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LATEST NEWS

BACK TO EARTH SUPERMAC READY TO DEFEND TITLE Image: LAT

BRUCE NEWTON talks to Scott McLaughlin about coming down from the high of his stunning IndyCar tests RIDING HIGH on the back of his fastest ever racing speeds, Scott McLaughlin has returned to Australia ready to start defending his Supercars championship.

McLaughlin was on a Qantas flight out of Dallas on Friday afternoon (Saturday morning in Australia) within hours of completing his IndyCar rookie oval test at Texas Motor Speedway.

The numbers McLaughlin posted in a Team Penske Dallara-Chev during his 150-lap outing make for eye-popping reading — a 222mph (357km/h) top speed and a 214mph (344km/h) average. “My outlap was probably the fastest I had ever been in a race car. It was like 180mph (290km/h) into turn one,� McLaughlin told Auto Action. “It just shows the speed, they are like a little slingshot. It’s unbelievable. You are really locked in, your neck, you can’t move. “You have to be so precise and I really enjoyed it. It was really interesting. The way widening your arc on entry by a tyre width aided your exit or car balance was pretty amazing. “I can see why guys get so excited racing ovals.�

McLaughlin revealed he had been given a few insights by IndyCar legend Rick Mears before the Texas test. “He was really helpful,� McLaughlin said. “He just said, ‘Trust your arse and trust the feeling in your arse,’ and, ‘Don’t try and drive a bad car’.�

The test on the 1.44-mile (2.3km) TMS oval followed hard on the heels of McLaughlin’s spectacular third fastest time in testing for all IndyCar drivers at the Circuit of the Americas near Houston earlier in the week.

That in turn followed his first IndyCar drive at a rookie test on the Sebring road course in Florida in January.

McLaughlin will return to the US to make his race debut at the Indianapolis Raceway park road course in May. While not confirmed, speculation is growing he could add an outing on the Gateway oval in Illinois in August to his IndyCar schedule.

But for now McLaughlin insists he is focused only on Supercars and the May IndyCar outing won’t be a distraction. “I am pretty confident I am going to be OK in that regard,� he said. “They (Team Penske) wouldn’t let me do this if they thought it was going to be a distraction. “I am fully focused on what I have to do.�

McLaughlin, who this year will again have Ludo Lacroix as his engineer, was due to get his first taste of the 2020 version of his DJR Team Penske/Shell V-Power Mustang at The Bend test on Tuesday, ahead of the season opener in Adelaide from Thursday.

Mandatory changes to all Supercars in 2020 include a reduction in aerodynamic downforce and the use of a control SupaShock damper.

“I am hanging to get back in the car, really hanging,� McLaughlin said. “I don’t think I will notice a huge amount of change aero-wise. But the shock is probably going to be the biggest thing for every team. “I am sure that is going to be the biggest thing for us to get our head around engineering-wise.

But the best thing is we have a really good base from when we were at The Bend last year. “I was probably the happiest I was all year with the car at that track.�

Mclaughlin is conscious he can become only the fourth driver in the history of Australian touring car racing to win three consecutive championships, after Ian Geoghegan, Mark Skaife and Jamie Whincup. “Everyone keeps saying it (three-peat) to me,� he said. “I’m ready for it. “I have it in mind, I want to do it.�

Having also been married in the Supercars off-season, McLaughlin says he’s quickly put the controversies of 2019 behind him. They included losing his qualifying lap at Bathurst for an engine illegality and the pace car drama in the same race, which he went on to win. “I have never been more motivated to go well after what was a pretty political year last year,� he said. “I have been training my arse off for various different things, including the week that has just gone, and that’s put me in a good spot mentally and physically for this year. “I am really excited.�

THE FUTURE

AS ALWAYS, McLaughlin is toeing the Team Penske company line when it comes to more IndyCar racing in America, whether it be this year or making the transition full-time to the open-wheeler series as soon as next year.

On the prospect of Gateway in August, he says: “For me it’s locked in for May, but anything post or pre, that is completely up to Roger (Penske — team owner). “I will just wait for the call.�

And as for being guided into IndyCar racing rather than going NASCAR stock car racing, which was clearly his ambition in the past? “Honestly, I don’t care. I just want to have an opportunity in America whether its NASCAR, IndyCar or staying in Australia for another three, four, five years. “I want to drive for Team Penske and if it’s in America that’s a bonus. If not I have an awesome gig down south.�

McLaughlin is also not getting carried away by his instant speed in IndyCars. “I have an understanding, but I have a long way to go,� he said. “The consistency, in and out laps, there’s a lot of things I need to learn. “But I do have an introduction, it would be fair to say.�

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MOZZIE BUZZ!

As Mostert swaps sides, Ryan Walkinshaw tells BRUCE NEWTON that the team’s star signing is symbolic of a renewed determination to succeed IT’S NOT a rebuild!

That’s the forceful message from Walkinshaw Andretti United co-owner Ryan Walkinshaw even though the team is entering 2020 with two new drivers, a revised engineering line-up, revamped commercial backing and Holden Commodore ZBs that have been thoroughly renewed for the new season.

“I hate that word rebuild, it’s really annoying,” Walkinshaw told <i>Auto Action<i> .

“Everyone is bored with that. We always get pulled down this route: ‘are you rebuilding, is this the year?’

Walkinshaw is acutely conscious of the number of times the Holden team he has been connected with much of his life has gone through substantial overhauls in an attempt to reverse slumping form. WAU and its predecessors last won Bathurst in 2011 and the driver’s championship in 2002.

The operation’s nadir came when it lost its factory ‘Holden Racing Team’ status in 2017 to arch-rival Triple

Eight. Andretti Autosport and United Autosports joined the Walkinshaw family as co-owners later the same year For 2020 Chaz Mostert and rookie Bryce Fullwood replace James Courtney and Scott Pye as drivers, highly-rated Adam De Borre follows Mostert from Tickford Racing to continue as his engineer and a slew of new commercial partners join the squad including naming rights partners Appliances Online and Middy’s.

But for all that,

Walkinshaw is resisting the term ‘rebuild’ and refusing to make grand statements about the team’s future.

“There are so many different variable in this game, it’s so competitive out there, this is one of the most competitive categories in the world and it’s getting more competitive every single year,” he said.

“You just don’t know, you can only do and control what you have available to you and you have to do the best job you can possibly do and when things aren’t working make changes to try and do something different.

“That’s what we have done.

We have made a pretty focussed, targeted investment in a few key personnel and we hope we are doing the best we can.

“At the end of the

day it comes down to how all the plans we put in-place eventuate on the race track.”

Mostert is obviously central to those on-track plans. The 2014 Bathurst winner had his first experience of his new #25 Commodore in a 60km shakedown at Phillip Island last week, was scheduled to test last Tuesday (after AA deadline) at The Bend with the rest of the 2020 field and then make his debut for WAU at this weekend’s Superloop 500.

“We are really excited about what we feel Chaz can bring,” said Walkinshaw.

“To be honest, we feel Chaz has underperformed at Tickford.

“As a calibre of driver we think he’s up there with Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin.

“Our job now is to give him the best team and car package around him to get the best out of him.”

Mostert’s deal with WAU is long-term and Walkinshaw says his task and goal are simple.

“He says he is committed to this team

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MOSTERT’S CONFIDENCE BOOST

CHAZ EXCITED BY WAU PLAN

CHAZ Mostert’s confidence he has made the right call to shift from Tickford Racing to Walkinsahw Andretti United has been reinforced by his early experiences with his new Supercars team.

Ahead of the Superloop 500 in Adelaide he tested on Tuesday (after <i>Auto Action<i> deadline), shook down his new Appliance Online Commodore ZB last week and before that visited the team’s Clayton shop several times as well as Andretti Autosport in Indianapolis, the headquarters of WAU co-owner Michael Andretti.

“It’s been confidence-inspiring getting to the team and meeting up with everyone,” Mostert said.

“The vibe is good and it’s fresh.

Sometimes you just need to change your job, just so you’ll feel refreshed and can go back to enjoying your motor racing.”

Mostert had been part of the Tickford structure since late 2011. He made his main game debut with Dick Johnson Racing in 2013 while on loan from what was then known as Ford Performance Racing.

It was DJR’s successor, DJR Team Penske, where Mostert was expected to head in 2020, but he shocked the Supercars paddock by knocking back a big money offer to join Scott McLaughlin at that team.

Instead, he opted for WAU, which lost its factory Holden status for 2017 and has struggled for consistent competitiveness over many years.

“It wasn’t just one week … I spent a lot of time thinking about the decision,” said Mostert.

“This was probably the first time in my career where I have just solely focussed on pleasing myself and what I need and what I want to do.

“Walkinshaw was the best option for me … they were the ones that realistically made sense as the something I wanted to be part of.

“Those guys are keen to really up their performance and chase race victories and build something special. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, there’s a lot of hard work in-between. BN

Images: WAU/Supercars

for the long-term because he wants to win championships and bring this team back to the top,” Walkinshaw said.

“He wanted to be part of the story, part of the resurrection of our great team in a very similar way to what Scott Mclaughlin has done at DJR.” Walkinshaw insists Super2 champion Fullwood didn’t get the drive in the #2 car simply on the basis of bringing Middy’s Electrical money.

“If it was a money play there were plenty of other drivers out there who were throwing around some really big money,” he revealed.

“But for us it was really important we had a driver that we felt could deliver.”

On the other side of the pit wall De Borre, with whom Mostert has worked from much of his Supercars career since 2013, is the biggest change.

The race team operation will continue to be headed by co-team principal Matt Nilsson, with Englishman Carl Faux as technical chief and Walkinshaw veteran Robbie Starr engineering Fullwood.

The race team structure will revert to orthodoxy in 2020 after Nilsson and Faux were called in from Winton onwards in 2019 to work more directly with Pye and Courtney

respectively.

In overall operations Nilsson continues to share team principal duties with Bruce Stewart.

The engineering team has been hard at work on the ZBs WAU will roll out in South Australia. Walkinshaw confirmed they will incorporate more changes than the mandatory aero, shock and engine modifications introduced by Supercars for 2020.

Those development reflects the fact the WAU Commodores were rarely strong in qualifying and didn’t win a race throughout 2019. In other words, much improvement was needed.

“There’s been a lot of development from our side going in to this season, but whether that’s going to work or not is always up for debate,” Walkinsahw said. “Until you turn a wheel in anger you are not going to know.”

Walkinshaw does acknowledge the opportunity to benefit from surprise results, especially early in the season.

“Teams like us who have had a lot of change are at a risk of having inconsistency, but also if we get those changes right we have the opportunity to do a much better job than we have done previously.”

DEPARTMENT OF YOUTH THE RECRUITMENT of Super2 champion Bryce Fullwood could be the first sign of a Walkinsahw Andretti United youth development program.

While currently and understandably focussed on getting its two-car Supercars championship squad in contention, team co-owner Ryan Walkinshaw has flagged a potential expansion of operations

by WAU to groom young drivers.

“Once we are winning (Supercars) races, getting podiums regularly and fighting for championships both team and driver, then that’s the time you can … start looking at Super2 programs, TCR programs, or whatever it may be,” Walkinshaw said.

The ambition is shared by his team co-owners Zak Brown (United Autosports/ McLaren F1) and Michael Andretti (Andretti Autosport).

“Zak is very, very focussed on bringing young talent through,” explained Walkinshaw. “We have seen that with Lando Norris and McLaren.

“He firmly believes you are never too young to deliver. If they have the skills then

chuck them in the deep end and see how they roll.

“I quite like that philosophy as well.

“Michael (Andretti) has a very successful Indy Lites program which has a similar mentality.”

New star signing Chaz Mostert also backs the youth policy.

“Chaz also mentioned when we signed him he was very keen to work with a younger driver to try and develop and become a bit of a protege for him,” explained Walkinshaw.

“We also felt that was a good move.”

Separately, WAU is also keen to again campaign a wildcard entry in the Bathurst 1000 again in 2020, although nothing is locked away. In 2019 North American IndyCar drivers Alexander Rossi and James Hinchcliffe finished 18th. BN

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AXING HOLDEN PAVES WAY FOR CAMARO

WALKINSHAW IN THE BOX SEAT TO TAKE CONTROL OF CHEV SUPERCAR HOMOLOGATION

By BRUCE NEWTON THE DECISION by General Motors to axe the Holden brand at the end of this year could lead to a fundamental swing in the balance of power between some of the heaviest hitters in Supercars.

Right now, Roland Dane and Triple Eight Race Engineering hold all the power as Holden’s official homologation team and parts source for the Commodore ZB Supercar.

But with Holden gone and if — as expected — GM elects to focus its Australian retailing efforts on a local conversion business run by the Walkinshaw Group, that all changes.

Walkinshaw Group division Walkinshaw Racing was the homologation squad for Holden, but lost that right and the Holden Racing Team name to T8 in 2017.

The Walkinshaw Group converts the Camaro to right-hand drive for Australian sale under the HSV brand and is expected to form GM Specialty Vehicles.

The new entity mentioned

by GM executives is expected to officially offer the US corporation’s vehicles in Australia once Holden departs.

Walkinshaw Group has championed the plan to develop

6 AutoAction

a Supercars version of the Camaro for the past couple of years, but that has been blocked

by GM and Holden’s preference to have only one of its products on the Supercars grid at any one time.

At best, the ZB Commodore could race until the end of 2021 — Holden’s current contract with T8 expires then.

There’s no doubt Supercars will want a “live” replacement on the grid alongside the Ford Mustang by 2022 when the Gen3 technical rules are scheduled to roll out.

Right now, the Camaro looks like the best option and it’s impossible to imagine Walkinshaw handing off the rights to anyone else to develop a Supercars racing version.

As an alternative, the C8 Corvette due could also form the basis of a Supercar given Gen3 is shaping as a two-door formula.

Walkinshaw Group boss Ryan Walkinshaw declined to comment on this scenario when contacted

by Auto Action.

AA also attempted to make contact with Roland Dane on Monday afternoon after the Holden decision was made, but was unable to gain comment.

In a previous interview with AA Walkinshaw spoke passionately about the need for Supercars to

cheapen and broaden its offer to manufacturers to tempt them into the category.

“It’s unreasonable to expect manufacturers in the modern Australian automotive industry to throw millions of dollars at a race team. It’s not going to happen,” he said. “It’s OK having two manufacturers and two body shapes in the category.

“However, I believe getting a couple more manufacturers in the sport is critical to its sustainability over the medium to long term.”

He was strong in his view on what Gen3 should be.

“I believe that opening it up to two doors and making the cost of entry as cheap as possible to manufacturers is an exciting opportunity available under the new-gen regulations.

“So let’s focus and do it, let’s not mess around looking at history and legacy and sunken cost we already have in our current product.

“Let’s take it as an opportunity to reinvigorate Supercars and turn it into what we feel it can and should be and make it easier, simpler, more economical and more exciting for manufacturers to get in.”

Quite feasibly, Walkinshaw could soon be in a powerful position to make that happen.

WHAT HOLDEN DID

GENERAL MOTORS will close Holden and pulled out of Australia because it can’t figure out how to make money.

It’s that simple.

The continuous Holden factory commitment to touring car racing stretching back into the 1960s is collateral damage in that.

Holden has a contract to race in Supercars with Triple Eight Race Engineering until the end of the 2021 season. Feasibly, it could honour that contract, or it could negotiate an early exit with the team.

Either way, it’s likely plenty of ZBs would still be on the grid in 2021.

Holden interim managing director Kristian Aquilina — a motor racing fan — was giving little away about how he thought it would all play out during a press conference last Monday afternoon.

“I personally am a big supporter and fan of motorsport,” he said. “I am in love with the sport as well as the company we are talking about here.

“But I think it’s only the right thing to do to give our partners here the courtesy of a discussion before I talk about it publicly.

“We have a relationship that I value very highly. We’ll do that and then we’ll have more to comment together with our partners.”

DE PASQUALE: NO DEALS DONE But Penske and Triple Eight have both asked questions

INQUIRIES ABOUT the future of rising star Anton De Pasquale have been made to his management by the two heavyweight operations in Supercars, DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight Race Engineering.

But De Pasquale’s manager Paul Morris insists there have been no deals done with either team.

“I have had discussions with (Team Penske president) Tim Cindric about Anton, I’ve had discussions with Roland (Dane, T8 co-owner) about Anton,” said the 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner.

“I think if a position opened up in any of those teams he would be the obvious choice, but nothing has gone any further than just some dialogue.”

The Penrite Holden Commodore ZB driver starts his third year in Supercars with Erebus Motorsport this year.

Last year he extended his deal with the team only for one year, potentially leaving him open to move to one of the category’s two super-squads next year.

Erebus has put some back-up plans in-place by guaranteeing Will Brown a full-time drive in the Supercars championship next year.

David Reynolds is already locked in to a drive with the team for 10 years.

Seats are potentially opening up at both Supercars powerhouse teams for next year.

Jamie Whincup will clarify his future in Adelaide on Saturday. It is feasible this could be the seven-time champion’s last season in the category as a full-time driver.

Meanwhile, DJR Team Penske could be in the market to replace Scott McLaughlin next year as the defending Supercars champion’s IndyCar career begins to take shape.

McLaughlin will make his debut in North America’s premier open-wheeler series in a fourth Team Penske entry in May after a stunning third fastest in pre-season testing at COTA this month.

Morris said his personal preference would be to direct De Pasquale to T8.

De Pasquale drove for the squad at the Bathurst 12 Hour this year although a practice crash by teammate Sam Shahin ruled him out of a start.

“I still think Red Bull is the pick of the teams, the way they can rebound, the way they do things, their leadership and so on,” Morris said.

“But it’s not going to be my choice.

“I think it’s going to be Jamie Whincup’s choice. It will all have to wait for next week.”

Morris was skeptical of Dane’s recent declaration to Auto Action that he would look overseas for a potential Whincup replacement as well as in Australia. See https://autoaction.com. au/2020/02/09/danes-global-talentsearch.

“Normally if Roland is talking about something he is thinking about something else,” suggested Morris.

“He may already have a replacement for Jamie, but I can tell you it’s not Anton if he has.”

If neither T8 or DJRTP opportunities eventuate Morris thought De Pasquale’s best option would be to stay with Erebus.

“If he moves it needs to be a good

move, so if it’s not one of those teams he’s better off staying where he is at,” Morris said.

“And who knows what happens this year. Erebus could rise and fulfil what he needs.”

Morris has worked with De Pasquale since the 24-year-old returned from Europe in 2015, running him in the development series for two years before he graduated to the main game with Erebus.

“The best thing about Anton is he is how calm and cool he is under pressure,” he said. “Everything is very logical and there’s no emotion.

“When he steps out of the car it is what it is. He’s either made a mistake or done a good job. There’s no baggage, or hang-up or blame on anyone else.

“It’s just, ‘That’s what I did wrong and that’s what I need to do better next time’. That’s the best thing about him.”

Apart from De Pasquale, Morris is currently working with Brodie Kostecki and Broc Feeney. The former will be an Erebus co-driver and contest Super2 with Eggleston in 2020 while Feeney — son of legendary Aussie production bike racer Paul Feeney — will be in Super2 with Tickford.

ANTON’S JUST FOCUSED ON RACING AS FLATTERED as he is by the attention he is receiving, Anton De Pasquale insists he is focusing only on the racing and letting Paul Morris worry about his future career.

“Obviously there is a lot of talk going on ,” he told Auto Action.

“It probably makes me feel good about myself, but it doesn’t change my life or the goal of what I am doing.

“Paul will sort that side of my life out.

He has been good to me so far.

“He is a good mate so in terms of what is happening beyond this year is not really in my mind.”

De Pasquale made it clear whatever happens next year, he wants to progress from last year’s 14th place in the Supercars championship and open his tally of wins this year.

“You have to set realistic goals … but I think if don’t win a race in 2020 I will be very disappointed,” he said.

“I put high expectations on myself and the whole team wants to win, so hopefully me and Dave (Reynolds) can make our cars as fast as possible and then we are fighting for the top step or podium spots.”

BN

COMMODORE AERO CHOP ALTHOUGH NOWHERE near as extensive as the Mustang’s cutback, the Commodore has also had an aero trim.

As these photos show, the ZB’s undertray has been shortened by about 75mm to reduce downforce.

They also show the changed foam infill of the rear of the undertray, the angle of which has also been reduced.

The changes are the result of new VCAT measurements recorded in Mustang vs Commodore straight-line aero tests during the off-season.

The new, more rigid tests were aimed at improved aero parity and a reduction of overall downforce of about 10-12 per cent.

The Commodore’s cutback is not as extensive as the Mustang’s, which received major undertray, front ducting, and rear wing location and endplate modifications.

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The ZB’s rear wing location and endplates are unchanged, whereas the Mustang’s was moved forward.

However, the Holden’s rear wing gurney flap is shortened by 3.5mm, while the range of wing adjustment of both cars is now limited to 7-13 degrees. The aero adjustments were tried for the first time at the pre-season test at The Bend on Tuesday (February 18).

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WHINCUP DECISION MADE All-time champ to announce future at Adelaide 500

By MARK FOGARTY SEVEN-TIME Supercars champion Jamie Whincup will reveal his future at the season-opening Adelaide 500 this weekend.

Whincup, just turned 37, has been deliberating on whether to re-sign with Triple Eight for next year and beyond or quit full-time racing at the end of this season.

He is in the final year of his existing contract with Red Bull Holden Racing Team alongside Shane van Gisbergen, who has extended until the end of next year.

Auto Action believes Whincup will announce his decision at the Adelaide Parklands street circuit on Saturday (February 22).

While there is speculation this will be his last full-time season in Supercars, fewer than a handful of close associates know what he is planning beyond the end of this year.

If he quits, he will continue with Triple Eight — of which he is a minority co-owner — as a co-driver in the endurance races.

Whincup revealed last month that he was pondering his Supercars future after this year, weighing up whether it would be the right time to retire.

Triple Eight chief Roland Dane is looking to him to take over as team principal in the near future.

Whincup sees that in his future, along with other business opportunities and his role as a Supercars commissioner, but made it clear his decision would be based on whether he thought he would remain a title contender in the next two or three years.

He will be a leading contender to win a record-extending eighth Supercars championship this year, expected to vie for another V8 crown with van Gisbergen and his DJR Team Penske arch rival and defending champion Scott McLaughlin.

While his decision is unknown, Anton de Pasquale is already favoured as a possible replacement — as he is also DJRTP’s target to take over from US-bound McLaughlin.

Although he has long maintained he would not stay in Supercars past his late 30s, many question why he would give up while he is still competitive enough to chase more titles.

Among those who think he has more championships left in him is former Supercars champion and triple Bathurst winner Garth Tander, who has raced alongside Whincup as a Triple Eight enduro driver.

Tander certainly doesn’t see J-Dub changing his approach this year even if he has decided to retire from full-time racing.

“What Jamie has done his whole career has been the standard for the championship, so I don’t see why you would change anything in that regard,” GT said. “In the back half of last year’s championship, he was as strong as ever. Having the privilege of being inside the organisation now and seeing more closely how Jamie works, you wouldn’t change anything because what he does and how he does it clearly works.

“You don’t win seven championships by changing it up. What we’ve seen in the past is just monotonous speed — he’s almost robotic when he gets in the groove.

“So I don’t think that would change if he decides that’s the way he’s going to go (retirement). It’s got him this far, so why do it differently?”

Tander added: “I don’t understand why he’s even thinking of retiring. For me, he should be pressing on.

“He is still a championship contender, he’s still fit, he’s still motivated, he’s still in an organisation that can give him cars that can win championships. I think he should be giving it a big push to win more championships because he’s still in that window for getting the job done.

“But, in saying that, he has said all along, even from when he won his very first championship, that he didn’t see himself doing this as an old driver. All along he’s said that and he’s got to that point in his career where that decision needs to be made. But purely from an athlete point of view and a driver point of view, he still has the capability to win a championship, so if I were him, I’d be pushing on and trying to claim another one.

“He’s already an absolute legend of the sport, but that would just put it beyond any doubt. This year is his opportunity for number eight — it’s just whether he goes on to make it nine or 10.”

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THE HARDER THE BETTER FIRED UP with a fresh two-year contract in his pocket, Lee Holdsworth is hoping the 2020 Supercars prove to be more difficult to drive than their predecessors.

The 37-year-old finished off his first year at Tickford Racing strongly with a front-row start in New Zealand and a podium with Thomas Randle at the Sandown 500. He ended up 10th in the driver’s championship.

He will campaign the Truck Assist Ford Mustang after the roadside assistance and insurance company replaced long-term Tickford backer Bottle-O as his car’s primary sponsor.

But it’s not the livery Holdsworth is fixated on, it’s how aero changes and the new shock absorbers will affect it and the other 23 cars in the field.

As far as he is concerned, the more unruly they are the better.

“I hope the cars are harder to drive this year,” Holdsworth declared.

“If you look back 20 years it didn’t matter if you were in an average car or a good car, the cream always rose to the top, whereas now you have to be in a good car to be at the top.

“You can’t pick the car up and drag it up the field, it just doesn’t happen these days.

“I’m hoping a bit of that will come back into it and with the cars sliding around a bit more and the driver having to make and conserve the tyres a little more, I am hoping it will play a part.

“That can only be good. I feel that’s a step in the right direction.”

Speaking ahead of last Tuesday’s pre-season test for the entire Supercars field, Holdsworth expressed confidence the aero testing would have a relatively even affect on all competitors.

He identified the new SupaShock control damper as the potential source of more issues and closer competition.

“The less opportunity to spend money in certain areas the closer the category will be as a whole,” he said. “Shocks is one area where you can spend heaps of money on development, but no longer — everyone will have the same.

“I think it will be great for the category, because it will provide opportunities to the smaller teams.”

Holdsworth, who is building a strong relationship with engineer

Sam Scaffidi, is predicting a stronger championship result in 2020.

“I just want to go better than last year,” he said. “My goal would be top seven or better, based on my results in the second half of the year.

“But it’s very hard with all the unknowns to set a target because you don’t know what you are going to have exactly.

“After the first round you know where you are at and how close to the window you are to start setting some proper goals.”

Bruce Newton

Image: Daniel Kalisz/ARG

ARG switches TCR strategy HAVING FINANCIALLY aided entries into the inaugural TCR series last season, the Australian Racing Group now expects the grid to find its own funding for this year.

ARG says it is still investing in TCR and other categories it promotes, citing the new broadcast deal with Channel 7 being produced by Supercars Media, but says it won’t be subsidising entries in the field.

In fact, it is currently selling off the TCR racers it brought into the country to kickstart last season’s series. A byproduct of that change in strategy will also likely mean fewer guest “star” drivers appearing in TCR.

8 AutoAction

“In the first year of the series we obviously invested to get it up and running, to get to the show where it was,” ARG CEO Matt Braid told Auto Action.

“For year two it’s basically about consolidation now. We feel that we have done the investment, we have significantly invested in TV production and the like to boost the show.

“So our investment is still there in the series, but maybe in different areas in 2020.”

Braid is confident the change in financial policy won’t have a significant impact on the size of the TCR grid.

About 28 cars are expected to front for the TCR

Asia Pacific Cup at Albert Park in early March, with the seven-round carsales TCR Australia Series forecast to attract a regular field of 23 to 24 cars.

In total there are currently 33 TCR cars in Australia.

The TCR season will culminate with a 500km race at Mount Panorama in November.

“After year one everyone has been able to see what budgets are and what’s required and it’s still one of the most cost-effective touring car or racing categories in Australia,” Braid said.

“You can see by the nature of who has joined this year and who is announced there are

obviously different drivers coming in and different business models announced.

“We are not concerned about anyone dropping out. I think the series has shown and the investment has shown it’s viable and it’s got a high profile, so the grid numbers should take care of themselves.”

The cars ARG is believed to have brought into Australia for the first season included two Opel Astras, two Subaru WRXs, two Volkswagen Golf GTIs and an Audi RS3.

“Some of those cars are for sale, some are for lease, some have been disposed of,” said Braid.

Bruce Newton

RICHARDS ADDS GRUNT TO TEAM 18 CHARLIE SCHWERKOLT hasn’t just doubled driver input into his Supercars team this year, he’s tripled it.

While Schwerkolt has signed Scott Pye to join Mark Winterbottom in the Holden squad, he’s also brought retired four-time Bathurst winner Steve Richards into the camp.

And while Richards’ official title is relationship manager he has made it clear he will also be paying attention to the development of the Team 18 Holdens.

“The weekend role in terms of the ontrack stuff I will be as involved as I can be,” Richards told Auto Action. “Just listening, another set of ears, being in on the debriefs and pre-briefs.”

Richards pointed out the changes to

aerodynamics, the introduction of a control damper and increased tyre allocations would throw more technical challenges at teams than they had experienced for some years.

“It takes a solid group of people to ensure when things aren’t tracking quite on the right direction you can turn that around and get things back on track really quickly,” he said.

Team 18 ran a single Irwin Tools-backed Commodore for Winterbottom last year and encountered the issues single car operations often do, running out of testing and practice time to achieve truly competitive pace.

That’s a key reason Pye’s DeWalt-backed entry has been added to the squad, as Richards acknowledged “Supercars is designed as a two-car

model, the way all the practice sessions work, the way the garage set-ups are,” Richards said.

“You really need to be a two-car team to gather all that data with the really short timeframes of practice to get the most out of the car.

“Being a one-car show makes it really tough to gather enough data to understand where your weekend progression is going.

“Without doubt, being a two-car team really helps. You can set one car off in one direction and the other in another.”

For his part Schwerkolt said the objective for Team 18 this year was to start winning some silverware.

“I want a trophy. I think both cars are

capable of that,” he said. “I want a trophy for all the team members here and especially for the sponsors.

“I know Scotty and Frosty want to deliver something back and I reckon both are capable of a trophy. We want to be in the 10 every race and be consistent.”

Last year Winterbottom looked set to quickly win some silverware when he qualified on pole for race seven in Tasmania.

But he was passed on the last lap and finished third and finished the season in 13th place. Pye finished 12th for Walkinshaw Andretti united.

There are no single car operations running in this season’s Supercars championship.

BN

SYDNEY COMES TO THE PARTY AFTER A tough summer push Team Sydney is set to make its competition debut in the opening round of the Supercars championship in Adelaide this weekend.

As Auto Action was closed for press last Monday afternoon the team had yet to confirm its second driver.

However, Chris Pither was notably present at The Bend ahead of Tuesday’s test, reinforcing the

expectation he would join James Courtney at the former Tekno Autosports.

AA has made several attempts without success to contact both team owner Jonathon Webb and Courtney so we could provide you with a more detailed update of the team’s plans and expectations.

Keep an eye on autoaction.com.au for more on the Coca-Cola-sponsored team as the week goes by.

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NUMBER CHANGES galore ahead of the 2020 Supercars Championship — Walkinshaw Andretti United has chosen to run the #25 for Chaz Mostert, which has resulted in the #22 moving to Team Sydney, which surprisingly said the number will not be run by James Courtney but their second driver. Brad Jones Racing expands to four cars this season with the addition of Jack Smith, who will run number #4, while his teammate Macauley Jones switches from #21 to #3. The second of the Team 18 cars to be driven by Scott Pye will boast the #20 throughout the season.

