron, with Ryan Preece slamming into the Chevrolet’s passenger door so hard that it twisted the door bar inside the cockpit.

Both drivers were thankfully unscathed.

As Auto Action went to press, the WURTH 400 at Dover Motor Speedway mile oval had been postponed due to wet weather.

TW Neal

MCFADDEN AND ROTH FACE WRATH OF WOO OFFICIALS JAMES MCFADDEN and the Roth Motorsport World of Outlaws Sprintcar team have been issued a suspension, fine, and heavy loss of championship points after failing a tyre test sample.

Though a suspension has been issued by the WoO officials, the Australian NT born Sprintcar star and the Roth team have appealed the findings, and will be allowed to compete until their appeal is heard, and the final penalties are then applied or withdrawn.

After the April 14 WoO feature event at the Federated Auto Parts Raceway, where McFadden scored a hard fought P2, tyre samples were taken from the right rear of McFadden’s #83 Toyota engined Sprintcar.

Following the Missouri I-55 race, the sample was sent to an independent laboratory where it failed a test following the detection of chemically altering substances on the tyre.

Using a comparative analysis procedure, the tyre surface was found not to match or conform to the Hoosier supplied benchmark.

The findings mean that both the driver and team will be disqualified

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from the Missouri event on April 14th, with a subsequent four race suspension hanging over their heads, along with a fine of $8,200.

Aside from the four-race suspension, the other factor that will sting for the Aussie is the loss of 500 valuable championship points, which will also be applied should they lose the hearing.

With the awarded point split having such fine margins, and McFadden sitting seventh in the standings and climbing in a year that’s already shaping as an early career best, the loss of 500 driver and owner points could possibly derail a career best year for the Aussie.

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Despite the penalties hanging over his head, the #83 RM racer scored a P9 at the Tri City Speedway in Illinois, before registering a DNF at the Tri State in Indiana when he got caught up in a four-car mess at the back of the field.

With no clarification on when the appeal will be heard, the team is still set to contend at the Eldora Speedway this weekend.

After 15 WoO feature starts in 2023, McFadden has had two victories already this season, four top fives, and 8 top 10s to sit 182 points off championship leader Carson Macedo.

TW Neal

www.autoaction.com.au I 17

LATEST NEWS

MOSTERT ‘STOKED’ WITH PERTH FIGHTBACK

DRIVERS REFLECT ON LONGER FRIDAY PRACTICE

CHAZ MOSTERT was unable to challenge for podiums in Perth, but limited the damage to his championship hopes after Walkinshaw Andretti United “dug deep” on Saturday night.

Mostert clung onto his second spot in the championship standings at Perth despite starting significantly on the back foot.

Following a steady Friday, car #25 was a notable absentee from the final phase of qualifying on Saturday.

Mostert struggled to find one lap pace from his WAU Ford Mustang GT and was knocked out in Q2 in 15th.

In the opening 42-lap race a relatively longer first stint saw him move up 11th after a last-lap move on Jack Le Brocq.

But with his nearest championship rivals Shane van Gisbergen and Brodie Kostecki fighting at the front, Mostert needed to lift otherwise he and WAU faced another tough

Wanneroo weekend.

Last year’s trip to Perth was Mostert’s worst of an otherwise solid season, whilst WAU itself has not won at the track since 2006.

However, a big night studying the data allowed Mostert to climb up the leaderboard and salvage some strong points on Sunday.

Car #25 set the sixth and seventh fastest times in the back-to-back qualifying sessions before putting in a pair of clean drives crack the top five in both 42-lap races.

He credited the improvement to the team after a big shift overnight unlocked more pace.

“I am super stoked with the turnaround,” Mostert said on the Fox Sports broadcast.

“I am really happy with Sunday’s results to get a fourth and a fifth after where we were on Saturday.

“The team dug deep on Saturday night going through the data to come out with a different philosophy

on Sunday, so credit to the team.

“I would have loved a trophy, but I am still pumped we could get some good points.”

Mostert described the weekend as a “learning curve” with the big takeaway the importance of rolling out of the truck with a strong package given the difficult nature of refining the cars.

“This was a learning curve for me. In qualifying I did not get the most out of the car because the philosophy was so different, so I need to go back to the drawing board a little bit,” he reflected.

“These cars are a little bit harder to work on than last year’s cars. All the mechanics have been working extremely hard in the background on reliability and all of those things.

“I will be glad if we can start the next round this way and push on from there (because) you need to start at the pointy end.”

Thomas Miles

THE OPENING day of the 2023 Perth SuperSprint saw the unusual sight of a standalone 90-minute practice session taking place.

The extra track time gave teams ample opportunity to try variouse setup changes and directions and gain an understanding of the new Gen3 cars at a fast and technically challenging track such as Wanneroo Raceway.

Despite only finishing 17th, Brad Jones Racing’s Bryce Fullwood enjoyed the challenge of trying all sorts of different things in his #14 Camaro across an hour and a half of track time.

“Obviously the long practice was very different from what we’ve had, but it was kind of cool in some ways to have a little bit of time to think about things through the session,” he said.

“We did a lot of laps actually and fair bit of race running, so we have learnt a bit for the races.”

Being one of the victims of the session and finishing down in 24th meant Jones did have the most enjoyable time in the “goldmember” #96 Camaro and he stated his preference of the traditional practice regime.

“A 90 minute session was a long session.

I probably prefer the two half an hour practices,” he said.

“In those you don’t feel rushed or you can get out of the car and actually sit down with your engineer and talk about things or direction and reset but I can’t complain with 90 minutes in a race car, it’s always fun.”

Thomas Miles

BEZZECCHI BACK TO HIS BEST AT JEREZ TEST LESS THAN 24 hours after a chaotic Spanish Grand Prix, riders enjoyed eight hours of more track time at Jerez for the first in-season test of the 2023 MotoGP season.

Marco Bezzecchi bounced back from the previous day’s disappointment to finish the day fastest with a 1:36.574.

Bezzecchi led a VR46 Racing Team 1-2 with his teammate Luca Marini next best 0.104s away.

Also a tenth back was Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, while Gresini’s Fabio Di Giannantonio and April’s Maverick Vinales rounded out the top five.

Vinales also completed the most laps of the 4.428km circuit with 94, as new championship leader Francesco Bagnaia was sixth fastest.

Australia’s Jack Miller was 14th fastest in his KTM after recorded a best time of 1:37.431 from his 67 laps.

The test opened with Quartararo, Aleix Espargaro

and Jonas Folger riding with a new radio system, which notifies riders of on-track warnings fed by race direction.

After the early trail run, the #20 Yamaha recorded the top time of the opening hour before having a dice with

Jorge Martin for P1.

After the 2021 MotoGP champion got the better of Martin with a 1:36.725, he remained in P1 until the final hour.

Quartararo was knocked off by Bezzecchi, who went two tenths faster on his year-old Ducati, while the sister VR46 Racing Team bike also snuck ahead of the Yamaha.

The test was also the scene of Honda unveiling its anticipated Kalex chassis with test rider Stefan Bradl enjoying first use.

However, Bradl did crash the new chassis and had to settle for a P19 finish.

Other Honda riders to fall were Joan Mir and Alex Rins, who were riding different chassis.

After four big days at Jerez, the MotoGP world takes a breath before the 1000th Grand Prix at Le Mans, France on May 12-14.

Thomas Miles

PUMPED UP PEREZ TAKES THE FIGHT TO MAX

LUCK MIGHT have been part of the story, but it only played a role in the victorious Azerbaijan Grand Prix for Sergio Perez.

Perez took his second win of the year after capitalising on an early race Safety Car to jump Max Verstappen.

Despite the slice of luck, Verstappen quickly accounted for Charles Leclerc to setup a Red Bull fight at the front.

When the reigning champion surged to second, Perez only had slightly more than a second in hand.

With 37 laps still to run, the general feeling was that Verstappen will hunt his teammate down, but the Mexican held strong.

“Checo” was able to keep car #1 out of DRS range to become the first driver to win multiple Azerbaijan Grands Prix backing up his 2021 success.

In addition to the two wins, Perez also jumped on the Baku podium at the first opportunity in 2016 and returned for a second time in Force India colours two years later.

His success rate at Red Bull is also impressive with

results of P1, P2 and P1 at Azerbaijan since 2021.

Perez put pressure on himself to deliver and he did so in style this weekend, winning both the Sprint and Grand Prix to come within six points of his illustrious teammate in the championship standings.

“It was a great weekend overall. We delivered when we had to,” Perez said.

“There was a lot of pressure. I felt this format it puts a lot of stress on the drivers engineers and mechanics, so the way we delivered over the weekend was great.”

Perez revealed the “super intense” first stint paved the way for his success.

“The first stint was super intense, just making sure I stayed in that DRS,” he said.

“Then once I was in the DRS, just kept pushing Max to make sure he used his tyres and I think that was one of the keys.

“But then once we were on the Hard compound, it was really hard to keep Max behind because I knew that as soon as he would get DRS then that’s it.

“So just to keep him behind the DRS was a massive challenge and we were pushing each other massively.

“We really gave it all, lap after lap, so I’m really happy to come away with this victory.”

Verstappen’s 81st podium saw him surpass Aryton Senna’s total in his 167th start, six more than the legendary Brazilian took to reach that mark.

The Dutch driver described his weekend as a “messy” one, only topping Friday practice as Leclerc found greater one-lap speed and contact with George Russell put him on the back foot in the Sprint.

After the Safety Car drama, Verstappen “tried to put pressure on Checo” but fell short.

“I think the weekend in general was a bit messy, but I think that can be expected with this format,”he said.

“I think the first stint I could have been a little bit more aggressive with the way I was using my tyres and was just too careful.

“We made the call to pit and I saw that there was a car stopped, I thought he maybe just locked-up. In hindsight, I can’t see that, but it’s something to review because it hurt my race.

“Then after the Safety Car I tried to put the pressure on “Checo” to try and get into that DRS, but it was just hanging in there and then I just settled in.”

Going forward Verstappen is preparing himself for a more sustained tussle with Perez, who has risen his game from previous years.

“We clearly have the fastest car at the moment but I’ve been in this position before and it’s about consistency,” he said.

“Checo this year has really been on it, he’s been really performing well and that’s great to see.

“He’s feeling more and more confident in the car and for the team as well, we are really enjoying it.

“We will continue fighting for the rest of the season but that’s normal, we have done that our whole life.”

Thomas Miles

LECLERC STILL BELIEVES FERRARI IS THIRD FASTEST CAR FERRARI AND Charles Leclerc finally had something to smile about in Baku, but the Monegasque still believes he is driving the third fastest car.

After a painful start to the season where Leclerc collected an underwhelming six points across three races, car #16 was back at the front.

Leclerc reminded the world of his supreme speed over one lap on street circuits by beating the highly fancied Red Bulls to both the Sprint and Grand Prix pole positions.

Although the charging Bulls of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen were “in another league” during the Grand Prix, Leclerc gave Ferrari its long-awaited maiden podium of the season.

But after holding off Fernando Alonso by just 0.8s to claim the trophy, Leclerc said Ferrari still needs to find more race pace to be second best team behind the allconquering Red Bull.

“Honestly, the feeling is a little bit better,” he said.

“We got maybe a little bit closer to Red

Bull, but we are still very far behind in race pace at least. I also think we are behind Aston Martin in terms of race pace, so we really need to work on that.

“Taking a bit more of a risk over one lap helped us to be at the front, but then over 51 laps there is not much we could have done more.

“We optimised everything and maximised every session, which is a positive, but there is still a lot of work to do.”

Leclerc further explained tyre management was one of the bigger things holding him back on the streets of Baku.

“We have to (conserve tyres) with our car otherwise we kill them,” he said.

“Then we cannot get them back and then this has a big influence on our performance.

“I managed it differently (to the Sprint) but actually the outcome doesn’t change. I lost time at the end of my stint on Saturday and at the beginning now (on Sunday).

“The bottom line is that we are not quick enough.”

Thomas Miles

LATEST NEWS

WHY PREMIAIR IS “EXCITED”

BY GOLDING’S DARING EFFORT

PREMIAIR RACING may not have hit the headlines it did in Newcastle, but James Golding’s race pace has got the team “excited” for what’s next.

After struggling in Sunday’s back to back qualifying sessions, Golding flew through the field in the final two 42lap races.

His charge started in Race 8 where he started 22nd, but charged up to the edge of the top 10 with an 11th place finish.

Once the compulsory stops arrived, Golding had worked his way to 15th before eventually getting as high as third before he was the third to last to change tyres on Lap 27.

Having rejoined down in 18th, the #31 driver put the foot down and climbed up to 11th in eight laps, setting the fastest lap of the race in doing so.

With a starting position of 19th for the final race, Golding had a similar challenge ahead of him and pulled off another comeback drive.

He once again got his elbows out early to get to 11th before those around him dived into the lane for service.

The PremiAir Racing team pulled off an identical strategy with Golden coming in on Lap 27 from third place and rejoining in 13th.

He held strong across the run home and just missed out on the top 10 after a thrilling battle for the minor places with James Courtney and Scott Pye. The comeback drives ensured Golding matched his personal best result at Perth, first scored in his Garry Rogers Motorsport days in 2019.

With his rise from 24th to 15th on Saturday also factored in, Golding climbed an impressive 28 positions across the weekend.

Jumping out of his #31 Camaro after the strong performances Golding was in an upbeat mood, believing the final day at Perth was the fastest race car he has had all season.

“Both Sunday races were decent for us and we had good race pace,” Golding said.

“I struggled a bit with qualifying this weekend, but other than that there are a lot of positives to take away.

“I would say in particular we had probably the best race pace we have had all year, perhaps maybe even ever (with PremiAir Racing), so there is a lot of positives to take away.

“We learnt a lot of things with the car this weekend, made a lot of ground up, and kept consistent finishes with two P11 results and a P15 yesterday. I am looking forward to the next round and hopefully we can keep moving forward.”

PremiAir Racing team principal Matty Cook said the speed provides plenty of encouragement within the garage for the future sprint events ahead.

“While not having the best qualifying car, Jimmy had really good race pace,” Cook said.

“He moved up the grid to P11 in both races and even set the fastest lap of the race in race eight.

“We are excited for the speed that the car does have.

Hopefully moving forward, we can qualify a little better, and that way we aren’t making life so hard for ourselves.”

PremiAir Racing hopes to show even more speed at Tasmania on May 19-21.

Thomas Miles

MANAGEMENT DEPARTURES AT ARG ON THE eve of the next ARG/Motorsport SpeedSeries round there have been management changes within the Australian Racing Group, the co-promotors of the SpeedSeries.

Following the recent Bathurst 6 Hour event, the event Director/Manager Ken Collier’s position with ARG has ended.

Collier joined ARG in August 2019 where he took over the operational and logistical areas of ARG’s list of categories, which incorporated TCR Australia, S5000, Touring Car Masters, V8 Touring Cars, GT World Challenge and Trans Am. In recent time he switched his focus to operations of the Bathurst 6 Hour, however his contract with that role has not been renewed.

“Yes my position with ARG has ended. We have come to an agreement that is fine with

me,” Collier confirmed to AUTO ACTION. Despite the news and moving on, Collier said the possibility to do more work with ARG in the future is still open.

“The door is still open to work with ARG in the future. If they want me to help with future Bathurst events for example, I would love to do it.”

The news on Collier’s departure follows today’s announcement that Grant Rowley of ‘Network R’ will no longer be the communications and content manager for several of ARG’s categories, including TCR, GT World Challenge and Trans Am since its inception in 2018.

This follows on from the departure of Chris Lambden, who left his S5000 category role in January earlier this year.

The creator of S5000 left due to a budgetary restructure within the ARG organisation, owned primarily by Barry Rogers and minor shareholder John McMillan.

In October 2022 ARG’s Chief Executive Officer, Matt Braid also stepped down.

As a result Liam Curkpatrick was promoted from ARG general manager of motorsport operations to Chief Operating Officer. Thomas Miles

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LATEST NEWS

DJR PUSH DAVISON/DE PASQUALE PARTNERSHIP INTO 2024

DJR AND the Shell V-Power team have extended the contracts of Will Davison and Anton De Pasquale into the 2024 Supercars season, with the team locked into a battle to turn around its stuttering Gen3 fortunes.

After creating an extension last August into 2023 to ensure both drivers stayed on with the leading Gen3 Ford development team, the two are now locked away through 2024, as DJR tries to find a way to return to the front of the grid on race days with the new Mustang.

With that move, DJR joins Triple Eight and the current team and drivers table toppers, Erebus, as the three squads to be fully locked away for next season.

That will also make it four season’s running with the famous Ford squad for this driver partnership, which despite seeing De Pasquale take a pole at the Melbourne Grand Prix, has yet to see either driver climb the steps after nine races.

After Davison went on a charge in the back-end of 2022, an inauspicious start with the new Gen3 Mustang has

seen DJR drop back in the Ford stable rankings, with WAU, Grove Racing, and Tickford all above them in the Teams Championship.

The #11 and #17 Mustangs were wild in the rear at Newcastle, but started to look a bit straighter in Melbourne, with Davison now finding himself back in the top-ten through the three Perth SuperSprint races.

De Pasquale would admit disappointment so far in 2023, where despite getting a pole in Melbourne, has only cracked the top-ten twice this season, which he couldn’t at Wanneroo despite a second row start for Race 8.

And whilst Davison has managed four top-eight spots in a row, De Pasquale also finds himself sitting nineteenth in the Drivers Championship, and will need to start building back momentum in Tasmania, or he’ll be facing a steep battle through the shortened 12 event Supercars season.

On the Parked Up Podcast, DJR team CEO David Noble said that they were keen to have driver consistency in

the two cars through the first years of Gen3.

“It’s the consistency that you’re after and development in the new car, so it’s nice to have that, and not have to get into that silly season,” the former North Melbourne FC coach said. “…very happy that we’ve got our two guys on board at the moment, so it takes us out of the equation for anything on the market.

On De Pasquale’s early season slump, Noble says it’s about giving him the machinery to get him back on the steps and challenging.

“He’s really resilient and cares a lot about his driving, so we have to make sure we can deliver him a product that can get him back on the podium.”

May 19-21 at Symmons Plains will be a telling outing for DJR, where not only do they need results to keep up with Erebus and Triple Eight, but a strong weekend to ensure they return to the picture as Supercars leading Mustang division. TW Neal

MCRAE NAME JOINS MYTHICAL RALLY IN LEGENDARY 555 ALISTER MCRAE is the latest big name addition to the upcoming Mythical Cars Rally in Italy, and he’ll do it behind the wheel of a Group A car that’s very familiar to the family: a Subaru Impreza 555.

The famous McRae rally family has been back in action in Europe of late, with Alister’s Son Max McRae gearing up for a tilt at the junior ERC. And now Alistair himself, the son of fivetime British champion, Jimmy McRae, and younger brother of the legendary Colin McRae, will also get back behind the wheel at the upcoming Logiman Mythical Cars Rally in Varzi, Italy on May 24-27.

The Subaru Impreza 555 was of course the machine that Colin McRae took out the 1995 Group A World Rally Championship in, and now it’ll be reunited with both the Scottish flag, and a McRae. Alister was also a WRC competitor, competing in 79 rallies across the globe between 1991 and 2012, and the winner of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship when the series held far more competitive fields than in its current day.

McRae joins fellow past and present WRC competitors, including double world champion Marcus Gronholm, and WRC winner Andreas Mikkelsen, with more to follow.

“When you see or hear one of these cars, it’s impossible not to smile,” he said.

“Obviously, the 555 is fairly close to the heart for the McRae family. My brother Colin did quite well in one!” McRae recounted.

“I drove a Subaru Legacy RS for the Prodrive team in 1993, but I only did a couple of events in a Group A Impreza.

The last time I was in one I retired from the lead on the Azores Rally when an input shaft failed. Hopefully we’ll have more luck this time around.

“There’s something special about these cars and I’m really looking forward to Logiman Mythical Cars. I remember them being an absolute beast back in the day, I hope nothing’s changed!”

McRae added that they attempted to split the driving duties with his son Max but it wasn’t to be, with Max competing in his first event at the ERC Rally Poland in the days prior.

“We did think about trying to find a way to split the driving in the Subaru with Max at the Mythical Rally.

“Max has heard so many stories about what his Uncle Colin did in these cars, he’s really keen to get a shot in one himself. It would have been nice to have done that…

but I’m not too disappointed to be doing all of the driving myself!

“We have some really special memories of these cars and those times. It’ll be nice to push the starter button and enjoy a great noise and some great memories.”

With six competitive stages over 78 kilometres on the main day and a 7 hour shakedown the day prior, the Asphalt event is open to R-GT cars, Group A, including Super 1600, Super 2000, kit cars and World Rally Cars up until before the Hybrid era. TW Neal

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LATEST NEWS

NEW DATE FOR 2024 BATHURST 12 HOUR AUSTRALIA’S INTERNATIONAL ENDURO WILL RETURN WITH A NEW DATE IN 2024

THE BATHURST 12 Hour will be held on February 16 – 18 next year.

With the high profile event regaining traction, the announced 2024 date is two weeks later than the 2023 event.

The change comes following extensive consultation with teams, fans, key stakeholders, manufacturers and international partners to ensure the growth of the event.

Event partners SRO Motorsports Group have confirmed that the Bathurst 12 Hour will remain the opening round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge, with the outright class remaining for allprofessional driving combinations.

Positive discussions are already underway with potential teams and manufacturers from Australia and overseas, all keen to tackle the Mountain next year.

It is claimed that the 2023 international enduro attracted a record attendance of 53,466 fans across the three days this year. No doubt aided by the presence of seven times MotoGP Champion Valentino Rossi. who competed in the event driving for Team WRT in a BMW M4GT4, finishing sixth.

With the 2024 date confirmed it is belived that tickets, grandstand seating and camping for the event will go on sale soon, with 2023 Bathurst 12 Hour campsite purchasers having exclusive access to a pre-sale window prior to general sales commencing.

The 2023 race was won by MercedesAMG team SunEnergy1 Racing and drivers Jules Gounon, Luca Stolz and Kenny Habul for the second consecutive year – and the

International Enduro into the future.”

third in a row for Gounon.

The race, which saw the top three cars split by just 1.6 seconds at the finish, was Bathurst’s fastest ever enduro with the field covering more than 2,000km in 12 hours.

2024 is set to be a thrilling year with a host of new cars, including new models from Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini, all eligible for the first time.

The Bathurst 12 Hour is supported by the NSW Government via its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW. SHANE RUDZIS Event Director, Bathurst 12 Hour “There has been extensive consultation into the revised date, all of which is aimed at further growing the race as one of the leading GT endurance races in the world.

“It is only a two-week shift, however it creates several positives for our

competitors from both Australia and overseas.

“Moving two weeks later allows for some separation from the start of the United States’ season at the Daytona 24 Hour and opens the potential for participation from those teams.

“The slightly later start will also allow for Australian teams to better prepare across the Christmas – New Year period, while also allowing European teams to better manage their freight and travel logistics at the end of the current season.

“The race will remain the start of the Australian racing calendar and launch the 2024 season with a bang in New South Wales.

“Our thanks go to our partners at Destination New South Wales, the Bathurst Regional Council, SRO Group and all our partners for their support as we continue to build Australia’s

STEPHANE RATEL Founder and CEO, SRO Motorsports Group.

“Racing in February is an intrinsic part of the 12 Hour’s identity but also allows manufacturers and international teams to travel Down Under each year without impacting their other programmes.

“Maintaining both elements has always been of paramount importance, but we are also mindful of the congestion that now exists within global GT and sportscar racing’s ‘pre-season’ schedule, as well as the clamour from outside of Europe – and especially in America – to race at the iconic Mount Panorama.

“Pushing Bathurst back two weeks therefore makes perfect sense if we’re to ensure that even more of the world’s very best drivers can test themselves in Australia’s International Enduro.”

ROBERT TAYLOR Mayor, Bathurst Regional Council “We look forward to welcoming teams and spectators to the 2024 Bathurst 12 Hour in mid-February. The event continues to grow and the revised date will help ensure an even bigger line up of teams and drivers from across the world are able to participate.“This will only enhance one of the best endurances races in the world, on one of the best race tracks in the world and keep bringing race fans to Bathurst and the Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit.”

COLONEL OF SONORO

Images: RED BULL CONTENT POOL

DANIEL ‘CHUCKY’ SANDERS HAS CLAIMED HIS FIRST EVER FIM WORLD RALLY-RAID CHAMPIONSHIP VICTORY, AT THE SONORO RALLY IN MEXICO, SHAKING OFF A FEW INJURY-INTERRUPTED YEARS TO CLAIM A DOMINANT WIN IT WAS five days of ultimate all-round success for the Aussie duo of Sanders (above and right) and KTM’s Toby Price, with the latter’s battling P4 enough to maintain his lead at the top of the championship standings.

But the weekend belonged to the gutsy fellow from Three Bridges, Victoria, claiming three out of the five stages to claim a powerful 8.32s win over Honda Spaniard Tosha Schareina, with Argentine Husqvarna rider Luciano Benavides topping Price by 2.27s for P3.

Sanders proved his mettle at the Dakar Rally earlier in the year when he pushed though a number of physical ailments to make the finish, before missing the second round in Abu Dhabi through recovery.

“It’s great to get my first rally win. It feels like it’s been a long time coming, obviously.

After a year off it’s great to be back where I want to be,” a relieved Sanders said.

“Dakar’s the big one but getting wins in the world championship is also super important. I’ve had some bad luck with speed penalties and things like that in some events, so to finally get a world championship win means a lot to me.

“Also, I feel like I’ve ridden well at this event, leading out on several days, and generally having a good run through the entire rally.”

The 2,278 km event with 1,203km of timed stages (the first ever W2RC championship round at Sonoro) kicked off around the Sonoro capital of Hermosillo with Price topping the prologue, who then chose to head off sixth for the opening 170km timed loop around the capital’s ranchlands and low mountains.

But it was Sanders to who stood up, to take a P2 behind Schareina, laying down the early challenge, with Price ending the day in P15, 07:45 off the mark after enduring navigational issues.

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Price – a tiny dot in a wild environment ...

A 162km special to the Penasco Bivouac saw Sanders take a lead he wouldn’t lose, as teammate Sunderland continued a nightmare year, crashing 24km in and sustaining injuries to his knee and nose, joining American Skyler Howes, who had wrecked 18km in.

Price fought back into the top-10 on his #8 KTM 450 with a P3, elevating him into P8, with Pablo Quintanilla moving into P3 outright.

Amidst stunning views of the Gulf of Cortez, Day 3 had the GAS GAS charger blow out his slender overnight 21s lead, with a dominant day in the monster 350km timed Penasco loop, heading into the bivouac with a seven minute lead over the Spaniard.

Quintanilla had a nightmare with Liaison speeding penalties, with Benavides taking P3 outright – 15:11 off the lead – but he had Price putting on the pressure and moving into P4.

Stage 4 was a moving day for Price in closing the podium gap to 39s, as well as taking out the second 254km Penasco loop stage. But despite having some navigational

issues with the road book, Sanders took P4 on the reverse loop, as well as collecting 05:09 in bonuses for the day, setting up the push home to perfection without having to lead the field out.

With a lead of 5:42 heading into the final stage, Sanders didn’t rest on his laurels, hitting the gas hard to lead the timings on the run home into San Luis after only 1km of running, with the top stage times eventually going the way of the final podium results.

With Price pushing for a third straight Rally-Raid podium, the two-time Dakar winner was left rueing a navigational error late in the piece to lose a certain P3.

“I’m obviously really disappointed, I made a stupid little mistake right at the end there,” Price said.

“I didn’t quite get the right road, so I had to cut across and then come back, and then when I was back on the road I turned left instead of right.

“A silly mistake, but it ended up costing me the podium. That’s racing unfortunately – the championship still looks good, but I’m gutted to have missed out here in Mexico.”

Following Price was KTM teammate Matthias Walkner in P5, with French Honda racer Adrien van Beveren behind him, losing his grip on second in the championship to Benavides.

Ross Branch, Ricky Brabec, Quintanilla, and Sebastien Buhler rounded out the top 10.

In the cars, Qatari Dakar winner and Toyota driver Nasser Al-Attiyah regained the championship lead from French rally legend Sebastien Loeb with a comfortable 06:22 win over Yazeed Mohamed Al-Rajhi for a Gazoo Racing one-two, with Argentine Sebastien Halpern taking P3.

Loeb led the rally early but a big crash into a dry river bed at speed on Stage 2 forced him to retire, with his co-driver Fabian Lurquin airlifted to hospital with a fractured shoulder.

With two events left to go to decide the world championship, World Rally-Raid next heads to another first time calendar event in Argentina for the Desafio Ruta 40 on August 26-September 1.