THE OPENING round of the Pirtek Enduro Cup will take place at The Bend Motorsport Park for the first time, but at the Supercars season launch it was announced that The Bend 500 would not feature as part of Network 10’s free-to-air coverage.

Instead the TV organisation will continue to show the SuperSprint Sandown 400 round. Supercars CEO Sean Seamer said the current contract names Sandown and not the first event of the Enduro Cup season. It is also unlikely that the Perth SuperNight will be shown on FTA this year.

KELLY RACING decided not to run its Super2 program just a couple of weeks before the start of the season to focus on its inaugural campaign in Supercars with the Ford Mustang, having moved from Nissan Altimas. The Victorian-based team had planned to run three Altimas in the second-tier series for the first time, but in recent days has put the cars on the market. Three Nissans will still appear on the grid as Matthew White Motorsport continues to run them successfully.

SUPERCARS HAS announced further tweaks to the race format at Albert Park, as well as changing the two longer and two shorter race format to four 100km races. The points for each race will now be a maximum of 75 points. In an effort to spice up the racing, drivers will have to use a set of both the hard and soft compound in each of the four races.

JACK PERKINS has been signed to pair up with Will Davison in the 23Red Racing Ford Mustang for the Pirtek Enduro Cup replacing Will’s brother Alex.

10 AutoAction

INTERNATIONAL STARS FLOCK TO S5000 THE FIELD for the first point-scoring round of the S5000 Championship is beginning to take shape with Formula 1 Grand Prix winners, Bathurst 1000 champions and local Indy 500 starters all ready to line up on the Albert Park grid next month.

One driver keen to race an S5000 car at the Australian Grand Prix is reigning Bathurst 1000 winner Alex Premat, who will rejoin Garry Rogers Motorsport for the event.

In Australia the Frenchman is most commonly known for his work in the Supercars Championship, but the 37-year-old is an established open-wheel veteran, taking race wins in the GP2 Series (now known as Formula 2) driving for ART Grand Prix and was teammates with both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

“It has been a long time since I have driven a singleseater. The last time was back in 2006 when I drove at ART Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to being back in one of these

(open-wheel) cars. To be back with Garry, Barry and the GRM team is awesome.

“I need to learn the car, the big engine, big downforce, but it will be a good challenge. I think it is going to be pretty cool and pretty fun.”

As well as this Premat has also been announced as a Tickford Racing co-driver for the 2020 Pirtek Enduro Cup. The Frenchman was left without a seat when DJR Team Penske elected to sign up Brad Jones Racing refugee Tim Slade. At this stage it is unknown which of the three Tickford Racing drivers Premat will compete alongside.

As previously reported by Auto Action Rubens Barrichello was left free to race at the Australian Grand Prix as he had no other racing commitments on the GP weekend. The Brazilian was the star of the show in the first S5000 round at Sandown last year and has now been officially confirmed for two rounds of the 2020 season.

Barrichello will race at the opening round of the

2020 season at Albert Park, a track he has driven on 16 times before, claiming five F1 podiums. As well as this the 47-year-old will race at the non-championship Bathurst International event in November.

“Of course, I am thrilled to be coming back to Australia, not once but twice in 2020, to continue my open-wheeler career in S5000 at the two biggest and most iconic race tracks in the country, Albert Park and Bathurst,” said Barrichello.

“At Bathurst, after most international series have concluded, it will bring the opportunity to drive a special car around a circuit all Australians love, which I would expect to attract drivers from all over the world. It will be an exciting end to the year for sure.”

Australian James Davison, who has made four Indianapolis 500 starts, finishing as high as 12th in last year’s edition of the American classic, will also participate in the opening round of the S5000 Championship on March 12-15 .

Dan McCarthy

SHAKEDOWN SUCCESS FOR KELLY’S

RANDLE’S RIDING WITH PERCAT

KELLY RACING completed a troublefree shakedown of the Ford Mustang Andre Heimgartner will drive in this year’s Supercars Championship at Winton last Sunday.

“It went incredibly well, alarmingly well almost,” Todd Kelly told Auto Action. “There was not a single issue with anything — it just feels too good to be true, like something’s about to go wrong.

“The car didn’t miss a beat or (suffer) a single oil leak, electrical problem, engine mapping or driveability and everything was just perfect. We couldn’t pick a fault with it at all. It’s a huge credit to the guys to achieve that.”

Due to racing commitments in New Zealand, Heimgartner was unable to participate in the shakedown, instead Rick Kelly was entrusted with the new Mustang and was impressed with the package straight out of the box.

“He was really positive,” Kelly told Auto Action. “He said the engine feels real good, gearchanges are good, mapping’s good. I said, ‘You’re not just saying that because we’re a little bit buggered,’ and he said, ‘Nah, it feels bloody good’.

“You don’t really know until other

FORMER TICKFORD Racing Pirtek Enduro Cup driver Thomas Randle has made the switch to Brad Jones Racing, partnering Nick Percat in the team’s lead Holden ZB Commodore.

Finishing third in last year’s Super2 title, Randle made his Supercars debut as a wildcard at The Bend Motorsport Park before undertaking the Pirtek Enduro Cup alongside Lee Holdsworth, where they finished third overall, culminating in filling the final podium slot at the Sandown 500.

It has been a challenging time for Randle after his recent diagnosis with stage 2 testicular cancer with treatment to begin after he races in Adelaide as part of the opening round of Super2, where he will compete with MW Motorsport.

An eager Randle is keen to replicate his Pirtek Enduro Cup podium from last year.

“I’m thrilled to be joining BJR as co-driver to Nick,” Randle said.

“It’s a very exciting time. I have to say a huge thanks to Brad and Kim for the chance to be a part of their organisation. They’re a team with so much history in not only Supercars but in Australian Motorsport.

cars are on the track, but on its own it’s hitting the rev limiter where it should, gear change points are where they should be.”

While Rick was revealing his Castrol Mustang at Federation Square, Todd was busy overseeing the homologation of Kelly Racing’s new Supercars engine in Queensland.

Kelly is no stranger to the process and he was pleasantly taken aback by the engine’s horsepower during the process, ensuring it will be competitive from the word go.

“That’s also been a bit of a surprise,” Todd told Auto Action. “We ended up being a lot closer to what we thought. The biggest issue we have now is we didn’t have time to lighten the engine blocks or cylinder heads so the engine is a bit heavy.

“Now we need to work out how to get engines back out of the system, strip them down and run a lightening program over everything. Then we’ll need to re-homologate them and run them in the cars. Power-wise, it’s turned out pretty good.”

HM For more on the Kelly Racing Mustang builds, turn to P40-41.

“I feel that the experience of competing in my first Supercars enduro campaign, as well as making my Wildcard debut at Tailem Bend last year, will put me in good stead for the upcoming season of endurance.

“I’m very focused on getting behind the wheel of the BJR #8 Holden Commodore and delighted to be teaming up with Nick. I’ve known Nick for many years and I’m sure we are equally as hungry to get the results the team deserves.”

Percat comes off a consistent 2019 where he finished in the top 10 of the Supercars Championship. He believes the duo will make a formidable pairing when the Pirtek Enduro Cup begins at The Bend Motorsport Park on September 18-20.

“I’m really excited to have Thomas alongside me for the Pirtek Enduro Cup,” Percat said. “He is fast and a proven race winner in Super2. An extremely motivated young driver who showed last year he can do a good job. He will be a great asset to the whole team.” HM

O’KEEFFE FOCUSES ON TCR THE SUPER2 silly season has provided many surprises and one of them is Dylan O’Keeffe’s absence from the grid after finishing fifth in his debut season last year, but the Victorian is eyeing a shot at the TCR Australia crown instead.

Last year O’Keeffe was a frontrunner in the series driving an Ash Seward Motorsportprepared Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce TCR, taking four wins and two poles on the way to fifth in the title after myriad reliability problems.

This year the former Porsche Carrera Cup Australia frontrunner joins Garry Rogers Motorsport in its Renault program to partner James Moffat in a pair of Megane RS TCRs. “Super2 never really eventuated, it was hard this season in getting the deal sorted,” O’Keeffe said of the lack of a Super2 deal.

Although hinting that he may make cameo appearances in the second tier class of Supercars, O’Keeffe has turned his complete attention to TCR and after his first drive of the Renault last week he was impressed by

the package so far. “My impressions were much better than expected because I had seen the car struggle a bit last year with a few reliability issues and what not,” he told Auto Action.

“Then, at the end of last year the Megane ended up going pretty well, at The Bend Chris (Pither) was pretty fast as the team had a pretty good handle on the set-up, it was just about spending the time and effort getting them going.

“I felt comfortable straight away, the characteristics of the Megane were similar to what I had in the Alfa and I think that’s great. It gave me the confidence to be able to push — the Renault was handling extremely well.”

GRM completed testing of new parts that are designed for the Evo version of the Megane RS TCR, which will hit Australian shores soon, and car developer Milenko Vukovic is keeping an eye on them.

“I spoke to Milenko quite a bit on (posttest) and sent him a few of my notes, and

he was quite excited to receive my feedback compared to the Alfa,” said O’Keeffe. “He’s a very passionate guy and so are the people here at GRM, so I’m looking forward to pushing the program.”

The inter-team battle at Renault will be an interesting one with O’Keeffe eager to impress against a quality teammate.

“Moffat’s definitely a hard competitor and fierce racer so I’m looking forward to putting

it to him,” O’Keeffe said. “I want to do the best for myself and my own image. I need to be beating him, really. We need to work well together as well, we’re our own team within GRM so we need to all combine well to get the most out of this season.”

A third Renault Megane RS TCR has also arrived at GRM ahead of its planned debut at the Australian Grand Prix.

Heath McAlpine

TANDER: IT’S STILL THE BIG THREE

By MARK FOGARTY FORMER V8 champion Garth Tander sees Jamie Whincup as a leading contender in this year’s Supercars championship battle.

Tander expects Whincup to be in the thick of a three-way title fight with defending champion Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen after VCAT aero parity adjustments.

“Those three are the standout championship contenders,” he told Auto Action.

Tander, who will again partner SVG in the enduros, dissected the technical changes and their likely effects in AA’s comprehensive Supercars season preview (see pages 30-31 for his pronouncements).

With the Mustang and Commodore theoretically aligned, the semi-retired 2007 Supercars champion and triple Bathurst 1000 winner is convinced the record seven-time titlist will be in the title hunt.

“You have to factor Jamie in,” Tander said. “A lot of people think it’ll be the Scott & Shane Show, but I genuinely believe Jamie will be in there as well as far as battling it out for the championship. Then it’ll come down to those two teams as to who hits the ground running faster.”

Tander thinks adjusting to the switch to control dampers will determine the initial difference between Shell V-Power Racing and Red Bull Holden Racing Team.

He also thinks McLaughlin’s Team Penske IndyCar program

will be a factor. “You can’t call a potential IndyCar program a distraction because it’s such a big thing in its own right, but if you’re looking at it purely from a Supercars championship tilt point of view, 100 per cent that’s a distraction,” Tander said.

“I’ve never driven an IndyCar, but I can’t imagine the driving styles are much the same — so having to adapt from one to the other is going to be a challenge, plus all the international travel.

“While he’ll be doing it in the pointy end of the plane, it still will take a toll. He and the team need to be very careful with how they manage that so that it’s not too much of a distraction from his Supercars championship tilt.

“Great opportunity for Scott, but balancing all that is going to be a challenge to him.”

According to Tander, McLaughlin — and DJRTP — will be hoping for a controversy-free title defence.

“I would imagine he’ll want less noise around what he’s doing, but in saying that, a lot of that noise last year was brought on by his own team, so I’d imagine the team as well would want less noise,” he said. “For the good of the championship, we just want to see a good, intense battle between the drivers and the teams.”

Tander’s and also Mark Larkham’s expert analyses are part of our extensive Supercars season preview from pages 24-35

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THE SCHEDULE for the Australian Grand Prix weekend has been released and features an impressive support bill. Joining the Supercars will be Carrera Cup Australia, which will run four races, one on each day with the Thursday encounter running as part of the Endurance Cup. The S5000 Series will run its inaugural points-scoring round with a practice session, qualifying, two qualifying races and a feature race across the four days. The non-championship TCR round is the first running of the Asia Pacific Cup and contains three races from Friday through until Sunday.

THE STOLEN steering wheel from the #92 MARC II car has been returned to Ryan McLeod. After the conclusion of the Bathurst 12 Hour race while still in parc ferme conditions, it was discovered the wheel had been stolen from the damaged car.

After posting about the incident online McLeod received several messages to help him track it down. One gentleman who claimed to have come into possession of the wheel contacted him on behalf of the person or persons responsible and apologised for the “drunken mistake”.

THE 2020 calendar for the always popular National Sports Sedans has been revealed. The big bangers will visit three states in the five-round series. The opening round at Winton Raceway takes place on March 28-29 before Wakefield Park, The Bend with the Motorsport Australia Championships, Master Blast featuring Muscle Car Masters at Sydney Motorsport Park, before concluding at Phillip Island - Island Magic.

REIGNING BATHURST 6 Hour race winners Beric Lynton and Tim Leahey have confirmed plans to defend their crown this year. Last year the pair dominated the race, scoring a comfortable one-lap victory in their BMW M3 Competition. The team will return with the same BMW this year as well as adding an identical second car run by Rob Rubis, Scott Turner and Shane Smollen.

THE FIVE-round 2020 Heritage Touring Car Calendar has been released. The first event takes place at the picturesque Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit before heading north to Morgan Park Raceway. The Bend Motorsport Park in SA will host round three, round four will be part of the Master Blast featuring Muscle Car Masters event at Sydney Motorsport Park, rounding out the year at Baskerville Raceway in Tasmania in September.

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ARG UNVEILS BROADCAST DEAL

ARG teams up with Supercars Media to produce Motorsport Australia Championships and Bathurst broadcasts

THE AUSTRALIAN Racing Group has confirmed that award-winning broadcast production company Supercars Media will produce and deliver the coverage of the 2020 Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships as well as the Bathurst 6 Hour and new Bathurst International.

ARG said the deal would result in a high quality product broadcast by the Seven Network and provide an outstanding package for race fans.

The combination of Supercars Media, renowned around the world for its cuttingedge motorsport broadcasts, coupled with ARG categories including the carsales TCR Australia Series, S5000, Touring Car Masters, Trans Am Series and V8 Touring Cars, would provide fans with world class motorsport entertainment on Seven, ARG said.

All seven rounds of the Shannons

Motorsport Championships will be broadcast live and free on Seven, while every moment of Saturday and Sunday’s track action will be delivered live via the network’s digital offering, 7plus.

The deal will include broadcasting of the two events at the world-famous Mount Panorama — the Hi-Tec Bathurst 6 Hour on April 10-12 and the Bathurst International on November 13-15.

Supercars Media has been responsible for the production of the Supercars Championship since 2007, creating and broadcasting motorsport vision that is regarded as an industry leader.

Supercars Media’s television broadcast of the Bathurst 1000 has won seven Logie Awards for the Most Outstanding Sports Coverage, the most recent being the 2017 Bathurst 1000.

The company also looks after the broadcast of the Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour, also broadcast on the channels of Seven since 2015.

ARG’s coverage will be delivered by Andrew Janson, executive producer of Broadcast for ARG along with the Supercars Media Team led by Nathan Prendergast, Supercars Media general manager of television and content, with Nicole Cornelius as the series producer.

A new commentary line-up will also feature as another initiative for the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships broadcast, ARG said. The team would be confirmed soon.

The opening round of the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships will be held at Sydney Motorsport Park on March 27-29.

CARUSO’S BACK IN GRM WITH ALFA MICHAEL CARUSO will rejoin Garry Rogers Motorsport to drive one of the team’s two Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloces.

The new venture, a two-year deal will also feature Valvoline backing, another return of sorts for Caruso as he debuted with GRM in Supercars when the oil manufacturer was major sponsor.

After testing the Alfa Romeo last week, Caruso is confident he can challenge the established frontrunners in TCR Australia, kickstarting his campaign at Albert Park as part of the inaugural Asia Pacific Cup. “I’m really excited to partner with Valvoline and the Garry Rogers Motorsport team for the next two years in the TCR Series,” Caruso said.

“I watched the first season of TCR Australia and you can see the potential that it has. I knew I wanted to be a part of it, and it is even better that I get the chance to link up with Valvoline and GRM to do it. I know that as a team we have all of the right ingredients to make it successful.

“I believe we are definitely a chance to give the series a shake-up.

The Alfa Romeo has shown that it is a strong package — both in Australia and in other TCR competitions around the world.

“There is already so much excitement around the 500km race at Bathurst and it is something that I’m very much looking forward

to competing in. Everyone loves endurance-style racing at Mount Panorama and that race will be the perfect way to end the season.

“I definitely want to be the inaugural winner and have my name on that trophy.”

Caruso will be a teammate to fellow Alfa Romeo driver Jordan Cox, while GRM will also run a customer Peugeot program and the factory Renault entries. HM

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HONDA STICKS WITH TCR IN WHAT signals an important year for Honda Australia, it has continued its support of Tony D’Alberto’s Wall Racing Honda Civic Type R as part of a three-effort from the Sydney-based team.

Combining his TCR Australia program with his Pirtek Enduro Cup role with DJR Team Penske, D’Alberto finished on the podium four times on his way to the runner-up slot in the first series.

Wall Racing received considerable support from the Italian manufacturer of the Civic Type R, JAS Motorsport, while D’Alberto hopes to take the next step and win the TCR Australia Series for Honda.

“I’m excited to be back with Honda and Wall Racing, and we are all aiming to go one better in 2020,” said D’Alberto.

“There’s no doubt that the level of competition in TCR is going to step up considerably in the second year. Some of the drivers and cars that have been announced already suggests it is going to be a super competitive series, but that’s what motivates us, so we’re up for the challenge.”

It is a significant year for the Japanese marque as it celebrates 50 years in Australia.

It is planning various activities and marketing initiatives

to take place throughout the season.

The links between the race and road versions of the Civic Type R was what drove Honda’s support, said company director Stephen Collins.

“Tony and the team at Wall Racing really showcased what a great performance car we have in the Civic Type R during the first year of the TCR Australia Series,” said Honda Australia director Stephen Collins.

“Tony has plenty of experience around Bathurst in Supercars and GT Endurance racing, and he was part of our support team during the historic Australian Type R Challenge activity, so the entire team at Honda Australia is really excited see the Civic Type R take on the famous mountain track once again.

“We wish Tony and the Wall Racing team all the best for another successful season of racing in TCR.” John Martin returns to the team after taking a win at The Bend Motorsport Park and will receive support from Mobil.

The team’s third driver is the Hong Kong-based Paul Ip, who is also team owner of international team KCMG, which has contested the past two Bathurst 12 Hour events with Nissan GT-Rs. Heath McAlpine

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CAMERON MAKES PEUGEOT SWITCH MICHELIN CUP winner Aaron Cameron will make the switch to Garry Rogers Motorsport and Peugeot this season as he aims for an overseas touring car seat next year.

Although a late deal, Cameron drove a Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR prepared

by Melbourne Performance Centre to third in the overall points in a season where he gained much attention.

Moving away from his comfortable surrounds at MPC was not a decision taken lightly, but he is confident the change will not hinder his shot at the title.

“By the end of last year, MPC, my engineer and I were all happy with where we were at,” Cameron told Auto Action. “To now come to Garry Rogers Motorsport and start from scratch with a new engineer, new car and new team for me as well, it was a hard decision, but I’m pretty happy with where we are at and I think we looking pretty good for this year’s series.”

Cameron’s interest in the Peugeot started at the TCR Australia finale where the DG Sport Competition team debuted the Peugeot 308 TCR at The Bend Motorsport Park. Problems with

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the wiring loom meant Aurelien Comte failed to demonstrate the model’s full potential, though Cameron had viewed enough to be impressed.

“I looked the at the car at the last round in 2019 at The Bend and I was really impressed with the build quality,” he said. “The Volkswagen Audi Group, like the Golf GTI TCR I ran last year has a super high build quality and I think the Peugeot has the same feel to it.”

Cameron was supposed to have a drive of the chassis Comte drove at The Bend last week, but noise put an end to that. However, he has completed his research and believes the Peugeot will be a contender at Bathurst because of its grunt.

“Looking back on the Peugeot’s worldwide results last season it went good at circuits where I didn’t expect it to, like Monza, so it obviously has pretty good straight-line speed,”

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Cameron said. “It gives us good confidence going into two races at Bathurst this year and we’re going to have to work on a set-up plan.

“The Peugeot Sport guys have been good and they’ve helped us out with a base set-up.

“Then we’ll tune it from there to suit my style of driving as well.”

Cameron joins former Bathurst 1000 winner Jason Bargwanna in a Peugeot. Factory ace Julien Briche will support the drivers in a third entry at the Asia Pacific Cup as support to the Australian Grand Prix, bringing with him Peugeot Sport engineers.

“To have Julien Briche and the Peugeot Sport team at the Grand Prix is going to be really valuable for us during the rest of the season,” Cameron said. “They will give us an idea of what makes these cars tick.”

HM

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TILTON - CHOSEN BY WINNERS SINCE 1972 For the full range of Tilton products call the Australian distributor Racer Industries 07 5546 2040 or visit www.racerindustries.com.au

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WORLD ENDURANCE Championship LMP1 team Rebellion Racing has intends to quit all motorsport activities at the end of the current season. The Swiss team has been a part of WEC since its inception in 2012 and has already made plans to run a second car for the final two rounds of the season. The decision to end its motorsport program comes as a shock as the team had announced a planned alliance with Peugeot beginning in 2022. Peugeot said that it will be unaffected by the decision.

FINALLY THE official announcement has been made — Robert Kubica will race in the DTM series this year. The former Polish Formula 1 driver will get behind the wheel of a BMW M4, driving for customer team ART Grand Prix. ART previously ran cars for Mercedes and will return to the grid after a three-year absence. The 2008 Canadian Grand Prix winner tested for BMW at Jerez in December last year after his departure from the Williams F1 team.

PEUGEOT IS planning to pair up with Ligier Automotive as the French brand builds towards a return to top level endurance racing in 2022.

It was expected that Peugeot would join up with ORECA because of its operations and technical support of Rebellion and the fact it had undertaken conceptual aero work with the company. However, after Rebellion’s sudden announcement that it will depart from motorsport at the end of the year Peugeot opted to choose Ligier.

THE 2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick has signed a two-year extension to remain at Stewart-Haas Racing that will run through until the end of the 2023 season. The 44-yearold was the topic of much speculation due to his age, contract status and his increasing TV commitments. Harvick has said that he will dial back these appearances this year to spend more time with his family.

A 30-CAR entry list has been drawn up for the World Endurance Championship round at the Circuit of the Americas circuit this weekend.

The top tier LMP1 class will see a record low of just three entries as the two Team LNT’s Ginetta G60-LT-P1s will not make the trip to the Formula 1 circuit. LMP2 will be made up of nine cars, while in GTE Pro Corvette make a cameo appearance.

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BOND WINNER KING FOCUSED ON TCR TOYOTA 86 Racing Series driver Luke King received the Colin Bond Award at the Motorsport Australia NSW and ACT presentations.

Racing legend Bond presented the honour to King for being the most versatile and successful driver in NSW and ACT. King finished runner-up in last year’s Toyota 86 Race Series to Aaron Borg and described the accomplishment as the highlight of his career.

“It was an amazing honour to be nominated along with some other great drivers, so it was wonderful to be chosen as the recipient of this great award.” King told Auto Action.

The 29-year-old has placed his 86 race car — which won at Bathurst and Newcastle — up for lease as he pursues a ride in the TCR Australia Series for this season, following previous

converts Tim Brook, Liam McAdam and last year’s series winner Will Brown.

King wants to be on the grid for the first TCR Australia round of the series at Sydney Motorsport Park as part of the Motorsport Australia National Championships next month and is working hard to secure a deal with a couple of different options available to him.

“While I don’t have anything locked in as yet I’m working hard to put a TCR program package together for 2020,” said King.

“We have had a couple of successful years in the T86 series and it’s time to step up and I think the TCR category has some fantastic benefits to offer a driver like myself.

“It’s affordable and offers good value for sponsors with the race program and live

television package on offer. In fact, the whole ARG program has momentum so we are aiming to be on the grid for the start of the 2020 series.

“I have been looking closely at TCR and did some work with Jason Bright last year at a couple of races so I have an understanding of what’s required and I’m confident that I can be a competitive part of the TCR series if we get a program together.

“Our supporters from the T86 program are keen to get involved in TCR, so that’s a positive.

We are just working out if we can get a budget to drive for one of the teams, my preference or look to run a car for ourselves. The experience with Brighty’s (Jason Bright’s) TCR Golf last year gives us confidence that we could run a car ourselves if that’s an option.” Bruce Williams

GODDARD’S KEEN ON LEARNING SUPER2 GRADUATE Zane Goddard will have a very busy schedule in 2020, contesting more than half of the Supercars Championship rounds as well as the inaugural S5000 Championship.

Goddard will make his Supercars Championship debut this weekend on the streets of Adelaide for Matt Stone Racing as part of the new SuperLite program.

The concept will see Goddard and Jake Kostecki both drive the #34 cars at a minimum of five sprint rounds as well as teaming up to drive the car in the Pirtek Enduro Cup. “I was actually teammates to him (Jake) in go karts for a year, so definitely looking forward to competing with him,” he told Auto Action.

“The last two years I have done Super2 against him. It will be quite different, it is not like your normal teammate pairing where you are racing each other. It is pairing up to both work with each other and improve each other’s results. It’s a cool idea. I think it could be a new exciting pathway to get drivers into the sport.”

The 20-year-old said they would be at every round, even when they are not driving, as they try to expand their knowledge.

“For us it is all about building that rapport because obviously we are also going to pair up for the enduros,” Goddard said.

“So the more we see how each other works and push each other on the better our results are going to be in the enduro campaign.”

When asked about the aero changes between the Super2 Nissan Altima and the current spec Holden Commodore he said he felt that the parity adjustments would make the step easier.

“I think for people who made the step up last year, they probably would have

felt a bit more of a dramatic difference in downforce,” he said.

“From that side it wasn’t so dramatic but it just has different characteristics to the Altima — that was quite an on-the-nose car, whereas this one is a little more stable.”

Goddard believes the S5000 Championship, which he will also contest this season, could be a useful tool to help him in the Supercars Championship.

“It surprisingly handles a bit like a Supercar. Obviously there are a few differences,” he told AA. “I’m obviously looking forward to it. It’ll be good to be nice to be back in an open-wheeler, it will be different, a whole different vibe from the V8s.

“It is sometimes good to have a bit of change. You can learn different things that you can take across to the other that you otherwise may not have picked up on, so I think it will be good, just a little bit of a change here and there, it is always good for the brain.”

Dan McCarthy

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XD AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY STEVEN JOHNSON believes his new Ford XD Falcon is an unknown quantity compared to his more established rivals in Touring Car Masters after a late rush by Team Johnson to complete the highly anticipated entry.

The Johnson XD Falcon is one of three “new generation” TCM cars debuting this weekend, joining the Commodores of Gerard McLeod and newcomer Claud Taranto on the grid in Adelaide.

Johnson is enthusiastic about the new entries and is intrigued about how the new entries will stack up against TCM’s established runners.

“To have some of the new generation cars that are still built to the current rules that TCM enforce in the way of the Mustang, it will be interesting to see,” Johnson said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the new model cars coming in and giving it a good crack.”

Despite reservations from some competitors about the XD, the new build has already piqued the interest of motorsport fans and grown interest in TCM, an aim of Johnson’s when planning the build.

“It’s a car that has been widely anticipated, whether good or bad,” Johnson told Auto Action. “There probably are some competitors, who don’t want to see it happen.

“We’re trying to not only build something for the

fans so they can relate to past motor racing with our family, but also to lift the profile of TCM even though it’s as big as what it is already and we’re trying to help that.

“We’re not being selfish here; we want to raise the profile of the series where we can be in a position to negotiate the venues we want to go to and what races we’d like to do as a group.”

The XD completed a ride day at Lakeside Raceway where some lucky fans were taken on a lap by either Johnson or his father Dick in a throwback of sorts for the three-time Australian Touring Car champion.

“I’m not an overly emotional person,” Johnson said after the day out.

“I can tell you reading some of the comments before we got there how people were excited and come to watch (moved me).

“The turnout on the day, I’m not one to be able to pick crowds, but there would have been 3000-4000 people there. It was unbelievable.”

And what were Dick’s impressions of the XD? “He was pretty pumped about it all,” Johnson said.

“He was knackered, to be honest, he did quite a few rides and a lot of people on the day purchased rides to go with him, we had to cap it.

“I think the car did something like 50 rides and

giving the fans an opportunity to ride with me or my old man. He got out of the car at one stage and said, ‘I don’t care what anyone says, this is still one of the best tracks in the country,’ and then he turned around to say, ‘I wish my car in 1981 went and turned like this thing’.”

About 100 laps were completed relatively troublefree, apart from a leaking power steering line, but the XD is incomplete with Johnson and his team working hard to finish little odd jobs.

“We don’t know how it’s going to go,” he said.

“We’re a bit underprepared for Adelaide because we haven’t really had a chance to do a test day, but we’re just going to have to go there and make sure it’s reliable to finish all the races.”

Johnson is expecting tough competition from the Commodore runners because of the similarities to the Torana.

“The advantage they have is that underneath is not too dissimilar to a Torana in that they run with front and rear coilovers,” Johnson said.

“I would expect that car to come out and be pretty sorted straight out of the box, whereas the XD is sort of similar compared to a Mustang and we’ve gone off that so I’m hoping that ours is close.”

Heath McAlpine

BROWN AND EXPANSION CONFIRMED REIGNING TCR Australia Series winner Will Brown is aiming to go back-to-back in the class this year after being confirmed as continuing with HMO Customer Racing for the coming season.

A successful season last year for Brown included seven race wins on his way to sealing the inaugural TCR Australia Series title with a round to spare. He will again be joined by Nathan Morcom, who finished fourth in the series with a solitary race win at The Bend finale last November.

The Sydney-based team is aiming to have three Hyundai i30 N TCRs on the grid for the season. HM

TRANS AM National Series driver Jimmy Vernon will team up with Skye Sands for the Adelaide 500. Making his second start in the Flo-gineering Ford Mustang, Vernon is excited by the new partnership ahead of one of Australia’s premier events. “I am over the moon to have the support of Rusty French and Skye Sands for the Adelaide 500,” he said.

“Having such an iconic brand behind our team has given us a boost of confidence to attack our first Trans AM event. It’s been an incredible effort from our team to have the car livery finalised and ready for the weekend.” HM

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PREMAT SCORES TICKFORD CO-DRIVE TICKFORD RACING has finalised its co-driver line-up for 2020 with the confirmation that Alexandre Premat will join the squad.

The reigning Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 winner joins Tickford Racing after losing his gig with DJR Team Penske to Tim Slade.

“I can’t wait to start the season with Tickford as a co-driver,” said Premat.

“They have been one of the teams to beat the last 10 years in Supercars, so I am delighted to join such a competitive team for the Enduro Cup.” “I’m excited to bring my knowledge acquired in the past five years in the endurance races, and am also happy to be back as a reigning Bathurst champion.”

Tickford Racing CEO and Team Principal Tim Edwards lauded the arrival of Premat, who won the Pirtek Enduro Cup in 2016.

“It’s not often the defending Bathurst winner becomes a free agent,” commented Edwards. “So we were really happy to snap Alex up when the opportunity came about.”

“He routinely shows up come Enduro season and is straight on the pace, which is what you need nowadays, so we’re very excited to see what he’ll bring to the team. We think he’ll complement our other drivers quite well, so we are very happy with our overall line-up.”

Edwards also commended returning co-drivers Michael Caruso and James Moffat, who return to the roster after strong showings in the 2019 Enduros.

“Moff and Caruso were fantastic last year,” Edwards added.

“When you have a co-driver who can genuinely race the main game guys it gives you a huge advantage, and when we put both of them in tough situations last year they excelled.”

“It’s a no brainer to have them back in 2020, and to add Alex to the mix gives us a really strong line-up, we’re really excited about it.”

It has not been confirmed which Tickford co-drivers will drive in which car.

However, Auto Action believes that Caruso will remain as a co-driver to Waters, Premat will join fellow Tickford Racing newbie Jack Le Brocq leaving Moffat to move into the #5 car alongside Lee Holdsworth.

Dan McCarthy and Rhys Vandersyde

TCR NZ GIVEN CHAMPIONSHIP STATUS TOURING CAR racing in New Zealand is set for a major shake up later this year with the announcement that the New Zealand Touring Car Championship will be handed to the NZ TCR Series from the 2020/21 season.

MotorSport New Zealand has confirmed that it will not be renewing the BNT V8 category with the title of championship. The series, which is currently managed by NZ Touring Cars Ltd has been New Zealand Touring Car Championship since 1996.

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“The BNT V8 Championship has produced some great drivers over the years,” said competitions manager for MotorSport New Zealand Elton Goonan.

Early last year MotorSport New Zealand announced that they had secured an agreement with WSC Ltd, the global rights holders of TCR to introduce a national TCR series in New Zealand in 2020 and be run by the Australian Group (ARG).

“Touring car racing (TCR) is changing across

the world, particularly the cars being utilised for competition. We believe TCR better reflects what local vehicle distributors are selling which increases the potential for support from them,” Goonan said.

“Confirming that TCR NZ will compete for the New Zealand Touring Car Championship title is a big piece of the puzzle complete for us. It adds another incentive for teams and drivers to join what is a huge success worldwide and gives drivers a recognised platform to

compete on.

“The NZTCC has many historic names on it such as Robbie Francevic, Craig Braid and the late Jason Richards to name just a few attached to it.

“We’re incredibly excited to see TCR get underway in New Zealand and can’t wait to share further details in the near future.”

The TCR NZ Championship will be launched as part of the 2020-2021 MotorSport New Zealand Championship calendar. Dan McCarthy

DANE SURPRISED

BY TIMING OF HOLDEN AXING

Red Bull Holden Racing Team boss Roland Dane has spoken publically for the first time since General Motors announced that it would axe the Holden brand at the end of 2020.

By DAN McCARTHY DURING THE Supercars official pre-season SuperTest at The Bend Motorsport Park, Roland Dane admitted that he was caught off guard by the sudden announcement.

“The timing of this was definitely a surprise,” he confessed.

“As somebody who is very aware of the motor industry on a larger platform on a world basis the lack of right hand drive plans going ahead was a concern, but there was some new models that were in the pipeline from what we could see which is what gave us reassurance.

“It is what it is, we are a very small market in Australia, competing for the attention against much bigger markets, so the decisions that affect

the car industry on a wider basis are not made in Australia they are made in Japan or Detroit or Germany.”

Dane felt that this announcement will result in some big changes in the Supercars Championship going forwards as soon as 2021.

“Undoubtedly we will see some change coming up, I’m not going to tell you what that change is at the moment but you will see some change,” he teased.

“The Holden brand will disappear by the end of this year, so you might see Holdens running around in the lesser categories in Super2 and beyond for some years to come but you won’t see the Holden brand as predominant in Supercars in 2021.”

The team boss of the factory Holden team feels that Commodores could still be on the grid in 2021 much the same way the Falcon was after Ford had stopped rolling the model off the production line.

“The homologation as it were from Supercars will be valid for several more years as it always is even with the Falcon after they stopped the production of the car and wasn’t availability to the public it carried on racing for several years,” he said.

Dane said that Supercars wants to continue racing cars that the Australian public enjoy watching, and he is confident that this will be continue to be the case going forwards.

“If we collectively as a category do our

homework properly, we can still provide the excitement, the show that people have come to expect over many years,” Dane said.

“Unfortunately one of the issues is an awful lot of people who have been barracked for the Holden brand over the past 10 years haven’t actually been buying the product for whatever reason.”

“It is something that we are aware of and times change and we have to change with them.”

Later on this week Dane is set to have a meeting with GM to discuss what will happen with the brand going forwards.

“It is still very sad the demise of such an iconic brand. Being Australia’s first and only homegrown car there is plenty of history and it is sad to the chapter drawing to a conclusion,” Dane said.

PITHER ANNOUNCED AS FULL TIME TEAM SYDNEY DRIVER KIWI CHRIS Pither has been announced as the second Team Sydney driver in the 2020 Supercars Championship.

Pither as previously suggested by Auto Action, Pither has secured the seat of the #22 ZB Commodore and in doing so has filled the final vacant spot on the 2020 Supercars grid.

The official confirmation was released on the Team Sydney Facebook page during the Supercars SuperTest which took place at The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia on Tuesday.

To help the team achieve as much as possible at the test the Sieders Racing team mechanics from the SuperUte Series assisted the new Sydney-based squad.

Pither’s #19 Team Sydney car, like his teammate James Courtney is boasting a full Coca Cola sponsored Commodore.

The Kiwi has previously competed fulltime in the Supercars Championship for Super Black Racing throughout the 2016 season.

In 2017 the now 33-year-old became an

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WAU LOCK IN CO-DRIVERS Erebus Motorsport co-driver before moving to Garry Rogers Motorsport in 2018.

That year Pither competed in and won the second tier Super2 Series as well as finishing in the top six at the Bathurst 1000 alongside Garth Tander.

Last year Pither impressed with a number of substitute appearances in place of the injured Richie Stanaway.

In the three solo races he drove in last season Pither recorded two top 15 finishes something that full time driver Stanaway achieved three times all season.

The season kicks off officially with a Thursday Practice session on the streets of Adelaide. Dan McCarthy

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WALKINSHAW ANDRETTI United has locked in its co-driver line-up for the 2020 Pirtek Enduro Cup. Following a wholesale change of its full-time driver line-up, WAU has retained the services of Warren Luff to partner Chaz Mostert in the Mobil 1 Appliances Online Racing #25 Holden Commodore.

Luff continues into his seventh year with the Clayton based squad, having partnered Garth Tander and Scott Pye previously. It is an association that has resulted in a Pirtek Enduro Cup win in 2015 as well as three Bathurst 1000 podiums.

“It’s fantastic to be back with the team, alongside a new teammate in Chaz.” said Luff.

“There’s no doubt he is one of the top-talents in the series, so I can’t wait to line up alongside him and see what we can achieve together.”

“On the team front, we made some real ground

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towards the end of last year, so I’m confident that will continue in the early parts of 2020, and we can roll into the enduro season in a really strong position, fighting for trophies.”

In addition to Luff, the team has recruited Kurt Kostecki to join Bryce Fullwood in the Mobil 1 Middy’s Racing #2 entry.

Having finished runner up to Fullwood in the Super2 Series championship last year, Kostecki will make his Pirtek Enduro Cup debut despite already having contested four Supercar rounds.

“It’s a huge privilege to be joining Walkinshaw Andretti United this year for the endurance season, the team has already made me feel really welcome,” said Kostecki.

“Bryce and I have been racing together for as long as we can remember so to be teaming up with him this year is very exciting and we will be pushing as hard as we can to run up the front.”

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SONIC DRIVERS READY THE SONIC Motor Racing Services team has now revealed all four of its cars liveries ahead of the season-opening Adelaide 500 which begins on Thursday.

The Melbourne based team will field a strong line up which contains both youth and experience, but each driver possesses a lot of outright speed.

Dale Wood is back for another crack at the title in 2020, after leading for the majority of the series last year he fell just short of the title losing out to teammate Jordan Love, this season Wood will compete in an eye-catching Timken sponsored car.

“I could not be happier with the way the Porsche has come together with the major support of Timken and the rest of our partner group,” said Wood.

“You can be sure we will be having a serious crack from the first green flag in Adelaide.

“We proved we can be competitive in this terrific one-make series, but we have some unfinished business in 2020.”

Once again this year the Sonic squad will field two Bob Janes T-Marts supported Porsches the #77 will be driven by Michael Almond. The 2019 Porsche Sprint Challenge (formerly known as GT3 Cup Challenge) runner-up Max Vidau

will drive the #777 car replacing the reigning Porsche Carrera Cup Australia series winner Love who is not returning in 2020.

“Going from Porsche Sprint Challenge to Carrera Cup is a big step up, but this is why the Porsche Pyramid is designed and its the perfect stepping stone,” said Vidau.

“To start off with, I need to keep the car straight. I’ve never been to a street circuit, so I’ll just ease my way into the weekend. Ultimately, my goal for the season is to be in the top five and be ahead of all my other rivals who have moved up from GT3 Cup Challenge.”

Aaron Love younger brother of Jordan, is one

of Vidau’s rivals that will also make the step up from the Porsche Sprint Challenge with Sonic.

Love made an appearance in the final round of the Carrera Cup Series on the Gold Coast last season.

“Doing the GT3 Cup Challenge last year was a perfect grounding to get ready for this year. The car’s performances are very similar, so it will be just a matter of working towards the front of the field,” said Aaron Love.

“It’s cool that my brother won last year’s title.

I’ve been working with him to improve myself and I can only hope to replicate his feats.”

Dan McCarthy

JONES REVEALS STRIKING NEW LIVERY AFTER WINNING the 2019 Porsche Michelin GT3 Cup Championship (now known as the Porsche Sprint Challenge) young gun Harri Jones is gearing up for his debut in the Porsche PAYCE Carrera Cup Australia in a striking, new-look HeliMods Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car.

Jones will again team up with Queensland based team McElrea Racing and is looking forward to the new challenges and competition ahead in the Carrera Cup. “Winning the Michelin GT3 Cup Challenge certainly gives me a lot of confidence that we will do well in the Carrera Cup,” said Jones.

“You only need to look as far as Matt Campbell, Jaxon Evans and Jordan Love to see how well this pathway has worked for them, but there is no room for complacency in this category.”

Jones will also have

continued backing this year by major naming rights sponsor and partner, HeliMods, a worldleading aerospace tech company based on the Sunshine Coast where Harri also interns as an Engineer.

“I’m so grateful for the continued support from HeliMods. We formed an excellent partnership last year and have some pretty awesome plans for the future that I’m really excited about,” said Jones.

HeliMods Managing Director, Will Shrapnel, said he could not be prouder of Jones and what he achieved last year throughout his championship season in the GT3 Cup. “This year, we’ve stepped up along with Harri into the Carrera Cup and are backing him in a big way, not only through sponsorship but also through a partnership that will see us work together on some exciting new endeavours, including race and driver analytics,” said Shrapnel.

RACE FUELS JOINS WITH GT WORLD CHALLENGE ASIA AUSTRALIAN OWNED and operated fuel supply company RaceFuels has become the control fuel distribution, representing world renowned companies Total, for the GT World Challenge Asia over the next three years.

For RaceFuels, the leading racing fuel supplier for all levels of Australian motorsport, this deal represents its first major international fuel supply agreement, expanding its trusted and efficient distribution onto the global scene.

“We really are proud of our involvement and heritage in the Australian motorsport scene, and it is a privilege to be nominated by Total to represent our skillset on the world stage with the GT World Challenge Asia,” said Race Fuels Pty Ltd director Mark Tierney.

“We are excited to be recognised as a world-class provider with our unique fuel delivery service and we are all looking forward to the new challenges.”

The GT World Challenge Asia is the preeminent GT class through Asia, with six events visiting iconic circuits such as Sepang (Malaysia), Shanghai (China), and Suzuka (Japan).

The series has already captured the attention of Australian teams and competitors, with Triple Eight Racing Engineering, featuring star driver Shane van Gisbergen, entering its Mercedes AMG.

RaceFuels is planning scheduled deliveries to each GT World Challenge Asia team, preventing over supply and improving compliance and safety.

“RaceFuel’s methodology is scheduled fuel delivery service in which teams have their allocated fuel requirements delivered to their pit area,” Tierney said.

“This takes away the guess work in calculations from the teams and it improves circuit storage and compliance.”

RaceFuels offers this same level of hands on service to racing categories such as the Supercars Championship, Porsche Australian Carrera Cup and Australian GT. The team at RaceFuels, will deliver fuel at over 40 events in 2020, including all levels – from the Supercars and Shannons Nationals to state and club level competition.

It has been a high-profile start to the year for RaceFuels, the GT World Challenge Asia, announcement coming shortly after RaceFuels supplied the Total racing fuel at the Asia Le Mans Series round at The Bend in January and during a major fuel operation at the Bathurst 12 Hour, meanwhile RaceFuels is planning the supply to all support categories at the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park next month.

OJEDA STEPS UP TO SUPER2 SUPER3 SERIES runner up Jayden Ojeda will graduate to the Dunlop Super2 Series with MW Motorsport in 2020.

Ojeda’s Formula 4 title in 2018 and success in Super3 last year has helped secure the deal with one of Super2’s benchmark teams.

The 20-year-old Ojeda will steer the third Nissan Altima with the 2019 title winning team, alongside successful Super2 and Pirtek Enduro Cup driver Thomas Randell, and fellow Super3 graduate Zac Best.

“I’m super stoked to join MW Motorsport and step up to Super 2, I really looking forward to the huge challenge ahead,” said Ojeda.

“I am so honoured at the opportunity MWM has given me, the team has had great drivers and great success in the past, hopefully I can learn a heap from them and add to that list.”

“I really need to thank some great new sponsors and my ongoing supporters; without them this would be nothing but a dream.”

Team owner Matt White added: “We’re really excited to have Jayden join us in the 2020 Dunlop Super2 Series.”

“He showed us last year in Super3 he is capable of getting the results. He acquitted himself really well in a test last week, and we are most happy we could give another young gun the opportunities to further their career.”

Ojeda will join at least five drivers including Feeney, Mouzouris, Morse, Fife, and Best competing for the top Rookie prize.

MAWSON LATE ADDITION TO WALL RACING WALL RACING has confirmed that it will field three cars for the 2020 Porsche Carrera Cup Australia round in Adelaide.

The 2017 series winner and team owner David Wall will again drive for the team in the pro class this year. Greg Ward who drove for the squad at the final round of the season last year in Pro Am will re-join Wall Racing for the 2020 season driving the #68 car.

However a surprise addition to the team is Australian Joey Mawson, a name largely unknown in his home country.

This is due to Mawson spending most of his career to dateracing overseas in European openwheel championships such as European Formula 3 Championship, GP3 Series. In both of the world class categories Mawson scored podium finishes and will be a welcome addition into the Wall racing team driving the Secure Logic Group car #96.

Mawson is no stranger to Porsche competition having competed in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup Championship in Europe last year where he finished on the podium in Monza, however Mawson is happy to be home.

“I’m very much looking forward to the year ahead, it’s exciting to be racing back in Australia full time since 2012,” he said.

“Having been away for seven years I’m hoping

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to take my experience and knowledge that I’ve gained to work hard and achieve some good results.

“This year may give me a second chance at Europe if successful as well as giving me exposure in the Australia Motorsport scene.

“Wall Racing has been consistently running at the front of the series the last years, so naturally they were a team that we contacted for a seat.”

Wall was also very pleased to lure the likes of someone fast and experienced.

“Having Joey join the team is excellent as Joey’s performance in Porsche Mobil1 Supercup was very impressive,” Wall said.

“Joey is the perfect fit for Wall Racing as we feel we offer a great avenue for young drivers along with Pro-Am drivers, having won both championships in the last few years.”

“We are also the only team that has been on the outright podium for the last four years. I feel we should be able to pick up from where the year ended, which was right up the pointy end fighting for podiums.” Dan McCarthy

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CARROLL TO RACE TRANS AM VICTORIAN NIC Carroll will make his debut in the new Australian Racing Group (ARG) run Trans Am Series at the Adelaide 500 event this weekend.

The former Super3 driver will drive a Melbourne Performance Centre-run Chevrolet Camaro on the famous Adelaide Street Circuit ahead of a planned assault on the six-round series.

“Trans Am is going to go from strength to strength this year, and I am excited to be part of it,” Carroll said.

“At first we really struggled to find a seat as every car was already committed for Adelaide, which is great news for Trans Am and gives you an idea how competitive the category is going to be this year,” he said.

“Thanks to the help of Garry and Barry Rogers, as well as Greg Crick, we were able

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to secure a deal on Friday afternoon.”

“I am really looking forward to getting out there on Thursday morning. Practice 1 will be my first time driving the car and my first time at the Adelaide street circuit, so I will be doing my best to adapt quickly to the car and track in a highly competitive field.”

Sponsors Hogan Prestige, Ben Blackburn, Gibson Freight and CSC Waste and Recycling have confirmed their support for Carroll’s campaign, with others being finalised ahead of the Adelaide debut.

The 20-year-olds car is a 2017 TA2 Camaro with few racing miles and the former Toyota 86 Racing Series driver is one of several young guns this season being drawn to the TA2 category including former TCR Australia driver Jimmy Vernon.

Dan McCarthy

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

CAMPBELL STEPS UP AT LE MANS AUSTRALIAN MATT Campbell will make the step up into the GTE Pro class for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

The Queenslander has competed in the World Endurance Championship GTE Am class in the past two years, including a victory on debut with the Dempsey-Proton Racing squad. This time he makes the step up to join 2015’s outright Le Mans 24 Hours winners Nicky Tandy and Earl Bamber in the 991 GT3 RSR. Currently Bamber and Tandy are competing in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, racing in different teams.

But the pair regularly receive the call to compete at Le Mans as Porsche expands its entry to four cars for the event.

Steffen Hollwarth, head of Porsche Operations in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, is confident Porsche will be able to take victory at the legendary event.

“We’re proud and delighted to again be represented by four factory cars at the highlight of the season,” he said.

“With both driver crews in the number 93 and 94 Porsche 911 RSR, we’ve put together a good mix of experienced and young drivers.

“Alongside seasoned IMSA drivers like Tandy, Bamber and Pilet we have the young drivers Matt Campbell, Mathieu Jaminet and Julien Andlauer, who have already proven themselves at long-distance events.

“With these teams we’re excellently

positioned to tackle the season highlight.”

Aussie Campbell is fresh off fifth in the Bathurst 12 Hour and third in the Daytona 24 Hour, but is no stranger to his new co-drivers, having partnered with Tandy, while delivering Earl Bamber’s first major success as a team owner in last year’s Bathurst event.

The rest of the Porsche line-up includes Fred Makowiecki, who joins Gianmaria Bruni and Richard Lietz for the 24-Hour race in the #92 car. Reigning WEC class champions Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen will be joined by Laurens Vanthoor as they were last year, while the #94 car fields a youthful and fast line-up containing Patrick Pilet, Julien Andlauer and Mathieu Jaminet. DM

DOOHAN CLOSES IN ON ALDERS

AUSTRALIAN JACK Doohan clean-swept the second-last round of the Asian F3 Championship at the Sepang International Circuit, winning all three races.

The Pinnacle Motorsport driver was keen to show he is still a threat to championship leader Joey Alders and did so with an authoritative performance.

After taking pole for Race 1, the 17-year-old Doohan made a perfect start and led from lights out to the chequered flag. Dutchman Alders came home second ahead of reigning W Series champion Jamie Chadwick, who claimed her first podium in the series.

In Race 2 Alders got away from pole well and was unchallenged into Turn 1, while both Doohan and Chadwick closed up as the lap went on.

Doohan briefly took the lead on lap 3 but made it stick a lap later into Turn 4, Doohan

WALLS’ EUROPEAN ADVENTURE

quickly pulled a margin while Alders dropped like a stone, finishing a disappointing eighth.

In the final race of the weekend Doohan made a great start and methodically pulled out a near 4s margin over Alders by the time he greeted the flag.

“A perfect weekend, double pole and three wins. We came here to do a job and we did it,” Doohan said.

The other Australian, Tommy Smith, claimed three point-scoring finishes, including two season-best seventh place results.

As a result of the three wins Doohan closed the championship margin down to 15 points with 75 available in the final round at the Chang International Circuit on February 22-23.

“I wasn’t focusing on the championship too much. Obviously, it’s always at the back of my mind, it’s valuable points,” he said. DM

JACKSON WALLS will follow in the footsteps of Oscar Piastri, Alex Peroni, Luis Leeds, Thomas Randle and Zane Goddard as another Australian driver to race in Formula Renault Eurocup.

Walls has been named as an Arden motorsport driver for the 2020 Eurocup season after competing in two seasons of the now defunct Australian Formula 4 Championship.

“It’s a privilege to be joining Arden Motorsport for Formula Renault Eurocup for 2020 and I greatly appreciate the trust that everyone has placed in me,” Walls said.

“The team’s heritage shows it can provide an outstanding driver development environment, especially given the number of current Formula 1 drivers who have driven for Arden on their rise to the top tier.”

As well as competing in the Formula Renault Eurocup Series the team races in Formula 2, Formula 3 and British F4. The team has a history of bringing up young Australian talents. In the past two years Jack Doohan, Bart Horsten and Piastri have all raced for the British squad in various championships.

The series visits many famous and challenging European tracks, including Silverstone, Nurburgring and Monaco, but Arden Formula Renault team manager Ben Salter feels Walls has the experience to cope.

“He’s (Jackson) got a strong track record in Formula 4 and Formula 3-spec machinery,” Salter said. “All of that experience will be very useful in terms of driver development as he adapts to a new car and a very competitive championship.

The opening round takes place at Monza, Italy on April 18-19, 2020. DM

TWISTS AND TURNS IN MALAYSIAN ALMS HALF A dozen Australians contested the third round of the Asian Le Mans Series at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia.

The race was won by the #45 Thunderhead Carlin Racing drivers of Ben Barnicoat, Jack Manchester and Harry Tincknell.

The start was delayed by 100 minutes by a monsoonal downpour and severe storms.

In the end, through the treacherous conditions and despite not crossing the line first, the British trio were promoted to victory and became the first team to topple the #26 G-Drive Racing with Algarve from first position all season.

The #36 Eurasia car with Australians Nick Foster, Aidan Read and Former F1 driver Roberto Merhi were leading in the closing minutes when they were instructed to pit and repair the rear tail lights.

The team did not do so and as a result was immediately given a 36s post-race penalty.

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Because of this penalty the #45 car leapt into the top spot, but the #36 trio were still able to hold onto second. Coming home third was the series leading #26 G-Drive Racing with Algarve car of James French, Leonard Hoogenboom and Roman Rusinov.

The race in Malaysia saw the series standings close up considerably. The #26 car still leads the class with a nine-point gap to the #45 Dallara, and a 10-point buffer over #36 Ligier heading into the final round.

Adopted Australian James Winslow finished the race in fifth ahead of the Aussie trio of John Corbett, Nathan Kumar and Mitchell Neilson.

The LMP3 class was won by the #9 Graff Racing car of David Droux, Eric Trouillet and Sebastien Page, with the latter replacing Australian Ricky Capo for the round.

Australian Liam Talbot, with Marcos Gomes and Davide Rigon, was in the mix for victory until a 60-second stop-and-go penalty for a violation of the Full Course Yellow resulted in the three drivers falling to second place.

The final race of the 2019-2020 Asian Le Mans Series takes place at the Buriram circuit in Thailand this weekend. DM

FAMOUS NAMES ENTERED IN PHILLIP ISLAND CLASSIC ENTRIES FOR the 2020 Phillip Island Classic have been confirmed and what a list it is.

The event will feature many Australian motor racing legends matched only by some equally well known and popular historic race cars.

This year the event takes place on March 5-8 with six-time Bathurst 1000 winner Larry Perkins acting as patron for the 2020 edition.

Both Perkins and his son Jack will be driving at the event in a car made famous by his crash at The Cutting in 2003.

The car has been restored by Jack in time for this event and Auto Action spoke to them both about the restoration (see p42-46).

The Perkins pair aren’t the only famous names who will attend the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

Seven-time 1000 winner Jim Richards and 2003 Bathurst 1000 pole-sitter Greg Murphy will both get behind the wheel of the legendary Australian Touring car Championship

BMWs from the ’80s.

Two BMWs will race at the Phillip Island event. Richards will get back behind the wheel of the Black and Gold 635 JPS car, while Greg Murphy will drive an M3.

In that class for Group C&A Touring Cars built between 1973 and 1992, a total of 40 cars, including 12 BMWs and several Ford Sierras will be competing.

The 1995 Australian Touring Car Championship winner John Bowe will drive Joe Calleja’s ex-Carroll Shelby’s Allard J2X as shown in the recent Ford vs Ferrari film.

Shelby drove the very car that Bowe will drive in the final five races in 1953, winning four races.

Particular interest will be shown to the Q&R Racing car class as it features the fastest historic racing cars in the country.

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competitors attending the event, which is highly spoken of around the world ,according to VHRR chairman Ian Tate.

“For the Formula Ford fraternity worldwide, the Phillip Island Classic is now recognised as the event to be at, with higher levels of interest coming from international competitors each year,” Tate said.

Dan McCarthy

COMMODORE READYING FOR DEBUT

WINTON IMPROVED SIGNIFICANT UPGRADES have been made to Winton Motor Raceway in a bid to help overtaking around the tight circuit in northeast Victoria.

The main focus area has been the kerbing around Turns 3 and 4 in an attempt to widen the track and create more side-by-side action.

On the exit of Turn 3 the tall sausage kerb has been replaced and Winton Raceway marketing manager Brenton O’Brien said that this will effect racing into the following corner.

“What we are trying to promote here is more sideby-side racing,” O’Brien told Auto Action.

“It will be quicker as well as safer. A lot of thought and planning went into this.

“The exit of Turn 3 had a sausage kerbing but that has now gone we have flattened it out. So if you want to get a bit greedy and adventurous you can use all the exit of 3 but it might not pay off with the new jagged kerbing.

“As you come into Turn 4 the jagged part flattens out and cars are able to take a wider entry into 4 and take a lot more of the inside which gives them a cleaner exit out of the corner and into 5.”

Both the kerb on the inside and outside of Turn 4 has also been extended and flattened, but these aren’t the only changes going on around the rural Victorian circuit.

Repairs have also been made to the edge of the tarmac at Turns 9 and 10 to smoothen the transition

One of them is a Ferrari Formula 1 car built in 1985 and driven by Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson.

This will be raced in the same class as Tom Tweedie in his ultra-fast Formula 5000 car.

Legendary car designer and builder Adrian Reynard will be at the circuit racing a Reynard Formula Ford FF84.

He is just one of the many Formula Ford

when the cars leave the road which used to be a sizeable fall off the road.

“That (Turn 9 and 10 changes) will encourage better racing and the drivers will have less of a fear of possibly going off or creating damage especially to the inner part of their tyres if they do go off track,” O’Brien said.

With the current batch of upgrades completed, painting of the new kerbs will take place on February 24 before the TCR test day occurs two days later.

O’Brien hinted that these advancements were the first of several planned track and facility upgrades that will be made to the circuit over the next several years.

“We want to future-proof the circuit and there are plans to keep improving the facility in the long term, yes,” he told AA. “Winton is certainly going be a place to keep your eyes open for as we keep improving.”

DM

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AS FIRST revealed by Auto Action last year, Gerard McLeod’s Touring Car Masters Holden VB Commodore is set to debut on the streets of Adelaide this weekend.

It is one of three cars debuting this weekend.

McLeod hasn’t been able to complete any testing due to a couple of hold-ups late during the build process ,so the first time it will turn a wheel in anger will be at the opening round.

McLeod’s new Commodore is entered under Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport and has been built to the highest standard ,with the Victorian driver confident the car will be more than competitive on its debut.

“The design brief was to make a very simple, very reliable but well thought-out car,” McLeod said.

“We believe the Commodore platform will be very competitive in Touring Car Masters and we’re looking forward to getting it on track. I got in touch with the category four years ago saying that if they ever introduced a Commodore that we would be the first to commit to running one, and I’m proud that we’ve reached this point of getting the car on track.

“The car is owned by Lucas Dumbrell and I’ve done the build over the last year. We’ve drawn on all the experience from the industry that we could find and tapped into a lot of resources including people with experience from Supercars and beyond.

“Tony Freeman of Kelly Racing built the engine

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in-house. (TCM competitor) Gary O’Brien did the bodywork and it looks incredible. It’s been built to a very high standard.

“We could have had it finished earlier but we didn’t want to rush it. We wanted it right.”

The new Commodore will use the TCM-category engine designed to be affordable and reliable with McLeod failing many drawbacks about the option.

“Running the category engine was a case of making it feasible to actually do,” he said.

“Aside from being a potent little engine due to weight, it will be very torquey and will do two years without being unbolted from the car.

“We weren’t going to build the car with an $80,000 engine and it ticked last box for us to go ahead. it was at that point we committed to see it through to the end.”

The livery will reflect his family’s racing history, in the form of father Peter’s Autopart Holden Commodore from the 1986 Bathurst 1000.

HM

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THE INVESTIGATION into the accident that resulted in the death of Anthoine Hubert has concluded. The FIA concluded it was a chain of events that caused a protracted and complex crash which resulted in a high speed T-bone. The speed and trajectory in the impact were such that an extremely high level of energy was transferred and dissipated, translating into non-survivable trauma to Anthoine Hubert and very serious injuries to Juan Manuel Correa.

Multiple contributory factors were identified by the FIA but found that all drivers reacted appropriately in response to the circumstances on track and that the reaction of the marshals and race control was timely.

TESTING OF the 2021 18-inch Pirelli tyre has begun, two-time race winner Charles Leclerc and Ferrari kicked things off with a test at Jerez. It was the first of 25 dedicated days of tyre testing ahead of the 2021 season. The testing will be shared across all 10 teams with the top three teams Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing given an extra day for scheduled wet weather testing. The Jerez test ran smoothly for Leclerc despite a delay in the morning due to fog, the Monegasque driver completed a total of 130 laps in a modified version of last year’s Ferrari.

BRITISH FORMULA 2 driver Jack Aitken announced that he had left the Renault team as a test driver to start a new chapter. The following day he confirmed that he had signed with Williams to be its reserve driver for the 2020 season. This role will see the 24-year-old drive a Williams in a number of FP1 sessions throughout the season and will spend extensive time in the simulator.