TW Neal WORLD RALLY-RAID CHAMPIONSHIP W2RC STANDINGS AFTER 3 ROUNDS Price (AUS) KTM 62 L. Benavides (ARG) HUSQ 55 Van Beveren (FRA) HONDA 53 K. Benavides (ARG) KTM 43 Sanders (AUS) GASGAS 39

FORD TO BRING THE RAPTOR TO FINKE FORD PERFORMANCE has announced that it will bring its race-prepared Ranger Raptor to Australia’s toughest off road enduro, the Finke Desert Race.

After this particular Ranger Raptor tackled, completed, won its class, then drove the 297 km back to California after the gruelling Baja 1000 in Mexico, Ford Performance will now take on its first Finke entry with Walkinshaw Performance also assisting in the logistics, event management, and vehicle servicing.

It will reunite the father-son duo that took the Raptor through its paces at the Baja 1000 - Brad and Byam Lovell of Lovell Racing – who’ll attack the Finke Desert Race in the Production 4WD Class.

Built in Australia by Kelly Racing in Melbourne, Ford Performance Motorsports Global Director, Mark Rushbrook, is excited to be able to send the Ranger Raptor back to its true home soil.

“Bringing the Ranger Raptor to the Finke Desert Race is the next stage of Ford Performance’s strategic global racing plan,” Rushbrook explained.

“Ranger is our flagship platform

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for global off-road racing and, after conquering the Baja 1000 in the Stock Mid-Size class, we decided the next stop should be back to Australia, where the production truck was developed, to tackle the toughest off-road race down under.”

Brad Lovell, a Motorsports Hall of Famer and an important part of Ford

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Performance testing and development, is excited to tackle the Finke.

“The Finke Desert Race is one of the toughest events on the off-road calendar, and one that we’ve wanted to take on for a long time,” Lovell said.

“The Raptor is an incredible machine, and we’re confident that it will perform

exceptionally well in the race. We’re looking forward to pushing ourselves and the vehicle to the limit.”

“We know the truck is good, it ran faultlessly at Baja, and we’re aiming for more of the same at Finke.”

The Lovell Racing team also just recently ran a Bronco Raptor X at the San Felipe 250.

Finke Desert Race President, Antony Yoffa, is delighted that the powerhouse manufacturer is bringing the Raptor to the nation’s greatest off-road enduro.

“We are thrilled to welcome Ford Performance to the Tatts Finke Desert Race for the first time in 2023,” Yoffa said.

“Ford is a power in world motorsport, and its entry in our race reflects the Finke Desert Race’s position in the offroad racing landscape globally.”

This will be the third event for the Ranger Raptor, with it being given a minor refresh by the Lovell team following its appearance at the King of the Hammers.

The 2023 Tatts Finke Desert Race will take place on June 9-12.

TW Neal

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INTERNATIONAL AUSSIES

Noah Lisle (2) grabs the inside running from Rodin Carlin team-mate Louis Sharp (11). Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

LISLE JOINS BRITISH F4 WINNERS CIRCLE NOAH LISLE’S previous learning experience in the British F4 has paid off in the season opener, taking a dominant victory in Race 3, from pole.

The young Aussie was impressive in the lead, taking pole for Races 1 and 3, then leaving the Donington Park opener in second place in the championship behind his Kiwi Rodin-Carlin teammate, Louis Sharp.

Sharp was also fantastic, taking a Race 1 win, then charging from the back of the fully-flipped grid to take a sensational Race 2 win.

Lisle also broke the F4 lap record on his

way to P2 in the first race, before capping it off with an assertive drive in the closer, taking the chequered flag by 13.537s.

“Really happy to have built from last year, it’s been a good weekend with a podium, a fastest lap, then coming away with the win in the wet,” Lisle said.

“The car’s been strong in all conditions, with the team building a strong package.

“It was difficult conditions in the finale, and hard to gauge where the grip was because it was really greasy.”

After struggling to crack the top-10 last season, Lisle commented on the 2023 gains.

“I came into this wanting to build on last year, so from struggling to make the top-ten to coming away with a win … it’s amazing, the improvement has been huge.

Fellow Aussies Jimmy “JP” Piszcyk and Patrick Heuzenroeder also made some gains in the season opener, with JP taking a P10 and P11 over the first two, and a P18 in the difficult closer, racing for Hitech GP. Heuzenroeder started with P14 for Argenti Motorsport, then improved to a P10 and P7 in the closer.

The next British F4 round is at the classic Brands Hatch circuit in Kent on May 6-7.

TW Neal

WILLIAMS BRILLIANT IN GT RACING DEBUT CALAN WILLIAMS has taken a class podium on debut at the opening round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at Monza, Italy.

After making the switch from Formula 2 into GT racing, his first ever race event for Belgian team WRT in the BMW M4 GT3 ended in a P3 (P12 overall) in the Gold Cup class, with Williams being a standout player amongst his teammates Niklas Krutten and Jean-Baptiste Simmineaur.

“A great start to the season and thanks to team WRT, Niklas and JB for the weekend.

I can’t wait for the next one”, Williams said from the Monza pits.“Obviously, finishing on the podium is nice but I think we had the potential for more. From my side, I still have a bit of work to do, in terms of race pace management, and that will be my priority going into the next races.”

His first qualifying session saw him put the BMW on provisional class pole (an impressive P7 overall) with the team then starting in P2 after everyone’s Q runs were put together.

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Williams took the second hour-long stint in the three hour race, with Krutten handing him a narrow lead.

He exited the pits a half-second in front of the challenging Audi R8, with the Aussie youngster holding them off by a similar margin through to the next driver change.

In a clear run, he also pushed up on the leading group in a brilliant display of consistency, tyre management, and pace, at the famed Temple of Speed.

Williams will also be contesting the GT WCE Sprint cup series, with his next event coming at Brands Hatch on May 13-14.

TW Neal

CAPO RETURNS TO EUROPE WITH HURACAN PODIUM GRASSER RACING’S Ricky Capo has helped the Austrian GRT outfit to a podium in its debut race with the brand new Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

In the familiar surrounds of Monza (where Capo has tasted success in the European Le Mans Series) at the opening round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, a strong middle stint from Capo in the busy 55-car field helped see GRT take out P3 in the Silver Cup class, and the second highest finish out of the eight Lamborghini’s – in P25 overall.

“I’m really happy with the progress we made this weekend, and scoring a podium was icing on the cake,” Capo told Auto Action.

“Racing with 54 other cars on a circuit less than 6km means you’re always dicing with the field around you, so it made for an exciting stint.

“I was a bit nervous watching on the sidelines in the opening stint though.

“While it’s a good start to our campaign, we’re already focusing on what can be improved. I hope it’s the first of many strong results with the team.

Alongside teammates Sam Neary and Fabrizio Crestani, they qualified the Huracan in a class P2, just 0.480s behind the GRT sister Huracan, and started the race in P27 overall, smackbang in the middle to ensure a hectic opening stint.

With the former DTM Aussie taking the second stint, he kept the teams business in the top-three and maintained reach of the MercedesAMG ahead, with the Brit Neary taking it home in a thrilling chase, just one second off P2 after three hours of racing.

GRT and Capo return to the Endurance side of the GT WCE world at Le Castellet, France, on June 3-4.

TW Neal

POWER FLICKS SWITCH ON 2023 SEASON DEFENDING INDYCAR champion Will Power (right) put a sluggish start to the 2023 IndyCar season behind him with a podium at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama.

The two-time champion and Team Penske stalwart had to do it the tough way after a frustrating qualifying session had him start in P11.

Following his teammate and TransTasman rival Scott McLaughlin going off the road ahead, Power who was on a flyer, missed out on the Fast-Six qualifying session.

“Scott went off at Turn 1 on the money lap and just put grass all over the track, so I went wide there and lost some time, then at Turn 13 the wheel locked and unwound itself because there was so much grip in the middle of the corner.”

Whilst McLaughlin would go on to run Romain Grosjean down for the victory, courtesy of a three-stop tragedy and Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES ducking in early for a second pit just prior to a caution, Power came from 10s back to almost take P2 off the Frenchman. faster lap time, but I couldn’t get to him fast enough, I got “It was an extremely good day, we were super fast any to that air pocket but the tyres were too far far gone, it time we had the clean air, which was the key to getting wasn’t worth throwing third place away.” third, Chevrolet did a great job with the engine,” Power So far this season, it’s been a frustrating list of race said. results and qualifying sessions for the all-time record “We had a very fast car, and any time we had clear air pole getter, although his previous two top-tens at St we were pumping out some seriously fast times. That last Petersburg and Long Beach have kept him thereabouts sequence was where we gained a ton of track position. on the table, he hasn’t really locked like having the pace “The tyres had gone too much at the end, I could do a to challenge.

That wasn’t the case in Alabama however, and he now heads to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, a race he’s won four times, and with the the Indy500 following that, it’s the peak time to gather some consistent speed.

“We have to keep chipping away here, we’re going to get a win pretty soon … still, it was pretty good for an old bloke.” – Race coverage, page 49.

TW Neal

ARMSTRONG DOUBLES UP AT BARBER QUINN ARMSTRONG has continued his strong start to the 2023 USF Juniors season in the bottom tier IndyCar feeder series.

The field enjoyed a support slot for the IndyCars at Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama, with the Newcastle-born Aussie also enjoying the weekend with dual P2’s for his DEForce team.

After taking out the season opener at Sebring, Armstrong’s podium swoop also leaves him a close third in the championship.

“Another second place which is good momentum I feel after Race One where we also took second,” Armstrong said after the finale.

“Once again, a one-two for the team which I really love to see. They all put a lot of work in at DEForce, whether they are at the track or not, and I hope this is a bit of a reward for them.”

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The Aussie had a strong weekend all round in the brand new 2-litre, 150hp Tatuus JR-23, staying in the top three throughout practice alongside his Brazilian teammate and double race winner, Nicolas Giaffone.

He then took a pair of P3s in qualifying, which he converted into P2s.

Armstrong finished 4.721s behind Giaffone in Race 1, before taking P2 early in Race 2 to take the podium comfortably, 6.556 in arrears of the leader.

Looking competitive in his second season, Armstrong sits third in the championship on 109 points, 32 points off the leader in a bid to win the mega $241,890 advancement scholarship to start on his path toward IndyCar. The next round is at the Virginia International Raceway on June 2-4.

TW Neal

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BARGWANNA TAKES TCR TROPHY AT PORTIMAO BEN BARGWANNA’S first trip to the TCR World Tour in Europe has netted him the TCR Europe Rookie Trophy in Portimao, Portugal.

The Supercheap Auto TCR Australia driver came from 19th on the grid to charge up to P12 as the top rookie in an experienced field of international drivers, and got to climb on to the winners’ podium as result.

The 22-year-old from Warragul, and son of former Supercars driver Jason Bargwanna, was stoked to come away with a trophy in the first of two European visits he’ll make to the TCR WT. “Sunday’s race, oh my god … what a race! What a turnaround from yesterday, It’s been incredible and I can’t thank Team Clairet Sport enough,” Bargwanna said after receiving his trophy, as he and the Burson Auto Parts team enjoyed the celebration.

“I came home top rookie and 12th outright from 19th on the grid. I’m so stoked and over the moon I can’t stop smiling.

“It’s been a whirlwind of emotions this weekend, but it has been one of the best of my life. I’m so happy, I can’t thank the Clairets, my parents, and sponsors enough, it’s been incredible.

“I’m covered in champagne, I’ve got a trophy and it’s not what I expected to be coming home with, but I’m so happy.”

After experiencing the undulating Portimao circuit, Bargwanna will head back home to compete at Phillip Island in the national TCR series, before heading to Belgium where he’ll experience his Peugeot 308 at the legendary SpaFrancorchamps on May 26-28.

“We get to do it again at Spa and I just can’t wait to return to Europe.”

TW Neal

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

PORSCHE BREAKS NEW-ERA HYPERCAR GROUND

FRESH OFF its maiden victory in the new LMDh Hypercar 963 at the IMSA Grand Prix Long Beach, Porsche became the first LMDh or LMH team to provide a customer car.

The 963 is valued around US$2.9 million, and is the German manufacturer’s most expensive model – albeit one of its lower production numbers.

For comparison, the Porsche RS Spyder LMP2 cost US$1.5m in 2007-08 (US$2.1m in today’s economy).

Customers buying a turn-key 680hp 963 Hypercar receive continuous on-site technical support, but items like spare engines, transmissions, and extra bodywork, aren’t included. After Aussie Porsche Factory driver Matt Campbell completed shakedown testing at Porsche’s

private Weissach facility, the Porsche 963 LMDh keys were handed over to the British based Hertz team Jota and JDCMiller teams.

Jota contested the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in the World Endurance Championships third round in its new 963, sporting a stunning and classic livery.

The team of Will Stevens/Ye Yifei/Antonio Felix da Costa impressed greatly in its debut with a P6 in trying conditions, finishing one lap down and 1:04.549s off the #2 Cadillac after also qualifying in P7 - two spots above the #5 Penske 963.

American team, JDC-Miller Motorsports, will have its 963 shipped over to the States, which will provide Porsche

with a third IMSA 963, with a fourth to also come in August when German team Proton Competition enters the Road America round.

Again in the WEC stakes, Proton will also make it an even-fourth 963 by July’s Monza round, with the Porsche marquee set to be the most represented Hypercar brand across the LMDh and LMH competitions.

In addition to the extra Porsche, Cadillac is also getting ready to ramp up for its 24 Hours of Le Mans campaign, entering a second V-Series LMDh at the WEC Spa 6 Hour – but that turned to disaster for the Chip Ganassi team of Sebastien Bourdais/Renger van der Zande/Jack Aitken (see race coverage, p47). TW Neal

NASCAR TO EXPLORE TYRE COMPOUND CHANGE A MEETING between drivers and NASCAR officials over the progress of the new short track and road course aero package, has raised the question of possible improvements to the Goodyear control tyre.

The consensus from the performance quality of the new aero package is that many of the drivers feel that it’s no better, and in some cases, worse than last year after the Martinsville round was dissected in the meeting.

With Goodyear representatives present at the meeting, it is believed that a rare change to the NASCAR tyre compound could be on the cards.

Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver, Denny Hamlin, revealed as much when he left the meeting.

“We feel like we’re comfortable enough now to start mixing that up and really start getting more aggressive with our tire compounds,” Hamlin said.

“That’s fantastic news for us and hopefully for competition here in the next few months.”

Goodyear was believed to have told the drivers that they had taken a highly conservative approach to the tyre compound when the Next Gen car was released last year, which featured the new 18-inch wheels, a wider contact patch, and shorter sidewalls.

The new 18-inch bead diameter racing tyres took two years to develop and test prior to the 2022 season, in

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Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

WRC TITLE WIDE OPEN WITH OGIER SITTING OUT PORTUGAL

order to make it safely suited the high and sustained load that a Cup Car puts on the tyres in the oval style environment.

NASCAR senior vice president of competition, Elton Sawyer, says there’s plenty of factors that need to work at once for the on-track product to gel.

“There’s not one lever that you could ever pull and say, ‘That’s it.’ There’s a lot of things that go into it, like horsepower, tyres, aero, and the speed of Short tracks vs Intermediates vs Super Speedways.

“There was a lot of discussion about the tyres, and Goodyear will help us work through whatever the next development looks like.

“This car has a wider tyre, there’s more of it on the track, therefore, the way the aerodynamics work has changed.”

TW Neal

RALLY CROATIA blew the WRC title race wide open, with Elfyn Evans’ triumph drawing him level on points with his part-time Toyota teammate Sebastien Ogier.

With last year’s champion Kalle Rovanpera just one point in arreas on 68, and Ott Tanak just three points behind him and seven up on Thierry Neuville, the season is superbly tight after four rounds.

With the announcement that Ogier will sit out the gravel Rally de Portugal – an event he’s won five times – he’ll certainly drop down the order, but will then receive a far more desirable starting position in his next confirmed round, Rally Italia Sardegna on June 1-4.

“Sardinia was a tough rally for the team last year, so that was always the plan that I tried to join to help there. It’s nothing which is decided now because of the Croatia result or anything like that, it’s something we decided early on.”

Despite having the undesired position of opening the running in Croatia after winning in Mexico, luck wasn’t on his side despite winning a rally-high seven from 20 stages.

After starting strongly, an early tyre change, followed by a series of time penalties saw him finish in P5, 1:28.0 in arrears of Evans.

“It wasn’t my weekend, but I guess that’s part of motorsport sometimes. Of course, we had much more in the tank, but it didn’t work out and somehow we have to put this weekend behind us and come back for another event with the aim to do better.”

Ogier is still in the hunt to win a record equalling ninth WRC title should everything go smoothly from here on in, but it would take a miracle from the rally gods …

TW Neal

Image: MARK HORSBURG-EDGE PHOTOGRAPHICS

WAY OUT WEST AA’S COLUMNIST PONDERS GEN3’S FIRST PERMANENT CIRCUIT HIT-OUT

WELL, THAT was deflating.

I found last weekend’s Supercars round in Perth to be, frankly, a little depressing. I don’t feel Gen3 delivered what was promised and four aspects of the weekend in Western Australian were most concerning.

Before I go on, I’d like to point out my very open mind to Gen3.

Regular readers will know this column has provided a balanced viewpoint about the new era. If you want sycophantic comment and reportage, I’m not your man.

Sure, I have banged on about the importance of Gen3 improving the show given Supercars’ existential crisis in the wake of Holden’s death. And I enthused about my weekend in Newcastle having witnessed the stunning new cars.

Then the drama that unfolded at Albert Park had me on the edge of my seat. The racing in Melbourne, brief as it was, was thoroughly entertaining. However, post Wanneroo I’m feeling decidedly flat about the future.

with Luke West

REVVED UP Firstly, the quality of the racing on Sunday was, at best, average.

There was some overtaking down the field, but little in the way of sustained battles. But when it came to the contest for podium positions, both Sunday races were snoozers. Not a great first showing for Gen3 at the first permanent circuit on the schedule.

A penny for the thoughts of Supercars’ kingpin Mark Skaife, wearing his television presenter’s hat, when he interviewed Race 9 winner Broc Feeney on Fox Sport’s coverage immediately after the weekend’s finale. Skaife asked Feeney what changes unlocked car #88’s speed for Race 9 and, perhaps, got more than he bargained for when Broc replied: “The thing then compared to the race (9) before, just in clean air, it is a completely different car to drive. For sure we made some changes that were positive, but that car out-front was mega. It

was such a good car to drive, so different to what it was like when you’re in the pack.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Gen’s ‘raceability’.

The Gen3 cars can definitely follow more closely behind other cars compared to the ugly duckling Gen2 machines, yet a problem that has long held the sport back still exists. Hence, there was no storming drive through the field from Shane van Gisbergen in the finale.

Even when Supercars had a moment to salivate on Saturday it still found a way to trip over itself.

After the troubled rollout it was wonderful to finally have a race with a brilliant battle leading to cracking finish, as we had in the dying laps on Saturday. Both van Gisbergen and Brodie Kostecki fought hard but fairly in a battle for the ages. Then officialdom let the air out of the balloon, complete with farty noises, by issuing a

warning for bad sportsmanship to Kostecki.

Fair dinkum. It’s exactly this sort of racing Supercars fans crave and the kind the category needs regularly in 2023 to stop a potential slide into oblivion.

Officialdom is truly clueless as to the bigger picture. Do they want a procession watched by nobody?

Let them race!

Neither Kostecki nor SVG had their races ruined when dicing.

Both drivers seemingly enjoyed themselves and showed each other respect. But officialdom had to stick its nose in and spoil the fun.

The third thing that troubles me post Perth is the fact a Ford Mustang is yet to greet the chequered flag first in any of the nine races of the Gen3 era so far?

I have no clue whether there is parity between the Mustang and Camaro. All I know is that Ford is again playing second fiddle to GM, for whatever reason. In 2023 the Blue Oval has quickly slipped into its usual Supercars role as the token opposition to the brand with more teams and the bigger fan following.

Many will argue Chev teams are doing a better job than the Ford teams. And these folk may

be right. But what if that’s not the case and the Mustang teams are genuinely disadvantaged to the point Ford’s heavyweights get jack of playing the token opposition role again and pulls the pin? Imagine if Dearborn told Supercars it was withdrawing all support along with permission for its IP (the Mustang design) to be used in Supercars? Could you imagine the repercussions if the sole manufacturer with a full factory program left the series?

Surely Supercars won’t stuff this up also.

Yet the most troubling aspect of the Perth weekend was the size of the crowd. Or lack thereof.

The main spectator areas were sparsely populated. Sunday’s crowd probably just reached a five-figure total.

It’s a worry the first Gen3 round in WA wasn’t packed to the rafters. I would have thought West Aussies would have been gagging to see the new cars in the flesh.

If that’s the crowd for the inaugural Gen3 round in Perth – the only live event most WA fans will witness in 2023 – what’s it going to be like next year? And the year after when the novelty of Gen3 has worn off, especially as the racing was only so-so?

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SPEEDWAY NEWS

NEWLYN WELCOMED INTO SPEEDWAY AUSTRALIA HALL OF FAME

MOTORSPORT MEDIA stations across America and veteran Dennis Newlyn was overseas. “lost for words” when he “I was the first Australian was recently inducted into speedway media person the Speedway Australia Hall to secure airtime on the of Fame.

Indy radio network. It was Newlyn, 74, has been certainly a big moment in covering speedway racing my life. across all points of Australia After his time at Auto over the last 57 years as a Action, Newlyn also did journalist, publisher and work for Motorsport News commentator. while throughout the late He received the 70s, throughout the 80s and unexpected news after flying to mid-90s he published Speedway journalist and Auto Action correspondent Dennis Newlyn pictured National Speedway Illustrated up to New South Wales for in the studio of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway worldwide radio network the Lismore Dirt Modified for a quarter of a century. on a test day before the 2019 Indianapolis 500. Image: PHIL CHRISTENSEN National title and was Outside of magazines immediately ‘jaw-dropped’.

American Bruce Penhall, with his words the writer co-authored two books titled “I was lost for words when Speedway beamed back to Australia via high rating Tattersall the Legend and Ghosts in the Australia’s Darren Tindal and Ben Bishop Sydney radio station 2GB. Bull Pens. greeted me at Ballina Airport in northern He also made the step up to television After more than half a century of NSW on my way to the Australian V8 being a regular face on both cable covering the sport he loves, Newlyn Dirt Modified Championship at Lismore and free-to-air television coverage of has not stopped slowing down and still Speedway this past Easter,” Newlyn speedway. publishes the annual Speedway Classics recalled. “I was truly overwhelmed Newlyn was heavily involved with Fox magazine, which first appeared on newsand dedicated this huge honour to my Sports and Channel 9, with work with the stands in 1980. late mum and dad who met through latter standing out.

“I most sincerely want to thank speedway, and who gave me the passion.

“I enjoyed working in that role and I Speedway Australia for inducting me into “It is the definite greatest highlight of my remember that helped put together a the Speedway Australia Hall of Fame and long media career in speedway and one special feature with Wide World of Sports also the many people who nominated of the best moments of my life.” presenter Andrew Voss on the history me,” Newlyn concluded.

Newlyn has been the voice of speedway and closure of the Sydney Showground Other inductees into the Speedway not only in print, but also on radio and Speedway,” Newlyn recounted.

Australia Hall of Fame include; Speedcar television for much of the last 50 years.

“The special feature story on the driver Howard Revell; Two-time Australian He was a regular and valued contributor Showgrounds closure on April 27, 1996, Sprintcar Champion Ron Krikke (WA); for Auto Action throughout the 1980s and and its 70-year history was screened on Six-time Australian GP Midget Champion 1990s.

Wide World of Sports.

Wally Kermond; Photographer/t-shirt During that period he has also reported “It has been a great journey ... one of merchandiser/US tour operator Bill Meyer speedway action over the air waves on the absolute stand-out moments of my (posthumously.)

Sydney radio stations 2WS, 2UE, 2GB and career was being interviewed live as Auto Action would like to congratulate 2SM. a guest on the worldwide Indianapolis and acknowledge Dennis’s commitment By 1982 Newlyn was at the Los Angeles Motor Speedway Radio Network in the and dedication to delivering media Coliseum, covering that year’s World countdown to the 2019 Indianapolis 500. coverage of speedway for such a long Speedway Championship won by “It was live networked to affiliate time – well done! TW Neal

GOLF CART PRESENTATION

Steve Caunt, Garry Coleman and the golf cart at Eastern Creek Speedway. Image: GARY REID

By Dennis Newlyn.

REVEREND GARRY Coleman was overcome with emotion when presented with a golf cart organised by Late Model driver and Sprintcar competitor Steve Caunt at Eastern Creek Speedway’s April 15 meeting.

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It was a wonderful gesture by Steve who initiated a ‘Go Fund Me Page’ to assist Garry – and to aid his future mobility at ECS – following his heart attack at the venue on March 18.

The response was incredible after 63 people donated funds. “Within two days we got to $6000,” said Steve, who made the first donation.

Some people donated twice while representatives from the Supercar scene, largely through Jack Perkins, who is a friend of Steve Caunt, also got involved. It was an enormous success. Steve pointed out people from Mittagong (NSW) in the surrounding area where he resides “were very helpful.”

After trying three golf cart companies, Southern Highlands Golf Cars stepped up to the plate.

“They were very accommodating and realised it was for such a good cause.

We got a good discount on the upgrade which is normally $3000, but they did it for a thousand.

Phil Bramley from Signtism made the stickers because it was also so convenient to find someone in Wollongong and he did a great job.

“I want to especially thank these people and everyone who donated to such a worthy cause. I also want to mention Eastern Creek Speedway who gave us a garage for Garry to park the golf cart and were very supportive. ECS have been very co-operative and very supportive.

“Garry got emotional when he was presented with the golf cart. I was so pleased we were able to do this for him.”

Garry had a pacemaker fitted after he collapsed, as a result of a heart trauma episode while walking in the pits. “I want to thank everyone for their generosity and especially Steve Caunt for getting the ‘Go Fund Me Page’ up and running.

“I am so appreciative of everyone who contacted me while in hospital, the week after I was released from hospital and back at the track a couple of weeks later,” Garry said.

DUMESNY OUT OF ACTION AFTER BIG QLD CRASH

Image: MATTHEW PAUL

NSW SPRINTCAR champion Marcus Dumesny faces a 12-week road to recovery following a heavy crash at Toowoomba Speedway.

Dumesny was diagnosed with a fracture of his T3 vertebrae after it took nearly two hours for the Sydneysider to be extracted from his #N47 Rowett Motorsport Sprintcar.

Just weeks after claiming the State title at Eastern Creek Speedway, where he made history by joining his father Max and brother Matt as home-state champions, Dumesny crashed on lap 20 of 36 at the QLD State title.

Due to the long extraction process, the feature was called with the 16 remaining laps never occurring.

After being extracted from his car, Dumesny was admitted to Toowoomba hospital where was said to be in good spirits despite the fracture Dumesny Racing has provided an update on the NSW champion’s condition, confirming he hopes to make a racing return in the 2023/24 summer as he begins a 12week recovery process.

“Marcus is in good spirits; however he has sustained a fracture of the T3 vertebrae in his upper back,” the team confirmed on Facebook.

“As Toowoomba hospital doesn’t have a spinal ward it has been a slow process but they have been great.

“Marcus has made it home safely to Sydney from Toowoomba.

“His fracture is stable and doesn’t require surgery, (but) he is looking at a 12 week recovery at the moment and hopes to be back in the seat next season.

“Once again, we would like to thank everyone for the massive effort in getting him out of the car safely. Thank you for the outpouring of very kind messages, thoughts and prayers.

“He will be back on track soon enough.”

As well as taking out the generational NSW State title, Dumesny has also raced in the premier World of Outlaws series in the States in 2019, and was also the 2022 Australian Sprintcar champion. Tim W Neal

WANTED: A BLACK HAT BADDIE

A pair of ‘baddies’ in their day – Ingall and Ambrose ...

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

SOMETHING IMPORTANT IS MISSING FROM SUPERCARS ...

By Paul Gover BARCLAY NETTLEFOLD made plenty of good points when he sat down for an exclusive interview with Bruce Williams, the publisher of Auto Action.

Apart from talking about the new Gen3 cars and plans for an overseas race or races, the Trump said Supercars is aiming to become the number three sport in Australia during his time at the top.

It’s a bold and ambitious goal but, right now, one key ingredient is missing.

It’s not an overseas race in Singapore, not even a return to New Zealand, or another carmaker to join Ford and Chevrolet.

It’s a black hat. A baddie.

Right now, everyone in

with Paul Gover

THE PG PERSPECTIVE Supercars wants to be the niceguy or girl.

They all think they have to play safe to protect their fan base and their sponsors. That’s rubbish.

Russell Ingall proved it when he turned ’The Enforcer’ – a nickname I gifted to him after a nasty run-in with Glenn Seton at Phillip Island – into a personal brand that worked brilliantly through his racing days and also helps with everything he does since hanging up his black hat and helmet.

Allan Moffat was another star who wore the black hat.