IN A flurry fl off activity ti it the th Formula 1 teams showed off their new cars before heading to the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya for six days of testing to prepare for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on March 15.

Renault, however, only showed teaser photos of the R.S.20 that Aussie Daniel Ricciardo and his new teammate Esteban Ocon will drive this year.

“For the coming season,” said Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul, “we must respect the three priorities identified during the off-season: reliability from the get-go; ensure a high level of development very early in the season and have a good conversion rate on track. However, we also need to regain confidence and reinforce team spirit to get the best from everyone, and to maximise our chances each race weekend during this unprecedented long and challenging season.

“Taking back fourth position (from McLaren) in the constructors’ championship remains the objective over a season that will be more hotly contested than ever.”

The livery on the new McLaren MCL35 is once again McLaren papaya and blue, the original colours chosen by Kiwi founder Bruce McLaren and representing the team’s 57-year legacy in the sport.

“It is important not to be complacent, this will be a tough season,” noted McLaren CEO Zak Brown. “Nothing comes easy in F1 and the competition at the head of the midfield will be intense.”

Fourth is a popular target this year.

“We can improve a lot on what we did last year,” said Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez. “It will be

HOTLY CONTESTED difficult, but I think podiums and P4 in the championship should be the target for us this year.”

Given that it earned two podium finishes last year and has the ever-improving Honda engine, Scuderia AlphaTauri, formerly Scuderia Toro Rosso,

might play a spoiler role in the midfield battle.

“We have a very strong baseline,” Daniil Kvyat said, “and we’re going to try to do as many of those strong races that we had last year, and repeat them more and more often.”

SYNDROME THREATENS RACES THE FIRST Ferrari F1 car driven by Michael Schumacher has been put up for sale, the German tested the Ferrari 412 T2 at Fiorano and Estoril shortly after winning the 1995 title with Benetton.

Jean Alesi finished second in the car at the San Marino Grand Prix. Since 2018 a full chassis service, repainting, brake and gearbox service has been completed by Maranello confirming the original chassis, engine and gearbox, at this stage the asking price is unknown.

CHINESE FORMULA 2 driver Guanyu Zhou has been announced as the Renault test driver for the 2020 season in place of Jack Aitken who has moved into the reserve driver role at Williams. Zhou started as a development driver with Renault in 2019 alongside his F2 commitments finishing as the top rookie after claiming five podiums. In 2020 along with his increased participation on Grand Prix weekends and back at the Enstone-based factory he will again drive for UNI-Virtuosi Racing in F2.

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THE CORONAVIRUS epidemic has finally forced the organisers of the Chinese Grand Prix to ask that the race, which was scheduled for April 19, to be postponed. And now the inaugural Vietnamese Grand Prix, due to be run on April 5, is under threat from the deadly syndrome in neighbouring China.

More than 10,000 people in villages about 40 kilometres from Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi were placed under quarantine after several cases of the virus were discovered in the area. The Vietnamese Grand Prix is due to take place in the streets around a football stadium in Hanoi.

Given how long it took for the race in China to finally be postponed, it is doubtful that any moves will be done anytime soon to postpone the race in Vietnam.

The way Formula 1 race contracts are structured require the grand prix organisers to initiate moves to cancel their race. So, as with the event in China, the FIA and Liberty Media would have to wait for the officials in Vietnam to make the first move.

Without the Chinese Grand Prix, there is already a

gaping hole of four weeks in the calendar between the race in Vietnam and the race in the Netherlands on May 3.

If the Vietnamese Grand Prix is postponed or cancelled, there would be six weeks with no races between the events in Bahrain and the Netherlands.

Formula 1’s CEO Chase Carey has said it is too early to consider putting in a one-off race to fill the gap created by China being postponed.

Slotting the Chinese race in somewhere later in the season will be a challenge as the calendar is packed with the other 21 events. The teams have already rejected a proposal to stage it the weekend after the Hungarian Grand Prix because that would reduce the cherished and much needed mid-season break from three weeks to two weeks. They also turned down the idea to have races on three consecutive weekends at the end of the season in Brazil, China and Abu Dhabi.

Now there is a proposal to put the Chinese race into Abu Dhabi’s November 29 date and move the latter event into December. Abu Dhabi pays a premium for the

The AlphaTauri AT01 carries a new white and blue livery that replaces the dark blue, red and yellow traditional Red Bull colours.

Haas, meanwhile, is hoping not have a carryover from last year when it tumbled to ninth Image: LAT

honour of hosting the last race of the year.

That would not be fair to the fans who have already booked non-refundable airfares and made other plans to be in Abu Dhabi at the end of November. But there is a strong incentive for the teams and Liberty to have a Chinese Grand Prix this year as they share the US$50 million fee that the organiser pays to host the race.

Formula 1’s managing director of motor sports Ross Brawn acknowledged that the dates of other races might be changed to fit the China event in later in the year.

The season begins in Australia on March 15.

Image: LAT

Image: Red Bull

place in the constructors’’ championship after finishing fifth in 2018.

“Obviously, after a season like 2019, it’s good to get going again with a fresh start,” said Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.

“We realised last year, in the middle of the season, that we needed to do something different for 2020, and we did. We’ve just tried to apply into the new car some of the things we learned at the end of the season when we had

development parts on the car.”

Alfa Romeo needs to be more consistent this year than it was in 2019, and Williams still has work to do to dig itself out of last place.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

FERRARI AND Red Bull Honda each won three races last season. Compare that to the total of 15 victories by reigning world champions Mercedes and it’s clear that the former two teams have their work cut out for them – and indeed they have been working hard throughout the off-season to create better cars for 2020. But then so too has Mercedes.

Red Bull got off to a slow start last year, not winning until round nine, but team principal Christian Horner believes the squad will get off to a flying start this year.

“We’ve changed our philosophy as well going into this year being ready earlier,” he said. “With the stability of regulations it is obvious the RB16 is very much an upgrade and evolution of RB15. It’s focused on addressing some of its weak spots and building on its strengths. With that continuity the team is really eager to go toe-to-toe with particularly Mercedes.”

Ferrari’s 2020 car – called the SF1000 because the team will race in its 1000th world championship F1 race this year – has been finessed at every point.

“It may look very similar to last year,” team principal Mattia Binotto said, “but believe me it is completely different. A lot of concepts are very extreme on the car. We worked on all the components. The suspension has been designed to have greater flexibility when being

on the racetrack for the set-up, trying to adapt the set-up to whatever best suits the drivers at the circuit.”

This hopefully will cure the weakness in slow corners the Ferrari had last year.

“We put in a lot of effort to keep the weight down,” Binotto added. “We worked a lot on the power unit, not only for packaging, we worked on each single component. First for performance but also to cope with the change in technical regulations, where the oil consumption will be reduced by 50%. So obviously it may look very similar to last year, but it is completely different to the one of last year. And a lot of concepts are very extreme.”

Mercedes is taking nothing for granted noted team principal Toto Wolff. The team examined a myriad of areas to improve the new car, called the W11, and has changed the vast majority of the over 10,000 parts of the car to extract more performance. The Achilles’ heel on the W10 was that it did not perform well in hot weather conditions.

“We’ve improved the cooling package,” said Mercedes technical director James Allison.

“We’ve created more face area – so more actual radiator area in the car – which is a difficult thing to do mid-season.”

Pre-season testing will give the first indications of the balance of power between the top three, but the real test will in the race in Melbourne.

MERCEDES COMMITED LONG TERM TO F1 RUMOURS THAT Mercedes will withdraw from Formula 1 at the end of the year are just that – rumours.

The rumours were fueled by parent company Daimler saying in November it would cut at least 10,000 jobs and reduce staff costs by around 1.4 billion euros (A$2.7 billion) by the end of 2022. Furthermore, there was speculation that the current F1 was not all that relevant to the company’s move towards electrification.

But Mercedes has no intention of leaving F1. Team principal Toto Wolff insists that Mercedes is in F1 for “the long-term.” But that is not to say that Daimler has not closely examined its entire F1 project.

“With everything we (Daimler) do, we have to question ‘is it the right activity that we deploy?’” Wolff said. “It’s whether it’s in the petrochemical business, whether it’s as an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) in the car industry, or whether it’s F1. We, as Daimler today, we see the advantages and the benefits that Formula 1 as a marketing platform provides to us and we see the data. And that is the underlying condition why we’re doing it.”

“F1 provides a great marketing platform for our brand,”

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Wolff added. “This is what we do. We build race cars and we build road cars. F1 is the halo platform for hybrid engineering.”

F1 makes financial sense for Daimler.

“We see the data...participating in F1 is one of the greatest returns on investment in the whole Daimler Group,” Wolff explained “This is an exercise that costs little in comparison to the billions of marketing value that are being generated.”

Like the other nine F1 teams, Mercedes is negotiating with Liberty Media and the FIA on contract terms for the new Concorde Agreement that will replace the current one that expires at the end of the year.

“It’s an ongoing process and it’s a complicated set of contracts, trilateral contracts between the FIA, the commercial rights holder and all the teams,” Wolff said.

“That needs time and the devil is in the detail. So I wouldn’t want to commit here to give you a specific date because there are quite some topics that remain to be agreed on.

“It’s work in process. Clearly there is the will and the wish

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Image: LAT

for all of the stakeholders to come to a close before we embark on the 2021 season, because (otherwise) that would be an uncomfortable situation.”

Speaking of negotiations for 2021, Wolff wants Lewis Hamilton to renew his contract that also expires at the end of this year.

“It is the obvious pairing going forward,” Wolff said. “We would like to have the fastest man in the car, and I know Lewis wants to be in the fastest car so there is an obvious mutual outcome.”

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F1 INSIDER

with Dan Knutson

RICCIARDO’S RACING WITH A FULL HEART WHEN I interviewed Daniel Ricciardo for an Auto Action feature story last year, one of the questions I asked him was if he had any regrets leaving Red Bull, a team with a winning car, to join Renault, a team not capable of winning at the moment. No regrets at all, was his immediate reply.

Now, as the Aussie embarks on his second season with the AngloFrench squad, he wants to have no regrets.

“My personal targets for the season, one first and foremost which I had installed in me for a few years, is never leave the race track on a Sunday with my head down and feeling regret,” he said. “Leave on a Sunday knowing that I got the most out of that weekend, and leaving everything on the table.

“Racing with a full heart.

“I learned last year that being aggressive is good, and racing with intent is good. But I also have to manage that at times and be smart — pick my battles, pick my moments — so I want to be better at that.

“I really still believe that there is a podium there with Renault. When I signed this initial two-year contract I saw podium in that signing, if you know what I mean.

“As far as a position goes, that would be a

Image: LAT

personal objective for me.

It is something I think is obtainable.”

Ricciardo’s best finish last year was a fourth place at the Italian Grand Prix.

On the team front, McLaren took fourth place in the constructors’ championship away from Renault last year.

While Renault’s immediate objective is to regain that position, its real goal is to eventually mix it up with Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull.

“When I got to Renault last year, I noted that

the facilities were great,” Ricciardo said.

“It is not like we are lacking much at all in terms of that compared to the big teams.

So that is where teamwork comes in, and it is about using each member of the team in the most efficient way. It is not about having the smartest guy in all of F1 in your team. It is not about one individual. It is about everyone coming together. I saw last year that as the year went on the belief grew in the team, but that also needs to be

reinstated. As a person you forget things over time.

“So with team spirit and team morale you have to keep reiterating and reinserting this into the team and the atmosphere. It is something I’m working on as well. I want to keep that flowing in a better way this year to get the most out of everyone. I’m confident that we will put some things in place over the next few months. It will be interesting to see how they progress and how it helps us as a unit to become closer.”

Ricciardo’s new teammate is the lanky Esteban Ocon.

He competed in F1 in 2016 with Manor and the following two seasons with Force India, and now he returns to competition after a year’s hiatus.

“It is a chance to learn and another way of competing against someone new and measuring yourself,” Ricciardo said. “Esteban will bring a new dynamic.”

Ocon is 23 and Ricciardo is 30. But the latter had plenty of experience when Max Verstappen was a young charger beside him at Red Bull.

“Esteban is a lot younger and very hungry,” Ricciardo acknowledged. “I think that dynamic is going to be cool between us. You’re going to see a lot of competition between us. I’m sure we’ll keep it to a necessary level to keep the team from stressing too much. I’m sure we’ll have some good respect, and push the team further forward.”

Ricciardo’s first season with Renault got off to an inauspicious beginning in Melbourne last year when he had to retire after damaging the car just after the start of the race. His plan is to leave the Albert Park track after this year’s Australian Grand Prix with no regrets, and having raced with a full heart.

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ARG ASSAULT Big plans for 2020

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RALLY DY

30 years of Bat NASTY es brilliance

AA’s impressed pundit salutes Scott McLaughlin as he bemoans the inevitable death of Holden

Publisher

Bruce Williams 0418 349 555

Editorial Director

Bruce Williams

Editor-At-Large

Mark Fogarty

SO HOLDEN is dead. No real surprise, but still shocking news. It’s also not good for for Supercars.

As best as I can deduce, after sitting through a long teleconference on Monday, GM Holden will honour its commitment to Red Bull Holden Racing Team until the end of next year.

Unless it can negotiate an early exit. It’s all very fuzzy. The future of GM in this country is also opaque.

Most likely, it will be left to HSV to fly the GM flag. RHD converted Camaros, Silverados, etc — plus the much-vaunted C8 mid-engined Corvette. Its chances of making it here as a factory right-hook model just plunged.

If we accept that Holden and GM are done here, palming off the desirable models to HSV makes sense.

It will also put pressure on Supercars to hasten the entry of the Camaro. Otherwise, the 2022 season is going to look very thin.

Will we miss Holden? Of course.

It’s been an integral part of local racing since the 1960s. Monaro GTS 350, Torana XU-1, L34, A9X and Brock iterations. All the way through to the ZB. Now, though, all bets are off. GM Holden will renegotiate its RBHRT deal to align with not only the death of the Commodore, but of the famous brand itself.

Racing made the Commodore a top-seller, but that doesn’t count any more.

What it means is that the traditional Blue versus Red rivalry is doomed. Unless Supercars opens the series to all-comers. Which may be the beginning of the end.

Production

Deputy Editor

Heath McAlpine

Creative Director/ Jason Crowe

Special Contributor Bruce Newton Staff Journalist

Dan McCarthy

National Editor

Garry O’Brien

Online Editor

Rhys Vandersyde

Contributing Writers

However it shakes out, next year will be the last season of Ford vs Holden as we know it.

Hope that Gen3 makes it easier for teams to adopt different body shapes without manufacturer involvement.

SCOTTY STARS

SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN’S performance in his IndyCar tests in Texas last week was no less than extraordinary.

Third quick at the open preseason test at the Circuit of The Americas road course was mightily impressive. In difficult conditions Scotty out-performed many IndyCar guns.

He was only bested by Indy 500 winners Will Power and Alex Rossi, beat reigning champion Josef Newgarden and last year’s 500 winner Simon Pagenaud.

In other words, as a rookie he out-performed all but one of Team Penske’s best IndyCar drivers.

Whatever the machinations of tyres and conditions, that was outstanding for a young bloke whose only previous open-wheel experience was in a Formula Ford.

Even more impressive was his flawless performance a few days later at Texas Motor Speedway,

one of the most death-defying high-banked ovals on the IndyCar schedule.

Trust me, TMS is nail-gripping. In my years covering the IRL in the early 2000s, the Dallas-Fort Worth area 1.5-mile (2.4km) oval always produced thrilling racing. Real onthe-edge stuff.

It was so fast that Champ Car cancelled a race there because drivers were blacking out at 240mph (386 km/h).

So for McLaughlin to comfortably lap at an average of 214mph (344km/h) and top 227mph (365km/h) is extraordinary.

The most exciting races I’ve ever seen have been at TMS, where open-wheel disaster is just a sneeze away.

Racing there is knife-edge, holdyour-breath stuff. IndyCar races at TMS are won by thousandths of a second.

To me, IndyCar races at TMS were the ultimate gladiatorial contests. Superfast and incredibly dangerous.

McLaughlin performed well solo on the high-banked oval, but racing 20 other desperates is a different matter.

Still, he showed he has the ability to adapt to an entirely different kind of racing.

Edgy, fast, fearless.

McLaughlin will return to Supercars this week sharp as a tack. He will bemoan his Mustang’s lack of grip and acceleration, but by comparison, it’s easy to drive.

Fact is, McLaughlin is a rare super-talent.

He will defend his Supercars and Bathurst titles aggressively, but his mind — not surprisingly — will be on his future in America with Team Penske.

He is clearly a phenomenon.

To go from Supercars to toplevel open-wheelers and be competitive is unusual.

Roger Penske’s faith in his Down Under young gun indicates his future is over there.

But for all the blandishments, Scotty is focused on winning a third straight V8i title without last year’s rancour.

He is on a high from which he won’t come down until he is exposed to the cut-throat racing of IndyCar. But the betting is that he will impress Team Penske enough at the Indianapolis GP road race to secure a full-time ride in 2021.

The scenario is a lot different to the NASCAR future we all anticipated.

We take a look back at what was making news 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago 1980: MOFFAT TO race Porsche. The German marque’s Australian distributor Alan Hamilton put Moffat behind the wheel of his Porsche 934 to contest the opening round of the Australian Sports Car Championship at Sandown Park. It was also rumoured he was to dust off his old Ford Falcon hardtop to run the first round of the Australian Touring Car Championship. Rival Peter Brock revealed Noel Richards as the manager of the Holden Dealer Team.

1990: IT WAS a stunning result for Jim Richards at Round 1 of the Australian Touring Car Championship at Amaroo Park as he defeated the hordes of Ford Sierras to take victory. There were protests within the Ford camps as Dick Johnson Racing team manager Neal Lowe protested against the front guards of both Benson and Hedges Sierras driven by Alan Jones and Tony Longhurst. Steve Harrington gave Holden a victory on the Thunderdome.

2000: 2 JONES HEADS into cyberspace.

Brad B Jones Racing announced a first-forSupercars S sponsor in the form of internet provider p Ozemail. The ex-Longhurst Racing F Falcon gave BJR confidence ahead of its f season in Supercars competition. Steve first E Ellery was another to have a new sponsor i the form of Super Cheap Auto, but his in b brand new car was slightly off the pace.

G Glenn Seton was hoping for a better year a the restructure of his team to Ford after T Tickford Racing.

2010: SINCE TRIPLE Eight’s defection to Holden, there was little up for Ford fans, but Mark Winterbottom reassured the fans of the Blue Oval that Ford Performance Racing will be up the front. Retirement was a dirty word for veteran Russell Ingall, dismissing the idea ahead of his third year at Paul Morris Motorsport, which now had a Triple Eight Race Engineering alliance. Testing had

Australia Garry O’Brien, Mark Fogarty, Bruce Newton, David Hassall, Bob Watson F1 Dan Knutson Speedway Geoff Rounds Photographers Australia Ross Gibb, Rebecca Hind, Mick Oliver, David Batchelor, Randall Kilner, Rhys Vandersyd, Richard Hathaway International LAT Images Advertising Manager Bruce Williams All Advertising inquiries bruce@overdrivemedia.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

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HAVE WILL

Images: LAT/Richard Hathaway

NASCAR star Kyle Larson is one of America’s most versatile racers, also excelling in Sprintcars, midgets and even sports cars. Here he tells us why it’s good for his stock car career 22 AutoAction

HE IS the Shane van Gisbergen of NASCAR. Will drive just about anything, anywhere, any time. He’s a front-runner and title contender in a high-profile national series who just can’t seem to get enough racing.

Like SVG is here, Kyle Larson is a big name in the premier NASCAR Cup Series. He drives a Chevy Camaro for top team Chip Ganassi Racing — and wins races. Larson “moonlights” in Sprintcars and midgets, and has proved he’s a handy road racer when he puts his mind to it, sharing victory in the 2015 24 Hours Of Daytona sports car classic.

More accurately, he is the new Tony Stewart, approaching the versatility of “Smoke”, who won in Indycars, stock and sports cars, as well as Sprintcars.

Larson also has his own World Of Outlaws team, running fellow Californian Carson Macedo. He is such a racer that he spent several weeks Down Under this summer, racing midgets in NZ and Sprintcars in Australia.

In between, he returned to the States to win the Chilli Bowl Nationals, the biggest midget title — run indoors in Tulsa, Oklahoma — that he rates as one

of the highlights of his career. And this from a guy who was rookie of the year three years running in his rise through the NASCAR ranks from 2012-14.

Larson won last year’s All-Stars shootout at Charlotte and a Playoffs race at Dover, finishing sixth in Cup Series points.

Kyle Miyata Larson, 27, is half Japanese and the only Asian-American to race full-time in NASCAR. He was the first NASCAR Drive for Diversity graduate to earn a full-time Cup Series ride and the first to win a Cup race.

Larson’s brief trip to Australia, his first since the summer of 2015-16, was marred by rainouts and then his frontrunning Dyson Motorsport racer struck uncharacteristic troubles that ruled him out of contention in the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic at Warrnambool’s Premier Speedway.

At home on the high banks of Daytona or the flat tracks of the Mid-West, his sheer enthusiasm for racing was clear when we chatted at length in the dim light of the back of the Dyson hauler as he shrugged off his Grand Annual misfortune.

CAR, RACE Larson is a NASCAR Cup front-runner with Chip Ganassi Racing. But he is just as happy talking about and racing in Sprintcars, which are high on his thrill scale.

With the NASCAR season not far away, what’s the attraction to come all the way to Australia to race Sprintcars?

Just ’cause there’s no other racing I can really do at this time of year in the States.

You have the Rolex 24 going on, but I’ve done that and won it, so I want to get back to just racing Sprintcars in the (northern) winter. My schedule just worked out where I had an open week and I’ve known Sean Dyson pretty well for a while now, and I just gave him and Carson Macedo a call to see if they’d let me run this week and it worked out where I could do it. I just wanted to come down and get some good racing in.

How did you know Sean?

Well, Sean has supported Carson the past few years and Carson races for me in the World Of Outlaws series, and he sponsors our car on that circuit. He’s come to the States a few times to hang out with us — a really good family.

It’s fair to say, then, that you’ll race anything, any time, anywhere?

Yeah, no doubt. I don’t want to ever be

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thought of just a NASCAR driver or just a Sprintcar driver. I want to be known as a guy who it didn’t matter what type of vehicle he got in, he could be competitive and win races in all forms of racing. I looked up to Tony Stewart, who raced a lot of different types of cars, and I want to do the same thing.

It’s not unusual or uncommon that NASCAR Cup drivers compete in other divisions, but it’s not normal either, is it?

No, not really. You have guys like me and Chris Rebel, who probably do the most of it now, plus Ricky Stenhouse Jnr, who does a few midget races throughout the year. Alex Bowman and Justin Allgaier will do the Chilli Bowl. But as far as those guys who got to NASCAR through the pavement route, it’s not often those guys go back and race Late Models or the stuff they grew up racing. Kyle Busch will run a few races throughout the year and maybe a few other guys will run one or two other races, but nobody’s putting an extra 40-50 nights on their schedule on top of the NASCAR stuff like myself — and Chris Rebel’s probably running close to that, too. We’re definitely the two busiest drivers in America.

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One of our top Supercars drivers, Shane van Gisbergen, has a similar attitude.

He maintains it makes him a better Supercars driver. Does it keep you sharper for NASCAR Cup?

and midgets. It’s just getting laps. To me, it doesn’t matter what kind of car I’m in. As long as I’m getting laps, I’m becoming a better racecar driver.

How did you start?

Yeah, no doubt. I think it took a few years to convince my team that it does help me, but they now believe it does. That’s why they allow me to go race as much as I do.

I think that just putting myself in racing situations a lot helps with the NASCAR stuff — and I think the NASCAR racing helps when I get over here and race Sprintcars

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I grew up racing what are called Outlaw Karts and then from that I went into Sprintcars — 360 cubic inch (5.9 litres) and 410 cubic inch (6.7 litres). I really didn’t start racing midgets a lot until — gosh — I’d probably been racing already for

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four or five years in Sprintcars.

It was 2011 when I moved to Indiana to run USAC stuff — midgets, Sprintcars, Silver Crown cars. But I did midgets full-time in 2011 as well as a bunch of Sprintcar races. Sprintcars are the roots of my car racing career.

So you like the big horsepower?

I like all kinds of racecars, but to me the Sprintcars with over 900 horsepower (671 kW) and 1400 ft/lb (1898 Nm), it’s something I’ve never felt in anything else — nothing even close to it. They’re really wild racecars.

everything so I just have to turn up and drive. So I don’t think there’s any real pressure. There are things that become more of an obligation, like media, but even that I enjoy.

Better than Cup racing?

You had a reasonably good Cup season last year, making the Playoffs and winning races. How do you see your prospects of being in contention for the title this year?

I wouldn’t say that. It doesn’t matter to me.

I just like racing, so I’m going to have fun in any type of racecar. Some are more fun than others, but each has its own attraction. I just like racing.

Is it difficult to go from a 550 horsepower NASCAR Cup car on a superspeedway to a 900 horsepower Sprintcar on dirt?

I’m used to jumping back and forth between a Sprintcar, a midget and NASCAR all in one week, some weeks. You get used to it. You don’t even have to think about the transition.

It just like riding a bike. You don’t think about it when you strap into whatever racecar you’re getting in. Early on in my career, jumping between Sprintcars and midgets, and pavement and dirt, and wings and nonwings, and even more types of vehicles than I race now, I would have to think about what I was doing. But after you do it frequently for a couple of months, you don’t even think about it.

Sprintcar racing is rough and tough, but so’s Cup racing, isn’t it?

It’s just a different type of rough and tough.

NASCAR Cup is the most competitive series I’ve ever raced. It’s the very highest level.

All the teams have top-notch stuff, the best engineers and everything that makes the cars so equal. From first to 28th might only be separated by three-tenths at some tracks, which is nothing. It’s hard to win. When you run this stuff (Sprintcars), once you’re out there you’re relying on yourself. The races are so short, whereas in NASCAR they’re so long and there are so many variables that might affect the outcome of the race. It’s even more of a team sport than Sprintcars.

Do you feel the pressure to perform in NASCAR? No, not really. I think I do a really good job of never really putting too much pressure on myself. Also, you can describe pressure in different ways. There’s pressure or stress from travelling and things like that, but those are all things that I enjoy. I enjoy travelling each week to go race in different states and get to experience different cities — just fun things to do. I enjoy having a couple of hundred people in our shop preparing

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Last year was good. We struggled the first third of the season with crashes and bad luck — you know, blown tyres and things like that, mistakes on my part also. But once we got into a kind of rhythm, we were good and we were able to win the All-Star race.

Then we started performing really well right before the play-offs and that led us into winning at Dover and making my best run I’ve ever had in the Playoffs (sixth). So it was a good year, but obviously we would’ve liked to have won more races. For this upcoming year, we have a little bit of a different body shape than we’ve had for the past few years and based on all the data from the wind tunnel, it seems very positive. It sounds like this new (Chev Camaro) body shape is better than the one we had. Considering where we ended last year, and it’s sounding like our new car could be better, I think we should have a really good year.

So you’re looking at a run at the title?

Yeah, like every year. But you don’t really get a good idea of how your season’s going to be until March after we’ve run a few races.

All things being equal, who are the guys you have to beat?

It’s your normal contenders. All the Joe Gibbs drivers, all the Stewart Haas drivers, Penske and Hendrick, and us as well. It’ll be your usual faces, like it is every year.

Who’s your biggest rival or main antagonist?

I haven’t really had any run-ins with anybody. I mean, the NASCAR media always tries to play up Kyle Busch and I because we have a lot of exciting races, battling for wins, but I enjoy racing Kyle. I don’t view him as a rival. I love racing him.

He’s really good and he pushes me to be better. And in the dirt stuff, the same thing with Chris Rebel. We have really good races together. We’re always battling for wins and finishing first or second to each other almost every time we’re on the track.

They’re just fun, competitive rivalries without antagonism.

So no enemies?

No, I don’t have any enemies. I mean, there are guys I don’t talk to, but it’s not that I don’t like them. I just don’t have anything in common with them.

You not shy about speaking your mind, though, are you?

I guess compared with others, maybe not, but you still have to watch the things you say sometimes. I just want to be myself, but it’s hard when you get to NASCAR and you have big companies and brands that support you. You don’t want to upset them, so you have to watch what you say. But at the same time, I think fans appreciate how real-life I come across and how I do speak my mind most times. I don’t typically bad-mouth too many things, but I also wouldn’t say I’m your normal corporate NASCAR driver, either. I have opinions, let’s say.

Do you see yourself doing much more road racing?

I did the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona three years in a row and I was able to win it in 2015. But, honestly, I’ve had my fun with that race. You spend so much time in Daytona — about two-and-a-half weeks all up just for one race. And you’re on a team with three other drivers, so you’re not getting a whole lot of seat time. Bored would be the wrong word, but I felt I was there for so long and didn’t get a lot of track time. I just remember thinking, “Man, I could be racing in Australia right now.” I’m glad to say I’ve

won it and I have the trophy and the watch, and w who knows, maybe someday I might do it aagain. But as far as right now, I don’t want tto. Le Mans would be a cool one to do, fo for sure. As I said before, I want to be known as a driver who could get in anything and w was willing to race anything, and Le Mans is obviously one of the biggest races in the world, so I’d love to compete in that.

Unfort Unfortunately, Chip Ganassi Racing doesn’t have a sports car program any more, so anyth anything like that is probably going to be years down the road, and who knows where I’ll be in my career by then.

What about the Bathurst 1000? Do you know much about it?

I don’t know much about it, but again I know it’s one of the biggest races in the world.

The problem is the time of year — it’s right in the thick of the NASCAR Cup Playoffs.

So as long as I’m in NASCAR, I wouldn’t be able to do it. But some day when my NASCAR career’s done, I’d definitely be open to running in all types of big events.

Marcos Ambrose proved that a versatile driver can be competitive in NASCAR and Supercars.

I thought Marcos was a super-talented driver and a great guy, too. Really, really nice guy, but a really aggressive racer. It was fun to race him. And now Penske’s Supercars team is really good, so it’s a shame he didn’t stick it out when he came back here.

By the time this is published, NASCAR’s “Bathurst 1000”, the Daytona 500, will have been run. With such restricted horsepower these days, is the 500 just a drafting race?

Yeah. It’s a unique style of racing. It’s tough.

You have all 40 cars on top of each other basically the whole race and there are always lots of crashes, big crashes.

You kind of have to get really lucky.

It’s just tough. You have to just try to

Larson won last year’s NASCAR All-Stars shootout and also dominated at Dover. He had a frustrating time in his brief return to Australia last month with Dyson Motorsport, missing the final of the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic. position yourself at the right time to get lucky when that big wreck does happen. I haven’t had much luck in that race.