Like Collingwood in the AFL

and Manly in the NRL, people barracked for anyone who was racing against Moffat.

For a time, Mark Skaife was considered a baddie. Just ask Ingall. You can decide when.

Then there was Marcos Ambrose, who was not popular with his fellow Ford racers after he showed them what they had been missing. Not to mention the red army.

Greg Murphy polarised the pit lane and the spectators, Garth Tander was a truly tough man, and even James Courtney has a vicious streak that even now means he can be harder

to pass than a kidney stone in the midfield.

Why does Supercars need a baddie? Because sport is tribal.

It’s about rivalries.

All sport needs to polarise its followers, giving them someone to cheer and someone to (although it’s now a woke no-no) boo.

Look again at the AFL and NRL, or even the WWE. It’s tribal and brutal. So, should Supercars bring back the biff? Maybe.

Some contact has become more common in recent years, but goodies-versus-baddies can be almost anything.

An outburst after being blocked in qualifying, an honest mistake that takes someone out of the action, or a deliberate touch-up for a pass.

Right now, Shane van Gisbergen has no real rival.

He is as tough as they come and would have been a worthy combatant for Skaife and

Ambrose and all the rest.

Only Scott McLaughlin was willing and able to chest-up to SvG, but even he was missing the fire for a polarising rivalry.

It could have been epic stuff, with driver-against-driver, Triple Eight against DJR, Ford against Holden. But it fizzled before it could fire. And now nice guy Scotty Mac is gone.

Finding the right rivalry for SvG is not easy. No-one ticks all the boxes.

Brodie Kostecki has the cojones and talent to spark a stoush (WA last weekend confirmed that!), Broc Feeney is shaping as a genuine contender, and Chaz Mostert has the personality.

But Kostecki and Feeney are both on the red end of the racing, which leaves - for now - Mostert.

He’s already fired up against Cam Waters, even when they were team mates, so he has the fire inside.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PUBLISHER

Bruce Williams bruce@autoaction.com.au 0418 349 555

email: letters@autoaction.com.au Postal: Suite 4/156 Drummond Street.

Oakleigh Victoria 3166

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Bruce Williams STAFF JOURNALIST Timothy W. Neal STAFF JOURNALIST Thomas Miles NEWS EDITOR Andrew Clarke FEATURES WRITER Paul Gover PRODUCTION/SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Caroline Garde SENIOR DESIGNER Neville Wilkinson NATIONAL EDITOR

HISTORICS EDITOR Mark Bisset SPEEDWAY REPORTER Paris Charles ONLINE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS AUSTRALIA Josh Nevett, Dan McCarthy, Bruce Newton, Mark Bisset, Geoffrey Harris, Bruce Moxon, Gary Hill, Craig O’Brien, Ray Oliver, Martin Agatyn, Reese Mautone.

FORMULA 1 Luis Vasconelos US CORRESPONDENT Mike Brudenell PHOTOGRAPHERS AUSTRALIA Mark Horsburgh-EDGE PHOTOGRAPHY, Peter Norton-EPIC SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY, ROSS GIBB PHOTOGRAPHY, Daniel Kalisz, Mick Oliver-MTR IMAGES, Rebecca Hind-REVVED, David Batchelor, Randall Kilner, Richard Hathaway, Bruce Moxon, Ray Ritter, Ray Oliver, autopics.com.au INTERNATIONAL

Motorsport Images

ADVERTISING MANAGER Bruce Williams All Advertising inquiries bruce@autoaction.com.au 0418 349 555 Editorial contributions may be sent to Auto Action. No responsibility will be accepted for their safety. If you require the return of any sent item or items, please attach a separate, stamped and fully addressed envelope.

Auto Action is published by Action Media Partners ABN number 62976094459 Suite 4/156 Drummond Street Oakleigh Victoria 3166 Phone: 03 9563 2107 The trademark Auto Action is the sole property of Action Media Partners The website www.autoaction.com.au and associated social media platforms are wholly owned by Action Media Partners.

All rights reserved No part of this magazine’s content may be reproduced, retransmitted or rebroadcast without the express written permission of the Publisher and Action Media Partners.

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AUTO ACTION WEBSITE

For more of the latest motorsport news, reviews and features, PLUS additional breaking news.

Go to autoaction.com.au or scan below

HOME IS WHERE THE HEARTS ARE FOR SUPERCAR RACING

BIG TICK FOR A CHIEF WILLING TO GRASP THE NETTLE AT LAST! Finally, in Auto Action #1859, Supercars has deigned to tell us a bit about what it’s thinking regarding the future.

It was pleasing to hear from the previously invisible (chairman) Mr Barclay Nettlefold, rather than Mark Skaife, who often seems to project himself as the mouthpiece of the sport.

Not that I agree with everything Mr Nettlefold had to say, but at least he presented himself for you (AA) to grill after more than a year in the job.

Had he previously been avoiding such an interview or are our motorsport media too timid to get in there and ask the questions the fans want answers on?

Yes, well, we knew Gen3 had been delivered, even if it’s been with a few glitches. Those things can be sorted out.

The comments about future growth and investment were interesting. I detected quite a smack for Archer Capital for having neglected those things during its ownership of Supercars. It”s good that they’re now gone.

Of course New Zealand needs to come back into the championship. I’ve never been

SOCIAL DISCOURSE

in NZ when our V8s have raced there, but the kiwis are mad about them and have always been great supporters of the sport.

I look forward to the announcement that sounds imminent about a return to NZ. As for the (other) overseas venues, well it might be a hot topic but let’s get back to the exciting days when Tony Cochrane was taking Supercars to the Middle East, Asia and the USA. Sure there may be matters like the broadcast times to work around, and whether Supercars run with Formula 1 or standalone, but at least Mr Nettlefold has ambition, plans and vision. Good on him.

I like the fact that he’s prepared to stand up to Roland Dane, who has had far too much sway in the sport for too long. Dane needs to understand that his time is up, that he’s yesterday’s man, and that he should stay out of the way and let those now in charge, led by Mr Nettlefold, get on with the job of taking Supercars to greater heights.

Good luck to the RACE regime in their endeavours.

I’d be happy to see more of those in-depth interviews in AA in future. Any chance?

Michael Dwyer Beaumont Hills, NSW AutoActionMag

SUPERCARS WANT to try to conquer the world again.

Give us a break. They’re dreaming.

Roland Dane’s right. ‘Stick to your knitting’ at home, and in New Zealand, guys (and gals if there are any in the Supercars hierarchy).

For all the hype of the previous visits to Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Austin, etc. whatever came of it? If it was meant to be our ‘show’ would still be going to those places.

A few people might have had dollar signs in their eyes when those adventures happened back whenever, but it didn’t translate into backsides on seats and the venues clearly weren’t baying for Supercars to come back year after year. In fact, I’ve read somewhere that none of the contracts for overseas races ever lasted the distance.

Concentrate on getting everything right on the home front Supercars and reward the fans who have stuck with you through thick and thin, and you should find yourselves attracting an enduring fan base for the years to come.

You’ve got a damn good product. Just play to your strengths.

Mark Jackson Ashburton, Victoria

the tunnel made to resemble a fuselage!

Mark Webster Curra, Queensland Publisher/editor’s note: Like your final thought, but on the earlier one, Mark, please keep your feet on the ground. Aviation next door. This is meant to be a home of MOTORSPORT. Names like Beechey, Brock, Moffat, Perkins, Lowndes more relevant.

KOSTECKI IN THE MOULD OF THE LATE, GREAT ‘PETE’ GEOGHEGAN

HAVING BEEN a fan of motor sport for more than 60 years, I have seen many greats.

When I see Brodie Kostecki I am reminded of the late ‘Pete’ Geoghegan, who was a similar stature, also quietly spoken but had driving ability second to none.

I am sure Brodie will go on to achieve greatness as did ‘Pete’.

Bill Rooney Sydney NSW

A BIG THUMBS UP FOR INDEPENDENT VOICES OF AUSTRALIAN MOTORSPORT

I JUST read Luke West’s article (AA #1859) on the new Avalon circuit and saw his wish list.

Given the circuit’s location, maybe the straights and corners could be named after aviation pioneers and or planes which have a relevance to our aviation and military history. As a feature maybe they could have an Oran Park-like loop and overpass with

AUTO ACTION, you guys are on fire now with the Rev Limiter podcast as well as the magazine, website and social media.

It’s terrific the way you cover all the issues in Supercars in the podcast.

Much better than the nambypamby alternatives.

But one piece of advice: Paul Gover needs to get off the fence and toughen up like the other two guys.

Two out of three ain’t bad, better than all the rest, but maybe rotate an outside expert commentator through the third seat.

Sam Dalgliesh, Emu Plains, NSW

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IDEAS ABOUT AVALON ... AIRY-FAIRY OR PLANE TALKING?

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WITH SUPERCARS, FORMULA 1 AND MOTOGP ALL ON SHOW, FANS SOAKED UP MASSES OF MOTORSPORT ON AUTO ACTION’S SOCIAL CHANNELS. KOSTECKI V SVG

Kessa Re Webb Personally, I thought Shane has finally found someone to play with and someone to give it back to him. I thought it was great racing just like it has been with every other opponent who gets in Shane’s way.

Darron Walker It was tight hard racing with bumping and rubbing. Both gave as good as they got, so why not let it go, OK the standard has been set and use this as the benchmark for the rest of the season.

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Gavin Veach All those having a crack at Barry and Erebus need to pull their heads in.

All Erebus was doing was ensuring everyone knows where the lines have been drawn this year.

Robby McBride In Super3 Stewart was leading on the last lap, but McLeod pushed him from the back and went past, so the Stewards gave him a five second penalty.

How was that different to “Dizzy” forcing Kostecki wide?

NZ SUPERCARS AT TAUPO?

Craig McCall It is the best option by far.

There is limited spectator viewing at Hampton and if they go there it will be a repeat of Hamilton. Plenty of spectators the first year, but no one returns for the following years.

No issues with spectator numbers or accommodation when A1 ran at Taupo.

Dave Sharpe While they’re here, make it two rounds over two weeks – one

north, one south.

Either Hampton Downs or Taupo in the North, and I guess Ruapuna or Highlands in the South, that would be awesome.

Gareth Hall Interesting to see if Taupo actually has the infrastructure and logistics to pull this off.

I doubt there is enough telecommunications coverage currently.

And is there enough accommodation and hospitality for the thousands that would travel there?

A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION FORMULA ONE’S new format for the Sprint Race weekends was a step in the right direction, judging by the action seen in the streets of Baku.

The elimination of an FP2 session that counted for nothing, with car’s set-up already locked since the start of Friday’s qualifying, can only be seen as a good thing, so we can commend the FIA and the 10 teams (that agreed unanimously to this very late change) for their quick reaction before the start of the first Sprint Event of the year.

Under the previous Sprint format, Friday was a big day, with a Free Practice Session where the teams had to compact a lot of work – gauge the base set-up they had brought, the effect of any upgrades introduced that weekend, running the Soft and Medium (or Hard) compounds – to prepare both for qualifying and the two races and include a long(ish)

with Luis Vasconcelos

F1 INSIDER run that would simulate the Sprint Race and give valuable information for Sunday’s main event. It was a lot of work to do, so it guaranteed the track would always be full of cars and that was good for the show.

Then, qualifying would be as exciting as usual and things would end up on a high with the grid for the Sprint Race already defined.

Then came FP2, a real downer, as teams would be running with different tyre compounds, different fuel levels, different engine modes and so one, some drivers focusing on short runs, other on proper race simulations, so it was a confusing and boring

session that only helped the teams prepare their own race but left them and the fans in the dark about everyone’s true competitiveness.

Now things are different – and for the better. Friday is as intense as it was before but the qualifying results count for Sunday’s race only, the idea being to free the drivers from being naturally conservative in the Sprint race (as they wouldn’t want to risk a potential decent grid position for Sunday) and start taking more risks.

But the fact the Sprint race is now a completely different event, with its own qualifying

session and with no impact on Sunday’s race, has created a disconnection between the whole weekend, as Friday’s session counts only for Sunday’s grid and Saturday has a completely stand-alone event.

While this format is a step in the right direction, I would suggest a further tweak to create the buildup for Sunday’s race that we’re now lacking, as Saturday cuts into the main action with its own qualifying and race.

I think that having the Sprint race qualifying session – and how exciting it was in its shortened format – on Friday afternoon would work better, with the Sprint race held on Saturday morning and, with a respectable interval for teams to be able to make eventual repairs, qualifying for the main event in the afternoon. That way, the entire weekend would be a full build-up for the Grand Prix race, with the Sprint having qualifying

and race in different days, before giving way to the main event, with qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday.

The only other relevant thought I have is reflected in Fernando Alonso’s words after the Sprint qualifying, the Spanish driver cautioning against big conclusions being taken after just this Sprint event, “because Baku is the kind of track where any normal qualifying or race always brings out surprises – it’s so easy to make mistakes here, so it doesn’t really need this extra qualifying and race to be an exciting event with many unexpected things happening.

That’s why I’m not sure this format will work so well in normal tracks”, he concluded.

So, let’s wait until July and the Austrian Grand Prix, to pass judgement on that – hopefully with the tweak I believe the format needs, already in place.

Baku’s Sprint race won a conditional tick from AA’s F1 expert ...

Image: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

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FORMULA 1 NEWS – LUIS VASCONCELOS

SIX DRIVERS BENEFIT

VASSEUR PLAYS DOWN MEKIES’ DEPARTURE: “WE’RE RECRUITING MASSIVELY!”

FROM INCREASE OF PU LIMIT THE BIGGEST surprise from the latest Formula One Commission meeting was the increase from three to four elements allowed per season for Internal Combustion Engines, Turbo chargers, MGU-H and MGU-K. This is the first time the teams, the FIA and Formula One have agreed to ease the restrictions put on the usage of Power Unit components since they’ve became limited per season.

What is even more surprising is that the original limit had been established for a season with 24 Grands Prix in the calendar and now, even with the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix, that limit has been raised.

The reason, of course, is that three of the four manufacturers currently competing in Formula One have already lost at least one of the available elements of even a full Power Unit during the first three races of the season, with just Alpine escaping unscathed, for now – but it’s worth noting the French

manufacturer supplies only its own two cars, while Mercedes supplies eight cars, Ferrari supplies six and Red Bull Honda supplies the remaining four.

As a consequence of this change in the regulations, six drivers can now bread a sigh of relief, as the prospect of being handed a grid penalty has now become less of an issue.

Even the teams’ strategies will be altered following this increase on the number of Power Unit elements available, as now each full unit will only have to compete in a maximum of six full events when under the previous rule, two of those Power Units available would have to last for eight full events.

This change is particularly good news for Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, George Russell, Lando Norris, Nico Hulkenberg and Nyck de Vries, who will start the Azerbaijan Grand Prix already using their second Power Unit of the season – and of all of them only the Spanish driver had been handed

a second unit without losing any elements of the first one. That was done after Charles Leclerc was forced to retire from a solid third place in the opening race of the season, the Bahrain Grand Prix, as the Scuderia decided it was safer to fully analyze the two Power Units used in Sakhir before using them, or at least the surviving elements in the Monegasque’s PU. Among the Ferrari Power Unit users, Nico Hulkenberg is the other one that benefits from this rule change, the MGU-K of his Power Unit collapsing during the last lap in Melbourne; in the Mercedes camp Lando Norris lost a full Power Unit in Bahrain and works driver George Russell saw his PU suffer so much internal damage after a fire in Melbourne that it can no longer be used.

Finally, in the Red Bull Honda camp, it’s Nyck de Vries who sees the prospect of a grid penalty move away, after losing his first Power Unit before the start of FP3 in Saudi Arabia.

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

MASSA AWAITS LEGAL ADVICE ON 2008 CRASHGATE CASE FELIPE MASSA has put together a multinational legal team that will evaluate the chances of success in case he launches a legal action against the FIA with the goal of getting the results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix cancelled.

The first night race in Formula One’s history was marked by Nelson Piquet Jr. crashing on purpose to help teammate Fernando Alonso win the race, the Spanish pitting just before the crash after qualifying poorly, but inheriting the lead when the rest of the field refuelled under the Safety Car made necessary by the Brazilian’s crash.

Massa retired in the pits after being sent out when the refueling hose was still attached to his car, while title rival Lewis Hamilton salvaged third place and secured six valuable points. Given the Brit won the title by just one point over Massa, annulling the results of the Singapore Grand Prix would reverse the situation but the legal challenges the Brazilian face

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are likely to make him drop the case after the lawyers he has hired conclude their investigation.

Massa has admitted that, “a lot will depend on the laws that will be applied to this case, because different countries have different laws”, hinting the laws of Singapore (where the incident occurred), France and Switzerland – where the FIA holds a dual base – are under review.

A stumbling block for the Brazilian, though, is that the incident occurred in an event that is under the FIA’s jurisdiction and that the deadlines for any sort of appeal have long expired – as 14 days is now the limit to request the Right of

Review, an instrument that didn’t exist back in 2008.

It was Bernie Ecclestone’s admission he knew about the collusion organised by his friend Flavio Briatore, with Piquet Jr’s cooperation, and the fact he made it clear Max Mosley, then FIA president, was also aware of the situation, that has led Felipe Massa to seek legal advice. But the reality is that, since the end of 2009, it’s been widely known Nelson Piquet Sr. informed Race Director Charlie Whiting of what had happened during the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix and the much-missed Whiting duly informed Mosley of his findings.

But given Piquet Jr. refused to make any statement on the matter, as he wanted to keep his seat with Renault, there was nothing the FIA could do at the time and the situation only changed after the Brazilian was sacked after the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix and sought out the FIA to make an official confession to his part in the scandal.

FRÉDÉRIC VASSEUR has played down the impact of Laurent Mekies’ move to AlphaTauri, where he’ll replace Franz Tost as Team Principal, saying that “every year 100 people leave the team and another 100 people join us” and adding that, “even though we are not communicating it, we are recruiting massively right now.”

The Frenchman showed he holds no bad feelings towards the man who currently is Ferrari’s Sporting Director, saying that, “first of all, I think this is a mega opportunity for Laurent and considering also that I have a very good relationship with him, I won’t block Laurent, for sure.” In contrast, the Ferrari Team Principal took a dig at the Faenza-based team by the way they communicated Mekies’ hiring, going as far as getting the team’s name wrong: “If you speak about timeline, I think Toro Rosso was a bit aggressive in their press release – we have a long-term contract with Laurent and now we have to discuss the details.”

Rumors about Mekies’ departure from Ferrari had been circling since the start of the season and, in Bahrain, Vasseur had played down the possibility of his fellow Frenchman leaving the Scuderia. Now, he explained that, “back then the proposal was not the same” but when pushed about the conditions and timeline of Mekies’ release, Vasseur refused to give any details: “I can perfectly put myself in Laurent’s position and I think it’s quite impossible to refuse an offer to become Team Principal when you are in this business. Now, I’m here to protect Ferrari’s interests, because It’s Ferrari first and it will always be Ferrari first. So, we’ll have to discuss the conditions of his release.

“We had a very open discussion on this because I’ve known Laurent for 30 years, and I think it would be very difficult for him to turn down this opportunity and he was very open on the discussion.

“For sure, as I said before, we have a long-term contract with him and we have to find the best solution for Ferrari. When he’ll leave, when he’ll more to Toro Rosso, it will be discussed at the end of the collaboration.

But I’m not scared about this because we will discuss it properly and the relationship is very good.”

Vasseur also hinted that Mekies is unlikely to be replaced directly as he’ll take his departure as an opportunity to implement a different kind of structure to the team: “He’s fulfilling the role of Sporting Director – the role is quite large and it will be done as part of the reorganization of the company. You know that we are in a long process and it’s taking time, but we are also recruiting a lot from the outside. We’ll have names quite soon but that will be part of the reorganisation and we could split the job in two different positions, as some other teams are doing. That’s part of the restructuration.”

When questioned if Ferrari was losing too many senior personnel, (David Sanchez has also announced he’ll be joining McLaren early next year), he played down the impact of those departures: “To lose two persons in an organization with more than 1000 people is not a drama and the power of the team is always more important than the power of the individuals. We have to keep this in mind, that the most important is the group – the group is there, we are recruiting massively but we are not communicating it ... but we are recruiting massively.

“But we are doing it step by step, because you cannot put an organisation in place in just two weeks. You know perfectly well the recruitment system in Formula One – it’s quite long and painful, but I’m working on it.

Don’t expect that in one day we’ll have a completely new organisation – it will be done step by step and we are putting it in place.”

F1’S LATE APPROVAL OF NEW SPRINT QUALIFYING FORMAT RICCIARDO “NOT SCARED”

BY LACK OF 2024 SEATS DANIEL RICCIARDO is taking his break from Formula One racing seriously, the Australian driver staying at his family house in Perth after attending the Melbourne race and with no plans to be back in the UK until after the Miami Grand Prix. But Ricciardo is not just sitting back and relaxing, as he’s been a regular at his local kart track – although it looks like any thoughts of returning to competitive racing are still far from being set.

Speaking to local media, Ricciardo explained why he needed the break, saying, “I wasn’t enjoying myself, the fire wasn’t burning anymore, so I needed to step away from Formula One racing to see if I would miss it badly enough to want to return.”

To his surprise, his first day of work for Red Bull turned out to be an exciting one. As he admitted: “My first day back at Red Bull, I’ve never had so much fun driving in the simulator, which is crazy, especially since at this stage of my career it’s normally the most boring job! But Simon, my engineer at Red Bull at the time, now runs the simulator.

It felt like we were back to the 2018 routine, and I loved it. Basically, in one day, my confidence went from a fairly low level to what I remember.”

Nevertheless, the Australian driver is not yet certain he wants to return to Grand Prix racing and is aware there’s a distinct lack of competitive seats available for next year. In fact, should Lewis Hamilton extend his contract with Mercedes, as it’s widely expected, there will be no seats available in the top five teams - Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Alpine - but the prospect doesn’t seem to worry the former Red Bull and McLaren driver: “That doesn’t scare me. It’s always been like that and I knew it would be a risk, of course, to leave my seat. But I think what I don’t want is clear. I don’t want just any seat next year ... I don’t want to start from scratch and build my career from scratch again.”

Asked why he wouldn’t consider doing what Kevin Magnussen did when he accepted to return to Haas at the start of last year, Ricciardo insisted his stance “is not arrogance, but I know I need to be able to aim for running at a very competitive level to be able to motivate myself for the challenge. I’m not interested in being in Formula One just to be in Formula One – I want to be racing knowing I can win or, at least, fight at the front, as I did for most of my career. That’s why I’m not interested in taking just any offer because I would be back to the situation I just left at the end of 2022.”

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LESS THAN three days before the cars started running in the streets of Baku, the Formula One Commission approved changes to the format of Sprint Events, with the Sprint race getting its separate qualifying session, thus ending the useless and confusion FP2 session that used to take place on Saturday morning, squeezed between Qualifying and the Sprint Race.

Under the new Sprint format, Friday’s qualifying session still determines the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix, but now the Saturday qualifying session – named Sprint Shootout – determines the grid for the Sprint race.

The format that was then approved by the FIA World Council for Motor Sport via an e-vote will be organised as

follows: all 20 drivers will compete in Q1, that has its length reduced to 15 minutes, having just one set of Medium compound tyres to use; the 15 fastest drivers progress to Q2, where they have another new set of Medium compound tyres to use and just 10 minutes to run; finally, the 10 fastest drivers progress to Q3 and have to use one new set of Soft tyres with just eight minutes to set a time.

Regarding the way penalties are now applied during the Sprint Events, the new rules are: grid penalties incurred in FP1 or Qualifying will apply in the race; grid penalties incurrent in the Shootout will apply to the Sprint race; grid penalties incurred in the Sprint race will apply in the Race; breaches of the Parc Fermé rules will result in pitlane starts for both the Sprint and the Race, and; PU-related

penalties will only apply for the race, unless they are also breaches of the Parc Fermé rules.

On top of that the FIA also cleared up what “working on a car” means when drivers are serving time penalties in the pits during races, to avoid the confusion created by Fernando Alonso’s serving of a penalty during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix ... but the most significant change approved was the increase of three to four elements allowed per season for Internal Combustion Engines, Turbo chargers, MGU-H and MGU-K, after most manufacturers suffered unexpected failures in the first three Grand Prix of the season (see story opposite).

Baku coverge - page 50

VERSTAPPEN “NOT PLANNING RETIREMENT YET!” MAX VERSTAPPEN’S outburst against Grand Prix format changes, longer calendars and an abondance of sprint races, in Australia, took him as far as saying that, “if they keep going this way then I won’t be in Formula One for very much longer”, prompting rumors the Dutchman would be ready to retire at the end of his current contract with Red Bull, which expires at the end of 2028.

Having had four weeks at home, the double World Champion decided to clarify his position on the matter, even if he wanted to make clear that all options are still on the table: “I have to be careful with what I say ... I think I always said that even if there won’t be any more sprint races or whatever. But if we keep expanding the calendar and the whole weekend is that long, at one point you question yourself is it worth it? I mean, yes, I do like racing, I do like winning. I know that, of course ... you know, the salary, everything ... you have a good life. But is it actually a good life? I think sometimes you get to a point in your career where maybe you want to do other stuff. And I know that I have, of course, the contract until the end of 2028.

And then we’ll review again.”

He then went on to clarify his views, saying

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that, “if it’s getting at that point of being too much, then it’s time for a change. I think you always have to be talking to yourself and looking at yourself: are you still very motivated, fully motivated? And do you love what you do? And at the moment, that is definitely the case. But there will surely be a point where you want to do maybe other other stuff as well. And sometimes – you know, this sounds very weird for people from the outside, because they’re like, “Oh, you’re in Formula One, you’re winning!” And probably I would have said the same when I was in their position. But once you’re in it, it’s not always how it looks like or how people think your life is. I mean, yes, it’s great. I mean, it’s amazing. I can do a lot of things.

I’m very independent, but there is always a limit to certain things.”

And asked if the issue could be more his own personal feeling than the direction Formula One is heading into, he concluded: “I look at it from a racing point of view.

And probably Formula One looks at it from a business point of view. And then, of course, I understand the Sprint races, they probably add a bit more excitment, but then I look at it from the racing point of view. And I’m like,

“well, normally when you then do the Sprint races, of course, lap one is exciting, few shunts here and there, you know, damage, blah, blah, blah, and Safety Car ... bit more excitement.”

But then, throughout the race, you get quite a clear picture of what is happening, who is the quickest blah, blah, so then you also have quite a clear view on what’s going to happen the next day. And that probably takes a bit of the shine away from the main event, which I think always should be, you know, the special event.”

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( ) GOLD STAR A SOLID INVESTMENT GREG CRICK has been around motorsport a long time – the CV is a lengthy document, ranging from Bathurst in the early 90s, a famous podium in the 12 Hour (including crippling CO2-poisoning …), driving standards roles, to most recently being drafted by MA into an investigation panel. Everyone knows ‘Cricky’. Recently, after engineering the occasional TCR car for GRM, the Tasmanian oversaw James Golding’s S5000 entry in the Symmons Plains Gold Star round. He came away very impressed with the experience and was keen to spread the news. He spoke with AA’s BRUCE WILLIAMS. AA: So you’re now a big S5000 fan – What’s changed and how did the gig with James Golding come about?

GC: Having decided I wasn’t going to be able to do all the (TCR) rounds this year, GRM asked if I’d run Jimmy at Symmons. I thought it’d be something different to do, so I spent the weekend with Jimmy, and learned a lot about the S5000 cars and the category.

The truth is I’ve always been a fan and now I’m convinced – Australia has been crying out for a really good, exciting, openwheeler category – but apart from its own competition standard, I just realised what a really good training ground it is for any young driver – for any category.

The car is incredibly well-designed and built – you just make a little suspension change and you can see and measure the improvement – it’s a great ‘technical’ car, and a challenge to drive.

Double S5000 Gold Star champion Joey Mawson heads the field in Tasmania – in times past it would be a virtual gold pass to touring car racing, but Supercars policy provides a hurdle ...

Images: DANIEL KALISZ - ARG Content

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S5000 front-runner Cooper Webster (here at the wheel of the Team Versa S5000) is now racing in the UK in GB3 ...

“ ”

Look at the open-wheeler drivers who went on to success in touring cars. There’s been some rippers ... they all came from Formula Holden.

And it’s economical, which is the good part. At Symmons, the drivers got 76 laps, I think. Everyone had a good run and got miles in a fast and cost-effective category.

AA: It’s interesting that you should raise that because there seems to be something of an ongoing push by some people that maybe aren’t interested in seeing success for S5000, that there’s some kind of safety or driving standard issues. And yet when you look at these guys racing at places like Adelaide and the concrete-lined streets at the Gold Coast, they completed more race laps than just about any other category without (Safety Car) interruption.

GC: Yep. Compare the numbers – 76 race laps at Symmons Plains for S5000 … 14 race laps for Super2 at Newcastle …

And then you look at how much each of those laps cost … I think you’ll soon figure out which is the most cost-effective and which is the best value for money as far as improving your driving skills and getting miles in a car.

AA: So, what do you think’s been the issue with the growth of the category?

Why don’t more young drivers want to race in these big banger open wheelers when you see the success of James Golding coming back out of S5000 and doing so well with PremiAir in Supercars?

GC: It’s pretty simple – they all are told that unless they take the Super2 route, they’re never gonna drive a Supercar. I think that’s probably the the main part of it and I think that’s pretty unfair. I don’t think there’s

enough credit put on S5000 – what it takes to drive one, the skill it takes to drive one well, and safely.

James is living proof in my eyes. He was already a good driver. He drove quite well when he was in Supercars before, but I believe from watching him that his driving, back in a Supercar, improved after he drove S5000.

AA: Yeah, the, the feedback from a few of the young kids that have driven both S5000 and Supercars is that their characteristics – bizarrely – aren’t that dissimilar.

GC: I couldn’t answer that, but I think any time you drive a car that’s faster than another car and you get back into the other one, you’ll find the other one easy to drive.

I just see it as, as the best value for money. You can do an Australian Championship in an S5000 for about the same money as you do a national Formula Ford series. The cost effectiveness and reliabilty of these cars is amazing. Some of the engines have now done 7000km without an issue, the Australian made Holinger gearbox is superb … they’re technically superb.

AA: I guess the ‘elephant in the room’ is the fact that S5000 was stopped from racing at Bathurst last year, on safety grounds …

GC: It’s this so-called safety issue that astounds me. It’s the only FIA crash-tested chassis racing in Australia. It has got a bigger engine and it is heavier than what it ran overseas, but it was approved by the (Onroak-Ligier) factory that built them.

told a very good S5000 driver just recently that unless he does six Super2 rounds he is “dreaming” about racing a Supercar …

I think a lot of very good drivers find it extremely difficult to find the budget that’s necessary to do Super2. It’s an exorbitant amount. Those cars are no more relevant to the current Supercar than an S5000. I don’t understand what it’s all about. I think it’s all too inward looking.

People like to keep everything in their own control … and the cash flow coming into their side of the sport.

It’s actually quite selfish when you look at it.

Image: DANIEL KALISZ

Top: S5000 contested three well-received races at the 2022 AGP ... only for the importation of F2/F3 to elbow them off the Albert Park show this year.

Left and above: Respected Tasmanian motorsport identity Greg Crick is overseeing his grandson Charlie Parker’s early motorsport experience – to date that includes regular Excel racing (left) and (above) the GRM Combine, in an S5000.

Lower left: Engineering GRM S5000 (and Supercar) hot-shot James Golding at Symmons Plains – Crick came away impressed with the technical make-up of S5000 and what the category offers.

Image: HOBART MERCURY NEWSPAPER

Image: DANIEL KALISZ They raced at Bathurst, with reduced power, late in 2021. There was a bit of a coming together at the Chase; one slid down the fence. No one was injured – noone has had a scratch, ever, in an S5000!

And, all of a sudden, they’ve decided that those cars are so dangerous that they’re going to fly over the fence into the crowd and and kill someone?

It’s not like we haven’t seen other cars get airborne. I remember seeing an Aussie Race Car go over the fence and land outside the racetrack at Bathurst – and they still race there. We’ve seen other cars, including GTs, upside down on top of tyre walls. We saw the TransAm crash at Symmons Plains where James Simpson and Gricey came together – and James Simpson was a long way up on the Safety rail that goes across in front of the pit area …

Any race car can fly if the wheels get tangled or they ride over bodywork. I don’t understand what this is all about.

AA: Do you think we are too ‘sedancentric’ in Australia? I can remember when competing in and racing in the Gold Star,

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winning the Gold Star, was probably the highlight of most racing car drivers’ careers.

Is it this fixation with Supercar racing in this country that holds S5000 back?

GC: Oh, I think everyone’s fixated with Supercars. That’s fine … but look back, when John Bowe came out of openwheelers, which was where he did his apprenticeship, in Formula Ford, F2, Atlantic and F5000 … and then went into touring cars.

The upside of him, and others, coming out of open-wheelers was the engineering skill they brought to touring cars – making ‘em handle better and saying “hang on, this is not good enough. We’ve gotta fix this, we’ve gotta fix that.” Previous to that, I think the guys that were in sedans just drove around the problems.

Look back at the open-wheeler drivers who went on to success in touring cars There’s been some rippers – Mark Skaife, Craig Lowndes, Jason Bright, Mark Larkham, Rick Kelly, Neil Crompton, Bargs … they all came from Formula Holden.

Great drivers that are on the world stage did their time in Australia’s premier openwheeler racing at the time, including IndyCar Champions Will Power and Scott Dixon.

Obviously that was before Super 2 and Super3 ... but those guys all learned their skills driving those big fast open-wheeler cars. S5000 offers the same.

Currently, you can only put it down to one thing, which is that the young guys are being told that unless they drive Super2, that they’ve got no hope. One team owner

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AA: Back to the safety question – your grandson Charlie tested one of the cars down at Symmons Plains earlier this year; would you be comfortable him racing one of these cars? And have you got any plans for the future?

GC: It was something I never thought about until he drove it in the GRM Combine at Symmons Plains and he went pretty well, drove it well – and this is a kid that, 18 months before, I’d been teaching to change gears in a Hyundai.

That’s a pretty big step. He’s driven a few other things in the meantime, but I would be comfortable for him to race one of these cars.

You’ve got a halo, you’ve got a carbonfibre crash-tested chassis. They’re a safe car.

I do not understand the Safety committee at Motorsport Australia saying that these cars are too dangerous to race on certain tracks when other cars, with higher power:weight ratios, are still allowed to run on those same circuits.

AA: From a category point of view, S5000 is racing at some pretty high-profile events later in this year. It’s one of those categories that seems to have been well thought out.

The cars are technically current. They’re demonstrably safe, and yet we still get this pressure to hold them back.

GC: Well, I just think it needs more support, from key elements of the sport. Chris Lambden did a great job … his idea of building it, developing it. Even when he was doing that, he had Supercars come in and try and build another car, which as you know was not a great success ... but it does point to Supercars’ acknowledgement of what a good concept it is.

He kept at it and built the first car and then, to the credit of the GRM organisation, Gary stepped up and committed to build all the cars. Which they did very well. It obviously took an enormous financial punt to do it and good on them for doing it. But it’s something that needs support – it’s the Gold Star category! Why aren’t Motorsport Australia helping more to make this category successful?

AA: Do you think they’re being pressured by ‘outside elements’ to keep it down?

GC: I couldn’t say that; I’m not sure.

But there’s always … you know what motorsport’s like in Australia, or anywhere – it’s full of politics and if you’re not a politician, you’ll never get anywhere in it!

The sport, all sports, are full of vested interests. People push the train that they’re on – but sometimes it’s not in the interest of the sport or the young people coming through.

It’d be a great shame if a formula that offers this much to Australian motorsport stumbled due to lack of support from areas of the sport which should do so …

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Above: Team co-owner Pitbull – doing NASCAR differently ... Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

TRACKHOUSE IS DOING NASCAR DIFFERENTLY

TRACKHOUSE IN A FAIRLY NEW NASCAR TEAM WITH AN INTERESTING KICK – MEGA MUSIC STAR PITBULL IS A PART OWNER. BUT THERE IS MORE TO IT THAN JUST THAT. AUTO ACTION’S ANDREW CLARKE SAT IN ON AN EARLY MORNING CHAT WITH THE TEAM ...

AMERICA LOVES fame, and America loves it when fame crosses borders. So when Armando Pérez, better known as Pitbull, bought into Trackhouse Racing in NASCAR two years ago, the lines blurred and the global interest in NASCAR scored a boost.

A fan of the sport since watching ‘Days of Thunder’, Pitbull also knew Trackhouse driver Danial Suarez through connections, and that got him onto team owner Justin Marks, and the rest is history. The timing was perfect – Marks was starting something and had the ability to align with a star who has sold more than 25 million albums and has been viewed on YouTube more than 15 billion times.

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What aligned Marks and Pitbull, in addition to a shared love of NASCAR and motorsport, was the idea that they could do something more than just win races.

The pair are from very different backgrounds.

Pitbull was born in Miami to Cuban immigrants. It is said he learned to speak English from Sesame Street – we knew it was educational – and he grew up in tough crime-riddled neighbourhoods, where the seeds of his drive to make a difference were sewn. His music elevated him out of the cycle, and now he is one of the biggest names in the music industry and about

to release a new album named after his NASCAR team – Trackhouse.

Marks was born in Missouri, grew up in Iowa and then California, and gave up university to concentrate on his motor racing. He raced in sportscars and NASCAR, his biggest win being a class victory in the Six Hours at The Glen while racing for Meyer Shanks Racing in an Acura (we say Honda) NSX. Marks comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His father is a partner in a private equity firm and a board member of GoPro. He was an interim CEO at Tesla and is a minority shareholder in the Golden

State Warriors in the NBA. The Trackhouse Motorplex, formerly the GoPro Motorplex, near Mooresville in North Carolina, is a family venture that created a bit of a springboard for Marks getting into NASCAR team ownership.

Trackhouse’s origins came about when Marks failed in a bid to buy Leavine Family Racing when it folded at the end of the 2020 season. Rather than sulking in a corner, he created his own team, Trackhouse … from scratch.

He brought in former Dale Earnhardt executive Ty Morris to help with the dayto-day operations. The team runs a cause

Above: Ross Chastain pits during the Daytona 500. Below middle: Suarez in the #99 Camaro. Below right: Chastain leads Suarez.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF CHASTAIN’S WILD RUN AT MARTINSVILLE LAST YEAR

The team, Erin Marks,Justin Marks, Ross Chastain, Armando Pérez-’Pitbull’ and Danial Suarez marketing strategy that includes STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) learning with several initiatives around inner-city charter schools, which are non-government public schools in the USA. It was this link that grabbed Pitbull’s attention, given he is funding some of those schools.

Suarez was hired as a driver for the onecar team, ironically leasing a racing charter from Spire Motorsport, which bought Mark to Leavine, and things started to shift.

Marks cut a deal with Richard Childress Racing for cars and engines and then, in 2021, Trackhouse bought the NASCAR operations of Chip Ganassi Racing and expanded to two cars from 2022 onwards.

Ross Chastain joined the team and is right in the thick of the 2023 title, as he was in 2022.

“The whole initiative when we got together with Trackhouse was all about uniting people and creating awareness for Trackhouse and the sport and NASCAR,” Pitbull said last week. “I feel that music is a universal language that unites; it doesn’t divide. It’s the same way you could utilise the race car and how everybody loves racing. So you put them together, and that is what it’s all about to me.

“How do we find unconventional, nontraditional ways to create awareness, unite people, and bring them out to the track so they have fun and enjoy? Make them fall in love with Trackhouse, our journey, how it’s been from nothing to something, and the underdog mentality. It runs parallel with what’s happened in my career and it’s happened in the music industry with me.”

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He said calling his new album Trackhouse was a no-brainer, and there are lyrics on the album directly related to the track action.

“There’s a song called Takes 3 where I mention the move that I call ‘Ross Off the Wall’, ‘Off the Chain Chastain’, and then it’s Danielle Rapido Suarez.”

The song references Chastain’s wild run at Martinsville last year when he planted his foot on the last lap of the race, needing to win to remain in the title fight, but wasn’t in the running until he ran full throttle against the wall through the final to corner the win race. If you haven’t seen it, use the QR Code to check it out. Trackhouse the team is also spoken about as fighters in Can’t Stop Us Now. Or go to www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0eevQ1tFgTo Pitbull is helping to grow NASCAR, which is staggering given the size of NASCAR. But Marks says the alignment for him was perfect from the start.

“It’s been amazing, because we all just think so much alike,” he says. “It’s about trying to create something great in the world and something that’s memorable and something that resonates with as many people, inspires as many people as possible.

“It’s a creative collaboration, and it’s an alignment in stories. It’s given us an opportunity to have a partner that’s very creative and has a very different life experience and sees the world through a different lens, but at the same time, sees the same opportunity and is motivated by the same things.

“Being successful in music is competitive, and it’s difficult. You have to find your way

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and find your voice – and it’s the same thing in racing. It’s been empowering and inspiring for us, and this (the Trackhouse album) is just another incredible moment in the relationship.

“It is an incredible gift that Pitbull’s given us, to be able to take our Trackhouse story out to his world and to his fans and following, with some great music and some memorable experiences.”

In answering questions about his involvement in the team, Pitbull says it is very real and not a publicity stunt.

“This is all about our stories coming together, and that’s why the fans love it,” he says. “They know that in no way, shape, or form is this something that we’re just trying to do just because we’re trying to get Trackhouse to a certain level. This right here is about making history. It’s generational, it’s about creating a legacy, having fun doing it and putting the two stories together.

“They coincide. It’s all about constantly fighting and proving everybody wrong. It’s that underdog mentality that nothing is something, and that’s where it aligns. To do it through music and then Ross, Daniel, Ty, Justin and the whole Trackhouse team do it on the track.

“As far as the team goes, I think it is doing phenomenally well and clearly it’s been disruptive in a very positive way in the sport.

As for me being at the track, I was just at Daytona, I’m going to go and check out the team in Chicago, and I’m trying to be involved as much as I can.

“Now that everything’s up and running, and for lack of a better term, to a normal

state,” he says, referencing the COVID lockdowns, “you’re going to see me more at the track as far as communicating with the team and the drivers. I try to let them know that I’m very proud of them. It’s nothing but respect for what the team does, what the organisation does, but what those drivers do when they get in that car and give it all they have.”

Pitbull opened the first Slam school (charter schools) in Miami a decade ago and took a NASCAR into that school many years before Trackhouse. Slam now has 14 schools in Florida, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona, with more than 7000 students.

Now he gets to take one of his cars to the schools and prove the value of the STEM concept.

“I got a chance to survey and have the ultimate focus group when I saw those kids see a NASCAR and go, ‘Wow, what is this?’ Then about a year and a half ago, we brought a Trackhouse car in, and they got a chance to feel it, touch it, and hear the engine roar. Right there, a whole new world opened for them.

“So if you think about it, we’re already winning because that’s really what this is all about. In one way or another, we can help those that need it the most and have fun doing it. This process and what it is to create a winning team and a career that’s had so much longevity.”

Trackhouse is a disrupter and, in a short time, it has climbed to the top of NASCAR. Marks knew he wanted to be different, and when Pitbull joined the team, that was even easier.

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AGI SPORT: FILLING THE NATIONAL VOID

AS OUR AUSSIE YOUTH IS PRESENTED WITH GREATER OPPORTUNITY TO CHASE THEIR INTERNATIONAL OPEN WHEEL DREAMS, SYDNEY-BASED AGI SPORT IS AT THE COALFACE WITH THEIR F4 TRAINING AND PREPARATION. AUTO ACTION’S TIMOTHY NEAL SPOKE WITH AGI SPORT OWNER ADAM GOTCH ABOUT ITS ROLE, INVESTMENTS, AND FUTURE GROWTH… AS IT stands, from Formula 1 down to USF4 and across the continents of Europe, North America, and other globe traversing competitions, there are currently at least 20 young Australians plying their trades in the numerous and expanding amount of open wheel formulae series.

With a limited amount of international ‘pathway’ open wheel competition in Australia itself, and none that officially use the universal Tatuus machinery that’s employed across the world, getting applicable/relatable training and mechanistic preparation before our young talent heads overseas, is relatively sparse.

That’s where AGI Sport and its F4 Driver Academy step in to fill the void, offering a direct bridge of the gap between karting and ‘Euro’ open wheelers.

What started out as the AGI Engineering and Technology Group in 2009, led by its talisman – owner and team principal Adam Gotch – has grown into an academy that supports the aspirations of young drivers as they set out on their hopeful path toward the pinnacle of F1 or IndyCar. For two decades, Gotch had worked at the very top as a mechanic in environments like the BMW Williams F1 team, working with and alongside some of the world’s best racers both nationally and internationally.

From F1 champion Alan Jones, to F1 race winners like Ralf Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo, as well as IndyCar champs Will Power and Scott Dixon, to a host of V8 Supercar legends like Marcus Ambrose to the current crop, Gotch has been there.

AGI’s 2022 academy year has already

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reaped fantastic results, with the experienced Gotch and his professional team of engineers having elevated a promising generation of talent into prime overseas seats.

There are currently five young Aussies from AGI’s last group of six that are setting themselves to compete internationally this year, in James Piszcyk (British F4), Costa Toparis (GB3), Gianmarco Pradel and Jack Beeton (Italian F4), and Jesse Lacey (USF4).

Several have already shown their promise, like Pradel in the Spanish Formula Winter Series, and Lacey taking a USF4 podium on debut. Gotch also travelled with Beeton to the UAE, where he and Piszcyk competed the UAE F4 championship ahead of their respective 2023 British and Italian campaigns.

The very highly rated Toparis also

recently made his GB3 debut at Oulton Park in the UK, and had a very promising start despite some early setbacks.

After starting its academy program in 2021, by 2022 AGI sport was approached

by Motorsport Australia about running the data and engineering side of things for the Asia Pacific region of the Ferrari Drivers Academy (FDA).

AGI’s ongoing role now involves supplying engineering staff and reporting on drivers performances directly to the Ferrari talent scouts in Sepang, Malaysia, where the region’s final is held, with Gotch then traveling onto Maranello in Italy with the two finalists (Pradel and Beeton in 2022).

In Sepang, alongside the FDA, the AGI team is responsible for overseeing the development of 24 kids from the Asia pacific region.

And with the AGI Academy program soon set to move into a permanent and upgraded facility, its own growth and expansion is closely tied-up in Australia’s future and current talent.

Auto Action spoke with Gotch about its core aims, the present and future direction of AGI Sport, and its recent acquisitions of four of the latest-spec Tatuus F4 machines.

“Our role these days is to coach and teach young drivers coming out of elite level karting,” Gotch began.

“We basically help them to make that transition into Formula 4 cars, and then we help them to get overseas with that experience behind them.

“Once they’re looking to take that step out of karting, they come to us and we look to start that transition, which was initially word of mouth. But in terms of our growth, the announcement by Motorsport Australia in regards to the FDA in the Asia Pacific, and AGI being recommended to assist in that program, has really helped in growing that interest in us. We can also give those local kids prior opportunities in an F4 car through our training academy.

“With the FDA over here and this new Drive to Survive generation coming through, there’s a huge amount of interest in going overseas, and we’re able to offer that experience with getting onto the Formula 4 platform.”

As it stands, AGI is running out of workshops in Sydney with its new crop of six drivers and a host of full-time staff, with some exciting news to come in regards to some new and permanent facilities.

In terms of machinery, they currently have eight of the Gen1 Mygale’s and two

Above: Kristian Janev heads out at SMP. Below left: Adam Gotch attends as Jack Beeton prepares for Italian F4. Above right: Adam Gotch and Ferrari Academy Head Marco Matassa . Right: Gianmarco Pradel – Italian F4 also.

Below: The current spec Tatuus – four coming to AGi in Austrlaia.

Gen1 Tatuus Abarths, which are prepped in Sydney, and run at SMP, Winton, and Phillip Island.

AGI also has a team which competes with its drivers in the new Australian Formula Open (AFO) series.

And with its new in-coming Gen2 Tatuus Abarth’s investment, the team is eyeing off the opportunity to run some teams in South East Asia.

But between the balance of training and genuine on race track time, it’s a fine line in fitting in the necessary preparation.

“With the new AFO series there’s the potential for kids to get on track now, but having said that, our main business model is getting them ready for overseas.

In Europe now, it’s 15 years-of-age to get them into F4, and that gives us a pretty small transition window from Karting into F4. The US market is a little bit older and doesn’t really seem to be an issue, so we’ve got a bit more time with that.

“And in line with that, there are some things we’re looking at over this side of the world in terms of growing our Formula 4 program into Asia.

“It’s looking like the Macau Grand Prix is going to become an F4 event from this

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year onwards, and we’re looking closely at being involved in running a team there this year.

“We’re in talks with Davide De Gobbi, who runs TOPSPEED, the promoter of the UAE F4 and the UAE F3 regional series, who now has the rights to the South East Asian F4. And we think that may expand into an Oceanic series by 2024, so we’re just waiting on those details before pulling the trigger on that.”

Therein lays the importance of AGI’s new Tatuus cars for both giving a relative experience in training and on-track, which to-date, will be the only current spec models in the country, and will be arriving in June of this year.

“The new Tatuus cars will allow us to prepare our young drivers even better, with a greater chance of them being on pace as they’re the exact same vehicles as they’d encounter in Europe.

“It’s the main vehicle of choice in the major domestic competitions now in England, Germany, Italy, and the UAE; so it’s a platform you can now take around the world and compete with in most competitions.

“It also gives us the option down the road to go over there and compete in Asia or

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the other side of the world. For example, It’s also a possibility for us to go to the UAE F4 Championship with some cars in the future, and we’ve already spoken to some of the major teams in Europe about doing a collaboration there.

“I’ve spent quite a bit of the last six months in Europe and USA with these cars, so we’re well placed in terms of the engineering and mechanical side of things. And in terms of testing, we’ll run them on Hankook tyres, with the option of using the FDA and UAE-used Giti tyre, as well as running the Pirellis, which are the generally common European series tyre.

“So depending on where the client is going to race, we can bring those tyres in and they can test with both the relevant tyre, on the same Tatuus Abarth.”

AGI already has six new kids out of karting this year, which they are looking hopefully to expand to around 10 students by the year’s end, with an eye towards preparation for the FDA regional final in Sepang, and also for overseas completion in 2024.

The current group is made up from a mix of drivers that are strictly in training, and a few that have already started competing and training for the AFO series this season. They include: Kristian Janev from the 2022 Australian Karting Championship, Brodie Yendle, Loclan Hennock and Peter Bouzinelos, currently competing in the 2023 Australian Karting Championship, Kamal Mrad, who’s taking part in the current European Karting Championship, and Madeline Stewart, who’s a part of the USA Porsche Sprint Challenge this season.

AGI are running five cars in the AFO4 category for the current season, with Janev

having made a brilliant class clean sweep of Round 1 at Winton, whilst also finishing up the pointy end of the field against the faster Dallara and Tatuus entries.

Yendle is the other of the current academy members who has also started testing in preparation for the remaining events of the four state, six round national series.

With a busy year ahead, including the rest of the AFO season, the FDA Asia Pacific and world final in Maranello, moving into some top class and ontrack facilities, the new Tatuus’ arriving, preparing teams to hopefully race overseas, and the constant prep and training to nurture Australia’s next F4 crop, AGI Sport have very competently placed themselves into a very important, and once vacant role.

Australia’s interst in open wheel racing, both nationally and internationally, is in good hands with the likes of AGI to help.

www.autoaction.com.au I 35

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SPEEDWAY 13 Dale Morrison claims a thrilling Victorian Street Stock Title. Image: PARIS CHARLES

NEWTON’S QUEENSLAND SPRINCAR TITLE

THRILLING THREE-WAY DANCE FOR VICTORIAN STREET STOCK TITLE A STOUT field of 59 Street Stocks assembled at Hamilton’s Western Speedway, for the Victorian Championship. After 28 heats and a B-Main the top 20 competitors faced off for the 35-lap final and what an epic race that would prove to be, producing one of the greatest finishes of all time with a three-way race to the line.

Defending champion Matt Nelson proved his worth, claiming pole position. Nelson led the charge, opening a quarter of lap lead before rolling to the infield, vacating his title defence on lap 15. Mick Dann inherited the lead, with Nathan Thorne challenged hard, resulting in the duo connecting, ending Dann’s title quest.

Thorne led aboard his wounded Magna, but Morrison and AJ Lawrence pulled alongside in the final corner, making it a three-way sprint, crossing the line door-todoor and a mere 0.077 separating the trio. Just behind, a nasty crash occurred taking several cars out in the process.

Morrison won, Thorne and Lawrence sharing the podium. Steven Watts was fourth after winning the B-Main followed by Jason DeGoldi, Peter Kinnear, Jayden Edwards, Dean Jenkins and David Barrie on the lead lap while Rhys Meakins and Brad Warren were involved in the crash where the red lights blazed, and the race would be declared. The duo was classified a lap down in 10th and 11th. Warren was transferred to the local hospital for further treatment. Nathan Russell, Scott Secombe and Shaun Henry rounded out the finishers. Joining both Nelson and Dann on the retiree list was Jayden Blomeley, Jason Duell, Steven Gartner and Morris Ahern.

SUPPORTS CRAIG ANSELL claimed the Limited Sportsman victory over Rod Hetherington and Nathan McDonald completing the podium. James Peacock won the Junior Sedans New Stars from Steane Cosson and Cruz Carlin.

The Top Stars final went to River Patterson over Jayden Lock and James Oliver, while Cody McCabe, Austin Chivers and Bailey Sinclair squared away the podium in a carnage riddled Standard Saloons final and a variety of Vintage Sedans and Hot Rods turned back the hands of time with some spirited demonstration runs.

66 Ryan Newton leads #17 Luke Oldfield, #27 Cody Maroske and A1 Jock Goodyer. Images: MATTHEW PAUL HI-TEC OILS Toowoomba Speedway was a hive of activity with three championships on offer – the Queensland Sprintcar Title and two national crowns (the Australian Compact Speedcar and Australian Lighting Sprint Titles) run over two hard-fought nights of open-wheeled competition.

Jock Goodyer and Ryan Newton shared the front row for the SEDL Earthmoving Queensland Sprintcar Championship.

Newton shot to the front while Goodyer was swallowed by Cody Maroske, Brock Hallett, defending champion Luke Oldfield and Jamie McHugh on the opening lap. Newton quickly worked his way through traffic until Maroske spun, bringing on the first caution period.

Newton led the restart, while traffic again came into play as Oldfield challenged for the lead. Things were heating up for an exciting conclusion until the red lights blazed for Marcus Dumesny after coming together with Goodyer while challenging for fourth. Sadly, Dumesny was compromised medically, and it took the medical crew almost two hours to extract him safely before being transferred to the hospital with a fracture of the T3 vertebrae in his upper back.

The race was declared, awarding Newton his maiden Queensland Championship with Oldfield and McHugh sharing the podium.

Next was Goodyer, Ben Atkinson Jr, Randy Morgan, Jy Corbet, Taylor Prosser, Kaydon Iverson, Jessie Attard, Brent Kratzmann, Adam Butler, Andrew Corbet, Brody Appleby, Darren Jensen and Richard Morgan the final finisher.

FANNING FLIES FOR AUSSIE 1 THREE TIME and defending Lightning

SPEEDWAY NEWS with Paris Charles Sprints champion AJ McTaggart looked on track to retain his crown; however damage on the second night of competition ended his run before the 25-lap final of the Blatch’s Mechanical Repairs Australian Lightning Sprints Championship, meaning a new champion would be crowned.

From Pole position Dave Fanning led the final from go to whoa to claim his second national championship with Tyler Stralow and Kurt Wilson sharing the podium. Fourth was Keith Blatch from Scott Withers, Chris Davis, Darren Baldwin, Wayne Iacono, Scott Jukes, Jack Selmes, Harley Graham and James Elliot rounded out the top dozen. One lap behind was Michael Gollagher, Kevin Ottley and Ally Moore while Jack Selmers, Sean Iacono, Jim Kennedy and Andrew Kimm retired to the infield.

STEWART STREAKS TO CHAMPIONSHIP

HARRY STEWART made the most of his front row start to claim the 42nd running of an incident-plagued RJR Kitchens Australian Compact Speedcars Title. Bodie Smith and

Dave fanning Australian Lightning Sprint Champion

Harry Stewart Australian Compact Speedcar Champion

Dion Wilson would join the podium after 30 hard laps. Queensland and Victorian state champions Andrew Parkes and Matt O’Neill were next, followed by Luke Williams, Trent Usher, Mitchell Allison, Richard Treanor, Trevor Perry, Chris Serle-Thrussell, Brock Byrne, Mitchell Rooke, Rod Saville, Jeremy Ennever, Terry Brown and Arren Heeley.

Outgoing champion Justin Paul would retire along with Ron Williams and Dave Collins.

SUPPORTS

LIAM WILLIAMS claimed victory in Round 6 of the Crete4U Formula 500 Series; sharing the podium were James Kennedy and Bailey Leeson. The Junior Formula 500 final was claimed by Cooper Norman over Charlie Bowen and Chay Corbet. Taking the honours in the AMCA Nationals was Steve Potts from Tony Blanch and Bruce Marshall.

RANKIN RACES TO STAMPEDE SUCCESS HORSHAM’S BLUE Ribbon Raceway hosted the final round of the 2023 Victorian Formula 500 Stampede Series. A field of 16 competitors assembled to take the fight to Tim Rankin who was undefeated to this point but from the get-go Tim rose to the challenge on a very racy surface, checking out from the field to run 25 express laps, posting a comfortable winning margin of 10.398 seconds over Alex Ryan with Brooke Buckingham rounding the podium.