One year I was leading on the last lap and ran out of fuel. That was heartbreaking. The cool thing about Daytona — and Talladega even — is that every single driver in the field feels like they have a shot to win just because it’s that type of race and that style of drafting racing. So that part of it’s cool. I just wish you didn’t have to be so lucky. It’s a 200 miles an hour (322 km/h) traffic jam for three-and-a-half hours, so it’s crazy. Daytona and Talladega are definitely the two most dangerous races we have throughout the

year. I broke a rib at Talladega last year. I haven’t had much luck at the superspeedways, but we’ll keep going back until we can at least win one.

What do you think of the stages format of Cup races?

It’s good, I like it. It gives you something to race for. Our races are really long — on average, about three-and-a-half hours – so it gives you something to race for all the way as they pay out points to the top 10 in each stage. It just makes us all drivee really hard. I’ve been in this sport now since before we had stages and before you were just logging laps, really, whereas as

An adaptable talent, Larson was part of the winning Daytona 24 Hours team in 2015. Not his favourite event, though.

He’d rather be flinging dirt Down Under.

now, if you’re 11th or something and you’re now coming up to the end of a stage and you’re catching the guy in 10th, you’re racing really hard to try to gain that one point. Now everybody is aggressive, fighting for every point throughout every race. I think it’s more exciting for competitors and fans.

It’s Jimmie Johnson’s final season.

Another NASCAR superstar bowing out, following Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jnr. He’ll be sorely missed, won’t he?

Oh, yeah, for sure. He’s won seven championships and so many races, and he’s a great person, too. Does a lot for the community; just a great guy all around.

He’ll be missed in NASCAR, but he’s also the type of guy that I think, once he’s done with NASCAR full-time, you’re going to see him doing a lot of really cool stuff and compete in a lot of really cool events. So he’s not going to go away. If anything, I think he’s going to become even more of a worldwide driver. I’m excited for his

final NASCAR season season. I hope he can win a race. It’s been a while. I’m a big Jimmie Johnson fan, so it’s been tough to see him go through the struggles he has during the past couple of years, of not winning. To me, he’s the greatest NASCAR racecar driver ever. So I hope to see him have a good season and I look forward to competing with him each week. We always have a lot of really fun battles. I look forward to seeing what he does outside of NASCAR. I see him doing a lot of different kinds of racing rather than broadcasting like Jeff Gordon. I don’t think he has any plans of becoming a broadcaster. But I think once Kevin Harvick retires, I think you’ll see him move into the broadcast side. Jimmie’s also going to spend a lot more time with his family. He has two young girls and a wife who have had to put up with the travel and the schedule of NASCAR for a long time. He’s already a great dad, but you miss out on so many things when you’re gone on the weekends, so he’ll get to do a lot of that as well as compete in some fun events.

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2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

BUSINESS

TIME It’s that time of year, the drivers’ market has settled, the parity debate has tempered, and all is set for Adelaide. HEATH McALPINE recaps what’s happened in the Supercars off-season Images: LAT/Supplied

AN INFLUX of young drivers, a favourite son of the blue oval confirms his defection and just two manufacturers remain represented on the grid.

The driver market went into overdrive in the “silly season”, led by former Tickford Racing star Chaz Mostert’s move across to Walkinshaw Andretti United. Much like Formula 1 star Daniel Ricciardo’s move from Red Bull Racing to Renault at the end of 2018, it is a risk as WAU has underperformed considering the amount of support it has behind it.

Mostert has always been the shining light for Tickford, especially during its poor 2018 season and although he has tangled Will Jack Le Brocq be in contention at Tickford?

26AutoAction

with his teammates on a few occasions.

As predicted, his loyal lieutenant Adam De Borre will move across to engineer Mostert, further improving the area headed by the Brit Carl Faux.

Joining Mostert at WAU is reigning Super2 Series winner Bryce Fullwood.

Impressive co-driving with Andre Heimgartner in the unloved Nissan Altima, the Territorian dominated the second-tier Supercars series last year so don’t be surprised to see him in the top 10 sooner rather than later.

The man with big shoes to fill is Jack Le Brocq as he replaces Mostert at Tickford in what is somewhat of a reunion after he finished runner up with the team in Super2 back in 2016. He returns to the

fold after two years in the top tier with Tekno Autosports, where his first year demonstrated promise, but a forgettable 2019 followed.

Le Brocq has the right ingredients to fulfil his potential and be a regular frontrunner, replicating teammates Cam Waters and Lee Holdsworth. Mostert’s departure is the only change at Tickford Racing after the team returned to form in line with the Mustang. Waters finished a career-best seventh and Holdsworth was a consistent top-10 finisher.

Another to be revitalised by the Mustang was Will Davison, who took 23Red Racing’s first podium and was, just like Holdsworth, a fixture of the top 10.

The biggest change during the off-

season was at Kelly Racing. Not only has the team scaled back to two entries, but it has dropped the Nissan Altima in favour of the Ford Mustang. Andre Heimgartner was retained to partner Rick Kelly in a pair of Mustangs that feature Kelly Racing’s self-developed engine. It was a frantic offseason, particularly for Todd Kelly, who led all the engine development and oversaw the assembly of the two chassis.

The early rounds of the season will be used for development because, thanks to a lack of time, only dyno testing has been completed.

Of the two drivers dropped from the Kelly Racing program, Simona De Silvestro and Garry Jacobson, only one will feature on the grid in Adelaide. While the Swiss driver joined Porsche at the end of last season, Jacobson moves north to join Matt Stone Racing, replacing the Brad Jones Racingbound Todd Hazelwood.

Jacobson, just like Le Brocq, struggled in the fourth Kelly Racing Altima last season, but joins a team that improved considerably on its rookie season in 2018. Hazelwood finished a best of fourth and qualified in the top 10 a few times to surprise some of the established frontrunners.

MSR expands to two cars thanks to the new Superlites initiative where a pair of drivers split the sprint component of the Supercars season then combine for the Pirtek Enduro Cup. Two youngsters that were rivals in Super2 last year will share the ride — Zane Goddard and Jake Kostecki.

Hazelwood joins BJR after a season of vast improvement and replaces Tim Slade in the second seat at the Albury-based squad.

The 24-year-old will be aiming to push established leader Nick Percat, who

comes off a consistent season where he finished ninth.

BJR expands to four cars this season with the addition of Jack Smith, who raced four wildcard events last year as well as joining new teammate Hazelwood for the Pirtek Enduro Cup. Macauley Jones again drives the Tim Blanchard Racing-licensed entry after a season riddled with incidents. He will need to impress in his second season.

Team 18 was impressive at some stages last year, particularly Symmons Plains, but wasn’t consistent enough to crack the top 10 in the final championship standings.

However, the engineering department headed by Phil Keed should keep improving. The addition of a second Triple Eight, on a seven-win streak, Commodore should help. Former is betting on this car to snatch back WAU driver and race winner Scott the Supercars Championship crown.

Pye joins the team, as does ex-Garry Rogers Motorsport engineer Manuel Sanchez, which further bolsters that side of the team.

Pye’s former teammate James Courtney moves to the controversial Team Sydney organisation born out of Tekno Autosports. There has been much said about the future and possibilities of the Western Sydney-based squad even before it has hit the track, but will it be a success? Time will tell, but it appears to have given a Supercars lifeline to Chris Pither, who is in line to partner the former Supercars champion in the first Sydney-based team in close to 20 years.

The two-car Team Erebus Motorsport remains 18 program looks unchanged, but the pressure the goods, but will it remains for David Reynolds translate to on-track and Anton De Pasquale after a success? winless 2019 season.

Then that leaves the two contenders.

DJR Team Penske fired out of complete before being l t 4000km 4000k b f b i rebuilt. b ilt the blocks last year, but Triple Eight Race Breaking the engine seal before this mark Engineering is on a seven-race winning will result in a 10-place grid penalty. streak since Bathurst last year.

Supercars approval must be sought if The driver line-ups remain the an engine change needs to be made. same as Scott McLaughlin aims for a The biggest change is the control championship hat-trick, while fellow Kiwi SupaShock-built, Pedders branded, Shane van Gisbergen will focus on stifling shock absorber, which is sure to shake up that challenge. the field, much like the single-spring did Seven-time champion Jamie Whincup last year. and Fabian Coulthard have both taken a back seat to the battle between the two star Kiwis, but they can’t be discounted in title calculations.

Changes haven’t been restricted to the driver and team market, either, as a 14-round calendar will not feature Queensland Raceway, Phillip Island and Pukekohe. All were removed from the calendar, the latter being replaced by the nearby Hampton Downs Motorsport Park.

The Sydney SuperNight returns after a year’s absence, joining Perth as another race under lights. Also running in the dark will be one component of the Gold Coast 600 in what is not the only change to next year’s Pirtek Enduro Cup. Sandown once again loses its signature 500km event to The Bend Motorsport Park, which will also return the event to the pre-Bathurst slot in the calendar.

Technical changes include a limit of three engines to be used throughout the season, down from four last year, while piston ring and rocker ratios will become control components. Each engine must

There have also been several aerodynamic changes, including a se decrease of rear wing angle from seven to d 13 1 degrees, down from a maximum of 18 degrees.

Gurney flaps will feature on the d wing w plane (13mm) and bootlid (10mm), while the Mustang’s rear wing has been w moved 90mm towards the front and m lowered a further 50mm. The front bar of lo the th Mustang has also been re-profiled and the th undertray reduced.

The speculation stops when this magazine hits the newsstands. m Thursday’s evening practice session will not n give a definitive form guide, but it will highlight the teams that are happy or have h plenty of work to do on the sweltering p streets of Adelaide. st

The Kelly Racing crew are racing against time to finish their Mustangs, above, while Erebus Motorsport is hoping to return to its race winning ways, below.

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2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

MUSTANG

VS

COMMODORE

Larko on how they match up head-to-head TV pit lane pundit MARK LARKHAM demystifies the technical changes and explains why they should result in better racing LARKO IS excited! Supercars’ TV technical whiz thinks all the changes — aero, dampers, tyres and even race formats and new/returned venues — will really shake things up.

Known for his enthusiasm and colourful language, former driver and team boss Mark Larkham has a talent for making the complexities of Supercars racing digestible. He’ll again be entertaining aficionados and philistines alike on Fox Sports and Channel 10.

“I’m excited because I think this season presents a whole lot of nuances and changes and challenges for teams and drivers — technical, calendar, circuits — that we haven’t seen for a while,” Larko enthused. “I love the words motorsport and unpredictable in the same sentence, and that’s clearly what we have going into this season.

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LARKO’S VERDICT: FORD MUSTANG Strength: DJR Team Penske Weakness: Trimmed aero “I don’t think the Mustang will have anything like the advantage, perceived or otherwise, that it had last year.”

LARKO’S VERDICT: HOLDEN COMMODORE Strength: Equalised aero Weakness: None that’s obvious “If I were running Commodores, I’d be quite pleased with where all this is going to land.”

“All of the changes we’ve made for the 2020 season have brought the emphasis back to the driver in terms of his contribution versus the car — and that can only be a good thing.”

And his excitement was on the rev-limiter even before the pre-season test at The Bend just ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Adelaide 500, which will be the first real indication of whether Supercars’ latest balancing act is working.

We let Larko loose with his thoughts — and he didn’t disappoint.

SIMPLY UNPREDICTABLE

I think it will be unpredictable because the big unknown around all of this, I reckon, is going to be the control damper. We already saw some pretty significant change in the performance of cars that had been largely contributed to by the twin springs — and that’s a compliment to Triple Eight, who were clearly the king of using that as a tuning device really, really well.

I think a control damper has the potential to, I wouldn’t say throw things

into disarray, but I certainly think it has the potential to bring some teams forward and to stop some teams being lost. I think good teams will still make good use of it, so I’m really keen to see what that does. Coupled with the aero changes, I think that is pretty exciting.

It’s not just the fact that we’ve changed the aero of the cars. It’s the fact that all the teams have the aero information now of what cars do at different ride heights, which they had no way of knowing before. That’s quite significant for me.

One of the things that has been learned over the past couple of years in particular — and became quite profound with the Mustang — is that if you change that vehicle’s ride height, you will change the aerodynamic characteristics of it.

With the Mustang, in particular DJRTP and Ludo got on top of that early and you would have seen it in the telecasts during the course of the year, pointing out some of the substantial ride height changes in that car.

The gap under the front wheel arch one week and then the gap under the rear wheel arch the next week. It was really quite substantial and quite different to what we’d been used to, and also what they were doing with their front ride height and their rear wing. Ludo is arguably the smartest engineer in the pit lane, particularly in the aerodynamics of a touring car, and he exploited that beautifully during the year.

The fact of the matter is that now all the teams have that information — not necessarily his information — on the mapping of both cars at different ride heights, which goes right to the heart of the parity debate. I would assume and hope that there’ll be no more parity debate around those particular areas of the car because the performance of both vehicles has been matched across a range of ride heights and rates. I think it’s a good thing that all teams have that knowledge.

Between the control dampers and the aero adjustments, I expect it will be a much more level technical playing

The big unknown according to pit lane pundit Mark Larkham is the control shock absorber.

Which team gets on top of it early will be the one that takes the crown.

field. The great thing, though, is that despite the sheer range of control components and specifications, there are still so many areas you can get lost in that determine the performance of a race car. If I did a whiteboard for you, I reckon I could put 100 things on the board that would influence the performance of the car, before I even get to driver or strategy.

Psychologically, I can drive around behind Jamie Whincup and know we’re using exactly the same damper.

Now, we may have thoroughly different settings, but mentally, at this level, that makes a difference. I can now go around behind Scott McLaughlin

2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

Larko believes Chaz Mostert has arrived at WAU at the perfect time.

and know that everything Ludo knows about the aero map of that car, we now have as well. It’s such a sensitive game psychologically that I think this will be a positive thing for the sport.

BIG CHANCE FOR CHAZ

I think there’ll be teams that will lift because of these changes. For example, WAU. Let’s be honest, and they know it, they’ve been in the wilderness the past few years.

Are we about to find out that maybe some of that has been shock absorbers? I don’t know.

Certainly they performed well at Newcastle when they trialled an early version of the control-spec damper on an unbelievably bumpy circuit. Those guys know shock absorbers, they have for a long time, but it’s very easy to go down a path of really weird bump and rebound curves, progressive and digressive curves in your damper spec, that’s hard to back out of.

The damper map they get is not going to be dissimilar to the aero map. So here’s a kind of instruction book for both things, here’s the limits of what you can do within both. They’re very similar. They won’t tell you what it does on the track, but everyone will have the same baseline information in terms of those two guides. That’s pretty cool.

Shock absorbers are hard. There are a lot of things in our sport that appear to be hard, but actually aren’t. Creating a great livery for your car is not hard.

Keeping your tyres out of the ultra-violet light is not hard. Keeping on top of your tyre pressures is not hard. Yet teams fail at a lot of those things.

Getting the rebound valving and the bump compression right on a bumpy circuit under brakes and also coming off a slow corner is f***ing impossibly hard. A lot of that maddening calculation is now gone. So I’m excited about Chaz Mostert going to WAU at this time, with both an increased aero parity base and a control damper.

Perfect timing.

Don’t get me wrong. DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight will still be the ones to beat. The cream always rises to the top. All the changes should bring some teams forward, should improve the quality of the racing and should have an overall positive impact on the sport, But at the end of the day, when

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you get to the thin edge of the wedge, you’re right at the sharp end of the pencil, the really good people then have to find the really small increments and they do — and those increments are worth more.

The cream will still rise to the top, but I think they’re going to have to work a little bit harder and the great news in this is that I think some of that’s going to come back onto the driver. While there is a range of adjustment in this new (SupaShock) damper, it comes with recommended settings — this is where we recommend you start — and logic would tell me that the damper manufacturer is not going to provide a recommendation that is very far away from what they know would work. I don’t think you’re going to see any great performance change at the front, but I think a lot of the other teams will now be in the same sweet spot of damper performance.

LESS AERO, CLOSER RACING

One of the potential benefits of the aero changes is that the cars can run a little closer together and race a little better.

Personally, I think we have a little way to go with that. A reduction of downforce of about 10 per cent, on my own maths, I reckon that would probably be about what we added to the Commodore at Pukekohe last year. Or expressed another way, probably takes us back to only a couple of years ago.

So I don’t think we’re going to see a profound difference, but what really excites me is that we’ve finally made this step in this direction. And the reason it is only 10 per cent — and it’s a very logical reason — is they’ve managed to do that without having to re-do wing chords or undertrays, which is expensive. They did it with what are essentially modified existing components. I think this is the start of an exciting journey for the sport towards substantially reducing downforce.

Let’s broadly say a car makes 300 kilos of overall downforce at 200km/h.

Now, with roughly 10 per cent less, what they’ve done is the equivalent of throwing a 10-year-old off the roof.

Don’t do that at home, but that’s kind of what we’ve done in terms of removing downforce at 200km/h. Around 30 kilos doesn’t sound like a lot, but at the limit of adhesion, it’s quite significant.

Larko expects close racing like this to be a common occurrence thanks to less downforce.

Images: LAT/Supercars

Think about a car in the middle of a corner at the absolute limit of adhesion.

If I could walk up to it and push the rear of the car with my hand, it would send it into a slide. By lowering that limit of adhesion, that will change the way you drive the car. Braking distances will increase, opening up passing opportunities. And, theoretically, the cars will be able to run a bit closer without losing downforce.

“The maximum wing angle has been brought down on both cars from 18-18.5 degrees to 13 degrees. So the air behind the cars will be a little less disturbed, which means the car behind should be able to follow a little closer.

I’m not sure you’ll notice it, but we are on the right track.

RUBBER IS RACING

Don’t dismiss the increased allocation of new tyres and scrapping used rubber banks. A great decision. I used to get annoyed on Fridays or in the early practice sessions at events because you couldn’t get any real sense of a

form guide. Now we will. We also need to drive the cost out of the sport and I can tell you the cost of a new set of tyres is nothing compared with the cost of running around on used tyres and trying to work out the tuning of your car, which changes considerably when you put new tyres on.

So now the likes of WAU, Team 18, MSR, Kelly Racing, among all the changes that are going on at those teams, they can now roll out and know the results of their testing at a circuit on Friday are meaningful. They know they’re within the window with shock absorbers; they know that they have an aero map that allows them to tune the car from track to track with some certainty. These are significant changes to the sport that on the surface may not appear so, but they are all in the direction of making the racing closer.

DOWN TO TIN TACKS

So what does it all mean, Commodore versus Mustang? Well, as an unabashed Ford fan, I’m thrilled

“A great decision,” Larko says of the decision to increase allocation and scrap used tyre stocks. The form line will be revealed earlier in a race weekend and it will be a great benefit to teams. that we’re back to Blue vs Red tribal warfare.

Doesn’t get any better.

On the surface, you’d think the Mustang has lost a little with its trimmed aero package. It’s obvious by the changes that have happened in terms of the lowering and bringing forward of the Mustang rear wing that there was an aero parity imbalance in 2019.

To their credit, DJRTP made ride height changes a real tuning device for their cars. Now that that’s spread across the field, they won’t have such an edge in that area.

I don’t think the Mustang will have anything like the advantage, perceived or otherwise, that it had last year. It is going to come back to the engineering nous of Ludo and Scott’s ability to drive the car. As he showed last year, Scott

can drive the car “loose” with a flatter rear wing. I think it’s going to work for him. So while the adjustments to the car technically might work against him, with the way he drives the car, I think they’ll actually work for him.

If I were running Commodores, I’d be quite pleased where all this is going to land. The ZB has actually gained some front-end downforce. What might work against Triple Eight, particularly, is the control damper, eroding another of their core areas of expertise.

And there’s still a major unknown in all of this, yaw, because we don’t test for airflow over the sides of the cars. That was a big Ludo thing. But (Supercars computer aero consultants) D2H will have been doing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in yaw, no doubt about that, so I think that information should be pretty solid.

The best thing is that I’m sitting here umming and aahing about who’s going to perform this year, and that’s great.

There are just so many unknowns, there really are.

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2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW

Semi-retired Supercars star Garth Tander runs his experienced eyes over the 2020 rule changes and delivers his expert verdict on the likely ramifications Images: LAT/Supplied

FORMER SUPERCARS champion and three-times Bathurst champion Garth Tander is one of the most astute observers in the sport.

Although still active as a top-flight co-driver, he is far enough removed to provide objective appraisals.

Tander will again partner Shane van Gisbergen at Red Bull Holden Racing Team in the enduros. Last year they finished a close second at Bathurst and won a leg of the Gold Coast 600, confirming the lanky pairing are a formidable combination.

GT also competed in GTs and the TCR Australia Series, but where he really stood out was as an analyst on Channel 10’s RPM show. He is lucid, informed and incisive.

Unfortunately, his future with RPM is doubtful amid budget cuts and a format change. That’s a shame because his insights are among the best. It’s also a big loss for fans that there appears to be no place for him in the Supercars or TCR broadcast commentary teams.

The 2007 V8 champion has cast his eyes over the changes for the coming Supercars season for Auto Action and his expert analysis — made before the pre-season test at The Bend —

32 AutoAction

highlights the uncertainties heading into the Adelaide 500.

THE DETERMINING FACTOR

According to Tander, the switch to control Pedders-branded SuperShock dampers has the most potential for disruption, at least initially.

“I think, in reality, certainly for the first three to four months of the championship, it’s going to be the change to the control shock and who gets their head around that the best,” he forecast. “It’s a significant change, every bit as big a change as the single spring last year — and maybe, you’d even argue, even bigger. So that will be a big determining factor on the pecking order in the first three months as teams get their heads around it.”

After last year’s parity controversy, Tander is looking forward to Supercars’ aero reforms ending the arguments and also improving the racing.

“You’d certainly hope it (aero parity) is as close as it can be with the testing procedures that we have available here in Australia,” he said.

“Supercars and the homologation teams are to be applauded for going back and double-checking,

Garth Tander believes the control shock package is a bigger change then the single spring in 2019. effectively, because they weren’t happy and they’re obviously well aware of the gravity off the situation of getting that right. So I think that’s to be congratulated.

“I certainly hope it’s not as polarising as it was last year and I certainly hope the cars can follow more closely because when I jumped in last year for the enduros, in the racing you weren’t able to follow as closely as you had been able to in the past, and I think the racing suffered because of that. So I certainly hope they’ve got on top of that as well.

“It had been becoming a real issue for the past three or four years, but in 2019 it was worse than it’s ever been for following, to the point where it was almost worse to follow another car in a Supercar than in a GT3 car.

That’s not what we want. We want it so you can race close together because that’s what our category is well known for internationally and we don’t want to go down the route of

DTM where you can’t get close to the other cars. So I certainly hope that’s better this year.”

GIVE AND TAKE

Among the other changes, Tander expects the increased new tyre allocation to be significant, but he is not a fan of extending the Saturday sprint round races to 200km.

“The tyre bank thing will be interesting,” he mused. “I think those who are noted qualifying experts will have less of an advantage because there’s going to be more ‘green’ tyres available to everyone through the year, so everyone’s going to get more practice at doing qualifying simulations in practice.

“Those who had that ability to extract a lap time on a ‘green’ tyre will probably lose that advantage as the year goes on because there’ll be more and more opportunity to

practice qualifying runs, not only for the drivers, but the teams as well to get their heads around getting a qualifying set-up in the car where that’s available in the parc ferme rules.

“So I think that’s a good thing and we’ll have a very clear understanding of the packing order on Fridays now because the tyre bank thing has gone away and everyone’s going to be on the same quality tyres all the time, effectively. I think that’s very important for the sport from a publicity point of view and for clarity.

“As for the longer sprint race on Saturdays, I think it’s disappointing that they’ve done that, to be honest. I think the shorter races were the more exciting races. That’s my opinion, but as far as the impact that’s going to have on the championship, it brings more strategy into the race, brings more fuel saving into the event, which I don’t think is what we want to see.

“We want to see the drivers going flat-out as much as they can as often as they can. So there will be more strategy involved with pit stops and fuel saving — just more of what we’ve seen in the 200km Sunday races. The pecking order didn’t change much from the 120km races to the 200km races, anyway, so I don’t think it’ll have any great implication for the championship battle. I just hope it doesn’t have too much of an impact on the interest level on Saturdays.”

Alt Although he predicts another titanic battle between DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight for the title, Tander is uncertain about how it will play out. Adam de Borre joining Chaz Mostert at Walkinshaw Andretti United will be a big factor in WAU’s fortunes.

Mo

THE BIG TWO AGAIN

While he sees DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight remaining as the title e protagonists, Tander is unsure which way the battle at the front will swing.

“It’s really hard to know because the aero’s changed for the Mustang a lot over the break, on top of the control damper package,” he said.

“The aero’s changed quite a bit for them, whereas for Triple Eight, the ZB’s aero has changed slightly less, but the shock change could have a bigger effect.

“Triple Eight has been running Sachs shock absorbers forever, so for them I think the change will be slightly bigger. They had that one brand of shock for so long that changing brand and a different shock absorber philosophy as far as the damping goes is likely going to have a bigger effect for them.

Erebus Motorsport is a team that needs to step up, says Tander, as does Tickford Racing.

“They “Th probably have as much to get their heads around from a shock point of view as Penske do from an aero and shock package change. It’s going to be interesting to see who adapts their package to the 2020 rule set and gets up to speed the quickest.”

BEST OF THE REST

Tander is looking to Erebus Motorsport to step up as a more consistent challenger, and he is relishing the prospect of a behindthe-scenes rivalry between Tickford Racing and Walkinshaw Andretti United.

“For me, the ones that underperformed a little last year

we Erebus and they have were the potential to come out rea reasonably strong this year, giv that they’re longest given ru running SupaShock team in the ch championship,” he said. “But in saying that, the valving of th the control shock is likely to be d different to the valving in the Erebus E SupaShock.

“So while they won’t have any advantage in understanding a the t actual valving of the control shock, they’ll have some s experience with the intricacies of the SupaShock design — how it works and how that package has worked. There will be some small advantage in that, so I would imagine that they will have a strong package early on and also from a competitive point of view they will probably feel that they were slightly under par last year.

“So I would say that they will be the ones that will come out quite strongly. I tipped Anton to win races in 2019 and that didn’t happen, so there’ll be another push for that to happen. So I think Erebus will be very, very strong and the next most likely behind DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight.

“And then Chaz and Walkinshaws will be an interesting one because clearly there’s a fair bit of motivation from driver and team to show that this has been the right call and the right decision to put this partnership together. I would expect that the first six months of that relationship will bear some improvement on what we’ve seen from Walkinshaws in the past, but to what level is yet to be determined.

“I think the biggest factor in all that is having Adam de Borre go to the team as well. Chaz obviously knew all along that Adam was going with him. Once it was announced that Adam was going with him, the whole thing made a lot more sense.

The team, I know, would be very motivated to show that they’ve put everything in place to try to deliver on the promises they’ve been making for the last 10 years.

“The flip side will be how well Tickford goes without the Chaz & Adam Show. They’ll want to show that the team speed they had last year wasn’t as a result of that combination being in the garage.

“There are a few teams in that next rung down that have a lot to prove in this year’s championship.”

2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

VIEW FROM THE TOP Supercars CEO Sean Seamer looks forward to more winners and less controversy in 2020 THE CHALLENGES haven’t stopped for Supercars CEO Sean Seamer since he took over the top job in Australia’s No.1 motor racing category from James Warburton in late 2017. He enters 2020 with plenty to ponder and plenty on his plate, not least being negotiations for a new media deal and the start of heavy lifting on Gen3 technical rules due for introduction in 2022.

With the new season about to start Seamer offers his perspective on quite a few significant issues to BRUCE NEWTON. It’s been a big summer with two cracks at the aero and the control shock absorber coming.

Shell V-Power Racing and Red Bull Holden Racing Team won 31 out of 32 races in 2019 — do you expect something different to play out this year?

SS: I hope so, I really do, and we are optimistic.

We have had changes to the aero package, changes to the engine package, changes to the dampers and changes to the way we run the tyres.

So we look at the combination of the tyres, the dampers, the engine and the aero and a lot of the work that’s been done around that has the added benefit of levelling

the playing field as well. I am really optimistic, but we have to go racing.

The track is the ultimate judge.

No one denies that the best should rise to the top; Red Bull and DJR are fantastic operations. But surely it would be healthy for other teams to be cracking it for podiums and wins more often?

Absolutely. It was interesting actually, NASCAR provided us an overview of how they look at the quality of the on-track product in terms of number of lead changes, number of passes, number of changes for podium, top three changes and top 10 changes they pull out of their timing system. We will look at something similar as well because it will help us not only identify the quality of the racing but also the quality of the racetracks. Obviously, there are some tracks we have where there are limited passing opportunities and we are cognisant of that. The core racing product has to be good, it has to be entertaining and it has to be dynamic and

close and everyone has to have a chance of winning on any given Sunday. We are aware of that and we are looking at different ways we can monitor that and improve on it. But the technical package for this year, I think we all have reason to be optimistic it is going to shake things up a little bit.

Are you suggesting you will change racetrack design to improve the potential for passing? d Yes, for example the team is looking at Newcastle Ye at the moment. We made some changes for this year, but we felt there still wasn’t enough genuine ye passing there, so we’ll take another look at that p and a see what can be done for this year The good g thing about having Jamie (Whincup) on the commission now is he’s going to help with that c sort s of stuff.

Why W were there two goes at aero testing? What was w the core of the issue?

I’m no aerodynamic specialist, but there CEO Sean Seamer wants the 2020 version of Supercars to be about the great drivers, close racing and the emergence of new talent, not tech rule changes.

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was a sensor issue and the way that was being converted through logic into an output, there was a problem with it that the guys uncovered when they did the post-analysis on all the data and shared it back with the teams. So as they were doing the post analysis they uncovered an error in the relationship between the data and what the sensor output was. We obviously decided we didn’t want to take any risks, particularly after what we went through as a category last year around aero, so we went back and did it again. Would it have been great to have had no problems the first time around? Of course. Are we glad we found it and went back and got it sorted before the start of the season? Absolutely. So if something was going to go wrong, at least we got it in time before we turned a wheel.

Are you prepared — if you have to — to make in-season changes again, as messy as it potentially can be?

Look, we all really hope we are never in that position again. We have done everything we possibly can to eliminate or minimise any risk of that happening. But the ultimate arbiter is the racetrack and we will continue to monitor performance and monitor parity like we always

Supercars supremo Sean Seamer is optimistic that changes made in the off-season will end the two-team dominance and bring out new winners, such as Brad Jones Racing recruit Todd Hazelwood.

do. To be honest with you, I would much rather this year be a narrative around talent than tech. So if we are talking about what drivers are doing and what engineers are doing then that means we have got it right. If we are talking about how well Chaz Mostert is going at Walkinshaw, or we are talking about how good Todd Hazelwood is going at BJR, then we are good. That’s exactly what we need to get back to.

Holden has announced it is withdrawing the Commodore ZB from public sale, but it will race on until the end of next year with that car.

There’s also a new interim managing director, Kristian Aquilina. Have you been talking to Holden about its continuing commitment and attitude to Supercars racing?

Yes, they are very much feeding into and supporting the Gen3 process. We had an OEM council meeting with them in December and we gave them an update on where we are heading with Gen3 and recapped some of the other changes to this year. So they are very much involved in the Gen3 process and remain committed to it.