Declan Robinson, Dale Sinclair, Jack Nolan and Indy Rea remained on the prime lap.

Greg Dunmore, Russell, Lauren Bowen, Jett Hart, Aaron Cook placed further back while Dylan Anton and Bayley Wilson failed to travel the distance. Justin Bowen, Rob Rankin and Daniel Burleigh failed to start the final.

38 I www.autoaction.com.au

Rankin claimed the Stampede Series (352 points) – completing the top five were Buckingham (328), I. Rae (318), Russell (300) and J. Bowen (297).

EPIC WINGLESS FINAL

JEREMY BEDDISON and Nicholas Ryan went wheel-to-wheel in the express 25-lap Wingless Sprints final. The duo opened a commanding gap over the 12-car field. Ryan threw everything possible at the leader but was unable to find a way past with only a mere 0.328 of a second between them. Steven Hateley was third with Robert Whiteside and Pole sitter Ricky Bailey also on the lead lap, followed by Craig Plater, Kahn Aston, Kelvin Johnson, Tyler Bish and Cameron O’Brien while Mark Hutchins and Luke Johnson failed to finish.

SUPPORTS

THE V8 Trucks gripped the fans as Wes Bell held off a determined Jaryd Carman by just .155 of a second. Fletcher Mills, Nathan Bird and Donald Timmins rounding out the five.

Jamie Pumpa claimed his maiden Production Sedans victory; rounding the podium was the Queale’s in Ryan and Shaun. Dean Hughes and Haydn Riley wrapped up the top five.

Andrew Wilson got the upper hand in the Limited Sportsman’s after a tough battle with Jock Baker. Tom Baker, Nathan McDonald, and Craig Ansell making up the first five home.

James Oliver led all 15-laps of the JSPA Series Top Stars final defeating Pary Das, Jayden Lock, Will Fallon and Blake Glynn.

Tim Rankin clean sweeps all three finals in the Vic F500 Stampede Series. Image: PARIS CHARLES The New Stars feature was claimed by James Peacock; rounding the top five was Jackson Warrener, Steane Cosson, Max Leersen and Tyler Wilson.

In the Junior Formula 500’s Koby O’Shannassy claimed the win over Rusty Ponting, Aston Rodriquez, Hugo Chivell and Chevette Muir.

SEDAN TRIPLE TITLE TREAT THE CASTROL Edge Lismore Speedway was a haven for sedan fans as the venue played host to three New South Wales championships, for Super, Modified and Junior Sedans. The event was scheduled for two nights – however Mother Nature curtailed the opening night, cramming everything into a single night which would also become rain affected.

MATT PASCOE – SUPER SEDAN CREAM RISES TO THE TOP A STRONG field of 23 Super Sedans ran through the six qualifying heats, the reigning Australian Champion, Matt Pascoe and local Hayden Brims shared the front row going into the final.

Brims got the jump, followed by Pascoe, David Nichols, Ash Bergmeier, and defending Champion Steve Latham running the top five as the race settled into rhythm. Pascoe moved to the front as they negotiated their way through traffic, soon followed by the first caution.

Latham’s title defence would soon come to an end while holding down third.

With open track, Pascoe opened a handy break from Brims and Nichols as they battled for second as the rain began to fall which resulted in numerous incidents, making the track conditions too challenging to continue,

Australia 1 Matty Pascoe claimed his second NSW Super Sedan championship.

Images: TONY POWELL

Queensland 1 Nathan MacDonald added the NSW title to his Queensland crown

ending the race prematurely.

Matty Pascoe claimed his second NSW Championship with Tyson Moon and Nichols making up the podium. Ash Bergmeier, Brad Pascoe, Steve Jordan and Zac Brims all finished on the lead lap. The Nicolas, Mick Jnr and Mick Snr, finished one lap down while rounding out the finishers were Dion Bennett and Ty Pascoe. Brims, Dave Gartner, Latham, JJ Hamilton and the Taylors (Daniel and Scott) found their way on to the DNF list.

NATHAN MACDONALD – MODIFIED SEDAN STATE TITLE COLLECTION CONTINUES

THE 35-LAP Modified Sedan final saw an all-MacDonald front row with Shane and Nathan; the latter got the jump and quickly stretched his legs. Lapped traffic

would soon come into play where the well-travelled West Australian Champion Joel Berkley pounced to the lead before Nathan fought his way back to the front.

Nathan MacDonald and Berkley continued their tussle to the chequered flag, Nathan adding the NSW title to his Queensland championship and Steven Quirk rounding out the podium.

Greg Worling, Shannon Blackburn and Quinton Clarke finished on the lead lap while rounding out the 10 were Daniel Henshaw, Jason Beer, Mick Langton and Leonie Knight. Joining S. MacDonald on the infield was David Jacobi, Joshua Schultz, TJ Horne, Ben Stead, Max Clarke and Alex Sweeney.

The Junior Sedan final was rained out but has been rescheduled to the June long weekend.

0 Moss ‘The Boss’ Buchanan hangs up his helmet after a long and loyal service to the South Australian Speedway community

#1 Ryan Alexander beats his teammate #0 Jake Armstrong in the Modlites feature race. Image: PARIS CHARLES

MURRAY BRIDGE SEASON FINALE THE MURRAY Machining & Sheds, Murray Bridge Speedway held its final race night of the season, which featured Round 9 of the Ausloans Finance Strathalbyn Track Championship for all five classes featured on the night.

Carey Weston used his experience to take victory, swooping to the lead with two laps to run in the 20-lap Street Stock feature. Pole sitter Phil Watson and Nigel Reichstein made it an all Ford Falcon podium. Keith Moore and Dennis Knowles were next. A special mention to Moss Buchanan (13th) in the final race of his Speedway career – during his time Moss has played a key role in the management of South Australian Speedway.

The reverse grid format for the Modlite 20-lap feature made it an exciting affair. Ryan Alexander navigated his way through the field to take the win in what will be his final race in the class, Jake Armstrong and Luke Fraser sharing the podium, with Jacob Carlier and Brian Chadwick squaring off the top five.

While others fell by the wayside in the 30-lap Wingless Sprints final, Brett Ireland produced a tidy run to capture the lead in lapped traffic, passing Anthony Tapley for the win and Nate Trewin placing in third. Jesse Alexander and James Rodda completed the top five.

Nick Hall stormed to a commanding win from Jordan Grillet and Renee Pfeilerin in the V6 Sprint final. Kym Simon and John Pfeiler Jr would finish where they started to round out the first five home.

In an exciting Junior Sedan final the lead trio were threewide coming into the final lap, with Ky McEwin emerging as the winner as they crossed the line, ahead of Lucas Warnett and Henry Brumfield. Behind them were Ollie Bartlett and Declan Bolitho.

VEAL’S FOUR STRAIGHT THE PERTH Motorplex staged the final round of its track championship series’, a night that threw many curve balls including power failures, fence repairs and medical transfers, etc. The Maddington Toyota Sprintcar Series final proved to be a carnage-riddled event despite the long stoppages filled with continual unfolding drama Jamie Veal claimed an unprecedented fourth consecutive victory.

Joining Veal on the podium was Callum Williamson, Andrew Priolo and Taylor Milling. Advancing from 22nd to fifth was Jason Kendrick followed by David Priolo, Dayne Kingshott, Jaydee Dack, Mitchell Wormall, Bradley Maiolo and Jason Pryde on the lead lap. AJ Nash, Ken Sartori, Jamie Maiolo, Matthew Cross and Myles Bolger were one lap in arrears. Inglis, Kris Coyle, Daniel Harding, Jeremy Hale, Cameron Mckenzie, Jack Williamson, Trent Pigdon and Ryan Lancaster failed to travel the distance.

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Ingliss claimed the series with 2582 points, Kendrick second (2568), C. Williamson third with (2556) and overall winner of the track championship, Kingshott fourth (2538) and fifth to Maiolo (2408).

THE OLDFIELDS

JOE CHALMERS led the Late Model final before Jason Oldfield made his way past, the lead duo fought to the chequered flag in that order with Warren Oldfield third. Brent Vosbergen, Michael Holmes, Kodee Brown and Jay Cardy were next, followed by the Nylander’s in Matt and David from Matt Goodlad, Freddy Kinsella, Warren Minshull and Damian Hudson on the lead lap, with David Boyes rounding out the field. Craig Vosbergen, Veronica McCann and Chris Barrow ended on the DNF list.

Warren Oldfield won the track championship, ahead of Vosbergen and Michael Holmes third. Vosbergen also claimed the Pro Dirt Series title.

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IN HIS ELEMENT

REIGNING WESTERN Australian Formula 500 Champion Steven Ellement wrapped up the Opal Finance Track Championship, chalking up his eighth feature race win.

Glenn Carstairs and Matt Brown joined the podium celebrations. Brendon Marshman, Alfonso Guadagnino and Mikey Green completing the top six. Chris Dymock, Mark House, David Carstairs, Brendan Newmarch, Jamie Pages and Jeff Ross finishing on the lead lap. Flynn Roser and Darren Wood rounded out the field.

HARDING HANGS TOUGH

THE POOL Shop Group Speedcars final provided a three-way dance between the two Daniels, Golding and Harding, and Kaiden Manders, the latter eventually getting the upper hand, leading the majority of the journey from Harding who did not relent in the chase. With two laps remaining Harding took the lead and victory over Manders and

Jamie Veal claimed his fourth straight feature race win aboard the W17 Monte Motorsports Maxim.

Jason Oldfield claimed the Late Model final.

Images: RICHARD HATHAWAY

Keenan Fleming third. Golding, Beau Doyle, Cory Smith, Patrick Watson, Aron Sharp, Joel Watson and Rob Golding completing the finishers while Vaughan Manders and Declan Minchin did not classify.

Manders won his second track championship, with Doyle and Golding placing in the top three.

The Wingless Sprints final was cut due to curfew.

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NATIONALS WRAP

2023 ALL-HISTORIC

MALLALA

WITH 160 ENTRIES, THIS YEAR’S ALL-HISTORIC MALLALA ON APRIL 22-23 WAS THE 41ST RUNNING OF THE EVENT. THE EVENT WAS RUN IN MAGNIFICENT WEATHER, ATTRACTING LARGE CROWDS OVER THE TWO DAYS. AUTO ACTION’S JOHN LEMM WAS ON HAND TO REPORT ON THE ACTION. IT BEGAN on the Friday evening with around 30 competing vehicles driving into the Mallala township with a police escort for a well-attended street party in Wasleys Road. The Sporting Car Club had been trying to organise something similar for a few years and finally were finally given permission by authorities for it to happen.

Racing car constructor Peter Fowler was again very welcome special guest, bringing with him his recreation of the famous Bryan Thomson Volkswagen Chev, which was on display in the paddock. He also had the honor of driving one of his creations, the Thomson Mercedes 450 SLC Chev in the street parade as well as judging the Show and Shine on Sunday.

HISTORIC SPORTS SEDANS

THIS WAS the opening round of the John McCormack Historic Sports Sedans Australia series with four rounds to follow in four different states.

The large field ran in Supersprint format, longtime Chrysler tragic Jason Maros in the Clem Smith Charger and Simon Pfitzner in the Thomson Mercedes, trading blows through all five encounters, Maros fastest in the first with Pfitzner taking three wins.

Myles Bond in the Barry Bray Nissan Stanza

Images: JOHN LEMM AND DAVID BATCHELOR

Simon Pfitzner runs a little wide staying ahead of Jason Maros

40 I www.autoaction.com.au

turbo took the third after suffering fuel delivery problems in the first runs.

The very understated Datsun 1600 V8 of Mark Haig picked up three thirds.

The Tony Ross Holden FX Chev was back after a 30-year absence, rebuilt by Barry Bay and Ian Baird just in time for the event. Ross was back behind the wheel but struggled with its 16-year-old tyres, having a few spins over the weekend. This earned him the Farmer of the Day award, with which he was delighted.

GROUPS M/O SPORTS, RACING

THESE USUALLY well-supported groups had a disappointingly small number of entries. What the field lack in overall numbers it was more than made up for with the quality of the entries.

Shane Kuchel (Brabham BT18) had been fastest in qualifying and continued his ways in the first race but was another to score a five-second start penalty.

This gave Laurie Bennett (Elfin 600B) the win by two seconds from Kuchel with Mark Goldsmith’s Elfin 400 Globe Ford third from Norm Falkiner’s Elfin Mono.

Kevin Miller had stalled his supercharged Elfin 300 on the grid but made his way back up to sixth.

Kuchel led all the way in the second encounter, holding off Bennett to win by half a second, Goldsmith third ahead of Miller.

Positions were reversed in the next, Bennett leading all the way until he and Kuchel ran side-by-side through the back kink on the final lap. Bennett emerged as the victor by 0.4 second, Goldsmith and Miller again third and fourth.

Kuchel made no mistakes in the fourth, to beat Bennett by almost three seconds, Miller getting his best start of the day to beat Goldsmith to fourth.

Whilst Miller again stalled at the start of the final, Kuchel put on a great display, building up the biggest lead he’d had all weekend, before the Brabham coasted to a halt on the third lap with an electrical fault. This let Bennett into the lead, Goldsmith finishing a distant second, Miller eventually third after displacing Antonio Cafiso (Elfin Clubman) on the final lap.

GROUPS K AND L

PETER FAGAN’S twin-cylinder JAPpowered Cooper Mk 6 led all the way in the first encounter for the oldest groups, followed by a pair of period Lotus 11 copies – Dick O’Keefe’s Photon and Shane Bowden’s Lotus. It was a different era, when neither

the original manufacturer nor the controlling body threatened legal action. First of the earlier Group K was Peter Cundy’s 1934 MG NA, which has early Australian Grand Prix History, the only survivor after Chris Frost’s Fargo and Gerard Miller’s Plymouth both had problems.

In the second race, Fagan was leading by around six seconds when the gear linkage came loose and he pitted. This left Bowden to just edge out O’Keefe for the win, closely followed by Max Pegram’s Gemini Ford FJ. Miller brought the Plymouth home in fifth, the first Group K. Whilst Fagan was busy slicing his way through the field on the first lap of Sunday’s opener, Bowden led before being overtaken by the Cooper on the second lap. Fagan went on to win by 9 seconds from Bowden with O’Keefe 3 seconds back. In sixth place, Miller again was first Group K. Fagan was just as dominant in Race 4, Daniel Jeffries (Elfin Streamliner) second from Pegram for half the race before Bowden worked his way back to second, just ahead of Jeffries. Miller was again first Group K, winning the D. G. Fraser Memorial. After Chris Frost’s Fargo again dropped out with overheating, Cundy’s MG, as the only other Group K running, was second in group.

Laurie Bennett-Elfin 600B holds a slight lead over Shane Kuchel in his Brabham BT18.

Wally Storey) just edging out Foo whilst a last-lap ‘off’ by Bo Jensen (RF 89) sent him plummeting down the field.

It was another battle between Richardson and Whelan in Sunday’s opener until the latter had a loose plug lead with two laps to go, dropping him to eventual ninth. After another slow start, Foo worked his way up to challenge Richardson, setting fastest laps along the way. Connolly just held out Glen Woodforde (Reynard 83FF) and Jensen for third.

Richardson held off Foo, Woodforde and Connolly in the penultimate race for the first few laps before Foo got by whilst Woodforde had a small ‘off’ on the final lap, dropping to seventh whilst Connolly held on for third ahead of a fast-finishing Whelan.

For Foo and Richardson, the final was a rerun, Foo going on to win by 0.6 sec, with Whelan in third from Connolly and Sean Mullins (RF86). Foo picked up Driver of the Meeting for his great drives.

GROUPS Q AND R

The period Lotus 11 copies of Shane Bowden and Dick O’Keefe running in Group L.

The red Cooper led every lap of the final, Bowden just managed to hold out Pegram and Jeffries for second place, Miller again top Group K in sixth.

FORMULA FORD

A VERY close field of Formula Fords was headed by the Van Diemen RF89s of Neil Richardson and Sean Whelan, with Declan Foo’s recently acquired RF88 slicing through the field after a slow start to finish third.

Whelan turned the tables in the next from Richardson, Bruce Connolly’s Elwyn 003B (overseen by original co-builder

Neil Richardson leads the Formula Ford field.

David Hardman’s Hardman JH-1 Formula Pacific leads Bill Hemmings’ Elfin MR8 F5000.

Graham Jarrett three-wheels ... Below: Mark Goldsmith (Elfin 400).

DAVID HARDMAN (Hardman JH1) dominated Q & R, although Bill Hemming (Elfin MR8 F5000) got in front a few times but there was a lot of very close action going on behind this pair.

David Benda (Tiga SC80), Melissa Ford (Mallock U2), Phil Lane (Elfin 700) and Jim Doig (ASP 340C) fought over the next spot in the first, before the Mallock dropped out on the second lap when a pushrod popped out.

Hemming managed to get the jump on Hardman in the second race, the pair swapping the lead a few times before Michael Clarke spun and stalled his Farrell in Turn 2, starting a small fire, which brought out the Safety Car. In the one lap dash to the finish, Hardman won by a second from Hemming with Lane, Blake Miller (Elfin 630B), who had started from the rear of the grid, and Benda next.

With Hemming retiring with a failed fuel pump in Sunday’s first race, Hardman stormed away to win by 29 seconds from Miller, Benda and Doig whilst a spin by Lane dropped him to fifth.

Hardman was just as dominant in the next race, beating Miller by 25 seconds, with Malcolm Boyd (Elfin 792) just edging out a returning Hemming. Lane had spun out of fourth place, putting the rear of the Elfin gently into the tyre wall.

With Hardman sitting out the final race, Miller got the jump on Hemming leading for 4 of the 5 laps before the F5000 got past on the penultimate lap, to win by one second, with Boyd and Benda next. Finishing fifth, Jim Doig had competed in his 1,005th race in his ASP Clubman, which he has raced continuously since 1972.

RALLYSPRINT 2

MATTHEW FRITH, driving an ex tarmacrally Datsun 240Z, won three of the four encounters, the other going to Michael Reimann’s Mazda 808 Improved Production car. Andrew Maros’s Chrysler Valiant was third in each event.

REGULARITY

Regularity was split into Open and Closed vehicles. In the former group, Regularity specialist Shane Lee (Elfin Formula Vee) took two wins with Rod Chivas (Canstel Mk 2) and Lindsay Hick (MG TC Special) taking one each. Neil Martin won all four Closed category events in his Triumph TR7 V8.

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GROUP N TOURING CARS Darren Hossack’s Mazda RX2 won every Historic Touring Car race

The large Group N Historic Touring Car field streams down the start straight with Josh Axford in the lead AFTER A four-year absence, the THR Developments Historic Touring Car Cup was back, attracting 27 entries from four states.

Victorian former Formula Ford, Kart, V8 Supercar and Sports Sedan driver Darren Hossack (Mazda RX2) took the lead on the opening lap of Race 1 from Josh Axford (Escort BDA) and Kirk Davis (Mazda RX2) although Davis was penalised five seconds (along with two others) for getting away too soon. WA’s Graham Woolhouse (Mustang) moved up to third after a battle with Adam Smith (Falcon GT). Hossack went on to win by six seconds from Ashford with Woolhouse third, chased across the line by Justin Elvin and Jason Armstrong in two of the country’s quickest Mini Cooper Ss. Axford again got away quickest in Race 2 before Hossack again got by on the back straight with Axford falling into Smith’s clutches at half distance.

Armstrong was out with a broken crankshaft on lap two whilst Davis reined in Elvin to finish fourth. Hossack’s winning margin over Smith was six seconds.

Sunday’s opener was red-flagged on the first lap after a three-way crash in the Southern Hairpin which took out Woolhouse, Ian Pringle (Mini Cooper S) and Les Walmsley (Cortina) whilst Smith was leading. Pringle was taken to the medical centre but soon released.

On the restart, Smith led until the Northern Hairpin where Hossack took over, Davis third from Axford, Elvin and the fighting Torana XU-1s of Mark Blyfield and Stuart Young, the positions remaining unchanged to the finish. The race was cut by a lap in attempt to make up for the lost time, as were all the day’s remaining races. The Western Australian Mini of Cono Onofaro broke a valve spring during the race, but finished ninth. Help from local Mini people had it ready for the next race.

Race 4 saw Hossack go straight into the lead from Smith, Axford and Elvin before William Van Wersch’s Falcon XY beached itself in the gravel trap on the fourth lap at the Northern Hairpin after brake fade, which caused a red flag.

The race was called, Hossack winning from Smith, Axford, Davis and Elvin.

In the final, Smith led before being the loser in a braking duel with Hossack going into the Northern Hairpin, which saw him rejoin in eighth place.

Hossack then led from Davis, Axford, Elvin and Onofaro. Smith charged back up to sixth before running out of brakes entering the esses on the penultimate lap and sideswiping the wall.

Hossack won the Cup with 128 points to Axford’s 104 and Davis’s 99.

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NATIONALS WRAP NSW MOTOR RACING CHAMPIONSHIPS ROUND 2 - SMP APRIL 15-16

SUNNY SKIES GREETED THE NEW SOUTH WALES MOTOR RACING CHAMPIONSHIPS, WHICH HOSTED THE SECOND ROUND OF THE 2023 SEASON AT SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK. NO LESS than six categories raced at the well-known circuit, with Supersports, Formula Vee, Improved Production, Production Sports, Formula Fords and Sports Sedans all on show. Auto Action’s BRUCE MOXON reports on all of the action from the big weekend of racing.

SUPERSPORTS

With three races on the Saturday, Supersports put on some entertaining events. John-Paul Drake travelled from South Australia in his Wolf, didn’t put in a time in qualifying and started last. He was 11th out of 21 after one lap and took the lead on lap seven, setting a new lap record for the class along the way. Meanwhile Alex Kenny (Nova Proto) led early on and took second place.

In Race 2, Drake’s car failed, with Kenny winning from Ryan Godfrey’s Wolf and Justin Tigani’s Radical.

Race 3 and the overall round win also went to Kenny, after Godfrey led the first two laps and kept Kenny honest thereafter. Third went to Mark Laucke (Wolf), who had been up with the leaders in Race 2 before dropping back.

TOYOTA 86 ROUND 1 – SCHOLARSHIP SERIES

In the first of the new state-based Toyota 86 rounds, it was Marcus LaDelle who took three wins from three races. LaDelle showed great poise and opening up a gap as his pursuer’s squabbled among themselves.

In Race 1, Cody Burcher was second, and Lachlan Bloxsom took second in races two and three. Max Geoghegan was third in all three races.

The Scholarship Series is a training series for new entrants into the 86 class as well as a pre qualifying series to gain a start in the main Toyota 86 Series that are held in conjunction with the Supercars rounds.

SPORTS SEDANS

Brad Shiels took three from three in the Fiat Rotary. In Race 1, Birol Cetin (Camaro) was second early, until sidelined with an engine

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failure. Second in that race and the next went to defending champion Steven Lacey (Camaro) with Matthew and David Ingram sharing the third places in their brand new Mazdas. The final race had Shiels streaking away again before a car failure from Lacey brought out the Safety Car. On the restart, it was Shiels from Matthew and David Ingram and that’s how they finished.

FORMULA CARS

Race 1 was a non-event after a pair of twocar shunts at the start.

Race 2 went to Ryan Astley (Dallara) with a lights-to-flag win. The Safety Car appeared at the end of lap one and from the restart two laps later, second was always in doubt.

Ryan How eventually came out on top of a four-car tussle that included Jon Collins (Dallara), who took third, and the Dallaras of Trent Astley and Winston Van Laarhoven.

The final race also went o Astley with another dominant performance. How and Collins disputed second early, with Collins dropping well back after a tangle. Collins’ drive back through the field was the main point of interest now.

How and Van Laarhoven battled over second for the whole race, until Collins caught up and took third on the last lap.

FORMULA VEE

Races 1 and 2 went to Craig Sparke’s Jacer, after tussles with Darren Williams and John McDonald who took second and third in Race 1. Aaron Pace and Williams filled the minors in Race 2.

The final was a terrific battle between the top six cars. At one point Sparke went from fourth to first in four corners! It all fizzled out when McDonald and Pace tangled and the race finished under Safety Car, Williams winning from Sparke and Simon Pace.

IMPROVED PRODUCTION UNDER 2L Race 1 went to Kurt Macready’s Silvia, which then failed in Race 2, which went to Ryan Gorton’s 200SX ... which then failed while leading the third. Race3 went to Michael

Top: Alex Kenny took two from three in Supersports. Above: Zallou dominated the Prod Sports field.

Below: LaDelle heads the 86 field. Images by BRUCE MOXON Ricketts in his Pulsar, after first Gorton then Ian Price (Escort) had retired while leading.

Ricketts was as far down the order as sixth early on, but took the lead with five laps to go, heading home Graham Bohm (Civic), Matthew Birks (Corolla), Matthew Guintini (Civic) and the fast-finishing Charlie Viola (Integra), who’d dropped to the back early in the race.

FORMULA FORD

Matt Hillyer (Mygale) took the first two races with Conor Somers (Mygale) taking a pair of seconds.

Race 3 was a cracker, Hillyer and Zak Lobko( Mygale) contesting the lead until the final lap. Hillyer was ahead the whole race, but never by much. There was a tangle on the last lap which dropped Hillyer to sixth.

Kobi Williams took second in his Spectrum, from Lachlan Strickland (Mygale) and Edison Beswick’s Spectrum.

SUPERKARTS

Lee Vella (Avoig) took three from four races, after a DNF in the first. That race went to Paul Campbell, also aboard an Avoig. Adam Stewart (Anderson) and Lauren Shand (Avoig) took second and third in the first race and the second, as Campbell’s kart failed.

Race 3 was Vella from Laurie Fooks (Raider) and Stewart.

In the final, Vella held sway over Campbell and Shand. The only 250cc kart entered was Dylan Stephens’ Anderson and he failed to finish a lap in qualifying, crashing on the wet track.

IMPROVED PRODUCTION OVER 2 LITRE

Zac Hudson (RX7) won the first two races comfortably, before slowing in the final, allowing Lachlan McBrien (BMW M3) to win by the slimmest of margins. McBrien had taken second in the earlier races, with Scott Cook (Nissan S13) taking a pair of thirds.

Ben Algie took third in the final in his 200SX.

PRODUCTION SPORTS CARS

The one-hour enduro went to Marcel Zalloua (Audi R8). Zalloua was in front from the start, pulling out a big lead before making his compulsory pit stop. Ian Pretty (GT40) had led early before Zalloua regained the lead.

Pretty dropped back to third behind Paul Lucchitti’s R8.

Pretty handed over to Scott Fleming but the car was failing, retiring after 22 laps.

Once pit stops were complete, Zalloua had opened up a lead of 45s over Lucchitti.

This grew to be almost a lap by the finish, Lucchitti crossing the line just in front. Third went to Geoff Morgan /David Ryan (Porsche), then Stephen Moylan’s Porsche.

Above: Francois Habib was unchallenged in Sports Sedans. Below: Formula Ford (Duratec) was dominated by Jake Santalucia. Bottom: Reef McCarthy heads Jake Rowe in Vees. Images by NIEL HAMMOND

VIC STATE RACING ACTION AT WINTON

IT WAS A GREAT WEEKEND OF RACING IN FANTASTIC CONDITIONS WHICH SAW A MAMMOTH 90 MINUTES OF TRACK TIME ON OFFER FOR EACH OF THE EIGHT CATEGORIES COMPETING ACROSS APRIL 22 AND 23.

THE RACING was tight with a few unexpected results posted at the nation’s action track.

Auto Action’s STEVEN DEVRIES was on hand to cover the action.

replaced Pridmore on the podium in Race 2, then went one better in Race 3 to hand Holden a feature race win ahead of Stoopman, with Pridmore holding off the advances of Johnson for third.

FORMULA FORD

PORSCHE 944S

Sonic Racing’s Jake Santalucia posted all three race wins for the Duratec-powered machines. He edged away to a fivesecond margin in Race 1 ahead of Zak Lobko and Joe Fawcett, but the remaining two races were far from easy. A last lap pass following a Safety Car period secured Race 2 ahead of Fawcett and Jack Bussey, with Race 3 a 25-minute survival test with Fawcett glued to his rear gearbox all the way ahead of Bailey Collins.

The seven-car Kent class field saw Richard Davison continue his impressive run from Sandown with all three class wins, extending his streak this season to six straight. Andrew Lamrock (Spectrum 010) came home second in class – the only other Kent class driver not to strike trouble, with Grant Walker (Swift DB1) third despite a DNF in Race 2.

trouble, Andrew Butcher (BMW M3 E92) posted three solid results to take a round win – his first since Island Magic 2018.

Paul Cruze (Nissan S13) and Robert Baird (Mazda RX7) finished second and third for the round respectively.