If they’re a brand that markets only SUVs and utes, what’s your argument for them to stay in Supercars?

Well, I think from what we are able to ascertain General Motors will still be building performance cars in some way, shape or form.

So are you suggesting a car not marketed in this country could be raced in the Supercars Championship?

I think they will have performance cars that are marketed here, won’t they?

The one we know about is Corvette, but isn’t that outside the definition of what you see on the grid. Or do you see a mid-engined sports car being suitable?

We are still working through Gen3. But Gen3 will be driven in a large part by the direction the manufacturers are going, because it is about maintaining and ensuring we have market relevance. But what the cars look like we haven’t arrived at yet.

How would you describe what Holden is saying

about its fundamental attitude to Supercars and racing?

They want to plan for 2022 and onward.

Do you regard Kristian Aquilina as a good appointment for you?

Kristian is a great guy, he spends a lot of time at the events. He spends a lot of time trying to understand the sport, he is highly engaged, he participates on the OEM Council. As does Kay Hart (president of Ford Australia). We are really lucky right now to have both of them in those positions.

Where is Gen3 actually at?

That’s probably a John Casey (Supercars Chief Strategy Officer) question. We have an outline of the key principles, we have an outline of the timeline we are working towards. We are soon going to announce the appointment of a project engineer who is going to be working on that with John and Adrian (Burgess — Supercars Head of Motorsport) and we have a schedule of meetings for the next year that line up with commission meetings so the committee that is working on Gen3 can feed into the commission.

And does your timeline commitment remain introduction in 2022?

It’s tight. We have a lot of work to do, but it works for both our existing manufacturers that we are working with. But it also links to other discussions and other technologies that we are looking at.

And the commitment remains to V8s and rearwheel drive …

Fast, loud and good-looking … I think what we are able to see from manufacturer road maps is two-door sports cars — of which the Mustang is the first — will be a core part of our DNA going forward. Back to the 1960s, back to the future.

Media rights, where are you at on the renewal?

I’ll talk about it when it’s done, which is what I have been saying all along.

Will it be done soon?

International is done, so we will be able to give you all the updated international partners, which includes a bit of coverage back into the UK, which is good.

Are the cuts to some other sports being made by Fox affecting your negotiations?

We have a really good relationship with Fox. Motorsport is one of their key pillars. They continue to support us, they supported the Bathurst 12 Hour for the first time this year. So we are really happy with the way things have been going. They are good, they are investing and they are supportive of motorsport. Fox is an important partner to us and we are very happy with them.

Can you say the same about Ten? Yes, absolutely, they have a lot going on at the moment with (parent) Viacom and CBS (which merged last December) and all the rest of it, but we are working through plans for this year with them and then talking about the future as well.

How did the 2019 Perth SuperNight event work as a free-to-air telecast because it makes for a late night on the eastern seaboard?

It didn’t really work that well on free-to-air at that time, which is part of the reason we’re not pushing for free to air coverage (this year). That event we’re putting on extra replays and extra coverage, so it won’t be live because of the time challenges but we are certainly pumping a lot of extra coverage off the back of that event because it’s a great little track and it certainly kicks up great racing.

And will Saturday at the Tailem Bend 500km endurance race go back to free-to-air like Sandown used to be?

No, Sandown will be free-to-air and The Bend will be Fox. The race at The Bend will be on Fox? Yes.

I hope so, we’ll see. We will be announcing our new New Zealand TV rights in Adelaide.

Why is that Sean? The Bathurst warm-up is

tra traditionally on free-toair television.

Bec Because the current contract is for Sandown. con The current contract nam names the events that are cov covered.

No cconsideration to flipping that around? flipp The complications of that are ppretty far-ranging. We have a lot of commercial agreements about which events are covered by which broadcasters. It’s a complicated thing to change under the current agreement.

The New Zealand championship round has been shifted to Hampton Downs because of issues surrounding running competition cars at Pukekohe on Anzac Day. Obviously this was an issue that emerged pretty late. It must have disappointed you.

We were taken aback at the end of last year around the challenges for the resource consent. We weren’t aware of it. We haven’t got into a fingerpointing exercise about whose fault it was because we have been flat-out focused on getting the event up this year. We are not going to go back and do the blame game because it’s not going to change anything. We have to focus on making Hampton Downs a great event, because the track is fantastic and it’s going to kick up some amazing racing. So we just have to ensure what we can control — which is the event around it — is world class and delivers the fans an experience equal to or better than Pukekohe.

In terms of fan experience and logistics for teams, does anything change from Pukekohe to Hampton Downs?

The only thing from the fan experience point of view is we are really lucky to have a large covered grandstand at Pukekohe. We are going to have to put temporary grandstands in at Hampton Downs.

But there is really good general admission viewing particularly down through the hairpins. It will be a pretty special experience. For teams staying in Pukekohe it’s 15 minutes up the road, for teams staying in Manukau or in the city it’s a longer distance but it’s the same time because it’s straight down the motorway and not through Pukekohe.

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2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

SIXTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

MARK FOGARTY looks way, way back to the country race that started the touring car revolution that changed the sport Images: Autopics/Denis Gregory

IN 1960, Australia was in the midst of a credit squeeze. Today we’d call it a mini-recession.

Sir Robert Menzies was our Queen-loving prime minister, tempted to become a British parliamentarian.

Elsewhere, tensions were rising in Vietnam, satellites were launched and rock music was on the rise. It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

It was also the year in which the antecedent of Supercars racing was born. The first Australian Touring Car Championship was run at the Gnoo Blas street circuit in Orange, central western NSW, on February 1, 1960.

Back then, single-seaters were supreme.

Sedans were a sideshow. Nobody expected tin tops to be popular, much less become dominant.

So the ATCC’s start was low-key and, at the time, relatively insignificant. Just a decade later, touring cars were taking over.

In 1960, it was the dawn of the Space Age, and the onset of the sexual revolution and civil rights. But the cars that raced in ATCC 1 were still very much post-World War II or late 1950s “sports sedans”.

Which effectively meant the Jaguar Mk 1 3.2 was the choice of wealthy racers. It was fast and race-bred. The opposition was an assortment of “humpy” Holdens and class

misfits, many of which were driven to and back home from the circuit.

As quaint as it may seem now, the inaugural ATCC at Gnoo Blas laid the foundation for Supercars. It grew from a onerace sideshow from ’60-’68 to a multi-race series in 1969 featuring Ford Mustangs and a Holden Monaro.

V8 racing as we know it has its genesis in the late ’60s days of Beechey, Geoghegan, Jane and Moffat. But way before them were McKay, Pitt, Hodgson and West.

The 60th anniversary of the ATCC was celebrated in Orange last weekend (February 15-16).

5-16) The roads that made up the street circuit remain, although Jack Brabham and his peers would barely recognise the surroundings.

Jack raced there in the mid-’50s when Gnoo Blas was vying with Mount Panorama, Bathurst, for central western NSW motor racing supremacy. We know which won.

But the Gnoo Blas street circuit holds a special place in Australian motor racing history as the venue of the inaugural ATCC. Entrepreneur team owner, driver and motoring journalist David McKay won the race in his Retired Orange journo Denis Gregory (right) drove his road-legal Morris Major to fourth in class in the first ATCC at Gnoo Blas.

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Jag, Jag beating similarly mounted Bill Pitt and later Sydney Holden mega dealer Ron Hodgson.

They were at the pointy end of a 40-plus car field of classic cars, which included the mildly modified Morris Major of Denis Gregory.

He finished way down the outright order, but fourth in the 1301-2000cc class in his roadable Morris.

Gregory, 81, is still active in Orange as the longtime president of the Gnoo Blas Classic Car Club. He arranged for Garry Rogers, John Crennan, Kevin Bartlett. Tony D’Alberto and Supercars senior executive John Casey to attend and address the 60th anniversary gathering.

A retired career-long journo with the Central

A wide range of post-War cars was represented at Gnoo Blas, including these Austins of John Malcolm (Lancer) and later Mini/ Porsche 911 ace Brian Foley (A40 Farina).

Jaguar dominated the early editions of the ATCC. David McKay leads 1961 champion Bill Pitt off the line at Gnoo Blas (above) on his way to an eventful victory in the inaugural ATCC title race. Future famous Sydney car dealer Ron Hodgson was also a contender in his Jag, shown below lapping the Austin Lancer of Emanuel Pitsiladis.

Western Daily newspaper, Gregory still chronicles the sport in his region.

“The whole idea is to keep alive the history of the old track,” he said. “To go back to the beginning, Orange and Mount Panorama were always in competition. Bathurst had a local member who put everything in the way of Orange because he didn’t want it to become a strong competitor to Mount Panorama. ”Bathurst at the time had all the title races.

They had the Australian Grand Prix and the organisers of the Orange Cherry Blossom Festival even ran a NSW GP once, which went all right.

“When CAMS announced there was going to be a new touring car championship, the Orange organisers were quick enough to jump on it.

“That’s how they got the race.”

I visited the track several years ago and marvelled at the high-speed course. The mental hospital within its boundaries is still there.

Back in the day, disturbance to the psychiatric patients was an excuse to stop racing there. “‘The only patients that were upset were the ones who couldn’t get a good view from the fence,” Gregory noted dryly. “The Cherry Blossom festival motor racing committee just surrendered.”

The 1960 ATCC race drew a decent crowd — Gregory estimates around 15,000 — on a dreary, overcast day.

“It was a big event because it was also celebrating the 100th anniversary of local government in Orange,” he said. “The ATCC

was just one of a few events that weekend.”

Gregory, who went on to race in the Bathurst 500 in the mid-’60s, is one of just a handful of survivors from that inaugural ATCC event.

Among others is Mini ace Brian Foley, and Gold Star champion and 1974 Bathurst 1000 cowinner Kevin Bartlett, who famously raced his mother’s Morris Minor.

The race was run on the Monday of the then Australia Day weekend because the organisers weren’t allowed to charge admission until 1pm on the Sunday.

As Gregory recalls, McKay’s win required some forceful action.

“There was a light shower during the race that caused Roy Sawyer to roll his FJ Holden,” he said. “Sawyer was upside down. Des West was

one of his mates and he pulled up to help him.

“A Zephyr also stopped and blocked the track, and when McKay arrived, leading the race in his Jaguar, he just pushed the Zephyr out of the way and continued on.”

Different days.

Gregory’s good-as-stock Morris Major was clocked at just over 100mph (160 km/h), compared with McKay’s Jag at 135mph (217km/h).

He is now a keeper of the faith of the Gnoo Blas circuit and the 1960 ATCC. Although long retired from racing, Gregory still chronicles the sport for local media and has written books about Gnoo Blas.

“I’m still writing.” Gregory said. “I can’t stop.”

And nor should he.

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3355

2020 SUPERCARS SEASON PREVIEW

WIDE OPEN JUST AS the Supercars “silly season” was busy, so was Super2, which featured several surprising driver movements as the aspiring next generation hopes to emulate reigning winner Bryce Fullwood, who makes the step up with Walkinshaw Andretti United.

Fullwood’s promotion opened one seat up at MW Motorsport, as does Zane Goddard’s move to Matt Stone Racing’s Superlite program.

In one of the more surprising moves, Thomas Randle jumped from Tickford Racing to the lead MW Motorsport Nissan Altima. He is joined by debutant and Super3 frontrunner Zak Best, a driver who took the most wins last season but failed to be consistent.

Replacing Randle at Tickford Racing is 17-year-old Super3 Series winner Broc Feeney in a seat that will carry with it much expectation.

Jordan Boys will remain with Image g Racing for this season after finishing last season with two race victories in the final three races.

Joining Boys is charismatic 21-year-old Will Brown, who will be looking to recover from a lacklustre 2019 campaign with Eggleston Motorsport in which he finished the seriess in 12th place.

Eggleston Motorsport has retained the services of Jack Perkins after he ran a part-time campaign last year, as well as taking on the former Super2

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race winner Brodie Kostecki.

Brodie’s cousin Kurt finished runnerup last year with Triple Eight Race Engineering, but returns to the family-run Kostecki Brothers Racing as a single-car entry.

Triple Eight Race Engineering itself is fielding a sole Commodore for reigning Formula Ford series winner Angelo Mouzouris (see Young Guns on p38-39).

The streets of Adelaide will give him his debut event in a tin-top.

Other drivers to announce plans include Super3 round winner Josh Fife, who continues with Brad Jones Racing, Toyota 86 Racing Series graduate Zane Morse in a Brema Group Racing Commodore, an expanded two-car line-up for Matt Chahda Racing while Anderson Motorsport will take on the second tier in a Commodore.

Dan McCarthy

Thomas Randle is making a surprise move.

NEW CARS, BUT FAMILIAR FACES THERE IS a lot of hype and excitement surrounding this year’ss Touring Car Masters Series as an injection of the 1980s enters the popular category.

Most of the key contenders from last year’s series are returning to try to topple reigning series winner Steven Johnson, who will pilot something different.

After a long and successful relationship with his 1969 Ford Mustang, he will contest the seriess in a new Ford XD Falcon, paying tribute to ne the same model of car that launched th his father’s career after he hit a rock in h 1980 at Bathurst. After a test at Lakeside 19 last week, the XD will make its highly la anticipated racing debut on the streets an of Adelaide.

It’s just not the Blue Oval brigade that has received an upgrade, but the th Holden VB Commodore is eligible with H two entries received from V8 Ute racer tw Gerard McLeod and Victorian Claud G Taranto.

Ta Five-time Touring Car Masters series winner John Bowe had a challenging w season last year in his Torana, but the se 1995 Australian Touring Car Champion 19 finished the season off strongly with two fin ra race victories at the final round. This p placed him on 99 TCM race victories an and he’ll be looking to knock over the to ton in front of the Adelaide crowd.

A debutant last year, Ryal Harris shook u up the established runners on his way

Image: MTR Im ages to third in the title driving the Fataz Racing Chevrolet Camaro and is a dark horse for the title.

Fellow Camaro comrade Adam Bressington has been a perennial frontrunner driving the Whiteline Racing Chevrolet, and will be hoping to make amends for a tough season last year.

Bressington’s teammate is the returning Adam Garwood, who will compete the full season after completing a few rounds last year.

He heads a driver list that includes Torana drivers Ryan Hansford and Jim Pollicina, Marcus Zukanovic in a Falcon and the beautifully crafted Ford Mustang of Cam Mason.

All of them are keen to jump into contention for outright success.

Returnees include Jason Gomersall after contesting Super3 last year, and Leo Tobin who gets back behind the driving seat of his Ford Mustang, which was piloted by Aaron Seton throughout most of 2019. DM

NATIONAL TRANS AM SET TO GO THE INAUGURAL Australian Racing Group-run National Trans Am Series kicks off in Adelaide with a competitive field to take the grid.

These brash muscle cars are sure to light up the city of churches as the loud and rapid machines bellow through the concrete-lined streets. Three models are represented in Trans Am, with the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger split between 19 entries.

Aaron Seton was born into a family of Australian motor racing legends; his father Glenn and grandfather Bo need no introduction. The youngest generation of the racing Setons is fast establishing a reputation as one of Australia’s brightest talents and was a series winner in these cars competing in the domestic TA2 category last year.

Seton was challenged throughout last year’s campaign by another secondgeneration driver, George Miedecke. The duo battled hard during the course of the season, but the latter just fell short at the final round.

Remaining in the trusty steed that delivered him success last year, Seton is favourite on the streets of Adelaide, as rival Miedecke shifts to Chevrolet in a bid to topple his foe. Another to emerge as a frontrunner last ast season was Dodge Challenger driver Nathan Herne, who fell out of title contention only because of inconsistency. He has, though, started off his campaign with victory at Bathurst in the nonseries Combined Sedans meet.

Another expected to be competitive is the experienced Hugh McAlister, while several new drivers will hope to mix it with the usual category leaders.

Former Toyota 86 Racing Series drivers Jimmy Vernon and Cameron Crick make their debuts in Trans Am machinery.

Vernon comes off a half-season in TCR Australia after winning Toyota’s junior category in 2017 and drives for new

Tr Trans Am has rapidly ggrown at grass roots level aand steps up to a major event for the first time. ev Image: Insyde Media Im team Flo gineering in its Ford Musta Flo-gineering Mustang. Crick focused on SuperUtes last year but takes to the Adelaide streets this time in a Dodge Challenger.

The field is sprinkled with experience throughout, from a variety of backgrounds, local boy and former V8 Utes driver Craig Dontas is part of a three-car Dream Racing Australia line-up, while the former Commodore Cup racer and brother of Supercars driver Lee, Brett Holdsworth will race a Chevrolet Camaro.

Two SuperUtes converts will also take to the field in the form of Chris Formosa and Matt MacKelden for the debut of these cars on the streets of Adelaide. DM

AN OPEN PLAYING FIELD A 22-CAR field will take he grid for the opening round of the 2020 Porsche Carrera Cup Australia Series in Adelaide.

The entry list contains a vast array of racing experience from former series winners to returning stars and a bunch of young up and comers all hoping to take the glory.

Reigning Carrera Cup series winner Jordan Love will not return to defend his title, but a high quality grid remains to battle it out.

The man who led the majority of last season but fell just short, Dale Wood, will return with Sonic Motor Racing Services aiming to go one better. Again he will is joined by Adelaide local Michael Almond and two full time rookies making their step up from the Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia (formerly known as GT3 Cup Challenge), Max Vidau and Aaron Love.

The always consistent David Wall romped home with three victories at the end of last year and as a result the 2017 series winner enters this season as one of the favourites in his own Wall Racing-prepared entry.

After moving to McElrea Racing midway through Dale Wood starts this year as Carrera Cup favourite.

TV SCHEDULE (AEDT) ADELAIDE 500 Network 10 Friday – 10 Bold: 2:30pm-7pm Saturday – Ten: 12.30pm-7pm Sunday – Ten: 11:30am to 6pm

Fox Sports 506 and Foxtel Go Wednesday – 6.30pm. Supercars Trackside Thursday – 1.25pm Friday – 11.40am Saturday – 10.25am Sunday – 10am

Supercars Schedule Thursday Practice 1 – 4:25pm Friday Practice 2 – 2:35pm Practice 3 – 6:30pm Saturday Qualifying – 12:25pm Top 10 Shootout – 1pm Race 1 – 4:50pm Sunday Qualifying – 12:20pm Top 10 Shootout – 12:55pm Race 2 – 3:50pm

General Admission Ticket Prices

last season, Cooper Mu Murray M rray became a big threat, clean-sweeping the round at Townsville, thus becoming both the youngest ever race and round winner, and entering him into title calculations this season.

This year Murray will have a new teammate when 2019 Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia series winner Harri Jones makes his full time debut this weekend.

Last year Porsche Centre Melbourne driver Nick McBride took the Adelaide round win. The family lawyer can always be a dark horse as can Cameron Hill, Duvashen Padayachee and Josh Hunt, who all return.

Former Series runner-up David Russell re-joins the pack in Adelaide after a four-year absence. Although he will contest only selected rounds, the 38-year-old will act as a good yardstick for the rookies this season.

With last year’s Pro Am frontrunners Adrian Flack and Liam Talbot not returning, and Sam Shahin out through injury, the class is wide open.

In Adelaide, three-time class winners Max Twigg and Stephen Grove enter as round favourites, but the speed that was shown by Dean Cook and Scott Taylor last year could threaten the wise heads. DM

4-day $200 Thursday $45 Friday $80 Saturday $90 Sunday $100 Kids 14 and under are free

Entry List 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 12 14 15 17 18 19 20 22 23 25 34 35 55 88 97 99

Bryce Fullwood Macauley Jones Jack Smith Lee Holdsworth Cameron Waters Andre Heimgartner Nick Percat David Reynolds Fabian Coulthard Todd Hazelwood Rick Kelly Scott McLaughlin Mark Winterbottom James Courtney Scott Pye TBA Will Davison Chaz Mostert Zane Goddard Garry Jacobson Jack Le Brocq Jamie Whincup Shane van Gisbergen Anton De Pasquale

Mobil 1 Middy’s Racing Team CoolDrive SCT Logistics Truck Assist Racing Monster Energy Racing NED Racing Brad Jones Racing Penrite Racing Shell V-Power Racing Brad Jones Racing Castrol Racing Shell V-Power Racing IRWIN Racing Team Sydney Team 18 Team Sydney Milwaukee Racing Mobil 1 Racing Matt Stone Racing Matt Stone Racing Supercheap Auto Racing Red Bull Holden Racing Team Red Bull Holden Racing Team Penrite Racing

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39

After a frantic few months, Kelly Racing has finally hit the track with its pair of Mustangs. A crazy amount of hours have been spent building the new machines and readying them for the new season.

HEATH McALPINE reports

THE PONY HITS THE TRACK

YES, THE first Kelly Racing Mustang completed its first laps ahead of practice in Adelaide, but that’s only part of the story. The team’s engine was homologated

by Supercars, two new units needed to be completed ahead of the opening round, the body had to be wrapped, and the final fit-out needed to take place.

This instalment of Project Pony kicks off at Federation Square in Melbourne’s CBD, where Rick Kelly launched the livery for his Castrol Ford Mustang amid a throng of fans. This was happening while his brother Todd was in Queensland overseeing the engine homologation process by Supercars.

At the launch, Rick Kelly held high hopes for the team’s Mustang future, although he acknowledged that the engine would need time to develop in the early stages of the season.

“This year we’ve tried to put ourselves in a position where we should be in a competitive car, but there is no way of telling that until we hit the track and see how the homologation process has gone and what the performance of the car is actually like,” he said.

“While a lot of that is out of our hands, what is in our control is getting the engine to where it needs to be, driving the car the way it needs to be driven, doing a

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN - DAYS REMAINING: ZERO!!

Part Six

TThe he in-house Kelly Racing-built Ford Supercar engines are fully homologated and ready ttoo rrace. It has been a big push to get them ready to go into the Mustangs. The crew have ttheir he Nissan engines to compare with and they seem very happy with the results of their firs rst Ford engine building program. Now it’s time to race them and see how they go.

They might be unpainted and looking a little raw but it’s time to start the set-up process on the Kelly Mustangs.

good job of all the strategy and all the stuff that we know is critically important for results.”

Those developments are already under way, as Todd Kelly told Auto Action, the team already identifying key enhancements that will be beneficial as the season goes on and as it continues to go through the process of building race engines.

“There were a couple of little things that needed tidying up on version two when we can get to it,” he said.

“One of the things is that we need to take a bit of weight out of it because we didn’t have any time to lighten the blocks or cylinder heads to assemble.

“We’re actually starting work on that now and everything else is not too far away, which is a pretty decent result.”

Leading up to the shakedown last weekend, there were many jobs to complete, with long hours for the team of Kelly Racing, culminating in the reward of witnessing Andre Heimgartner’s Mustang run last Sunday.

“There was a fair bit of stuff to do,” Kelly said.

“It’s certainly coming together. One of the engines just rolled out of the driveway to the dyno, the second engine is sitting in Rick’s car, the first engine is up in Queensland with Supercars and just got homologated.

“It’s all coming together.

“There’s just lots of little things to do on the cars now, but the whole crew’s punching out some big hours to get it all done, so we’re not looking too bad.”

Homologation of the engine went smoothly, but it isn’t a foreign area to the Kellys, who went through it with their Nissan program.

“That went all pretty smoothly. There were no dramas,” Todd said.

“I went up to Brisbane Sunday night and got back late Wednesday. There were three days of dyno testing, disassembly and measuring. That’s a pretty big job to do to get the engine homologated and all the ESD (engine specifications document), but Supercars were really good and were extremely helpful through the process.

“We’ve been through it quite a few times with the Nissan engine so we’re quite familiar with how it all works and it all went pretty well.”

The results of the testing also sprung a surprise in the power stakes.

“That’s also been a bit of a surprise,” Todd told Auto Action. “We ended up being a lot closer to what we thought.”

As of late last week, the cars were still coming together with Rick completing the wraps on each Mustang himself.

This was happening alongside the installation of key components, none more so than the Kelly Racing Ford V8.

“They’re just starting to get wrapped at the moment and Rick’s car actually has the engine in it, so that should fire up for the very first time, then for Andre’s car we’re still waiting on some wiring and other items, which we’re making so it shouldn’t be far away,” said Todd.

“We’re not far off having the birth of two Kelly Racing Ford Mustangs.”

Although the time constraints were extremely tight, the work had to be completed with precision in mind to meet Supercars regulations.

“I’ve been more on the engine side than the cars up in Brisbane, but there is so much work required like fitting every single part to the car, pre-fitting it, working out how these things go together, because the accuracy is so important for everything to be legal on these cars,” Todd said.

“All the wing positions, mounts and deflections, the front bar positions and making all the bodywork gaps spot on,

that’s been a full-time job. Plus, building basically two brand new cars at the same time because one got stripped back so far it was nearly a new build.

“The guys have done an incredible job to get to this point.”

Heimgartner’s Mustang completed the 20-lap new car shakedown allowed under Supercars regulations with Rick at the wheel and the test couldn’t have gone better “It went incredibly well, alarmingly well almost,” Todd said. “There was not a single issue with anything. It just feels too good to be true, like something’s about to go wrong.

“The car didn’t miss a beat. (There wasn’t) a single oil leak, electrical problem, engine mapping or driveability problem and everything was just perfect. We couldn’t pick a fault with it at all. It’s a huge credit to the guys to achieve that.”

There is still a major push to complete the Castrol Mustang ahead of the BP Ultimate Supertest, which was taking place as this issue went to print.

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41

UNDER THE SKIN

LASTAND

FIRST

Auto Action’s Under The Skin feature returns this year with a throwback. The 2003 Bathurst 1000 signalled the end for Larry Perkins, but that famous surname returned to the grid three years later in the form of his son Jack, remarkably in the same Commodore, as HEATH McALPINE discovers Images: LAT/AA staff/Perkins Engineering

PERKINS ENGINEERING chassis PE 041 is significant in more than one way — it is the first Project Blueprint Commodore built by the team, the first to predominantly use CAD design, the final Bathurst entry for Larry Perkins, the first for his son Jack — and the only car that the team ever kept.

The Castrol Commodore has been accurately restored by Jack to the exact specifications it ran with at the 2003 Bathurst 1000.

The lead-up to that race involved an all-nighter to repair the car after it was severely damaged at The Cutting.

Since that event, the Commodore has been driven by the likes of former Perkins alumni Steve Richards, Paul Dumbrell, Alex Davison and Shane Price. It has also been painted in the colours of Castrol, Autobarn, Jack Daniels and, obscurely, Sirromet Wines in a history spanning four years. Now Larry will slide back behind the wheel of his last race car at Phillip Island Classic next month in a reunion that will be bittersweet.

When the Kellys bought Perkins Engineering at the end of 2008, the car, though still owned by Perkins, was moved into the new workshop with the idea of it being restored to its former glory. But because of the pressure of getting four entries ready for the coming V8 Supercars season, it failed to happen.

Since then it has been a side project for the younger Perkins, and as a restoration project it is now identical to the Commodore that took the grid on October 12, 2003.

“It certainly was the last car that I drove at Bathurst and that was my last race,” said Larry Perkins.

“On the other side of the coin it was probably the car that I did the least hands-on work because I had about

42 AutoAction

60 people working for me. Twenty years ago I was hands-on, but I had a lot of good guys around me and they put all this together.

"I was just the driver.”

After it was built in June 2003, Steve Richards gave the car its debut at Hidden Valley, where its best finish was fifth in the final al race. The first VY constructed d

by Perkins Engineering was the first built under Project Blueprint, which was designed ed to equalise the V8 Supercars field at the time.

Project Blueprint introduced d common suspension pick-up points and in particular saw both Holden and Ford-based cars run a double wishbone coil-over front suspension.

The chassis pick-up points, the wheelbase and track were all mandated as well as driving position and aerodynamic changes, all meant to stop the parity debate that had been sparked by the dominance of the Holden Racing Team.

Richards and Perkins shared the car during the Sandown 500, where they finished sixth before the annual pilgrimage to Bathurst, t, which began in great fashion when the Commodore qualified for the Top T 10 Shootout. The weekend turned sour, however, as Perkins recounted to Auto Action.

“It was to do with V8 Supercars and CAMS somehow getting together and you had to sign a letter of indemnity that covered both for negligence and I refused to sign it,” Perkins said.

“I’m not covering anyone for negligence.

"My team manager was on the radio during the last practice session saying, ‘You’ve got to come in, they’re

going to black flag you,’ and I’m saying to him, ‘Tell to eh, ‘T ll them h h eh, h eh, h eh.’ h’ “I’ve arrived at this turn (The Cutting) nearly 20kmh faster than I should have been, which is a huge error and promptly ploughed it into the fence. It took 15 inches (38cm) out of the front and nearly pulled all my gizzards out.”

The incident occurred in the final practice session on Saturday, which meant the Perkins Engineering crew worked through the night to repair the Commodore. This was completed successfully to standards Perkins recalls were “superb ... I couldn’t tell it

from before the h crash”. h” That was proved to be the case at the end of 161 laps around Bathurst where Richards and Perkins finished the day just shy of the podium in fourth. The Commodore then finished the season with Richards before starting the 2004 championship in his hands, then the chassis was driven by Alex Davison in the series finale.

The Commodore was then repainted in Autobarn colours for Davison to race in 2005, though he was dropped in favour of Owen Kelly for the final

tw rounds. It became a spare car in two 2006, just as Jack Daniel’s became 2 naming rights sponsor and it was n ssent to the Ohlins Shock Absorbers ssubsidiary sales and distribution centre in North Carolina for testing on its sshaker rig. This makes this chassis one of the few V8 Supercars to not only go o to the US, but test at Ohlins.

This Commodore was brought into sservice for the endurance events for Development Series drivers Shane D Price and his son Jack, who finished P 24th at Sandown, then Bathurst where 2 it was disaster on the first lap, as the younger Perkins tells it. y “It’s the car that I took out Mark Skaife — or he took me out, I still think — at Bathurst 2006,” he said. “There was a B lot of damage to the left-hand side and lo our first crack at Bathurst was done in o only a few seconds.” o The car was then repaired for Dumbrell to race on the Gold Coast D before being re-liveried to Sirromet Wines colours to fulfill Nemo Racing’s licence requirements after Paul Radisich’s big Bathurst crash in 2006.

Phillip Island 2006, with Price behind the wheel, was the last time it raced and it will return to that circuit next month when Jack and Larry sit behind the wheel at the Phillip Island Classic.

The younger Perkins has completed a ground-up restoration of the Commodore, so accurate that it carries the majority of the same components

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it did when gridded up for the Bathurst 1000 17 years ago.

A point of difference between this Commodore and other VYs running at the time was that this was a full-Project Blueprint build. Because of the brief turnaround, many teams converted VXs into the new model, which meant most still retained the Chevrolet 18-degree motor — this did not.

Fitted with the then new Holden Motorsport "Aurora" engine, a lot of work went into searching and finding the very same components that were fitted into the car when it took to the grid at Bathurst.

“We did have everything around the workshop and I was able to get it all back together, including the fundamental parts of the engine,” Perkins said.