Cruze dropped out of contention in Saturday’s race with a blown differential but bounced back with a vengeance with the two remaining race wins on Sunday.

Saturday race winner Luke Grech-Cumbo (HSV Senator) was in line for the round win heading into Race 3, but a brake failure at the end of the front straight culminated in a frightening off-track excursion that ended his race.

SPORTS SEDANS

HYUNDAI EXCELS

With Dean Camm (Chevrolet Corvette) coming to a halt during qualifying and withdrawing from the event, Francois Habib piloted his VZ Commodore Supercar to an unchallenged clean sweep of the weekend’s three races.

Holdens filled the podium positions across all three races, with Ben McLeod (Commodore) and Greg Lynch (HSV GTS) filling out the remaining two spots. The only blot on McLeod’s copybook came in Race 2 with an uncharacteristic spin at Turn 11 costing him second place to Lynch.

IMPROVED PRODUCTION

It was a weekend of attrition for many in the Improved Production ranks, and despite not taking any race wins and with several of the favoured drivers striking

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In a potential changing of the guard, Cadel Ambrose announced his arrival in Excels with a maiden pole and win on Saturday, surviving the early challenge from James Lodge to edge clear by three seconds, with Charlie Nash a further 10 seconds back.

A shortened second race due to an incident didn’t deter Ambrose from recording his second win, with Nash capitalising on a Lodge mistake to snatch second late in the race. Ambrose continued his breakout weekend with the feature race win ahead of Lodge and Harry Tomkins.

FORMULA VEE

Beacham Racing’s Reef McCarthy continued his winning ways with a clean sweep of the weekend, finishing well clear

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of the chasing pack in all three races and extending his run of consecutive race victories this season to five.

Behind McCarthy, a titanic battle all weekend long for best of the rest between Jake Rowe, Andre Curin and Heath Collinson raged on. Eventually, it was Rowe’s second place finish in the third feature race that sealed second overall for the weekend ahead of a tie between the two JRD drivers in Curin and Collinson.

SALOON CARS

With series leader Shawn Jamieson absent, after three action-packed races it was veteran driver Keven Stoopman (AU Falcon) with a pair of race wins along with second in the feature race taking round honours from Holden drivers Adam Lowndes and Kerran Pridmore, with Daniel Johnson (AU Falcon) only three points adrift.

Race 1 came to a premature end following an off for rookie Dane Licciardo (EA Falcon) with Stoopman, Pridmore and Johnson on the podium. Lowndes

After three races and 36 total laps of racing across the weekend, Cameron Beller increased his 2023-win tally to five with all three race wins in the 944 Challenge. Second place in all three races and the round went to returnee Ryan Woods, appearing on track in a 944 for the first time in almost six years after spending recent years campaigning in HQ Holdens.

Adam Brewer continued a good recent run of results with third place in the first race ahead of the more fancied Chris Lewis-Williams. The roles were then reversed for Races 2 and 3, with two third places enough to push Lewis-Williams to third overall by just three points.

MG & INVITED BRITISH

A familiar sight from previous seasons returned with Phil Chester and his MG B GT V8 saluting in two of the weekend’s three races, taking round honours by a mere three points ahead of Keith Ondarchie (Triumph Stag). John Illingworth (MG ZS) was a distant third overall ahead of Trevor Lindsay (Triumph GT6).

Ondarchie was a surprise winner in Race 2 ahead of Michael Trathan (MG Midget) and Lindsay, with Chester posting a sixthplace finish following an unscheduled pit stop on lap two. Whatever the problem, he bounced back to dominate the feature race from Ondarchie and Danny Ciama (MG B GT V8).

The next round of the Victorian State Race Series sees a return to Philip Island over the weekend of May 26-28.

This round is run by PIARC – for more infomation visit www.VSRS.com.au

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NATIONALS OFF ROAD KIWIS DESERT DASH WIN A DECADE IN THE MAKING NEW ZEALAND drivers Raana Horan and Michael Connor (pictured) have managed to survive the chaos to win the second round of the 2023 Motorsport Australia Off Road Championship.

The Pooncarie Desert Dash was tough on man and machine with the event claiming many victims including two teams who lost the lead through a mix of incidents and mechanical gremlins.

But the consistency of Kiwi combination Horan and Connor proved decisive as they won by just over a minute ahead of Travis Robinson and Andrew Pinto.

The win was the NZ duo’s maiden success on Australian soil and one they were waiting more than a decade for.

“It’s the first time winning and It’s been a long time in the making,” Horan said.

“I’ve been coming to Australia for 12 years and coming over here trying to win something. I’ve had a couple of thirds, but first is my best so I’m happy.

“I didn’t think I’d won it until the end because we had a bit of a problem at the start. But when we were coming off lap three, I thought we’re in a really good spot because the guys in front of me had

gone out, so I just had to do a clean lap, which I did.”

The eventful round looked destined to be going the way of Josh Howells and Gordon Tardrew after they took control after Day 1.

But proceedings turned upside down on Sunday where Howells and Tardrew crashed from the lead on Lap 2 of Section 2.

Their costly mistake elevated Ryan Taylor and Kye Floyd into the lead to ignite their hopes of back to back Pooncarie Desert Dash victories.

However, their time at the top was short-lived as their charge was cut short by mechanical dramas.

Another combination to experience misfortune were round 1 winners James Cook and Mitch Aucote, who ran out of fuel on the second lap of Section 2.

Brett Comiskey and Corey Cooper also suffered the same fate in a gruelling weekend where nine crews failed to finish.

After 315 tough kilometres, Horan survived the chaos to beat fellow Pro Buggy driver Robinson by 61 seconds.

A further seven and a half minutes behind were Mel Brand and Nick Price, who were the lone Pro Lite runners in the top seven.

They won a competitive battle for the final spot on the podium where a

WA FOREST RALLY BRINGS UP HALF-TON

TASSIE STANDOUT GETS HELPING HAND FROM AUSSIE ICON

minute separated the third, fourth, fifth and sixth-placed cars.

Despite the refuelling drama, Queenslanders Comiskey and Cooper still managed to prevail in the Extreme 2WD class.

Production 4WD winners were Adam and Mitchell Gear, while SXS Pro class victors were Glenn Brinkman and Dale Moscatt. Despite finishing second best, Robinson still emerged with the championship lead.

The dramatic weekend sets the scene for the biggest event of the year, the Finke Desert Race on June 9-12.

Thomas Miles

Image: GRANT THOMPSON

THE WA Forest Rally on May 19-21 will celebrate its 50th anniversary when the Australian Rally Championship makes its way across the Nullabor.

Excluding the pestilent years of 2020-2021, the ARC has been to WA every season since 1974, making it Australia’s longest serving rally state.

In the 50 years, the event has taken place in places such as Mundaring, Collie, Grimwade, and Perth, before it found its homes in the recent locations of Bussellton, Bunbury, and Nannup.

Peter Lang and George Shepheard (above) were its first winners in a Torana XU 1 at the Semperit 1600.

With 25 different title holders, Ross Dunkerton is its most frequent victor with seven victories, which span from 1975-1991, with Aussie rally legend Neal Bates taking it six times with co-driver Coral Taylor, who now

sits alongside his son Harry Bates (2019 ARC champion).

Other notable winners include Eli Evans, Cody Crocker, Wayne Bell, Greg Carr, Scott Pedder, and Molly Taylor.

Clerk of Course for the past 36 years, Ross Tapper OAM, is the man best suited to explain the

importance of the anniversary.

“These past 50 years has been quite a ride and there have been many amazing memories over the course of that period,” Tapper said.

“To be at the top of the helm of this wonderful event for such a long time is an honour. Of course, there have been plenty of challenges, but overall it’s been a wonderful experience.

“It’s a remarkable achievement, so every single individual who has been involved throughout these past five decades should be incredibly proud.” TW Neal

travel and time off work I needed to do for the transport.

“When Neal approached me on the Saturday night of Rally Launceston and made the offer to transport the car from Canberra to WA, it was kind of the sealer to get me to WA. “Then to win the Production Cup, which pays for my Forest Rally entry fee, and the four free tyres from Hoosier for winning the Standout Performer of the Round … it’s really helpful for privateers like me as it’s quite expensive.

“Even if I didn’t end up getting as many points as I did on Sunday, I would have taken up the offer from Neal because I have always wanted to do WA, so a big thanks to Neal, as well as Les Walkden, who is going to transport my car to Canberra.”

The WA Forest Rally takes place in Bunbury and Nannup on 19-21 May. TW Neal

BODIE READING (pictured) was a standout performer in the ARC’s Launceston round, with the local charger taking out the Production Cup after post-race penalties were handed down to the opposing #18 Subaru in the aftermath, as well as being awarded the Standout Performer of the Round.

Reading and his co-driver Mark Young had a stellar opening day, winning a maiden ARC stage, as well as taking the outright lead at the halfway mark of Day 1.

Importantly, the performance also caught the eye of Australian rally icon Neal Bates, with the four time champion offering to transport his #13 Subaru WRX STI across the Nullabor free of charge.

“I was planning to do the ARC Production Cup and go to rounds like Queensland as one of my four, as well as the Tasmanian State Championship, so it’s going to be a full-on year,” Reading explained.

“I never intended to do Image: DMAC PHOTOGRAPHY WA because of the amount of

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Image: NAKITA POLLOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

THOMAS AND BROOK ARE THE KINGS OF THE NORTH DYLAN THOMAS and Tim Brook took out the inaugural TA2 Muscle Cars Kings of the North crown after a taxing round at Hidden Valley.

After a huge weekend featuring six races, Thomas and Brook accumulated maximum points from the six-race round 2 of the 2023 Hi-Tec Oils Super Series.

Following their Sunday twin driver race win, Brook was promoted to the Race 4 win following a Mark Crutcher penalty, while Thomas finished a solid fourth in Race 5.

In the finale, Thomas and Brook simply only needed to reach the chequered flag in order to secure the $20,000 prize, which they achieved by finishing 12th after not pitting unlike the vast majority of the field.

After the race, Thomas admitted the team ran a conservative strategy in order to minimise the risk of being involved in incidents.

“Before the race, we worked out the result we needed in order to win the weekend overall, and knew we could afford to take a cautious approach,” Thomas said.

“The plan was to stay out in the lead for as long as possible and stay out of trouble. It

compromised our Race 6 result but we were looking at the big picture.

“Overall, it was a fantastic weekend – it’s my first visit to Hidden Valley and it has already provided some very happy memories.”

The sixth and final race was won by Mark Crutcher and Jordan Cox, with Cox charging to the front of the field after the last Safety Car restart.

The Josh Haynes/Nicholas Bates Mustang finished second ahead of the Graham Cheney/Edan Thornburrow Camaro.

Aussie American racer Nathan Herne was a star guest and showed his pedigree by winning the opener before Brook took the first win of his victorious campaign.

The twin-driver Sunday race was littered with incidents where Brook and Paul Manuell tangled up on the final lap with the former surviving to take the win.

The HQ Holdens returned to the track and there was no stopping Shaun Boland and Luke Harrison (pictured right).

The duo were untouchable winning all four races. Their success started on Sunday where they overcame the Ling duo by five

seconds to win the Crocodile Cup enduro..

On Monday Boland and Harrison continued their domination by winning both races.

But it was far from simple with Harrison closely challenged by South Australian Darren Jenkins in Race 4.

But nothing could stop Harrison and Boland from becoming the inaugural HQ Holden Founders Cup winners and bringing interstate success to New South Wales.

Tim Playford was also a dominant figure in the NAMSC Combined Sedans/Australian Super TT race.

Not even a rear of the grid start could stop Playford and his Mazda 808 in Race 3, while he enjoyed an untroubled journey to the chequered flag in the finale.

Michael Ricketts (pictured above right) continued his giant-killing form aboard the Nissan Pulsar, finishing second outright in both Monday races with the highlight his move on Commodore driver Stephen Johnstone just after a Safety Car restart on the final lap of Race 4.

In the Circuit Excel NT Racing Series, Zac Hannon and Liam Hall resumed their dice

from the weekend races.

Although Hannon took a comfortable win in Race 3, Race 4 was much toughter.

Hannon and Hall swapped positions on multiple occasions before the former finally broke free on the last lap to secure a thrilling win.

The third round of the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series will be held at Queensland Raceway, 2-4 June. Thomas Miles

FOUR DIFFERENT WINNERS IN EVENTFUL QR CLASH THE AUSSIE Racing Cars ventured off the Queensland Raceway on the weekend and put on some great racing with four winners from as many races.

After sweeping the Newcastle opener Joel Heinrich did not have everything his own way in the second round of the season in support of the Australian SuperBike Championship.

The championship leader started strong, taking pole by half a second ahead of reigning champion Josh Anderson.

Heinrich’s streak continued when he opened the weekend with a fifth straight victory, but he had to earn it.

Koby Garland got a fast start and took an early lead before eventually succumbing to the pressure of Heinrich.

Anderson also stole second near the end from Garland as Heinrich won by the

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comfortable margin of 4.5s.

The action heated up in race 2 where rookie Brandon Madden announced himself by taking a nail-biting win.

In a grandstand finish Madden showed enough composure to keep Heinrich at bay

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by just 0.131s.

Just three tenths of a second covered the entire top three with Anderson closely following them in a finish for the ages.

Drama continued to unfold in the reverse grid race 3 on Sunday morning where three

separate incidents triggered the Safety Car. Through it all came Reece Chapman, who bounced back from his opening race incident to take the chequered flag first two races later.

Chapman got the job done at Turn 3 with a move on Kent Quinn, who was eventually beaten to the podium by Garland and Kyle Ensbey.

Rylan Gray continued the unpredictable nature of the weekend, by taking a commanding 5s win.

Garland led from pole, but dropped to sixth after a mixup with Anderson at Turn 6.

After multiple lead changes, Gray drove clear as Garland and Quinn ended in the gravel at the final corner.

The next Aussie Racing Cars round is the Tasmania SuperSprint on May 19-21.

Thomas Miles

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WRC ROUND 4 - CROATIA

EVANS TAKES SOMBRE

RALLY CROATIA WIN THE RESULTS of the WRC Rally Croatia round in Zagreb were very much in the background of importance at both the rallies start and finish line, with the world rally community in mourning following Craig Breen’s death during pre-event testing.

The 20 stages in between were raced in a spirit of goodwill towards Craig’s memory, his family, and his co-driver James Fulton, who survived the pre-event testing incident in the Hyundai Rally1.

Toyota’s Elfyn Evans (above) was the victor in the end, finishing the final stage with a 27 second victory over Ford M-Sport’s Ott Tanak, and Hyundai’s Esapekka Lappi.

The Welshman’s victory, his first since 2021, also saw him join Sebastien Ogier at the top of the championship leaderboard on 69 points apiece, with Kalle Rovanpera and Tanak hot on their heels.

Evan’s reaction to his dominant victory was understandably subdued at the finish-line.

“Obviously we’ve been working towards this for a long time, but it all feels so insignificant at the moment … that’s the bottom line,” Evans said.

“After the focus of the weekend, we’re all back to missing our friend now.

“Straightaway after coming across the finish line, that’s all we can think about.

“We promised Craig’s family we would enjoy the weekend, and we’ve done that.

We’re all thinking of them right now.”

Pre Shakedown saw teams and drivers line up behind the Hyundai i20N that Breen last raced to a P2 at Rally Sweden, with a stirring message from the Irishman himself played over a video which left few dry eyes, his posthumous quote from a past event, reading: “Don’t forget to enjoy it, don’t forget to have fun … of course it’s competition, and there’s pressure, but you’re one of the most

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The teams played collective homage to Craig Breen ... Right (top): Ott Tanak got close, but had to settle for second. Neuville (bottom) led but crashed out late on Day 1. Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES lucky people in the world to get to drive in the World Rally Championship. You have to have fun, life is very short.”

Prior to the 301.26km of action, Rovanpera would take out the shakedown, with both he and Ogier looking dangerous for Friday’s eight stages.

However, the Toyota pair both suffered tyre damage through Stage 2, giving Thierry Neuville the lead in the green, white, and orange Hyundai tribute livery that he and Lappi were sporting.

Ogier also took on a penalty for not attaching his safety harness properly, dropping the eight-time champion completely out of the running.

The Belgian took a mix of soft and hard Pirelli compounds to negate the slippery asphalt surface, hiding a 5.7s advantage from Evans, with Tanak +30s in arrears after mistakenly opting for wets early on.

All the luck went to the Welshman from there on in, with Neuville’s victory push coming unstuck during Saturday’s Ravna Gora-Skrad Stage 11, going off road and hitting a concrete block, which put him out

of the remaining five stages for the Saturday.

Though Evans was elevated into the lead, the tenacious Tanak was gradually taking the seconds off to close the gap to the #33 Yaris, before transmission issues in the Ford dropped the Estonian back to a 25.4s split, with everything appearing to go the Toyota drivers favour.

The 54.48km remaining on the Sunday were among the most difficult of the weekend condition-wise, with the rough roads north of Zagreb leaving the door ajar for Tanak, with the top three more than settled down to Lappi in P3.

However, Evans remained composed throughout the final four Stages, with the big mover of the day being Rovanpera, who charged into P4, 19.7s behind Lappi, to maintain enough points to still head Tanak in the championship, No more than a few seconds separated Evans from the 2019 WRC champion throughout the day, as Neuville also came back to take two of Sunday’s stages, including the double points Power Stage finale.

Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta made it all four Toyota’s in the top six, taking P5 and P6 respectively, with Ford’s Pierre-Louis Loubet next up.

Rounding out the top-10 was the WRC2 podium, with Yohan Rossel, Nikolay Gryazin and Oliver Solberg.

WRC rally now heads to Rally Portugal on May 11-14 on the gravel, with that event marking a seven-rally gravel run up until the Round 12 Central Europe Asphalt rally.

Drivers will also get bonus championship points for the longest jumps at Portugal onward, at a designated spot, which in Portugal’s case, is at the iconic and crowd favourite Pedra Sentada jump.

Vale Craig Breen 1990-2023.

TW Neal WRC STANDINGS AFTER 4 ROUNDS 1 Ogier/Landais Toyota 69 2 Evans/Martin Toyota 69 3 Rovanpera/Halttunen Toyota 68 4 Tanak/Jarveoja Ford 65 5 Neuville/Wydaeghe Hyundai 58

WEC

TOYOTA CONTINUES WEC

DOMINANCE IN SPA CLASSIC THE TOYOTA GAZOO RACING TEAM HAS ASSERTED ITS STRANGLEHOLD ON THE 2023 WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP WITH ANOTHER HYPERCAR ONE-TWO FINISH AT THE SPA 6 HOURS, DEFEATING A RECORD 13 HYPERCAR GRID. IT WAS the pole sitting #7 GR010 (above) that got the job done in a hectic wet race at the famous Belgium circuit, as the Mike Conway/Jose Maria Lopez/Kamui Kobayashi trio overcame its #8 sister car for a 11.637s victory.

Ferrari made it a third straight WEC podium, but this time it was the #51 AF Corse 499P that got it done after the shattered Antonio Fuoco led #50 Ferrari found the pit exit wall in Lap 126 whilst sitting in P3.

It was a remarkable effort for the #8 Toyota – piloted by Sebastien Buemi/ Ryo Hirakawa/Brendon Hartley – coming from 36th on the grid after crashing in qualifying, with both GR010s having a less than ideal start on the slicks.

The story of the race was the cold Michelin tyre with plenty of Hypercars taking trips off the fast and tricky circuit, with the controversial tyre warmer ban needing to be looked at.

The decision was made on an absurd “environmental energy-saving” basis, but teams would logically argue that the energy cost to rebuild a near $3 million dollar LMDh/LMH Hypercar far exceeds the energy output of a tyre warmer, the lack of which being the cause of the damage!

The #7 team led for 132 of the 148 laps for its second victory of the year despite a late 5 second pit exit penalty.

“That was a fantastic job from the whole team to get the maximum result possible from this race,” Toyota’s Kobayashi said.

“It has been a challenging week,

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Toyota led from the start with the #7 car. Below: Cadillac’s brand new second car hit the Eau Rouge TechPro at high speed ... the driver was unhurt. Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES particularly in terms of tyre management.

When you have new tyres you have massive grip but you get degradation so it was not easy to decide how much to push.

“We can be very happy to be here with a one-two after no issues during the race, considering how challenging it has been. In my stint I was fighting with the #8 car and it is never easy to fight against your teammate but I think we made a good show. Now we aim to keep this going for Le Mans.”

The Penske Porsche missed a second straight podium on the last lap, with the James Calado driven Ferrari taking an inspired podium.

The Earl Bamber led LMDh Cadillac took P5, with its sister CGR #3 V Series-R finding the wall at Eau Rouge with a huge crash after a steering lock whilst in P2 in the second hour.

Renger Van der Zande thankfully exited safely, giving the record Spa crowd a bow

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to wild ovation.

P6 was one of the stories of the day, with the new Hertz Team Jota Porsche customer car 963 finishing a lap down on debut after an impressive P7 in qualifying.

The middle section of the race from the second hour onward saw two full-course yellows (FCY), with both Toyotas aided massively.

The first saw the #6 Penske Porsche suffer a complete loss of power with the #7 GR010 having pitted just before the FCY, then the Vanwall Vandervell 680 LMH went off at Les Combes on cold tyres, bringing the #8 back into the frame.

That advantage grew even greater when another yellow was called shortly after, when the Vanwall again went off, this time with Jaques Villeneuve in the seat, clashing with a Ferrari GTE at Blanchimont.

The #51 also regained time in the FCYs after an earlier damaged wheel rim, enabling it to charge through the field with a tyre advantage at the death, blowing past the Cadillac and Porsche.

The Peugeot 9X8s finished in P7 and P9, with the non-hybrid Glickenhaus Racing LMH splitting the two.

In the LMP2 stakes, it was a hometown victory for Team WRT, as its #41 ORECA 07 got it done by 6.042s over the pole sitting #23 United Autosports and the Polish Inter Europol machine, with the Belgium winner in P7 overall.

The GTE Am went the way of the #83 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, taking a comfortable 18.653s win over the championship leading #33 Corvette, and the #25 Aston Martin Vantage.

The next WEC round is the flagship 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the legendary event celebrating its centennial year on June 10-11.

TW Neal

WEC MANUFACTURER STANDINGS AFTER 3 ROUNDS 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Toyota Ferrari Porsche.

Cadillac Peugeot Glickenhaus

90 57 42 40 19 12

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MOTOGP

Bagnaia got there in the end, hitting the front on lap 21. Below: Binder and the KTM crew were ecstatic afterc their Sprint win. Bottom: Bezzechi dropped the chanpionship lead as well as his bike ...

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES

BAGNAIA FENDS OFF KTMs IN SPAIN CLASSIC

Images: MARK HORSBURGH

FRANCESCO BAGNAIA regained the championship lead after holding off the KTMs and Marco Bezzecchi crashed in a stunning Spanish Grand Prix.

The race went down to the final corner where Bagnaia held off the relentless Brad Binder and Australia’s Jack Miller, who led early and completed a promising weekend with his maiden Grand Prix podium for KTM. Marc Marquez missed his home race as his recovery from the Portugal crash continued longer than expected, while his former teammate Dani Pedrosa made headlines for the right reasons on Friday.

Now test rider for KTM, Pedrosa topped the opening practice session of his just his second wildcard outing in four years.

The 37-year-old veteran showed enough speed to go straight into the final phase of qualifying, something championship leaders Bagnaia, Bezzecchi and Binder did not.

Only Bagnaia and Binder progressed from Q1 with Bezzecchi forced to start from 13th after missing out by 0.037s as the sister Ducati of Enea Bastianini pulled out early due to injury.

The fight for pole was a thrilling affair with early rain creating a gamble between slicks and wets.

After P1 changed hands 14 times in 15 minutes, Miller looked on course to take a third career pole and first for KTM, but was pipped by Aleix Espargaro, who fired in a 1:37.216 at the death.

This did not stop Miller from getting a lightning start in the Sprint, but the Aussie was halted by an early red flag waved following a big crash at Turn 2 involving Franco Morbidelli, Alex Marquez, Bezzecchi and Augusto Fernandez.

For the second standing start in succession the KTMs took charge with Binder ahead of Jorge Martin this time as Espargaro slumped to fifth.

On Lap 2 Miller snatched the lead following a well-executed pass on his teammate at the final corner.

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his chain six corners from home.

After crashes marred his last two races, it was a timely win for Bagnia, who heads to the 1000th MotoGP race in France on May 12-14 in charge once again.

MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS AFTER ROUND 4 1 Francesco Bagnaia 87 2 Marco Bezzecchi 65 3 Brad Binder 62 4 Jack Miller 49 5 Maverick Vinales 48

The Australian controlled the field for six laps before Binder prevailed in an entertaining duel in the stadium section.

Miller eventually had to settle for third after a mistake at Turn 6 allowed Bagnaia to slide through on the last lap.

Binder held on to his second Sprint win of the year ahead of Bagnaia, Miller and Martin, who were separated by just 0.8s.

Bezzecchi could only manage ninth after a troubled race, while Joan Mir, Espargaro, Alex Marquez and Takaaki Nakagami all fell.

HISTORY REPEATED in Sunday’s Grand Prix as Miller led a KTM 1-2 off the line before a red flag stopped the race due to another incident at Turn 2. This time Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo and Miguel Oliveira fell, having been squeezed out in the battle for track position.

After the pair flew into the gravel at high speed, both riders required medical attention.

Quartararo eventually made the restart, but suffered long-lap penalty pain, while Oliveira could not, with a dislocated shoulder.

For the fourth standing start in a row, the KTMs left Espargaro for dust and Binder charged around the outside of Miller.

But the South African did not lead for long as Miller dived down the inside at the final corner of Lap 2.

Two laps later Binder returned serve and the KTM contest brought Bagnaia into play.

The Italian launched a big dive on Miller at Pedrosa Corner and hit the Australian on the way through, allowing Martin to also sneak by.

The visibly angry Miller reclaimed third with an aggressive move of his own at Lorenzo Corner and the #43 soon returned to second as Bagnaia was instructed to give the place back.

A pair of mistakes at the end of Lap 15 were enough for Bagnaia to blitz past Miller as championship leader Bezzecchi crashed out having got Pedrosa Corner all wrong.

Determined to make maximum impact on the championship, Bagnaia pulled off the race winning move at the final corner after a tense tussle on Lap 21.

Binder made a valiant attempt to retake the lead at the last corner, but Bagnaia was not to be denied, leading home the two KTMs to spark a joyous podium ceremony.

The long list of retirements featured Oliveira, Mir, Alex Rins, Bezzecchi and Joan Zarco, who all crashed, while Maverick Vinales lost

MILLER THRILLED WITH SUPER PODIUM AFTER CRASHING from a potential podium at COTA, Jack Miller was in top form to score a “super” maiden podium for KTM at Jerez.

Miller finished third in both the Sprint and Grand Prix in Spain having been in the thick of intense fights for victory with team-mate Brad Binder and eventual winner Francesco Bagnaia.

The Australian felt like a “sitting duck” in the Sprint, but still held onto a podium place, whilst in the race he scored a fighting third after some thrilling scraps at the front.

For Miller it was a sweet weekend, vindicating his move to KTM: “I had to work for that one, it was a long race,” Miller said.

“Brad and Francesco rode awesome and I am super happy to be on the podium for KTM. “A lot of people doubted us, but we are here already and hopefully we can stay.”

Miller sits an equal career best fourth in the standings ahead of the French GP.

INDYCAR

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN BECAME THE INDYCAR SEASONS FOURTH WINNER IN AS MANY ROUNDS, WITH THE PENSKE JET ALSO CLAIMING HIS FOURTH VICTORY SINCE MAKING HIS MOVE FROM SUPERCARS THE KIWI superstar returned to the scene of his first race as a full-time IndyCar driver for Team Penske, opening his season account with a strategic threestopper to come home over Romain Grosjean and teammate Will Power.

Grosjean was left a sitting duck to fall short of his maiden win again this season, as McLaughlin had the superior firepower to mow down the Frenchman, who was lucky to survive in P2 from a rampaging Power in the #12 Verizon Chev.

The three-stop strategy was made possible to due a caution when Dale Coyne Racing’s Sting Ray Robb slowed to a crawl in Turn 9 on Lap 38, with the Penske drivers taking advantage.

The Penske and Andretti duo have developed a combative history this season, with a brazen move from McLaughlin taking both he and the former F1 driver out at St Petersburg in Round 1, but it was strategy that got the job done at Barber Motorsport Park.

“I call that the ‘happy driver’ strategy, I was a lot happier doing that,” McLaughlin said in the post-race.

“We just raced hard, and that was three races ago,” he said in reference to Round 1, “we just got on with it. We’d talked man-to-man, and as far as I’m concerned, we raced hard and fair.

“The win has been coming – we’ve been close but hadn’t quite had it in the last couple rounds.”