“It is (Perkins Engineering) engine 184, cylinder heads are set 52. They were still in circulation so we were able to put them back on the engine and marry that all back up.

“We’ve got the original rocker covers from the 2003 meeting and basically everything under the bonnet is original parts from when the car ran back then.

Even the water flow bottle, power steering reservoir bottle, all other items were as original as we could find.”

Because of the development of the engine during its initial run, the air box had many iterations, making it hard to piece the item together.

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The interior is exactly how it was laid out in 2003, even the steering wheel that was borrowed then purchased from Dick Johnson Racing remains in its place, below.

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UNDER THE SKIN “Finding all the original airbox pieces wasn’t easy,” he said. “It was such a period of evolution with the brand-new Holden Motorsport engine that there were five or six versions of this airbox. It matches the radiator ducts, the radiator and the manifold, just to name a few.”

The engine was rebuilt to 2003 specifications right down to the manifold, trumpets and fuel rail injections, ensuring the mechanicals are accurate.

A Holinger H-pattern gearbox feeds power to the rear wheels just like in 2003.

Major work was also undertaken with the rollcage as this particular chassis featured some innovative bar work within the engine bay.

“It then went through a greater period of evolution ... engine, chassis, suspension, so I needed to work back in time to basically how it rolled out of the factory when it was brand new,” Perkins said of the restoration process.

“One of the big things under the bonnet in particular is the unique rollcage system. The bar across the two shock towers comes right across the engine, the trumpets are underneath, so to get the engine in and out of the car you need to drop the crossmember and pull the engine out in an interesting manoeuvre.

“Why is this a talking point?

"We actually got rid of this after a year or two because we felt like there were more gains with a bigger airbox, more air induction, more pressure and we had to redesign all the bar work to maintain the same rigidity in the chassis without having the bar over the top.

"Placing this item of bar work back into the chassis was no mean feat and required quite a bit of effort to reinstall.

“I couldn’t restore this car and put this original airbox there knowing that this bar wasn’t there. We’ve re-engineered the car back to how it was so we had to pull out the dash, the dash in full, the firewall and re-do this to precisely how this was built.

"It’s quite a tricky thing that not many people will realise. We painted it black to try to disguise how the bar work was. The rest of the chassis is in silver.”

This was only the start as bars were removed and even the interior layout had been modified at the end of 2004 to suit the tall Davison, which has now been restored to how it was at Bathurst the year before, and much of it is hidden underneath the seat.

“In the cockpit we had to do quite a bit because the rollcage over time, without the use of CFD and engineering technology, we realised there were a few weaknesses in the strength of the rollcage,” Perkins said.

“We put a lot of bars into the car. One of the ones that’s missing, that we did take out, was an FIA driver intrusion bar we used to run on a vertical plane across the driver’s door.

In the rear of the car there was a cross weld across the trailing arm boxes to really stiffen up that lower area of the rollcage.

“When the car was first rolled out, it had what we called an X exhaust system, so it had tailpipes coming out both sides, before the endurance races. In

Rear shockers have been reverted back to TT44 Ohlins dampers. In its last year of racing in 2006, it used Ohlins TTX dampers, but Perkins have gone back to the 2003 spec. The diff housing needed to be modified back to original “equal length arm” specification, above. This chassis is the first built by Perkins engineering under the Project Blueprint regulations so it features double wishbone front suspension, left. The bodyshell still carries the scars of that hit back in 2003, left middle.

The braking package is one of the only areas of the car to basically not have changed during its time. The car was used before control brakes and rotors were introduced to the category. It started life with and subsequently finished with AP 6-piston front calipers and Brembo 4-piston rear calipers.

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The car as it sits now in the workshop of Perkins Engineering in western Melbourne, fully restored to its 2003 Bathurst specifications, right. The project began 10 years ago with the chassis as it last raced at Phillip Island 2006 with Shane Price behind the wheel, below.

2003 we worked out the X system wasn’t the go and the Y system where the tail pipes come out the passenger side was a better bet.

“But then, back to when we wanted to restore it to 2003, the seat was higher and the exhaust box was there so we had to re-do all that work; put the exhaust box back in, the rollcage through that section we had to re-do all that to precisely how it was in 2003.

There are some little finicky parts under the seat that you’ll probably never see, but to do the job properly it needed to be done and that’s what we did, so there were no shortcuts.”

Throughout the process, Perkins discovered that due to its CAD design lineage, it was incredibly hard to work on and not very user-friendly, which as mentioned earlier was changed rather quickly.

The accuracy extends to the interior where the MoTeC gauges, the famous Perkins Engineering "tower of power" take centre stage. Perkins undertook the tough task of tracking down the exact Recaro race seat that was used for the event as the Commodore had been fitted with a VELO product.

“Tracking that exact Recaro down

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wasn’t easy, but Gerard McLeod had one and we were able to swap him,” Perkins told Auto Action.

“The seat had Perkins Engineering spec velcro attached to the sides for the lap belts, so the original origins of the seat may indeed have been with us, which is cool.”

The steering wheel used at Bathurst remained with the car throughout its life. It was bought from Dick Johnson Racing post-accident. The original item was bent as a result of the hit and was given to fabricator Travis Langman, who still works at Perkins Engineering on the restorations, and returned the wheel so it could stay with the car.

Many components, including the brake bias adjuster, drink bottle and TEGA monitor mounts were robbed for new car builds, so these were re-manufactured or the originals were found and the rear-view mirror was reverted to the road-going model just like in 2003.

The belts used in the accident were stretched and cut by officials. A spare pair of red MOMO belts were used at the time and reinstalled for the restoration but expired in 2008,

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One of the big things under the bonnet in particular is the unique rollcage system. The bar across the two shock towers comes right across the engine. It was removed later during this chassis' life but reinstated during its restoration as was the airbox, above.

Everything in the boot is exactly how it was in 2003, Perkins kept it simple, below.

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UNDER THE SKIN After an all-nighter by the Perkins Engineering crew, Perkins and Richards fought on to just miss the podium in fourth, left. The chassis as it entered the pits after Larry's accident at The Cutting, below.

Catch Larry and Jack driving chassis PE 041 at the Phillip Island Classic on March 5-8.

Larry has a smile now, but 18 years ago it was a different story, right. Seen here holding the remnants of the front spoiler smashed after his Bathurst calamity. requiring new belts for Phillip Island.

The brake system is one of the few areas of the Commodore not to be changed.

“The car was used before control brakes and rotors were introduced to the category,” said Perkins. “It started life with and subsequently finished with AP 6-piston front calipers and Brembo 4-piston rear calipers mated with AP Racing front brake rotors with ????? 01 pads and the rear set-up consists of AP Racing Rotors and Padgid RS4-4 rear pads.”

Perkins Engineering enjoyed a great relationship with suspension company Ohlins, as proved by the shaker test in 2006, so the package in the Commodore uses TT44 dampers just like it used at Bathurst 2003. It had been updated to the TTX, but was reconverted.

“During 2004, legendary race engineer Ron Tauranac came on board to assist with development,”” Perkins said. “We changed to unequal length rear arms, with the lower arm being longer than the top arm. “Modifying the diff housing back to equal length arms wasn’t an easy task.”

Instead, faithfully, this Commodore has been restored to exactly how it rolled on to the grid at Bathurst all those years ago. The attention to detail is impeccable, but the car might not be in the hands of Perkins Engineering if it hadn’t "slipped through the net".

“It’s the last car dad owned,” Perkins said. “We’ve always had the philosophy of you need to sell one to pay for the next one, so we’ve never had a car collection until after the fact. We built 49 race cars and 198 engines during 25 years of

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HOLDEN VY COMMODORE V8 SUPERCAR PE041 BODY

Holden Motorsport VY Commodore shell, Perkins Engineering designed and manufactured roll cage, chrome moly tube, unique doube main hoop roll cage

ENGINE

Perkins Engineering designed Holden Motorsport Engine - PE 184 8 cylinders, 5000cc, 625hp at 7500rpm, dry sump, M48 Motec Control ECU, Exhaust by Perkins Engineering

TRANSMISSION

business.”” business For Larry, it’s a trip down memory lane with a chassis that carries significant meaning for two generations of the Perkins family.

“A lot of good memories and a lot

of bad ones with this particular car,” said p LP. “I’ve never had the enthusiasm to look en backwards at my old ba cars, ca so I’m very pleased and an rapt Jack’s taken that on board.

"It was just a coincidence "I that tha I kept this car, it just panned out that way. pan "We could easily not have "W kept it. To be my last race car and Jack’s first Bathurst car, I didn’t know that. It’s a real good example of what we used to do "I’m very proud of it.”

Holinger H6S Gearbox with Holinger Shift Cut gear knob, control V8Supercar Gear Ratios, AP triple plate racing clutch, 9” diff, cambered diff

SUSPENSION

Front: Perkins Engineering designed and manufactured Double Wishbone Front Suspension Rear: Cambered live-axle, multi-link, watts linkage Ohlins TT44 Shocks, 4-way adjustable

BRAKES

AP 6 piston front, 372mm AP rotors PFC 01 pads Brembo 4 piston rears, 372mm AP rotors, Padget RS4-4 pads

STEERING

Perkins Engineering designed and manufactured steering rack, steering column, Momo Steering Wheel

WHEELS AND TYRES

Speedline 5-spoke, Ford Offset, 17” x 10”

FUEL SYSTEM

ATL 120litre bladder, PE manufactured box, Holley Blue lift pumps, Bosch 044 High Pressure pumps, -06 hard line fuel lines with return

INTERIOR

Perkins PPG Silver paint colour, Recaro Seat, Momo 5 point harness, Perkins Engineering Designed Pedal Box, grilling master cylinders, PE throttle assembly

WEIGHT Three years after Larry called it a day in chassis PE041, Jack made his fateful debut in the same car. The day ended early after an opening lap collision with Mark Skaife.

Dry weight: 1355kgs, with LP and some BP Ultimate Petrol 1450kgs

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DAYTONA 500

HECTIC WEEK AT DAYTONA

By DAN McCARTHY Images: LAT AS AUTO Action went to print the 62nd edition of the blue ribbon NASCAR Cup Series, the Daytona 500, had been washed out, put off until the next day.

The race was to have been completed on Sunday afternoon in Florida. Polesitter Ricky Stenhouse Jnr was in the lead when just a few minutes into the opening stage of the race it was redflagged because of the weather.

Just 20 laps had been completed before the flag, with Stenhouse in the #47 Chevrolet leading the way from Joey Logano, with Aric Almirola, Ryan Newman and Kevin Harvick rounding out the top five.

Attempts were made to restart the race but as the sun began to set rain increased and as a result the race was postponed for a day.

It was just the second time in history that the Daytona 500 had been delayed until Monday because of bad weather.

The other time was in 2012.

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Reigning winner Denny Hamlin was sent to the back of the grid for the race start as the car failed pre-race inspection twice.

A week earlier the traditional non-championship Daytona Clash took place and there were certainly a number of clashes and notable incidents throughout the race and only six of 18 starters were still running at the finish.

Erik Jones had not led a lap in his #20 Toyota all day until the all-important final lap. He took the victory but not without the assistance of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin.

As the leading cars started the final lap of the race Hamlin was a lap down and elected to help his limping teammate Jones, Erik Jones wins the Clash a week before the Daytona 500 (below). A few days later William Byron claims victory in the second Duel (right).

The Daytona 500 fails to be completed as planned on Sunday (top). The race starts in front of a packed grandstand but is red flagged soon after (left). Ricky Stenhouse Jnr led every lap until the stoppage (above).

pushing him to the lead past Austin Dillon, Ryan Newman and Clint Bowyer on the last circuit to take an incredible and unlikely victory.

Jones picked up the damage after a crash on lap 66 when Joey Logano tried to block Kyle Busch at Turn 4. Contact between the two cars caused a chain reaction that resulted in six cars picking up damage.

The crash eliminated Kyle Busch and Logano’s teammate Brad Keselowski from the race.

When the race went back to green six laps later, several cars spun, wiping out most of the field in the process. In the end Jones took the win by 0.697s from Austin Dillon, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Larson, Ryan Newman and Hamlin, who rounded out the six finishers.

“I knew he was going to be in for a ride,” Hamlin said.

“It was just a matter of whether he could handle it … I knew that last lap he needed to strap in, because I was going to push him. I didn’t care if I pushed him into a wreck — I was going to push him.”

The Busch two Duals took place on the Thursday before the 500. Joey Logano bounced back from the Clash incident to win Duel 1, while William Byron performed strongly to win Duel 2, claiming the first win for the new Chevrolet.

Each of the three brands, Ford, Toyota and Chevrolet have each won one of the three non-championship races in the build-up to the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series, which shows that it will be a closely fought season.

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51

WRC

EVANS DANCES IN SWEDEN IN WHAT was his second triumph and first for new team Toyota Gazoo Racing in the World Rally Championship, Elfyn Evans has sealed a 12.7s victory in the Swedish mud and gravel.

At the beginning of the final day Evans held a 17s advantage ahead of reigning WRC champion Ott Tanak, navigating through the final 21.19km test safely to draw level with Tanak’s Hyundai teammate Thierry Neuville in the title race.

Third was young gun Kalle Rovanpera in just his second topclass start, capping the result off with victory in the power stage by 3.7s ahead of Neuville and Toyota teammate Sebastien Ogier.

It was a shortened rally because of a lack of snow in what is the WRC’s only winter rally, but that didn’t have any effect on Evans as he topped the timesheets throughout the day to lead Tanak by 8.5s at the close of the opening run of stages.

Rovanpera was challenging Tanak for most of the day’s stages, but a spin during the final stage of the day allowed the defending world champion to take a 5.8s margin into the second leg.

Ogier led M-Sport’s Esapekka Lappi, the Hyundais of Neuville and new recruit Craig Breen, and Teemu

It’s joy for Elfyn Evans and co-driver Scott Martin after he takes his second WRC victory of his career in the snow/gravel of Sweden. Images: LAT

Suninen in the second Ford Fiesta WRC. The only real casualty of the day was Jari Matti Latvala, whose privateer Toyota developed electrical gremlins.

The second day of competition was a continuation of the opening stages. Evans doubled his margin to 17s ahead of Tanak thanks to three stage wins.

The battle for third between Toyota men Rovanpera and Ogier fell in favour of the latter to the tune of 0.5s.

It wasn’t without a fight as the duo chopped and changed positions throughout the day’s stages, but it left the pair with a small margin to make up to the leaders.

Lappi still remained in fifth, 4.5s ahead of a struggling Neuville, who was lacking confidence in the unseasonably warm conditions, which turned the normally white stages into mud.

Evans held his nerve on the final day to comfortably take his first victory since the 2017 Wales Rally GB when driving for M-Sport.

“I think it’s going to take a little bit of time, I’m sure there’s things that

we will be and can be doing to improve that performance,” Evans said.

“While we’ve spent the whole Christmas period building a race car so we can drive, the other teams have spent Christmas break working out how to make theirs faster. This is a big change for us, it opens up the possibilities in the future. I think we still need to be realistic. It’ll take a little bit of time for us to work out that new package and get it to where it needs to be to compete at the front.

“I have to give a lot of credit to the team for not only giving me a great car but also giving me the support and help in testing for me to get the car to where I wanted it.

Reigning champion Ott tanak finishes 12.7s in arrears of Evans, while the surprise was Kalle Rovanpera beating teammate Sebastien Ogier for third.

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“The car is giving me great confidence, and in changeable conditions like we’ve had here, that’s really worth a lot. It has been very enjoyable to drive so far and hopefully we can carry this feeling on to gravel in the events to come.

“A big thanks to (co-driver) Scott (Martin), too: he’s been very good since he’s been alongside me and I’m very happy to finally be with him for his first win, too.”

Rovanpera put in a stunning drive on the final day to overhaul Ogier to the tune of 2.4s to take the final podium spot behind Tanak, who recovered from his massive crash in the same event last year to finish a consistent second.

Neuville managed to make set-up changes overnight ahead of the final day, but it wasn’t enough to topple Lappi for fifth. Breen in his comeback to WRC competition finished seventh ahead of Sunninen and Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta.

The next round of the WRC takes place in Mexico on March 12-15.

HM Points: Evans 42, Neuville 42, Ogier 37, Rovanpera 30, Lappi 24, Tanak 20, Suninen 11, Loeb 8, Katsuta 8, Breen 6

FORMULA E

EVANS HITS HIS STRAPS IN MEXICO NEW ZEALANDER Mitch Evans has shot himself into the lead of the Formula E Championship after taking victory at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City.

Putting in one of the most dominant Formula E performances in recent years the Kiwi was untouchable, drawing away to take a commanding 4.2s win from DS Techeetah’s Antonio Felix da Costa and Nissan e.dams’ Sebastian Buemi.

After starting from second position Evans made a reasonable start in his Jaguar while pole-sitter Andre Lotterer attempted to close the door, only to catch himself out by running off at Turn 1, thus giving Evans the lead.

At the end of lap 1 Evans led Mercedes driver Nyck de Vries, Buemi, Lotterer and Sam Bird.

Things quickly changed and on lap 2 de Vries plummeted down the order. At the start of lap 3 in an attempt to overtake the ailing Dutchman at Turn 1 Nico Mueller lost his car and went head-on into the tyre barrier, resulting in a safety car.

The safety car returned to the lane with 35 minutes on the clock and an aggressive Bird made light work of Lotterer before deploying his first — of three, threeminute — Attack Modes. He then quickly caught and passed Buemi for second position.

Lotterer fell out of contention with damage to his front.

This caused a large plume of smoke to stream from the right front wheel. Eventually the German had to enter the lane.

ROUND 4

Kiwi Mitch Evans powers to his Second Formula E win.

Antonio Felix da Costa charges through the field to claim second position (above). Season 2 champion Sebastien Buemi scores his first points of the season by rounding out the podium (below).

After the front bunch of drivers had used Attack Mode Evans led Bird, Buemi, Robin Frijns and de Vries, who appeared to be back on the pace.

With 20 minutes remaining da Costa caught de Vries using Fan Boost down pit straight to overtake.

De Vries did the same to defend, but de Vries could not avoid clipping the side of the innocent Frijns before hitting the wall.

The two DS Techeetah drivers, da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne, caught up to the third-placed Buemi, but the team was unable to decide on an effective Attack Mode strategy, which cost the drivers time as they held each other up, allowing Buemi to break away.

Eventually breaking free of his teammate, Da Costa recaptured and passed Buemi with his extra energy.

With da Costa now on the charge he caught up to Sam Bird with five minutes remaining. With increased pressure, Bird misjudged Turn 4 and hit the wall, crippling his Envision Virgin Racing car. This promoted da Costa into second and Buemi to third.

Just as the race appeared to be sorted, championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne capped off a terrible day for Mercedes by locking up and hitting the same wall as Bird, throwing away fifth position.

Despite the chaos around him Evans kept a cool head and took the win from da Costa, Buemi, Vergne, Alexander Sims and Lucas di Grassi.

“This result is a huge testament to the team and their hard work since our issues in Santiago — what a brilliant weekend for the team,” Evans said.

“We’ve really shown our pace this weekend and now the plan is to achieve this again across the season.”

STANDINGS: Evans 47, Sims 46, da Costa 39, Vandoorne 38, di Grassi 32, Bird 28, Rowland 28, Gunther 25, Mortara 22, Lotterer 21

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TOYOTA RACING SERIES ROUND 4

HEIMGARTNER MARCHES ON THE DOUBLE

Kiwi Liam Lawson snatches back the lead of the Toyota Racing Series at Pukekohe.

Images: Supplied

LAWSON PREVAILS IN PUKEHOE GP A SLENDER eight-point margin is all that separates the two leading contenders in this year’s Toyota Racing Series with Liam Lawson returning to the head of the table after success in the New Zealand Grand Prix at Pukekohe Raceway on February 8-9.

Two wins during the course of the weekend elevated Lawson above fellow M2 Motorsport driver Igor Fraga, while Australian driver Jackson Walls took his maiden race win.

Lawson fired the first shot by taking pole, but a poor start immediately placed the local on the back foot with Fraga taking the lead before a pass executed at Pukekohe’s back straight complex not only left Lawson in the lead, but dropped his Brazilian rival two spots.

The race was stopped after four laps when former race winner Emilien Denner speared off at Turn 4, burying the nose of his TRS car into the tyre wall. By this stage

Lawson was in the lead ahead of the battling duo of Yuki Tsunoda and Fraga.

A further safety car interruption failed to halt Lawson’s charge to the flag as Tsunoda held off Fraga for second.

The second race featured an inverted top eight, but penalties for formation lap indiscretions left Walls on pole. He took full advantage to hold off mtec Motorsport engineered by R-Ace teammate Petr Ptacek to take his maiden major international victory.

It was the leading two who built an advantage and maintained it as Lawson sat fourth, unable to make an impact on Franco Colapinto.

“That’s definitely something I wasn’t expecting. I’m speechless,” said Walls afterwards.

“I haven’t been doing the best starts, but luckily I got a good enough one this time. I made a few mistakes, but I held on for the win.

“All “Al the years of hard work have been put into this and honestly I couldn’t be happier.

I felt Petr pressuring me h a couple of times but I felt pretty co comfortable the whole race. com “I told the boys to keep quiet as I had it under control. If he was going to keep pressuring me, he was going k to burn out his tyres. Mine were nice b and an cool the whole race.”

A spin to rival Fraga in the final event, the New Zealand Motor Cup, ev aided aid Lawson as he charged to a 7s victory ahead of Franco Colapinto vic and an Lirim Zendeli.

Eighth E for Fraga was the result of a phenomenal launch through th field, only overshadowed by the Aussie Jackson Walls takes his te teammate Tsunoda. The Japanese maiden win in Race 2. d driver climbed from 16th to eighth a after the opening lap to an eventual fo fourth by the conclusion. HM

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KELLY RACING Supercars driver Andre Heimgartner has taken two of the three race victories on offer in Round 3 of the NZ V8 Touring Cars at Pukekohe Raceway on February 8-9.

Heimgartner’s Hamilton Motorsport Holden Commodore sat on pole alongside TCR Australia driver Alexandra Whitley, driving a Richards Motorsport Toyota Camry. The two tussled through the opening corners of the race before Whitley outbraked herself heading into Turn 4, dropping several spots.

Championship leader Heimgartner led comfortably as his title rivals fell by the wayside. Nick Ross’s Nissan Altima encountered overheating problems, which ended his weekend prematurely.

The race then turned as Heimgartner slowed on the back straight after hitting the pit lane limiter rather than the radio button, losing position to teammate Lance Hughes and Ford Mustang driver Sam Collins.

Hughes led briefly before Collins roared past to take the win ahead of Heimgartner and Whitley.

Sunday was Heimgartner’s day. He extended his championship lead by taking both victories, while a consistent Whitley finished runner up in both.

It was a fast-starting Whitley in the final event that appeared to have Heimgartner’s measure, but a pass at Turn 4 proved decisive.

“These cars have no form of launch control, so I just did what I thought would be right, and it worked out to be OK,” said Heimgartner.

“Alexandra got an amazing start off the line there, so credit to her, it was a good first few corners and the Mustang of Sam was chasing pretty hard behind.

“Fairly wild inside the car, the tyres were slipping and sliding all over the place as it was a lot hotter this afternoon.

“It’s good to come here and getting your head in the game.

“I’m looking forward to driving the Mustang back in Australia.”

Heimgartner will now focus all his energies on Kelly Racing’s new Ford Mustang program.

Whitley will continue and has received a boost of confidence after duelling with the Supercars rising star. “I worked a lot with my engineer this weekend to make sure we came out firing,” Whitley said. “It was great to be rubbing shoulders with Andre.

I even managed to beat him off the line in that final race.

“Great to get three podiums for the team, and even better for me to improve every time I get in the car.” HM

TOYOTA RACING SERIES ROUND 5

FRAGA WINS TRS TITLE BRAZILIAN IGOR Fraga is the Toyota Racing Series champion after sealing the title with victory in the New Zealand Grand Prix at Manfeild on February 16.

Trailing by eight points heading into the final round Fraga had to defeat local driver Liam Lawson, which he did in both Race 1 and the main 35-lap Grand Prix event.

Fraga made the perfect start to his pursuit of Lawson by taking pole position and then converting that into victory in the opening race ahead of Lawson and Argentine Franco Colapinto.

An inverted top eight resulted in the youngest competitor in this year’s Toyota Racing Series becoming the eighth winner of the season. Tjimen van der Helm defeated Lucas Petersson and Petr Ptacek, but all eyes were on the battle behind between the two championship protagonists.

The drama started early as Lawson and Fraga clashed approaching the opening corner before going side by side with the Brazilian holding the ascendancy.

Despite challenging on numerous occasions, Lawson was unable to make an impression. The pair finished fourth and fifth,, leaving the Kiwi with just a

HEIMGARTNER TAKES SWEEP NZ V8 Touring Cars championship leader Andre Heimgartner continued his dominant run towards the title by taking a clean-sweep at Manfeild on February 15-16.

Starting from pole, Heimgartner led the entire opening 14-lap encounter as one of his chief rivals, Alexandra Whitley, beached her Richards Team Motorsport Toyota Camry at Turn 1 early in the race, though she rejoined a lap down once extracted.

After a disastrous round at Pukekohe for Concept Motorsports Nissan Altima driver Nick Ross made a great recovery

Ig Fraga celebrates his title with his Igor fa father and 1982 NZ GP winner Roberto M Moreno.

tw two-point advantage.

D Despite three safety car periods, Fr Fraga held his nerve to dominate th Grand Prix. The final restart the pr proved critical as Lawson hit the re limiter on the back straight, rev a allowing Colapinto into third and leaving the Kiwi’s championship le hopes dashed. h Coming from a disadvantaged childhood, which included living c out o of a car and showering with

bottles of water in pursuit of his dream, Fraga was congratulated by his father Fabrizio.

“It is an unbelievable feeling to win,” Fraga said.

“I am very, very happy to succeed and it’s something really special. It is important to thank everyone who has been supporting me here.

Obviously, my parents, but also Gran Turismo, who have since last year been crucial to my career. All of the M2 Competition guys have been working very hard to deliver a competitive car, too.”

Lawson finished six points adrift, while Colapinto placed third in his rookie season.

The ever-improving Jackson Walls finished the season with a 10th, ninth and eighth on his way to a top 10 finish in the championship. HM

Andre Heimgartner dominates proceedings ahead of his Mustang debut.

to qualify second, but set-up struggles due to completing no testing between events left him fifth by the flag.

Heimgartner was followed home in Race 1 by Hamilton Motorsports teammate Lance Hughes and Brad Lathrope completed the podium in his Ford Falcon SuperTourer.

“Good fun, especially at the start there,” Heimgartner said after the race. Nick got bit of a jump at the start, it was a good race overall.

“The car is pretty fast. Good to see

Lance get second as well.”

The next two races provided the same result with the two Hamilton Motorsport Holden Commodores holding sway with Ross recovering to finish third,

despite a gearbox change between races.

The next round of the championship will be held at Hampton Downs on March 27-29.

VODANOVICH EDGES AHEAD LOCAL PETER Vodanovich has snatched back the lead in the Toyota 86 Championship after a see-sawing battle in the fourth round at Manfeild.

A two-point advantage separates Vodanovich from Aussie Jaylyn Robotham entering the final rounds of the title after the two split the wins between them.

The opening encounter was dominated by the Kiwi after starting from second alongside Connor Adam.

Vodanovich was never headed as Adam failed to hold off the advances of Robotham and Jaden Ransley.

An intense battle between the trio for the final podium positions was won by

Robotham as he skipped away Ransley and Adam were caught by Justin Allen.

Allen was unable to make inroads, which left Ransley to hold off Adam.

Vodanovich made a poor start in the second race as Ransley led only for Robotham to then pass.

Jaylyn Robotham and Peter Vodanovich fight wheel-to-wheel at Manfeild.

It was a closely fought battle as the lead was split between Robotham and Ransley, then Vodanovich, while Ransley finished Vodanovich resumed his challenge fourth after being pipped by Adam. pushing the duo hard until the Aussie A titanic struggle finished the weekend completed a race-defining pass halfway as Vodanovich held on for his second win through the race. of the meeting, just edging Robotham Robotham held a comfortable margin and Adam. in front, which he held to the flag over “That last race is one of the best of

the championship so far for me,” said Vodanovich. “I battled with Jaylyn the whole time. He was really quick and it was a great battle. A credit to him really, he did an amazing job.”

The next round of the championship is at Hampton Downs on March 26-27.

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s w e n Y A SPEEDW

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Image: Ray Ritter

KAIDON BROWN has warmed up nicely for the 2020 Australian Speedcar Championship later this month with victory in the sixth round of the Ultimate Speedway Challenge at Murray Bridge.

The former National champ led home Travis Mills and Matt Jackson who are also favourites for the coming title decider at Premier Speedway from February 28, which looks destined to see some of the world’s best in the 50-car field, including ninetimes New Zealand champion Michael Pickens and American ace Alex Bright.

Image: Richard Hathaway

Image: Rock Solid Photography LEGENDARY AMERICAN Micro Sprint racer Stan Yockey is returning to Australia to race in the rerunning of the Ken Willsher Classic at Laang Speedway in late April. The Californian will return for the April 25 race and drive for the Mount Gambier based Mansell Motorsport. Organisers are hoping April’s event will finish what the Willsher family set out to do 12 months ago and complete the tribute meeting to former national Formula 500 champion Ken Willsher, who died suddenly in 2018.

V8 SUPERCARS and Speedway look like being the perfect match next in South Australia. Murray Bridge Speedway has wasted little time with its schedule and locked in its first major Sprintcar show with the annual Bill Wigzell Battle of the Bridge to be run on September 19. This date has been chosen to coincide with the first Supercars endurance round held at Tailem Bend Motorsport Park and, organisers are hoping to capitalise on the close proximity of the large crowd at the Supercars.

THE ANNUAL Wally Anskaitis Cup for GP Midgets at Avalon Raceway has ended controversially. In an action packed 12-lap final a controversial final corner incident saw Trevor Perry relegated to the rear of the field after leading for 11 laps but late-race contact with Janelle Saville would see her declared the victor. Chris Fowler ,who railed from deep in the field, grabbed second and Travis Florimell filled third.

DROUIN SPEEDWAY hosted the Victorian Unlimited Sedan Championship and Club member Warrick Taylor did not disappoint the partisan fans, winning the 30-lap title decider from Lennie Bonnici, who raced from 10th starting position and Daryl Nicolson was third ahead of Trent Susol and Johnny Young. Other feature winners were Michael Conway in the Mini Sprints, Jeff Blencowe (Standard Saloons), Kate Stuchbery (Ladies Standard Saloons) and Jack Yeomans in the Junior Standard Saloons.

JAMES MCFADDEN has helped Kasey Kahne Racing to its first one-two finish since 2016 at Cotton Bowl Speedway in Texas by finishing a close second to teammate and defending World of Outlaws champion Brad Sweet in the series opener in Florida.

Image: Richard Hathaway

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HUGE NUMBERS TELL THE STORY IF THERE was ever any doubt about the success of one of Australian Speedway’s biggest weeks of the year the official numbers have put paid to that.

The 48th running of the 2020 Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic had 28,800 people overall for the three days and a final night of near 11,000, 9300 on Saturday and 8000 on the opening night.

These big numbers are something that have left Premier Speedway manager David Mills and his hard working band of volunteers smiling.

“I believe it would be close to a record,” Mills told Auto Action.

“There is no way other than with everyone standing could those numbers have fit in with

the old terrace and hill (preMt Max).

“As a club it was a weekend of great reward for our volunteers and members.

“The end result was a mix of pride, accomplishment and achievement, and then almost automatically the anxiety kicks in again and you hope we can work hard over the next 12 months to keep improving.”

He said there was a perception that Premier Speedway was making “millions” of dollars but after expenses the club might make about $200,000 out of the Classic.

“It’s not a giant moneymaking scheme,” Mills said. “It’s been a victim of its own success in that regard.”

He said the Australia Day

BLIGHT ENDS SEASON WITH WA TITLE AUSTRALIAN CHAMPION Kye Blight has brought his season to the best possible conclusion at the Perth Motorplex, claiming his first WA Late Model Championship, adding to the National crown he won just a few weeks ago.

His most recent win in the 30-lap feature race did not come easily, but Blight fought hard to claim what was his seventh win in a row this season and his ninth career Perth Motorplex feature victory.

Blight would hold off a fast-finishing Warren Oldfield, followed by Ryan Halliday, Veronica McCann and Jai Mazzini.

It was the latest victory in a season full of highlights for Blight, crowned by the national title.

“We hadn’t been in those track conditions all year, so we were reluctant to get away from what worked,” Blight said.

“In the end we put the big boy pants on, and I abused the crap out of my stuff. There was no letting it breathe.

“The temp light was on for a couple of laps and I thought if we want to win the race that is what we need to do.”

The feature race was attrition-filled, with just eight of the 24

holiday being a Monday long weekend, good weather and a big field of competitors helped.

“The super-popular long weekend doesn’t come about as often but when it does it’s a boon for us,” Mr Mills said.

“The international content was pretty high class.”

Across the South Australian border at Mount Gambier’s Borderline Speedway the 26th annual Kings Challenge also recorded significant growth, according to club vice-president Andrew Broome.

“It was one of our biggest Kings ever. We were very disappointed for the large crowd that we didn’t get the feature races in, as we think it would have been a ripper,” Broome said.

During the weekend the awareness for organ donation was also pushed to the forefront of people’s minds, with volunteers mainly from the Aranyosi Motorsport Team collecting names of potential donors.

Spokesman Brandon Aranyosi said a person was registering every 2.4 minutes during the annual Fan Appreciation morning on the Saturday of the Warrnambool Classic.

“The final registration amounts show a potential 350 possible organ donations and 1000 possible tissue donations,” he said. “We are over the moon with the numbers and feel we are making a difference, but we are keeping going to raise awareness.”

Image: Richard Hathaway

cars that started making the finish.

Blight said the victory marked his last event for the season as he has sold the car.

“We are not really sure right now (about our plans),”Blight said.

“Our car is fantastic, and my Dad said I was an idiot for selling it — it’s a good way to go out.”

MONTE’S STILL HUNGRY FOR SUCCESS ON THE eve of the 2019-20 World Series Sprintcars finale powerful car-owner Luch Monte says he still craves victories for his team and hopes that he might finally claim the one race that has always eluded him.

The fruits of Monte’s success are a string of Australia’s major feature races as an ex-driver and now watching superstar James McFadden steer the famous W17 to victory under the eye of clever crew chief Kim Buswell.

“It’s like a drug. It’s an addiction,” Monte told WSS Media of his love of Sprintcar racing before this weekend’s final two rounds.

“I just enjoy watching my car with good drivers in it.

“I know how hard it is to win, so I have a hands-off approach and let them do what they do without me getting in the road.”

Monte, a third-generation M hi d i market k gardener from Western Australia and pin-up boy for Woolworths supermarkets, who enjoys playing poker, says there’s no gamble with the way his successful Monte Motorsport team is run compared with the family-owned business.

“It’s very different at the farm, with over 60 employees over three sites,” he said. “I’m right in there making things happen and we do long hours, so to watch my race car on the livestream or to be able to sneak in a quick trip away to the races is my hobby and I absolutely love it.”

Monte has a stunning record of wins and drivers who have combined to claim seven Grand Annual Sprintcar Classics with Danny Lasoski, Donny Schatz, Kyle Hirst, Steven Lines and most recently with James McFadden, who has also delivered two World Series title for the team.

This weekend Monte and McFadden are looking to add to their impressive list of feature wins with another potential World Series title. The other win Monte says he really wants to secure is the Australian Sprintcar Championship, and he’s hungry for it. “We’ve led the title for the last four years with James, but never won,” he said. “I guess it just makes me more hungry for next year.”

Monte might finally get his wish with the title race returning to his home state next year.

Image: Richard Hathaway

JOCK JAGS MAIDEN MAINLAND MAJOR A CLEVER decision to make a first-time visit to the Perth Motorplex has seen talented Tasmanian teenager Jock Goodyer take home a stunning last lap victory in the annual Sprintcar Westernapolis.

Sitting on the highline of the Speedway, Goodyer had to pass wily West Australian driver Jason Kendrick to take the chequered flag, but while Kendrick chose a line hugging the inside of the turns Goodyer found all the speed he needed against the safety barriers.

“It was cool to finally get a win on the mainland and to do it on the last lap,” Goodyer said.

The Launceston driver and his respected crew chief Glen Beaton made the decision to get some big track experience at both Bunbury and Perth Motorplex before the final rounds of World Series Sprintcars, of which Goodyer is a contracted driver.

“I approached this event as going out there and having fun; I knew it would be faster than I was used to,” he said.

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Since Boxing Day last year Goodyer has displayed some impressive form, securing his maiden Australian Formula 500 Title just a week earlier at Simpson Speedway.

Just days later he was back in the family-owned #T22 Maxim under the watchful eye of Beaton, who has partnered with some of Australia’s finest Sprintcar exponents, including James McFadden and Jamie Veal.

He believes there’s something special about the 18-year-old’s ability that goes beyond his driving talents.

“He’s a combination of James and Jamie,” Beaton says, “because he’s relaxed like James out of the race car, and he’s smooth like Jamie when he’s in the car. He’s an outstanding talent and I love being able to watch him develop every time he goes on the track. But he’s got such a teachable attitude that you know he’s constantly learning and listening.”

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TIGHT FINISH FOR WORLD SERIES WITH JUST two rounds remaining a narrow 26 points is all that separates James McFadden and Kerry Madsen in the race to be crowned the 2019-20 World Series Sprintcars champion.

The 14-round tournament’s 33rd season will come to an exciting climax this week at the Perth Motorplex on Friday and Saturday nights as McFadden chases his fifth overall title, while Madsen is looking for his first.

Since December 26 last year the pair have gone head-to-head for outright honours with McFadden leading Madsen all the way.

Recent rounds in Western Australia have given valuable points to Madsen and tightened the points chase.

Driving the immaculate Krikke Motorsport #2, Madsen survived a last-corner challenge from McFadden to take victory in round 12 at Bunbury Speedway and the previous night at Esperance Speedway defeating nine-times WSS champion Brooke Tatnell with McFadden third.

Madsen, nursing a broken elbow from an incident at the recent Australian Titles in Tasmania, was dominant from the start, grabbing pole position for the 30lap final and he opened up a solid lead instantly, as Perth’s Jason Kendrick — who set the fastest time in qualifying — and Brooke Tatnell provided an intense battle for second.

Tatnell momentarily stole the lead from Madsen after a restart but ran out of momentum while McFadden went directly into battle with Kendrick and Murcott and drove between them through turn 3 to fill third place.

The race changed dramatically soon after the restart with contact between Kris Coyle and Andrew Priolo launching the latter violently into the turn 1 catch fence.

Neither racer was hurt in the crash, although the extensive fence repair prompted an Open-Red situation.

Crews were given the opportunity for setup adjustments limited only by the option to change tyres, which would result in being Andrew Priolo has a wild ride in Perth.

sent to the rear of the field.

No teams rolled the dice on rubber change, but many made extensive modifications to shocks and bars in the break, except Madsen’s team, who left their car largely unchanged.

After a half-hour stoppage, the restart launched Madsen into another impressive lead and Tatnell looked solid fending off McFadden.

Kerry Madsen is chasing his first World Series Sprintcar title and winning in Perth does his charge no harm, above. Rival James McFadden has to settle for third after being defeated by veteran Brooke Tatnell, left. Images: Richard Hathaway

American Lucas Wolfe his A i L W lf bbegan hi campaign in earnest, displacing Murcott and Kendrick to step up to fourth before Rusty Hickman rode a right rear to dart into an awkward forward roll and crunch the turn 3 wall with 10 laps remaining.

At this restart Tatnell was passed by McFadden and then Wolfe soon after, with the Pennsylvanian continuing his momentum to almost dislodge McFadden as well.

McFadden, who was just back in Australia from the US after his most recent driving stint with Kasey Kahne Racing, responded with the quickest lap of the race and with just four laps remaining pulled out all stops.

He would eat away at Madsen’s lead untilil the h final fi l turn, where h he h swept aroundd the outside to only to fall just short on the finish line to trail Madsen by just seventenths of a second, but fend off Lucas Wolfe, who finished almost three seconds behind in third, ahead of Tatnell and Murcott.

“I just had to be patient,” Madsen said.

“I was watching the board and caught the lappers with three to go and it was tense.

James had a dabble on that last corner, but I’d made my mind up to not get caught up and open up the bottom. I’ve lost a race here before doing that.”

The previous night at Esperance Madsen parked his machine in victory lane for the first time during this WSS season, leading

fro start to finish at the series’ first ever from ap appearance at the new WSS venue.

T sleepy seaside town became the 35th The ve venue to host a World Series round and at attracted a sell-out crowd to witness Brooke Ta Tatnell claim his 35th Quick Time award.

Madsen would win the start on a challenging racetrack that would deliver ch limited passing opportunities in the lim moist and chilly southwestern West m Australian air.

A Apart from some minor incidents, the A 35-lap event was largely undisturbed, 35 with Madsen controlling the race from start to finish despite the occasional unsuccessful lunge in traffic from Tatnell, who maintained the runner-up slot ahead of McFadden in third.

“I knew that whoever won the shootout was going to have a big advantage in the main race, so we pushed a bit harder there to give ourselves the best chance,” Madsen said.

“I was so tempted to venture up to the top of the track to see if there was anything up there but, thankfully, we just kept hitting our marks on the bottom and it was enough to get us home.”

McFadden and his Monte Motorsports team were breathing a sigh of relief after Bunbury and happy to still be leading the title race.

“We dug ourselves out of a big hole last night to get up to second,” he said.

“A good weekend overall, but we know we need to be one step better next weekend. Now it’s time to gear up for the Perth finale.”

Madsen’s recent efforts have closed the gap to McFadden, while Tatnell remains third retaining a mathematical but unlikely chance to claim his 10th crown.

Jock Goodyer sits fourth and maintains his Rookie of the Year status ahead of Wolfe by just 61 points.

Point Standings: James McFadden 3239, Kerry Madsen 3213, Brooke Tatnell 2691, Jock Goodyer 2626, Lucas Wolfe 2565, Dave Murcott 2395, Brock Hallett 2369, Rusty Hickman 2354, Jason Pryde, 1860, Lockie McHugh 1764.

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p ra w S L NATIONA

Image: Imag Im age: IInsyde nsyd ns syd ydee Me Medi Media diaa di compiled by garry o’brien

QUANTITY AND QUALITY Report: Dan McCarthy Images: Revved Photography/AUS GT

THE OPENING round of the 2020 Victorian State Circuit Racing Championships took place at Sandown International Raceway on February 14-16 and the event was a spectacle to behold.

With the largest opening round entry list in 10 years it wasn’t all about quantity but also some really good quality racing.

Sports Cars/GT Trophy Series

THE COMBINED Victorian Sports Cars and national GT Trophy Series weekend consisted of a six-lap sprint race and a 40-minute endurance race and the two encounters did not disappoint. It was Matt Stoupas in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 who took pole but on the opening lap the Bulgarian-built Sin R1 driven by Benjamin Schoots found its way to the front. Despite immense pressure he held on to take the win. In the second race Stoupas snatched the lead early and from there drove smartly, keeping the Sin at arm’s length until the safety car was called with a handful of minutes to go. The race went back to green with one lap remaining, and Stoupas held on by just 0.1s from Schoots with Gary Higgin in third.

Formula Ford

SECOND GENERATION driver Ben Bargwanna was able to clean-sweep the race victories in the opening round of the Victorian Series. On debut in the category Jordyn Sinni turned heads by leading a couple of the races and maturely brought the car home second in each encounter. With two

Matt Stoupas wins the GT Trophy Series 40-minute enduro.

Damien Milano makes a winning return in Improved Production, below.

a third and two second place fin finishes.

Improved Production Im

thirds and a fourth Timothy Edwards rounded out the podium.

IT WAS Holden domination aro around the “Home of Horsepower” with 10 of the Ho top 11 positions going to Holden drivers. Damien Milano Hol won the round after taking two wo race victories, ahead of Troy Lloyd who won Race 2. Ashley Lloy Wright rounded out the podium Wrig ahead of Nathan Robinson in his BMW.

Hyundai Excels

Sports Sedans

A CAPACITY grid of Hyundai Excels took to the Sandown International Raceway and it was Timothy Rowse who came out on top with a pole and two race victories. The other win went to 2000 Bathurst 1000 winner Jason Bargwanna, who finished third in the following two races. However the Garry Rogers Motorsport driver was pipped to second in the round by Marcus Fraser, who bagged

DEAN CAMM, in his Chevrolet Corvette, withstood the challenge of David Wright to win the opening round of the Victorian Sports Sedans. It was Camm who took first blood before Wright fought back in the second race. The final race was won by Camm by just 0.26s. Allen Nash completed the round podium.

Saloon Cars

IT WAS a Holden Commodore podium lockout in the opening round of the championship with Shawn Jamieson taking all three victories in his Holden VY Commodore. Despite winning each race Jamieson was pushed all the way — his biggest winning margin was just 2.3s. Travis Lindorff finished the round in second ahead of Anthony Beare.

BMW E30s

JEREMY PAYNE dominated the BMW E30 proceedings across the weekend by taking pole and cruising to three comfortable victories ahead of Brian Bourke. Simon Leach grabbed the Ben Bargwanna makes a clean-sweep in Formula Ford at Sandown.

opportunity to secure third for the round after the retirement of Alex Jury with just one lap remaining in the race.

MGs and Invited British Sports Cars

IT WAS a clean sweep of victories for Vincenzo Gucciardo, who was challenged all weekend long.

Rhys Howell completed all three races in the top four and that was enough to finish second for the round with the consistent Keith Ondarchie in the Triumph Stag rounding out the podium.

HQs

THE HQs certainly put on a show with Andrew Magilton staying out of trouble to win the opening round. Rod Raatjes got his weekend off to a perfect start, taking the opening victory but Magilton fought back to win the second. On the final lap of Race 3 Ryan Woods attempted a move on Raatjes at Dandenong Road Corner. Raatjes plummeted down to fifth while Woods was handed a 5s penalty. This allowed Magilton to take the round from Raatjes, who was still able to claim second for the round, with Raymond Jardine third.

Formula Vee

REEF MCCARTHY dominated proceedings in the Vees taking pole and the three victories. After a post-Qualifying penalty McCarthy charged from 13th to take the win and then dominated the final two races, winning by more than 12s in both.

Heath Collinson was best of the rest in second ahead of Adam Slattery.

Porsche 944s

CAMERON BELLER was pushed throughout the opening round of the 944 Series but was still able to walk away with maximum points. Adam Brewer claimed three top five finishes which, resulted in him finishing second overall, while Anthony Westaway rounded out the podium.

“Coming up at the nation’s action and spectator tracks” Wakefield Park

www.wakefieldpark.com.au February 20 Defensive Driver Training February 21 Wakefield Park Track Day – Previously SOS/T&T February 22-23 Wakefield Park Motor Race Series Rd 1 February 24 Wakefield Park Track Day – Previously

Winton

www.wintonraceway.com.au February 20 Open Test & Tune February 21 Repco Sprints Round 1 February 25 Performance Test Day February 26 TCR 2020 Series Launch

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59

NATIONALS wrap n compiled by garry o’brie

WET, WILD WAKEFIELD NSW’S CIRCUIT racing season was off to a wet start at the opening round of this year’s Motor Racing Australia series at Wakefield Park on February 8-9.

SUPER TT

SPOILS WERE evenly divided in the three races. Dave Masing steered his Mitsubishi EVO to win race one, having run down Stuart McFadyen and Ben Cathcart (Mazda MX5s).

Cathcart was in the process of fending off Masing when his car stopped off the track.

McFadden dropped to fourth with a penalty, leaving Julian Burke (BMW M Coupe) second from Mark Granger (Ford Falcon).

Masing had a driveline failure off the line in race two, ending his weekend. Granger spun and took forever to get back on track from the wet grass. McFadyen won from Dennis Walker (Nissan Skyline GTR) and Brad Bassett (Falcon).

In the final, McFadyen started from the back, being late on to the track. Walker led early, while Mark Morsillo (Triumph Dolomite V8) was making his way forward. Burke was pushing

Walker hard before a lunge at the Fishhook didn’t come off, but allowed Morsillo past.

Morsillo took the lead and sped away as Walker ran off into the gravel trap on the last corner, recovering to be third behind Burke. Defending champion Parry Anastakis had a horror day, splitting a radiator hose in the first race and damaging the Peugeot’s engine.

EXCEL X3 SERIES

AS WIL Longmore won the three races, Jeremy Hodges had a nearly perfect score, too. After a pair of seconds Hodges fell off twice on the last lap of the final to drop to fifth. Preston Breust took third in the opener, Ben Crossland in the second and, in the final, Crossland and Matthew Drane filled the minors.

MX5 CUP

CURREN BRENNAN won the first with Stuart McFadyen and Lou Iezzi next. Ben Cathcart and

McFadyen scored the minors behind Brennan B in i race two. t In I the th final, fi l Cathcart C th t led ld early before retiring, leaving McFadyen to win from Paul Nudd and Steven Head.

SUPER MINIS

AHEAD OF a small field Craig Linsdell (JCW) won the first two races. Trent Spencer (Cooper S) took the next two before John Walker (Morris Mini) nabbed the final.

CLUBMANS

THERE WERE three winners from three races, the gongs going to Ivan Srejber, Stuart Shirvington and James Dick.

Bruce Moxon

RICHARDS BY THREE AT RUAPUNA

Image: Elgee

VETERAN TAKES OUT ROB ROY OPENER MIKE BARKER won the first round of the Up & Go Emergency Tyre Repair Victorian Hillclimb Championship at Rob Roy last month.

Ahead of 84 competitors 72-yearold Barker (Hayward 06) started well setting the pace on his first run but by the second, South Australian champion David Mahon (Dallara) was ahead and followed by Alan Foley in his Foley Formula Libre.

As storm clouds threatened Mahon and Foley failed to finish their third attempts with both having minor offs. Barker got everything right on his third attempt to take the win with a 19.37s FTD. It was not only another personal best but moved him to fourth fastest ever at Rob Roy. Fourth place and fastest tin-top went to James Crittenden (Subaru Impreza) ahead of David Harris (Subaru Impreza WRX). Class

60 AutoAction

champion Ian Granter continues his dominance of the well supported Improved Production up to 1600cc class ahead of Maurice Harper in the family Corolla.

Harpers closest rival is his wife Linda who was third in class with their shared car, giving her thirtysecond outright and the Fastest Female title. The sport continues to encourage women to compete and had a good turnout of six female drivers.

South Australian Norm Goodall (Porsche 911) finished 20th outright to lead the Prod Sports 2001-3000cc. In the Prod Sports up to 2000cc it was John Read who took the win and 21st outright in his Mazda MX5 ahead of Michael Goosens (Toyota MR2).

As drivers lined up for the fourth run the threatened storm arrived suddenly and the meeting was closed. Gary Hill

THREE GENERATIONS of the Richards family — along with Greg Murphy and a host of New Zealand stars — raced at the annual Skope Classic.

In its 30th year, the event is New Zealand’s biggest classic motor racing meeting and was held at the Mike Pero Motorsport Park Ruapuna, 13km out of Christchurch on the South Island.

Jim and Steve Richards, along with Murphy, were racing in Historic Touring Cars while Steve’s son Clay drove a 1980s Formula Toyota in Formula Libre.

In touring cars Steve Richards qualified fastest in a Super Touring Volvo S40 while Murphy (ex-Gianfranco Brancatelli Group A BMW E30 M3) was fourth quickest, and Jim Richards (Group C BMW 635i) would start the first race from 15th.

In the opening race, Steve Richards was involved in a three-way dice and finished second to Phil Mauger (ST Nissan Primera) and just ahead of Stu Rogers (Group A Nissan Skyline BN-R32). Fourth went to Bruce Miles (ST BMW E36 320i) just in front of Murphy.

Rogers won race two after taking the lead on the final lap, with Murphy second and Richards third while Mauger was penalised 30s post-race for a starting infringement.

Richards rebounded to take out races three and four, first ahead of Scott O’Donnell (ST Ford Mondeo) and Murphy, and then Brett Stevens (ex-Kevin Waldock Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth) and Miles. Overheating put paid to

O’Donnell and Murphy, with both retiring. Jim Richards was also out of the last after placing outside of the top 10 in the three earlier races.

Clay Richards had a slow start in race one, dropping from third to 20th before fighting back to eighth. Mechanical dramas ruled him out of a couple of races but he salvaged two third places before the end of the meeting.

Also taking the event, competing in the NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series, was Australian Paul Zazryn in his Lola T332.

After qualifying eighth in a field of 19, Zazryn picked up two places on lap two of the opening race when Warren Briggs (T332) and LeRoy Stevenson (Leda LT27 001) spun off in separate incidents. Zazryn finished seventh as he was passed by Brett Willis (T332) later.

Driving Graham McRae-built cars, Steve Ross (McRae GM1) took out the opener and Michael Collins (Leda LT27 004) won races two and three where Zazryn placed sixth and seventh respectively. Garry O’Brien

Brought to you by:

racefuels.com.au Superloop 500, Supercars Championship Races 1 & 2, Super 2 Series Rd1, Porsche Carrera Cup Rd1, National Trans Am Series Rd1, Touring Car Masters Rd1, Stadium Trucks, Parklands Adelaide SA, Feb 20-23 Tasmanian Hillclimb Series Rd1, Highclere TAS, Feb 22 Territory Off Road Breaky Bash, Alice Springs NT, Feb 22 Multi Club Supersprint, Sandown Raceway VIC, Sep 22 40th Anniversary George Woods Rally, Powelltown VIC, Feb 22 Top End Mud Racing Rd5, Hidden Valley NT, Feb 22 AORRA State Off Road Champs Rd1, Sexton QLD, Feb 22-23 QR Drivers Championship Rd1, Queensland Raceway QLD, Feb 22-23

Image: Bruce Moxon

CHAMPIONS INDUCTED

AUSSIES ENJOY SUCCESS AT TAUPO A COUPLE of Aussies were part of the Taupo Historic Grand Prix when Ian Woodward and Alwyn Bishop raced in the combined Historic Muscle and Historic Saloon Car races.

The group used a mixture of grid formats to deliver different winners from the four races at the Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, just outside of Taupo on New Zealand’s North Island.

Woodward was down to guest drive a newly-built Penske/ Sonoco-replica Chev Camaro while Bishop took his Ford Mustang across the Tasman to compete.

Before qualifying Woodward practiced in Dale Mathers’ Mustang, which the owner subsequently put on pole position for race one. Woodward qualified fourth behind Kevin Gimblett (Earnhardt/Goodwrench-tribute Camaro) and Paul McCarthy (Ford Mk1 Escort RS1600).

Bishop had promised to make his Australian Trans Am Mustang more compliant with the NZ rules

by fitting glass and making other modifications. He qualified seventh behind Glenn Allingham (Camaro) and Dennis McConnell (ex-Halliday Bros/Woolf Mk I Escort).

Mathers took out the opening race, just, ahead of Gimblett by 0.375s with Allingham a further 0.745s adrift and in front of McCarthy and Woodward with Bishop placed eighth.

In race two Woodward started 16th and came through to win while Bishop finished eighth.

Unfortunately the weekend was over for Woodward as the Camaro was packed away after an oil pump failure.

Meanwhile Bishop continued to race, scoring a pair of fifths on day two in races won by Gimblett and McCaughan (V8 Ford Capri) respectively.

Bishop went on to race at Levels Raceway Timaru on the South Island, three weeks later, where he qualified ninth, finished ninth in race one, second in race two, sixth in race three and fourth in the last. GOB

SIX-TIME NATIONAL sports sedan champion Kerry Baily, HQ Holden pioneer Ian Beechey, and motorcycle ace Barry Lack were inducted into the Tasmanian Motorsport Hall of Fame on February 9.

Established in 1989, the THoF is the only state-based one in Australia, also pre-dating the national Hall of Fame and was the highlight of the Tasmanian Motorsports Award Dinner in Launceston.

Baily made his debut in 1977 in a Holden Torana GTR-XU1 and went on to win six Tasmanian championships. In 1989 he built a Toyota Supra powered by a Chev V8 with the aim of tackling the national championship. He won the title in 1992, 1993 and 1997.

Three years later he updated to a Nissan 300ZX/Chev, winning the championship on debut in 2000 and again in 2003. Baily replaced the Nissan with an Aston Martin DBR9 in 2012 and went on to win his sixth championship that year.

He also co-drove touring cars at Bathurst and Sandown nine times with a best Bathurst result of 12th outright in 1996.

Beechey started circuit racing in a Sports Sedan in 1980 before switching to speedway for

several years, while continuing to attend circuit races. In 1986 he came up with the concept of a low cost regulated class with limited modifications, using HQ Holdens — which were readily available and cheap at the time — encouraging new drivers.

With the help of Spider Johnson, circuit promoters and others, the category thrived in Tasmania and attracted national interest. This led to Holden HQ racing taking off in every Australian state and New Zealand and it still runs today.

Lack started motorcycle racing as a teenager in 1970 and a year later won his first Tasmanian championship in the 350cc class.

He went on to win it another five times (1972, ’73, ’75-’77), the 500cc championship three times (’74, ’76-’77), and the Tasmanian unlimited title in 1974.

During the 1970s he also raced at mainland circuits with regular top-five finishes in 350 Grand Prix and 400 Production classes, as well as also competing as a co-rider with fellow Tasmanian Malcolm Campbell in the famous Castrol Six-Hour Race at Amaroo, Adelaide Three-Hour and Calder Two-Hour races.

Martin Agatyn

WP Motor Race Series Rd 1, Australian 1000 Rd1, Wakefield Park NSW, Feb 22-23 Tarmac Rally Championship Rd1, Mt Baw Baw Sprint, Mt Baw Baw VIC, Feb 22-23 Multi Club Supersprint, Morgan Park QLD, Feb 22-23 Multi Club Khanacross, Baskerville Raceway TAS, Feb 22-23 Multi Club Supersprint/Regularity, Sandown Raceway VIC, Feb 23 Multi Club Hillclimb, Haunted Hills VIC Feb 23 Dion Barnett Memorial Hillclimb, Mt Cooperabung Kempsey NSW, Feb 23 Multi Club Khanacross, Willowbank Raceway QLD, Feb 23 Multi Club Khanacross, Awabawac Park NSW, Feb 23 Club Motorkhana, Benaraby Motorsport Complex QLD, Feb 23 Summer Autocross Series Rd4, Perth Motorplex Kwinana WA, Feb 26 Australian Motor Racing Series Rd1, TA2 Muscle Cars Rd1, Formula 3 Rd1, Winton Motor Raceway VIC, Feb 28-Mar 01 Rally Retro Festival, Multi Club Khanacross, Metec Driver Training Complex Bayswater VIC, Feb 29 Blue Range Rallysprint, Uriarra Forest ACT, Feb 29 Multi Club Khanacross, Proston Rally Track QLD, Feb 29 Club Rallysprint, Mandalay Property QLD, Feb 29-Mar 01 State Motor Race Champs Rd1, Mazda RX8 Cup Rd1, Wakefield Park NSW, Feb 29-Mar 01 State Circuit Racing Championship Rd1, Baskerville TAS, Feb 29-Mar 01

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61

Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x

SWEDEN WITH NO SNOW? WHAT IS known as the winter round of the World Rally Championship, well, it wasn’t.

Because of unseasonal warmer conditions Sweden’s roads were not covered in the snow and r, ice the event is famed for — rather, s just gravel without the treacherous snow banks lining the stages.

The recent weather meant the rally resembled Rally Finland or New Zealand.

Event organisers cancelled the first day of competition and turned it into a shakedown as the WRC manufacturers had not tested the

2020 contenders in those sorts of conditions.Teams tyres also persisted with studded tyres, making an interesting prospect for both the drivers and spectators.

The rally that usually resembles a winter wonderland has been cancelled previously because of mild conditions — in 1990 — but last weekend Elfyn Evans emerged as the victor for Toyota in conditions similar to his native Rally UK. Although there wasn’t snow, the teams may be better prepared for the first proper gravel event in Mexico next month. HM

2020 SUPERCARS

Down

1. Who has joined Team 18 for 2020? (full name) 2. Former full-time Supercars driver James Golding will join who for the Enduro Cup? (surname only) 3. Who will share the #34 Matt Stone Racing Car with Jake Kostecki? (surname only) 4. Who will pair up with 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner David Reynolds for the Enduro Cup? (surname only) 6. Who will be the teammate to Chaz Mostert at Walkinshaw Andretti United this year? (surname only) 8. The annual New Zealand round will be held at what circuit next year?

10. What number will new Tickford Racing driver Jack Le Brocq run in 2020?

62 AutoAction

Across

5. Who will make their full time Supercars Championship debut for BJR this season? (full name) 7. Which team has changed to Ford Mustangs for the 2020 season?

9. How many events will be held under lights in 2020?

11. Who will sit behind the wheel of the #14 BJR car in 2020? (surname only) 12. Which state will hold the first round of the Pirtek Enduro Cup? 13. How many full time car entries will be on the grid?

14. How many rounds will feature in the 2020 Supercars Championship season?

The normally snow covered roads of Sweden went missing at this year’s event, turning it into the first gravel rally of the year. Sort of.

Images: LAT

13. Who will join Scott McLaughlin in car #17 during the Pirek Enduro Cup? (full name)

#1779 NASCAR Crossword Answers 1 across – Kurt 2 down – Toyota 3 down – five 4 down – James Davison 5 down – forty-two 6 across – Hamlin 7 across – Cole Custer 8 down – Ryan Blaney

9 down – Kyle Busch 10 across – Joe Gibbs Racing 11 down – eighteenth 12 down – seven 13 down – Suarez 14 across – four 15 across – Arizona

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