With the Barber circuit traditionally being a two stopper, Grosjean was

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McLaughlin closes in ... the Kiwi mowed down Romain Grosjean (#28) en route to win number four.

Images: MOTORSPORT IMAGES surprised to get done over – his warm set of Primary tyres gave him the lead out of the middle section of the race in a battle with the Kiwi, but they didn’t have the life towards the end.

“This hurts – the three-stop never wins at Barber, but today it did,” said a dejected Grosjean.

“The pits stayed open on that yellow, and it gave Scotty and Will a chance to go three. I just got unlucky with that yellow, but the team co-owner and his strategist said ‘Don’t have your head down, That was one of the best drives I’ve ever seen.’

“I gave it all, but congrats to Scott. He deserved the win.”

Grosjean started the race on pole after grabbing the second of his career by edging Alex Palou.

The Penske cars struggled early on the rimary Blacks, and with the race staying green, the lap Lap 38 incident allowed the Penske trio of Newgarden, McLaughlin and Power to take a second stop early

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in the 90 Lap race after seeing Sting Ray Robb slow down on track.

Andretti and Grosjean opted to stay out on a two-stop strategy, with the Frenchman’s forced fuel conservation meaning McLaughlin just had more oomph on the push home.

The #3 came for the Andretti International mid-race, and the Frenchman held him off, even managing to extend his lead to over a second, but

by Lap 56, that was cut down to sixthtenths.

McLaughlin made his final stop on Lap 64 and was back on the Primaries and, following that, the two then traded the lead, almost coming to blows again on Turn 16, but Grosjean managed to come out cleanly and push his lead back out to a second.

When Grosjean took the hairpin wide on Lap 72, his pursuer pounced, and despite the leader’s attempt to use his push-topass, which he completely drained, a wheel-to-wheel battle came out in favour

of the Penske driver, who then used his full reserve of push-to-pass to pull away.

The concern wasn’t over for the Frenchman however, as a once distant Power, who had a 20 second cushion either side of him to P2 and P4, made his charge.

Power (who started in P11) who was also back on fresher primaries than Grosjean, cut a 10.6s gap to under a second over 20 laps, but Grosjean held him off by 0.484s to claim his second straight P2, taking the bridesmaid spot for the fifth time in his career, in his 34th race.

O’Ward and Palou came in next, 20 seconds from the lead, with Lundgaard, Dixon, Rossi, Rosenqvist, and the championship leader in Ericsson rounding out the 10.

With that P2, it does put Grosjean fifth in the championship and in the hunt, in a series that tends to reward consistency over bulk wins, which are hard to amass in such a strong field that will trade for them all season.

Round 5 sees IndyCar head to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course for the GMR Grand Prix on May 13, the precursor to the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 28 (which no longer carries double-points). TW Neal INDYCAR STANDINGS AFTER 4 ROUNDS Ericsson 130 O’Ward 127 Palou 121 McLaughlin 119 Grosjean 115

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Formula 1 Round 04 AZERBAIJAN Grand Prix - Race report

Once Street-fighter Perez hit the front, courtesy of the Safety Car, Verstappen couldn’t make any impact.

PÉREZ WON ON MERIT BUT SAFETY CAR SURELY HELPED!

By LUIS VASCONCELOS Images Motorsport Images THE KING of the Streets did it again!

Sérgio Pérez won both the Sprint and the GP race in Baku to get his title charge back on track, leaving Azerbaijan just six points behind team-mate Max Verstappen, having cut the gap by nine points thanks to his two victories and setting the fastest lap in Saturday’s mini-race.

On Sunday, starting from third on the grid, lady luck gave the Mexican a hand, as the Safety Car went on track almost as soon as Max Verstappen was emerging from the pits, at the start of lap 11, handing Pérez a golden opportunity to pit and leapfrog his team mate.

In fairness, though, it was the Mexican’s pace which pushed Verstappen to pit way earlier than planned – most teams had planned to stop for the Hard tyre between laps 15 and 17 – so, in a way, Pérez had put himself in a position to benefit from any SC or VSC period that would come up for another six or seven laps. And, as Verstappen told him while they were waiting to go on the podium, “it happened to you in Jeddah last year, so this is like payback …”

Charles Leclerc’s amazing speed in qualifying and the fact he split the two Red Bull during the Sprint race, had raised hopes the Monegasque could mix up with Pérez and Verstappen in the race, but by the start of lap six the blue cars were gone and from then on the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was a private affair between the two Red Bull drivers.

Having lost just one lap stuck behind the Ferrari after Verstappen got past it, Pérez cut the deficit to the Dutchman from 1.2s to 0,6s in just three laps. With Verstappen complaining, “I’m sliding too much!” the team called him in at the end of lap 10, keen

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to avoid an on-track battle – but at a time Nyck de Vries had been spotted parked on the exit of Turn 5 with a broken left front steering arm and suspension. For once Red Bull didn’t react in the optimal way, didn’t tell the two times World Champion to stay out and, when the inevitable Safety Car period came, the race was all but lost for Verstappen.

As Pérez and Leclerc pitted under the SC, Verstappen dropped to third and even though he quickly re-passed the Ferrari driver on the re-start, he was never close enough to even try to pass his team-mate.

The Mexican drove superbly, proving again he’s particularly at home on street circuits – five of his six Grand Prix wins have been achieved between tight walls – and Despite taking both poles, the best Charles Leclerc could manage for Ferrari was P2 in the Sprint, third in the GP.

neveoreven allowed Verstappen within DRS range.

For him, though, it was the first stint that was the key for his win: “I really needed to pass Charles quickly, after Max got him, because I didn’t want to lose contact with him. I only lost one lap before moving up to second, then managed to get within DRS range of Max and I think I had better degradation than him in that first stint. I think that sort of forced him into pitting early and then the Safety Car came and bunched everyone up. But it was already looking good in that first stint.”

With Verstappen just 1.5s behind his teammate after making quick work of Leclerc on the re-start, a close battle was expected and we certainly got one, but not the one the

fans were hoping for. For the next 37 laps the two drivers were completely on the limit – both of them brushed the walls on at least three occasions each – but the gap never went bellow one second, so Verstappen could never use the DRS. And then, of course, his tyres started to go quicker than his team mate’s and by lap 45 of 51 the gap had reached 3.7s, meaning that, effectively, this was game over.

For once the Dutchman took the defeat with grace and was in reflective mode at the end of the race: “Of course I wanted to win; of course the Safety Car came at an unlucky time for me, but I was never comfortable with the car today. Checo and I have different settings, I was struggling to be consistent, so I was playing around with

QUALIFYING SRINT RACE

RESULTS SPRINT RACE 17 LAPS AZERBAIJAN GP

Pos Driver

Time

Pos Drivers

Make

Laps

1

Charles Leclerc

1:41.697

1

Sergio Perez

Red Bull

17

2

Sergio Perez

+0.147

2

Charles Leclerc

Ferrari

17

+4.463 t1

3

Max Verstappen

+0.290

3

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

17

+5.065 -

4

George Russell

+0.555

4

George Russell

Mercedes

17

+8.532 -

5

Carlos Sainz

+0.590

5 Carlos Sainz

Ferrari

17

+10.388 -

6

Lewis Hamilton

+0.805

6 Fernando Alonso

Aston Martin

17

+11.613 s2

7

Alex Albon

+1.149

7

Mercedes

17

+6.503 t1

8

Fernando Alonso

+1.313

8 Lance Stroll

Aston Martin

17

+18.417 s1

9

Lance Stroll

+1.367

9

Alex Albon

Williams

17

+21.757 t2

10 Lando Norris

-

10 Oscar Piastri

McLaren

17

+22.851 s1

11

Lewis Hamilton

Margin 33:17.667 s1

Oscar Piastri

+1.010

11 Kevin Magnussen Haas

17

+27.990 s2

12 Nico Hulkenber

+1.389

12 Zhou Guanyu

Alfa Romeo

17

+34.602 s2

13 Esteban Ocon

+1.671

13 Pierre Gasly

AlphaTauri

17

+36.918 s4

14 Kevin Magnussen

+1.915

14 Nyck de Vries

AlphaTauri

17

+41.626 s4

15 Logan Sargeant

-

15 Nico Hulkenberg

Haas

17

+48.587 t3

16 Zhou Guanyu

+2.357

16 Valtteri Bottas

Alfa Romeo

17

+49.917 t1

17 Valtteri Bottas

+2.532

17 Lando Norris

McLaren

17

+51.104 t7

18 Yuki Tsunoda

+2.616

18 Esteban Ocon

Alpine

17

+60.621 s1

19 Pierre Gasly

+4.131

NC Yuki Tsunoda

AlphaTauri

2

DNF t3

20 Nyck de Vries

+5.360

DNS Logan Sargeant

Williams

-

Despite feeling pretty ill, Piastri finally got past team-mate Norris late in the Sprint race. Below: Verstappen held the early GP race lead from Perez.

board to try and figure out how Red Bull can be so quick from the word go without hurting the tyres as much as they do – even managing their pace, as the rest of the field had to do again in the streets of Baku.

FERRARI CLOSES THE GAP – BUT NOT ENOUGH

the tools a little bit. And I think once I got that sorted, I would say the last 10 laps were actually quite good again. But that was just a little bit too late. I got to learn a lot of things throughout the race but, at the end of the day, good team result.”

While acknowledging “Max got unlucky with the timing of the Safety Car”, Team Principal Christian Horner had only praise for the race winner: “Checo is definitely living up to his nickname of King of the Streets or whatever his latest documentary series is going to be called. It was an incredible weekend by him, obviously winning the Sprint race yesterday.

“Obviously, he got a little bit lucky with the timing of the Safety Car. But having got the lead, he built close to a four second lead at one point and controlled the race. So, he used his opportunity and converted it into a into a great win. They were pushing each other hard, I think they were comparing the times that they touched the wall when they were on the podium, but we let them push all the way through – that was always the plan going into the race.”

For the others, it’s back to the drawing

QUALIFYING RACE 04

Charles Leclerc was the only driver to make life a bit difficult for the Red Bull duo in Baku, his two pole position laps cementing his reputation as the fastest driver in the streets of the Azeri capital. But if, on Saturday, he still split the two championship contenders in the Sprint (read sidebar), on Sunday there was nothing to do and the Monegasque acknowledged that: “Today I managed it differently but actually the outcome doesn’t change, whether I lose time at the beginning, because I need to be careful of my tyres, and then I push, or if I push at the start, like yesterday and then lose time at the end of the stint yesterday, at the beginning now. I think we’ve done absolutely everything., but the bottom line is that we are just not quick enough.”

For Sainz the weekend was even worse, the Spanish admitting all weekend, “I cannot get confidence in the car, so I cannot attack like Charles and, with this format, there’s no possibility to touch anything in the set-up, so P5 is actually not a disaster.”

Between the two Ferrari, Fernando Alonso led Aston Martin’s charge, both the Spaniard and Lance Stroll recovering from difficult qualifying sessions, when intermittent DRS issues cost them valuable grid positions.

Alonso’s pass on Sainz at the re-start was the key for his final result, but in spite of saving his tyres well there was nothing he could do to beat the leading Ferrari. Stroll lost out to Russell in the pits when he slowed down to avoid losing time parked behind his team-mate as both pitted during

RESULTS RACE 04 51 LAPS AZERBAIJAN GP

CHAMPIONSHIP AFTER RACE 04

Pos Driver

Time

Pos Drivers

Make

Laps

1

Charles Leclerc

1:40.203

1

Sergio Perez

Red Bull

51

2

Max Verstappen

+0.188

2

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

3

Sergio Perez

+0.292

3

Charles Leclerc

Ferrari

4

Carlos Sainz

+0.813

4

Fernando Alonso

5

Lewis Hamilton

+0.974

6

Fernando Alonso

7 8 9

Margin

Pos Driver

1:32:42.436 s3

1

Max Verstappen

51

+2.137 -

2

51

+21.217 t3

3

Aston Martin

51

+22.024 s2

5 Carlos Sainz

Ferrari

51

+1.050

6 Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes

51

Lando Norris

+1.078

7

Lance Stroll

Aston Martin

Yuki Tsunoda

+1.378

8 George Russell

Mercedes

Points 93

-

Sergio Perez

87

-

Fernando Alonso

60

-

4

Lewis Hamilton

48

-

+45.491 t1

5

Carlos Sainz

34

-

+46.145 t1

6

Charles Leclerc

28 s4

51

+51.617 s2

7

George Russell

28

51

+74.240 s3

8

Lance Stroll

27 t2

-

Lance Stroll

+1.408

9

Lando Norris

McLaren

51

+80.376 t2

9

Lando Norris

10 t1

10 Oscar Piastri

+1.408

10 Yuki Tsunoda

AlphaTauri

51

+83.862 t2

10 Nico Hulkenberg

6 t1

11

+0.832

11 Oscar Piastri

McLaren

51

+86.501 t1

11

Oscar Piastri

4 s2

12 Esteban Ocon

+0.976

12 Alex Albon

Williams

51

+88.623 -

12 Valtteri Bottas

4 t1

13 Alex Albon

+0.996

13 Kevin Magnussen Haas

51

+89.729 s3

13 Esteban Ocon

4 t1

14 Valtteri Bottas

+1.437

14 Pierre Gasly

Alpine

51

+91.332 s3

14 Pierre Gasly

4

-

15 Logan Sargeant

+1.573

15 Esteban Ocon

Alpine

51

+97.794 s4

15 Zhou Guanyu

2

-

16 Zhou Guanyu

+1.373

16 Logan Sargeant

Williams

51

+100.943 t2

16 Yuki Tsunoda

2

-

17 Nico Hulkenberg

+1.486

17 Nico Hulkenberg

Haas

50

+1 Lap s3

17 Alex Albon

1 s1

18 Kevin Magnussen

+2.148

18 Valtteri Bottas

Alfa Romeo

50

+1 Lap t5

18 Kevin Magnussen

1 t1

19 Pierre Gasly

+3.584

NC Zhou Guanyu

Alfa Romeo

36

DNF t4

19 Logan sargent

0

-

20 Nyck de Vries

+14.013

NC Nyck de Vries

AlphaTauri

9

DNF t2

20 Nyck de Vries

0

-

George Russell

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Perez leads the Sprint race.

Alonso got his Jaguar past Sainz, but couldn’t catch Leclerc.

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the SC period, but passed the Brit at the restart to claim P7.

At Mercedes it was Lewis Hamilton the most efficient driver in a very disappointing weekend for the German team. Hamilton held on to fifth at the start and pitted early to try and undercut Sainz, but, like Verstappen, lost out when the SC was sent out, dropping to 10th! He then made quick work of Hulkenberg, Ocon and team mate Russell to move up the order, before a wild moment from Stroll coming out of Turn 16 gave him the opportunity to secure P5, Sainz then proving too quick on the straights to be passed.

Lando Norris and Yuki Tsunoda scored the only remaining points available, a boost for both teams that brought big upgrades for this weekend, but had a frustrating time stuck behind Ocon and Hulkenberg, who started on Hards and pitted in the last two laps – so it was actually encouraging they finished just 30s behind Stroll, as Russell pitted for Softs with two laps to go and scored the point for the fastest lap with that move

PIASTRI GETS NO REWARD FOR BEATING ILLNESS

For Oscar Piastri the Baku weekend was a long and painful event, the McLaren driver affected by a stomach bug since the start of running and the situation was so serious Team Principal Andrea Stella admitted the team evaluated if it would be better for the Australian to sit out the sprint event on Saturday, to be fit to race: “There were a couple of moments during the weekend in which we needed to evaluate is it better to have rest now to make sure that we are okay on Sunday. I admit that we have made this evaluation a couple of times, and we’ve been very well supported by our team doctor.

And the overall medical support I would like to acknowledge has been excellent in assisting Oscar, like his team.” And there was no lack of praise for the young driver either: “Oscar was always been very calm, and saying ‘Okay, let’s try, I’ll get in the car.

If I can’t do it, I will box.’ And then has always found the resources to go through the session.

In spite of his brave fight, Piastri scored no points in Baku, having finished 10th in the sprint and just 2,7s behind Tsunoda on Sunday, in P11 but put a brave face on it: “It was a shame to miss out on points by one spo, but we were just lacking a bit of pace in the middle of the race, so there wasn’t really much more we could do.

I’m happy I survived the weekend after being unwell and we’ve got some really good about the tyres in the race, how to manage them better, so all of that will help us fight for points next time”.

,

SPRINT HAD SHOWN PÉREZ’S SPEED

THE FIRST Sprint event of the year benefited a lot from a new format that saw it having its own dedicated Qualifying Session and, with the result of this minirace having no bearing of the grid positions for the main race, freeing the drivers to attack.

That was obvious in the way Russell and Verstappen – who had a terrible start – fought in the first four corners, hitting each other, with the Red Bull carrying more damage than the Mercedes. Behind, Nyck de Vries, who had already crashed in the main qualifying session, took team mate Tsunoda’s front wing off in Turn 3 and when the Japanese hit the wall, losing one wheel later in the lap, pitting and then resumed with a car that was obviously broken, the Safety Car was sent out until the end of lap five, helping Charles Leclerc stay in the lead longer than expected.

But it took only three laps of free track for Pérez, who had already outqualified Verstappen, in the shortened new Sprint Shootout session, to get into the lead. Verstappen had dispatched Russell even quicker but any thoughts of attacking Leclerc didn’t materialise. Pérez, smartly, kept the Ferrari driver within DRS range for the next five laps, giving Leclerc the weapon he needed to defend from Verstappen but never being close enough to challenge the Mexican.

Eventually, though, the SF-23’s tyres cried enough and the gap went up to 4.7s in just four laps, but Verstappen only got within DRS range at the start of the last lap and ran out of time to secure a Red Bull one-two. His anger towards Russell was obvious as soon as he got out of his RB19 but the real frustration came from having a poor start and seeing his teammate play a clever game to make sure the gap between the two was cut down by three points, as the Mexican also set the fastest lap of the Sprint.

Behind the top three, Russell had a lonely race after being passed by Verstappen, Sainz held Alonso after nearly hitting each other at the re-start, as they both mugged Hamilton who had to brake early to avoid running into the back of his team mate. That demoted the seven times World Champion to a disappointing P7, with Lance Stroll scoring the last point available. Which means, of course, only the top four teams scored points on Saturday ... meaning the smaller teams have little or nothing to gain with this format.

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PERTH SUPPORTS

TALBOT/HOFER VICTORIOUS AFTER ROLLERCOASTER RIDE

Image: DANIEL KALISZ LIAM TALBOT and Max Hofer walked away from Wanneroo victorious after a roller-coaster campaign in Round 2 of the GT World Challenge Australia season.

Talbot and Hofer went from zero to hero, bouncing back from a Saturday DNF to complete the weekend with a commanding victory.

The result ensured the #65 Audi held onto a seven-point championship lead over EMA Motorsport’s Yasser Shahin and Garnet Patterson.

Talbot’s championship lead was under significant threat after Shahin and Patterson pushed Porsche to a maiden GT World Challenge glory.

However, it was a different Audi that looked set for success after Geoff Emery and Audi Sport factory driver Christopher

Mies topped both Friday practice sessions.

With Broc Feeney out of action due to Supercars commitments, Richie Stanaway stepped up to join Prince Jefri Ibrahim in the #888 Mercedes.

They showed early pace to end the opening day second with Talbot and Hofer slotting into third.

Despite a promising practice, Mercedes were no match for Audi as the four rings dominated qualifying.

Emery and Hofer split the poles, but success did not come Audi’s way when racing arrived.

Series leader Talbot was in the box seat initially leading the first 10 laps until his race spiralled from bad to worse amid a chaotic opening half hour.

A mistake at the final corner saw Talbot lose the lead to Emery before side-to-side contact with the lapped Justin McMillan at the same scene 10 laps later made a bigger impact.

The #65 Audi tried to press on, but spun at the very next corner and eventually elected to retire.

With the championship leader out of action, the race was blown wide open.

Although Emery/Mies held sway, the race was shifting towards Shahin.

The EMA Motorsport combination did not need to serve any penalty time, which ensured the #1 Porsche 911 GT3R would return from the pits in the lead after completing the mid-race driver change.

Although Patterson took control of the race, he had to fight to defend the lead

as the #88 Mercedes driven by Jamie Whincup/Prince Abu Baker Ibrahim closed in.

With the Emery/Mies Audi also joining the fray, a tense finish was on the cards with less than two seconds separating the top three.

But Patterson held his nerve to keep Whincup at bay and give Porsche a maiden category win, plus provide a big boost to Shahin’s title defence.

After a disappointing opening race, Talbot and Hofer were determined for redemption and got it in comprehensive fashion.

The pair converted pole position into a crushing lights-to-flag win with their nearest challenger Emery/Mies a distant 28s back.

Prince Jefri Ibrahim and Stanaway earned a podium appearance, while Shahin had to settle for fourth.

Behind the leaders, Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim spun Tony Bates twice within 10 minutes in the only dramatic moments from a quiet race.

Am honours were scooped up by the consistent Brad Schumacher, who broke into the top five overall on Sunday.

Phillip Island beckons as the next stop on the GT World Challenge Australia calendar on May 12-14.

Thomas Miles

GT WORLD CHALLENGE AUSTRALIA POINTS AFTER ROUND 2 1 Liam Talbot/Max Hofer 75 2 Yasser Shahin/Garnet Patterson 67 3 Geoff Emery 63 4 Prince Jefri Ibrahim 55 5 Prince Abu Bakar/Jamie Whincup 48

BORG BOSSES SUPERUTES OPENER AARON BORG warned his rivals how difficult it will be wrestling the #1 away from him after winning all four V8 SuperUte Series races at the Perth season opener.

Not even the biggest Super Utes field ever of 19 cars, including a former Olympian, could stop the defending champion from becoming just the second driver alongside Ryal Harris to score a weekend clean-sweep.

Not only did Borg win all four races, he topped every single session to get his 2023 campaign off to the most perfect start possible.

After beating David Seiders to pole by 0.1478s, Borg enjoyed an untroubled run to victory lane in the opener.

But there was drama behind as the slowstarting Seiders only lasted for 11 laps after contact with Harris sent the former into the gravel.

Adam Marjoram put in a good drive to hold second all race with a late-race move promoting Ben Walsh to the podium.

The second race saw the top 10 of the grid flipped and chaos was the result.

52 I www.autoaction.com.au

As Craig Woods led the field through Turn 1, Walsh got a lightning start and tried to steal second from George Gutierrez.

But front to rear contact fired Walsh into the fence on the exit of Turn 1.

After the lucky escape Gutierrez surged into the lead, but could not keep Borg behind who climbed from 10th to first within 10 laps.

Another big move was Seiders, who climbed from 18th to third with Guiterrez keeping Borg honest all the way.

The third race in the early hours of Sunday morning was a quiet affair with Borg taking a lights to flag win.

Seiders was the big loser of the only major incident, getting spun at the final corner, while Harris prevailed in a late-race scrap for second with Gutierrez.

Although the records indicate another Borg win, the fourth and final race was an epic.

Harris stole P1 from Borg off the line and the defending champion launched a fightback at the Bowl.

But the ‘Kid’ was in a fighting mood and immediate hit back to set up a thrilling fight where Ford suddenly slipped from first to fourth.

After Marjoram tried to wrestle the lead from Harris, Borg bounced back to setup a grandstand finish.

Things reached boiling point at the end of Lap 13 when Borg got an overlap on Harris, who forced the #1 D-Max onto the pit straight grass.

Borg’s response was equally as aggressive shoving Harris out of the way at Turn 1 to take the lead.

A lap later Harris spun into the sand as Borg defeated Seiders by half a second to win a special race to complete a special weekend.

The SuperUtes return at the Sydney SuperNight meeting on July 28-30.

Thomas Miles V8 SUPERUTE SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS AFTER ROUND 1 1 Aaron Borg 250 2 George Gutierrez 207 3 Adam Marjoram 203 4 Jimmy Vernon 189 5 Craig Woods 185

DUNLOP SERIES

WOOD BLAZES HIS WAY TO PERTH SWEEP

Images: MARK HORSBURGH RYAN WOOD has announced himself as a Super2 title contender after a perfect Perth performance.

Under race conditions no one could match the speed and craft of Wood (above) , who blazed his way to a pair of impressive wins as misfortune got in the way of others.

After collecting maximum points, Wood rose from 17th to fifth in the championship standings, which are still led by Zak Best from Cooper Murray.

On-track action commenced on Friday which was all about one man, Brad Vaughan.

The 2022 Super3 champion topped both practice sessions from Wood as the margins were tight across the competitive and trouble-free sessions.

With many cars in the mix, Saturday Qualifying was a thrilling affair with less than a tenth of a second splitting the first four cars.

After many shared stints at the top, Best stole it at the death with a 55.5521 to give Anderson Motorsport a maiden Super2 pole.

The #17 Ford eclipsed Wood by just 0.0100s with Vaughan and Lachlan Dalton not far behind.

Plenty of intrigue surrounded the races with a new timed 40-minute format unveiled “to promote more patience” – but it did not stop the action.

Wood’s clean sweep got off to a slow start as he bogged it down off the line allowing Best to take charge

ahead of Vaughan.

There was early drama as Eggleston Motorsport teammates Kai Allen spun fourth-placed Murray at the Bowl.

As Murray dropped to 26th, Allen also sustained powersteering damage and was relegated to last.

Moments later Callum Walker fired into the sand pit, bringing the Safety Car into action.

The following restart was where Wood made his move, firstly snatching second from Vaughan with a big lunge at the final corner.

The WAU Kiwi then pulled off another classic late-braking move at the same scene seven laps later.

Now in clear air, there was no stopping Wood, who checked out and recorded a commanding 5s win.

Vaughan also stole second from Best, who struggled with race pace, but held onto a podium place ahead of Dalton.

Old Super3 rivals Vaughan and Allen went head to head for Sunday pole and once again the Tickford driver prevailed.

Allen went early and laid down a 55.39s benchmark, which Vaughan snuck ahead by just 0.05s.

But the Eggleston Motorsport youngster won the battle off the line with a super getaway to storm into Turn 1, while Vaughan would eventually receive a five-second penalty for a false start.

Allen was in complete control across the first quiet 20 minutes until the race was turned on its head by Ryan Gilroy’s walkabout right-rear tyre.

The incident brought out a Safety Car, which made an immediate return after Vaughan was sent into the concrete

by Zach Bates.

After watching Wood make a move on the #5 Mustang stick at the final turn, Bates tried to follow in his WAU teammates’ wheel tracks, but misjudged an overlap and fired the Tickford driver into the wall prior to Turn 1.

After nailing the first restart, the second did not go to plan for Allen, who was caught out by Wood and the #2 Commodore snuck down the inside at Turn 1.

Allen got trapped on the outside line and slipped to fourth promoting Aaron Love and Murray to the podium.

Once again there was no stopping the restart-king Wood, who blazed home by 3s and heads to Townsville as the man to beat.

Thomas Miles SUPER2 POINTS AFTER ROUND 2 1 Zak Best 504 2 Cooper Murray 456 3 Aaron Love 429 4 Jay Hanson 423 5 Matthew Chahda 420

MCLOUD AND STEWART FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR THE second Super3 round in a row, Jobe Stewart and Cameron McLeod left nothing on the table in the fight for Super3 honours.

After the opening blows in Newcastle, things escalated at a pulsating Perth round where both races were not decided until the final laps.

The round honours were evenly split between Stewart and McLeod to leave the Image Racing driver on top of the standings by 27 points.

McLeod started the weekend on the front foot by showing superior one lap pace on Friday where he was unbeaten.

The third generation racer carried this form into Saturday where he completed a hat-trick of Super3 pole positions to start the season.

After Stewart “messed up” his second green-tyre run, McLeod finished 0.2746s clear.

Despite finishing second best in qualifying, the Image Racing driver got the upper hand

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once racing began with a lightning start.

However, McLeod slowly clawed his way back into contention as the race wore on to cut the gap down to just half a second inside the final 10 minutes.

Stewart’s charge was slowed by traffic at Turn 4, which opened the door for McLeod.

The Nissan driver launched an attack at Kolb Corner and nudged his way past to cross the line first.

But not for the first time this season, a post-race penalty stripped McLeod of glory after his race-winning move was deemed too aggressive by the Stewards.

Boosted by receiving a second Super3 win, Stewart showed scintillating one-lap pace to fly to Sunday pole position.

Despite the best efforts of Matt McCutcheon, Stewart celebrated his 19th birthday by taking his maiden Super3 pole by 0.0444s.

His rival McLeod could only manage

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fourth with Mason Kelly backing up his Race 1 podium with grid position #3.

Amid the Race 2 mayhem, which saw Gilroy lose a wheel, McLeod needed just three laps to displace McCutcheon and Kelly to take second and set his sights on Stewart.

The Image Racing driver looked in control, but got caught on the outside of Super2 runner Stewart, McLeod and Johnson on the Jordyn Sinni at Turn 1, which left rostrum. him exposed to McLeod.

The #92 Altima pounced on the penultimate lap to deny Stewart victory SUPER3 DRIVERS CHAMPIONSHIP on his birthday and get redemption.

AFTER ROUND 2 Johnson also got by McCutcheon to get 1 Jobe Stewart 576 the second podium of his career.

2 Cameron McLeod 549 Stewart and McLeod will resume their 3 Jett Johnson 498 rivalry at Townsville on July 7-9.

4 Matthew McCutcheon 471 Thomas Miles 5 Mason Kelly 453

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Supercars RACE REPORT Round 3 – PERTH

If it hadn’t already, Erebus has firmly cemented a spot in the outright contenders group!

Below: Van Gisbergen and Kostecki shake hands after the race of the year to date ...

Images: MARK HORSBURGH

THE REAL DEAL A CLEAN WEEKEND OF RACING SAW EREBUS STAND UP TO THE CHALLENGE DESPITE THE TRIPLE EIGHT BULLS TAKING ONE WIN APIECE, WITH WILL BROWN’S RACE 2 CLINIC ADDING TO ANOTHER PODIUM HAUL AT THE TIGHT WANNEROO RACEWAY. TIMOTHY W NEAL REPORTS… THE TEAMS took their Gen3 gear across the Nullabor to Perth’s Wanneroo Raceway for Round 3 of this intriguing 2023 Supercars season.

The Perth SuperSprint represented yet another Gen3 hurdle for the drivers and teams, with Wanneroo seeing this first regular Sprint format, and the first round for the new Mustangs and Camaros at a more traditional style Aussie track.

Newcastle offered up the close confines with little passing and all the uncertainties of a newera, whilst Melbourne gave frustratingly short bursts of high octane action and fast pace, where the Camaro was undisputed king.

The Gen3 Camaro’s also received another minor parity adjustment prior to Perth, with a slight change to the centre of gravity, as well as the Mustangs receiving some new engine mapping to overcome some throttle throttle opening lag.

Tyre degradation was expected to be high on the relatively new surface, with teams going in with four sets of pre-marked softs, and seven sets of event-marked softs.

Race fans would be treated to another new Gen3 first, with an extended and sole 90 minute practice session allotted for teams to sort their weekend setups for the hilly 2.4km circuit.

With no shootouts, three qualifying sessions (one three part knockout, and two 15 minute flat sessions) would precede Races 7, 8, and 9 of the season.

The weekend would produce three different winners (all three of the Camaro variety) with incredibly tight margins, Mark Winterbottom’s 600th race, a building championship split for its leader, and the continued rise for one of Supercars most promising young stars.

FRIDAY

Confirming his confident prediction of being a challenger, Penrite’s David Reynolds topped the unique session, which came to life in its closing stages with teams going through their Qualifying sims.

The top spot was thrown about as the drivers dived out the pits late, as the #26 Mustang put down a 54.528 to top a late flying Hazelwood and the championship leader and local lad, Brodie Kostecki.

The teams seemed to enjoy the 90 minute hit-out, as it

54 I www.autoaction.com.au

SATURDAY Q1

gave them the ability to change their set-ups reliably within the same conditions, instead of the usual spread out 30 minute sessions that have offered changing track conditions and weather.

It was also apparent that the weekend would be one of very fine margins, with the entire field split by under a second down to Jack Smith, 0.806s off the benchmark.

Nine stables enjoyed spots in the top-10, including six Mustangs that seemed to enjoy the improved engine mapping, giving them more power out of the corners with the levelled out throttle lag.

There were three red flags with BJR pair Macauley Jones and Andre Heimgartner taking simultaneous trips into the Turn 6 and 7 beach, as well as Rookie Cameron Hill going in too hot at 6. There was also an unusual early red to start the session, with officials needing to have the timing beacons repositioned.

Kostecki had early brake master cylinder issues, while SVG also had his setup struggles throughout.

There were also plenty of lockups on the hilly track with the lighter Gen3 cars proving a handful in the back end on the hard downshifting.

The top-10 was filled out by De Pasquale, Winterbottom, Golding, Heimgartner, Mostert, Payne, and Courtney.

The first qualifying session got underway under clear Perth skies, and it ensured a tantalising front row for Race 1.

Van Gisbergen and Kostecki filled the front two spots after a cagey qualifying session, with the teams managing their tyre sets and track time with the 25 car field again split by the finest of margins down to Smith by just 0.5702s.

With high degradation giving around two laps max to get it right, a 45-minute qualifying was split into three knockouts with Q1 throwing up some surprise omissions, with Heimgartner and Brown not getting it right by tightest of splits (0.38), with Hill, Golding and Smith also resigned to the sheds as the bottom five were cut.

Q2 had the ramifications ramped up to optimise the small tyre pressure and grip window with 10 to miss out.

It was Reynolds who topped Q2 by putting out the fastest time of the weekend with a 54.213s, with SVG and Kostecki also having nothing between them.

Once again, there were more frontrunners left wanting as the 15 minute clock ran its course, with 0.797s spitting the 20 cars, with Feeney, Hazelwood, Winterbottom, Percat, Mostert, Fraser, Jones, De Pasquale, Waters, and Pye missing the very fine cut, with Fullwood sneaking in by just 0.287.

Q3 saw the #97 come out on a set of used tyres, with SVG putting down a 54.362 before taking his suit off with six minute to run after a two-lap attempt.

Kostecki’s own second lap sewed up the front row, with Reynolds in P3, and the rising star of Le Brocq putting the #34 MSR Camaro into P4.

Payne did well for P5 to start next to Courtney, with Davison, Randle, Slade, and Fullwood rounding out the first five rows.

RACE 1 – THROW DOWN

The most entertaining race of the Gen3 era opened up the real stuff at Wanneroo, with van Gisbergen taking a hotlycontested chequered flag over the championship leader in a thrilling exchange of paint.

The officials called out Kostecki with a dubious bad

Wanneroo was also a red letter weekend for Cooldrive and Todd Hazelwood – fastest in Saturday’s race and just off the podium. Here dealing with Messrs Feeney and Percat.

Frosty may have reached 600 races, but the weekend was disappointing for Team 18. sportsmanship flag as the #99 doggedly defended his lead over the hectic closing laps.

Erebus contested the race result saying that the #97 Camaro gained unfair advantage from the Turn 6 contact where he took the lead, but officials argued that Kostecki could have avoided the contact, rather than block and defend his lead at the clutch.

Penrite’s Reynolds took P3 over a charging Hazelwood, who set fastest lap and gained eight spots to finish a close P4.

The 42-lap Race 7 got underway with SVG and Kostecki on the front row, with Reynolds and Le Brocq tucked in behind.

Kostecki took the first corner with a diagonal jump off the line, with Randle also getting a good jump into P6 behind Payne at the expense of Courtney.

Tyre protection was key early on, with SVG shaking off Reynolds to put the heat on Kostecki, with very little splitting the field down to Smith.

The pit window opened on Lap 7, with Percat taking the risky option to run his tyres to the end, and in a hot train of cars at the front, Slade took the first undercut option for fresh lefts on Lap 12, with Courtney and Davison also choosing to play the long tyre game.

Brown had charged up eight spots in the meantime as the biggest mover in the field, as the leaders had built a small split on Reynolds and Le Brocq by 1.4s as Reynolds took his decisive pit.

Kostecki and SVG jostled down the pit straight on Lap 18, with SVG capitalising on a small error down the hill prior to taking the lead, with Kostecki then hitting back in the same spot a lap later just to show he could, then dived in for tyres.

Kostecki couldn’t jump Reynolds out of the pits however, making the #26 Penrite the effective leader with SVG in P1 by two seconds over Le Brocq.

Waters had a hairy moment getting turned around on the way into the pit, as Smith then lost a wheel on the exit.

SVG was building the lead as Kostecki passed Reynolds with a deep Turn 7 dive, with the #97 Camaro pitting on Lap 28 in a lightning F1-like 1.8s stop to come out 3s behind Kostecki, but with a tyre advantage.

SVG found his way past the #26 Mustang with grip inhand, with the gap at 2.344 to Kostecki with 10 to race.

The maths was touch-and-go to predict the winner, with Reynolds holding off Courtney and Payne, looking solid for P3 with six left.

That two-second split had been whittled down to under a second with the Erebus charger having a real battle on his hands.

Kostecki was holding it straight in a bumper to bumper ripper with three remaining, grimly holding the inside line in an absolute thriller.

SVG bullied him on the inside with a typical move to set up his third win of the year by 0.595s, the 78th of his career.

Hazelwood took Courtney late for P4, with Payne, Slade, Davison, Randle, and Feeney competing the 10, whilst in his 600th Supercars race, Winterbottom dropped five spots to finish in P18.

Saturday’s race was undoubtedly a classic clash between SVG and a challenger not prepared to back down .... More please.

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www.autoaction.com.au I 55

Supercars RACE REPORT Round 3 – PERTH

Feeney’s Race 3 win was complete and comprehensive ...

Below: Matt Payne continues to develop – snaring a pair of top 10s.

Bottom: James Courtney’s Mustang showed no lingering effects from its AGP BBQ, with a trio of top 10s – two of them top fives .

SUNDAY Q2/Q3

In Sunday’s back-to-back Qualifying, Brown took his second ever Supercars pole with a late flyer for Race 2, whilst Feeney put down a weekend high to grab the final Race 3 Pole.

Once again there was very little separating the field in Q1, with only 0.212 in the top-10, and likewise for the second session with a meagre 0.296 split.

The second #99 Erebus car also qualified strongly in the back-to-back sessions, taking a P4 and P2, with Kostecki looking good to perhaps extend his championship lead.

David Reynolds also gave himself a chance at some more podiums, continuing his sharp Wanneroo pace by also taking a P2 and P4.

It was fresh tyres all-round for the 15 minute Q2 with a ginger start as the greens found some grip.

The main players would all come late in the piece, with a late flying Courtney and Mostert going top before Reynolds threw down the gauntlet, with Brown then answering the call with a blistering 54.245s to top the Penrite Mustang by four one-hundredths.

De Pasquale and a late pushing Kostecki took the second row, with Courtney, Mostert, Davison, Payne, SVG and Slade making the top-10.

Q2 had plenty of drivers start on used tyres to try and fire an early shot, with the final green sets largely available if required.

Kostecki went up early with a 54.535s before Slade enjoyed an extended stay at the top with a quick 54.371s, despite going wide into Turn 7.

The two Penrites pushed up, as did Le Brocq following a brake bleed after a disappointing Q1.

Reynolds’ second lap put him top with a 54.303s, before the #88 Camaro offered up a 54.182s, with a satisfied Feeney taking to the sheds early.

Kostecki went under Feeney and over Brown into P2 with one minute left, with Reynolds, Davison, Slade, Mostert, Randle, Waters, and Percat filling the five rows. So where was SVG? He just couldn’t stitch one together, ending up a lowly P21.

RACE 2 - CLINICAL EREBUS

Brown executed a perfectly-measured Wanneroo race to take out a memorable win in the second stanza of the Perth SuperSprint.

His teammate Brodie Kostecki put the punctuation mark on the race for Erebus, making a maiden Supercars one-two, extending his championship lead with a P2 over Tickford’s James Courtney, taking his first podium in 2023.

At lights out, Brown and Reynolds dragged it into the first corner, with Brown taking it on superior track positioning.

Kostecki took Reynolds with a bold inside move on Turn 7, with Pasquale trying the same but making

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contact with the Penrite car and pushing it out into the beach, with Reynolds re-entering in P12, allowing Courtney and Mostert to push up – the #11 DJR car took a 15s penalty for the contact.

Brown enjoyed clean air over his teammate by lap 7, with Waters making six spots into P10.

Reynolds was struggling, with sand in his brakeducts, but his rookie teammate Payne was running well in P6, and moving up on Davison.

Despite the warmer conditions, tyre degradation was surprisingly low as Brown extended his lead, enjoying a two second gap, whilst SVG and Waters found themselves in P7 and P8 and pulling up on Payne.

The two Erebus Camaros opened a healthy gap, as Kostecki went for the undercut, leaving Courtney 6.9s behind Brown on Lap 23.

SVG was left to run long in P2 over Waters on the same strategy, 12 seconds from the leader.

Brown took the option on lap 27 with the #97 in tow, as Brown came out using Randle as a wedge over his teammate in effective P2.

Slade was forced to park up to end his top-10 push, as Courtney distanced himself from Mostert to control P3.

Brown pushed the lead out past six seconds with two to go, with Kostecki pushing a three second margin to Courtney. Mostert and SVG came in next, with Davison, Hazelwood, Waters, Payne and Heimgartner making the 10.

RACE 3 – FEENEY KEEPS ON KEEPING ON

Feeney capitalised on his dominant pole, claiming a highly clinical victory, his third in Supercars, shutting the window on Brown in the Wanneroo finale.

Erebus were up front again with a double podium, as Kostecki claimed vital championship points over Mostert and SVG, to extend his overall lead to 100 points over the #25 Mustang driver, and to 136 points over the defending champ.

The 42 lap Wanneroo finale opened with Feeney and Kostecki on the front row, with Brown lurking on the second row.

QUALIFYING RACE 7 Pos Driver 1 Shane van Gisbergen 2 Brodie Kostecki 3 David Reynolds 4 Jack Le Brocq 5 Matthew Payne 6 James Courtney 7 Will Davison 8 Thomas Randle 9 Tim Slade 10 Bryce Fullwood 11 Broc Feeney 12 Todd Hazelwood 13 Mark Winterbottom 14 Nick Percat 15 Chaz Mostert 16 Declan Fraser 17 Macauley Jones 18 Anton De Pasquale 19 Cameron Waters 20 Scott Pye 21 Andre Heimgartner 22 William Brown 23 Cameron Hill 24 James Golding 25 Jack Smith

RESULTS RACE 7 42 LAPS Time 0:54.3625 rS 0:00.0257 0:00.2825 0:00.2878 0:00.3212 0:00.3763 0:00.5020 0:00.5195 0:00.5356 0:00.5718 0:54.5640 S 0:00.2037 0:00.2189 0:00.2294 0:00.2912 0:00.3553 0:00.4118 0:00.4234 0:00.5736 0:00.6482 0:54.7459 2 0:00.3886 0:00.3943 0:00.4276 0:00.5702

Pos Drivers 1 Shane van Gisbergen 2 Brodie Kostecki 3 David Reynolds 4 Todd Hazelwood 5 James Courtney 6 Matthew Payne 7 Tim Slade 8 Will Davison 9 Thomas Randle 10 Broc Feeney 11 Chaz Mostert 12 Jack Le Brocq 13 Anton De Pasquale 14 Bryce Fullwood 15 James Golding 16 William Brown 17 Nick Percat 18 Mark Winterbottom 19 Declan Fraser 20 Scott Pye 21 Andre Heimgartner 22 Cameron Waters 23 Cameron Hill 24 Macauley Jones 25 Jack Smith

Laps 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 39

Race time 40:02.0593 40:02.6542 40:03.0124 40:03.8062 40:04.9868 40:06.8285 40:06.9093 40:09.2891 40:09.9837 40:10.4548 40:11.9158 40:12.3162 40:13.3645 40:14.9706 40:14.9487 40:18.1882 40:19.8636 40:20.0545 40:20.5647 40:20.9597 40:24.9475 40:27.6701 40:29.9497 40:41.7149 40:41.9367

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Will Brown leaves the pits, headed for his strong Race 2 win. Right: the WA fans turned out in numbers for the Supercars circus.

Turn 1 congestion, with Thomas Randle in no-man’s land ... Right: David Reynolds’ qualifying pace and Saturday podium (and a fourth on Sunday) says Grove Racing is getting there too ...

Kostecki looked strong off the line but Feeney made the turn on the inside, as Fraser got turned by Le Brocq, dropping to the rear while the culprit copped 15s.

Feeney was strong out front, as Brown took P3 and had pace on Kostecki, making that happen through Turn 6.

Feeney’s comfortable split was ruined by the encroaching Erebus Camaro, whilst Slade was looking quick in P5.

He took the first undercut to get out of a three-car train on lap 12, whilst Kostecki had dropped 3.127s back on his teammate, who was also losing tenths on the #88.

Lap 18 had Brown just holding onto Feeney by 1.230, with tyre life falling off the cliff in general.

Kostecki pitted on lap 21, with Slade’s earlier undercut looking good, holding effective P3 over the #99 by three seconds, whilst being 30 seconds from the lead – but ultimately tyre life would hurt him.

QUALIFYING RACE 8 Pos Driver 1 William Brown 2 David Reynolds 3 Anton De Pasquale 4 Brodie Kostecki 5 James Courtney 6 Chaz Mostert 7 Will Davison 8 Matthew Payne 9 Shane van Gisbergen 10 Tim Slade 11 Todd Hazelwood 12 Bryce Fullwood 13 Jack Le Brocq 14 Andre Heimgartner 15 Cameron Waters 16 Nick Percat 17 Thomas Randle 18 Scott Pye 19 Cameron Hill 20 Mark Winterbottom 21 Broc Feeney 22 James Golding 23 Macauley Jones 24 Jack Smith 25 Declan Fraser

Feeney snuck away by lap 23, opening a growing split with Brown needing fresh rubber, which he took on lap 25, re-entering behind the #23 PremiAir Camaro with a clear tyre advantage.

Feeney had a 30 second cushion over Slade before Brown manoeuvred past him to go for the gain, needing two seconds to be any chance of finding Feeney at the pit exit.

That critical pit came at Lap 30, with the #88 enjoying 2.315s to the good on re-entry.

Kostecki held P3 by a hair over Reynolds, with Slade losing touch on older tyres as Reynolds and Mostert blew past him.

Over the closing laps, Feeney tore away from the challengers with a six second gap, as Reynolds lost contact with the podium, meaning Erebus claimed

RESULTS RACE 8 42 LAPS Time 0:54.2450*S 0:00.0404 0:00.1549 0:00.1624 0:00.1684 0:00.1691 0:00.1906 0:00.1907 0:00.1933 0:00.2128 0:00.2769 0:00.2796 0:00.3141 0:00.3218 0:00.3308 0:00.3600 0:00.3652 0:00.3746 0:00.4567 0:00.4657 0:00.5166 0:00.6033 0:00.7047 0:00.8007 0:00.8454

autoactionmag

Pos Drivers 1 William Brown 2 Brodie Kostecki 3 James Courtney 4 Chaz Mostert 5 Shane van Gisbergen 6 Will Davison 7 Todd Hazelwood 8 Cameron Waters 9 Matthew Payne 10 Andre Heimgartner 11 James Golding 12 Bryce Fullwood 13 Broc Feeney 14 David Reynolds 15 Jack Le Brocq 16 Macauley Jones 17 Scott Pye 18 Mark Winterbottom 19 Nick Percat 20 Jack Smith 21 Declan Fraser 22 Anton De Pasquale 23 Thomas Randle 24 Tim Slade 25 Cameron Hill

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QUALIFYING RACE 9 Laps 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 40 35

Race time 39:58.9291 40:05.1854 40:08.6823 40:11.3131 40:11.7305 40:12.2914 40:15.4635 40:16.6262 40:17.9578 40:22.8678 40:25.3709 40:28.3484 40:28.6355 40:32.0941 40:32.2533 40:33.5952 40:34.5149 40:34.7093 40:37.2704 40:37.9261 40:38.5096 40:39.3099 40:39.7347 40:03.5296 40:26.8424

autoactionmag

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Pos Driver Time 1 Broc Feeney 0:54.1828RS 2 Brodie Kostecki 0:00.0824 3 William Brown 0:00.1185 4 David Reynolds 0:00.1207 5 Will Davison 0:00.1870 6 Tim Slade 0:00.1886 7 Chaz Mostert 0:00.1993 8 Thomas Randle 0:00.2392 9 Cameron Waters 0:00.2836 10 Nick Percat 0:00.2968 11 Scott Pye 0:00.3292 12 Cameron Hill 0:00.3539 13 Todd Hazelwood 0:00.3582 14 James Courtney 0:00.3628 15 Andre Heimgartner 0:00.3730 16 Matthew Payne 0:00.3848 17 Jack Le Brocq 0:00.4001 18 Anton De Pasquale 0:00.4092 19 James Golding 0:00.4375 20 Declan Fraser 0:00.4465 21 Shane van Gisbergen 0:00.4788 22 Bryce Fullwood 0:00.6068 23 Macauley Jones 0:00.6221 24 Jack Smith 0:00.6751 25 Mark Winterbottom 0:00.7962

autoactionmag

another weekend double, cementing their capital as a true contender for the teams championship.

SUPERCARS NEXT head to the Apple Isle for another short-track SuperSprint format at Symmons Plains Raceway, 30km south of Launceston.

Teams and drivers will welcome another familiar format without the Gen3 mystery bag that both Newcastle and the AGP offered up.

Wanneroo largely offered up a pleasing product in the parity stakes, with such little between the cars in qualifying all weekend. Tasmania is expected to be the same on another short (2.4km) circuit, but with some slower corners and a hairpin, which will offer the Mustangs a more clear look at what the cornering gains from the engine mapping will produce. Lets go!

RESULTS RACE 9 42 LAPS Pos Drivers 1 Broc Feeney 2 William Brown 3 Brodie Kostecki 4 David Reynolds 5 Chaz Mostert 6 Cameron Waters 7 Will Davison 8 Tim Slade 9 James Courtney 10 Scott Pye 11 James Golding 12 Shane van Gisbergen 13 Nick Percat 14 Todd Hazelwood 15 Anton De Pasquale 16 Cameron Hill 17 Bryce Fullwood 18 Matthew Payne 19 Mark Winterbottom 20 Macauley Jones 21 Jack Smith 22 Andre Heimgartner 23 Declan Fraser 24 Jack Le Brocq NC Thomas Randle

CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS AFTER ROUND 3 Laps 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 42 32

Race time 39:51.3676 39:58.2482 40:01.1496 40:02.8637 40:04.0036 40:07.4524 40:09.6420 40:10.2687 40:13.4914 40:13.7301 40:14.0037 40:14.3665 40:15.1043 40:21.0885 40:22.9737 40:24.0636 40:25.9331 40:26.0439 40:26.4938 40:32.0642 40:33.6439 40:33.8904 40:36.2849 40:40.5470 40:16.7774

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Pos Driver 1 Brodie Kostecki 2 Chaz Mostert 3 Shane van Gisbergen 4 William Brown 5 Broc Feeney 6 David Reynolds 7 Cameron Waters 8 Andre Heimgartner 9 Will Davison 10 Jack Le Brocq 11 Todd Hazelwood 12 Matthew Payne 13 James Golding 14 Tim Slade 15 Bryce Fullwood 16 Scott Pye 17 James Courtney 18 Mark Winterbottom 19 Anton De Pasquale 20 Thomas Randle 21 Macauley Jones 22 Jack Smith 23 Declan Fraser 24 Cameron Hill 25 Nick Percat

Points 784 684 648 613 569 533 523 492 463 433 408 405 404 399 399 378 367 367 349 342 298 266 259 251 229

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www.autoaction.com.au I 57

TEST YOUR GENERAL MOTORSPORT KNOWLEDGE ACROSS 5 With what team did Allan McNish race in Formula 1 in 2002?

down, because only you know your true potential.” (surname)

DOWN

7 With what team did Scott Pye make his Supercars debut? (abbreviation)

1 Who won the 2023 Croatia rally in WRC? (surname)

9 How many people shared the car to win the Bathurst 24 Hour race in 2002?

2 With which MotoGP manufacturer did Jonas Folger race for on his MotoGP return at the Circuit of the Americas?

11 Which current Supercars driver scored his maiden race win in the championship at Queensland Raceway in 2008? (surname) 12 Which Finnish driver won his first of two WRC titles driving a Peugeot in 2000? (surname) 14 Who won the 2000 Bathurst 1000 alongside Garth Tander? (surname) 16 Who won the Indy 500 on debut in 2000 before moving into F1 the following year? (surname) 19 Which former Supercars Championship team won both Bathurst 24 Hour races? (abbreviation) 20 Who is the longest serving team principal in Formula 1? (surname) 21 Which Brazilian CART driver won his first title in 2000? (full name) 22 Who scored his sole Supercars Championship race victory alongside David Reynolds on the Gold Coast streets in 2013? (surname) 23 With what manufacturer did Allan McNish win the World Endurance Championship in 2013?

24 In the 1988 Italian Grand Prix someone competing in a Williams in a one-off drive collided with Ayrton Senna when he was being lapped – name the driver. (surname) 25 On the current Formula 1 Silverstone layout, what is the name of the first corner?

26 Who said, “don’t let anyone put you

3 What model Holden won the two Bathurst 24 Hour races?

4 For how many years were Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella teammates?

6 How many times did Allan McNish win the Le Mans 24 Hours?

7 Who am I? My last Bathurst 1000 appearance was in 2006; I won the Bathurst 12 Hour in 2009 and the Bathurst 1000 twice, the first of which was with Tomas Mezera. (surname) 8 Last weekend Maserati secured its first single seater podium since 1957 – in what championship was this?

9 In which nation did Craig Breen score his first WRC podium?

10 Who famously coined the phrase “To finish first, you must first finish.” (Surname) 12 Who scored Maserati’s first single seater podium since 1957?

13 Who holds the record for most MotoGP pole positions? (full name) 15 What nation did Craig Breen represent in WRC? 17 How many WRC podiums did Craig Breen score?

18 What was Craig Breen’s highest WRC event finish?

24 In what country did Craig Breen score his final WRC podium?

1 down – Hispania Racing, 2 down – three, 2 across – three, 3 across – eighth, 4 down – Iwasa, 5 down – Payne, 6 down – four, 7 down – Brack, 8 down – two 9 down – Erebus, 10 across – Murray’s Corner, 11 across – Eleven, 12 down – Montoya, 13 down – Bell, 14 across – Feeney, 15 down – Schumacher, 16 across – seven, 17 across – Wills, 17 down – Walker, 18 down – six, 19 across – Ryder Quinn, 20 down – Percat, 21 down – two, 22 across – Vettel, 23 down – Lowndes, 24 across – Bortoleto, 25 down – twelfth, 26 down – Mir, 27 across – Makinen, 28 across – Hodges

We take a look back at what was making news in Auto Action 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago

1973 FIFTY YEARS ago the first Australian Touring Car Championship round was held at Wanneroo Raceway, which was christened by a thrilling battle between arch-rivals Allan Moffat and Peter Brock. The 35-lap race went down to the wire as Brock in his XU-1 Torana hunted down Moffat’s GTHO Falcon.

The Holden Dealer Team driver bounced back brilliantly from a slow start to be on Moffat’s bumper and create a thrilling finish. But he fell just short, as Moffat led home Brock in a near dead heat with both cars crossing the line in the dirt.

1983 TEN YEARS later Peter Brock and Allan Moffat were once again fighting to the death, but this time the HDT driver emerged on top at Adelaide International Raceway. Moffat now driving his Mazda RX7 had cut down Brock’s 6s lead inside the final seven laps to set up a grandstand finish. Moffat tried to make a move around the outside of the final corner, but Brock edged him out by less than six inches as both cars were awarded the same time.

The future of Sydney’s Oran Park Raceway was in doubt with the circuit on sale for around $1.5 million.

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1993 ALAIN PROST took control of the 1993 Formula 1 World Championship with a pair of dominant wins at Imola and Spain. After earler being beaten by Ayrton Senna in back-to-back races, some wondered if Prost was past his prime, but The Professor responded in style. In a crazy San Marino Grand Prix where just nine cars finished, Prost finished 32 seconds ahead of Michael Schumacher and was equally as dominant in Spain despite a slow start. With Tony Longhurst being held back in his BMW, rival Dick Johnson made the “radical” call that the former should be able to build a Ford or Chev V8 for his M3.

2003 THE MOTORSPORT world was mourning the tragic death of rallying legend Possum Bourne.

Bourne passed away as a result of serious injuries sustained from a ‘recce’ accident in preparation for the Say Hillclimb.

Tributes were seen at Eastern Creek where the third round of the 2003 V8 Supercars Championship and Ford filled the podium for the first time in six years. The 77-lap race was dominated by Marcos Ambrose, who led home FPR’s Craig Lowndes and SBR teammate Russell Ingall. Ambrose “felt like Mark Skaife” charging to victory as the HRT star struggled to 19th.

2013 CRAIG LOWNDES made history as Triple Eight enjoyed a perfect Perth round a decade ago. Victory in Saturday’s 60/60 race of the Perth 360 gave Lowndes more Supercars/ ATCC wins than any other at the time. His historic 91st win knocked Mark Skaife from top spot. After Lowndes’ record-breaking win on Saturday, Jamie Whincup continued Triple Eight’s celebrations by sweeping Sunday and taking over the championship lead. In F1 land, Fernando Alonso secured his 32nd and most recent Grand Prix win on home turf for Ferrari.

Alonso made a four-stop strategy work to beat Kimi Raikkonen by 9s, while both Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo scored points.

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