Auto Action #1786 by Auto Action

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BOOST MOBILE MU STANG

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MORE AJ REVELATIONS!

Aussie legend lifts lid on F1 duds

Issue #1786 May 21 to June 3 2020 $8.95 INC GST

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Timeline for racingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s return

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BOOSTED!

Courtneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s back in a Ford and back in the Supercars championship By BRUCE NEWTON THIS IS the new Boost Mobile warpaint a â&#x20AC;&#x153;humbled and excitedâ&#x20AC;? James Courtney will debut in late June, when he races a Ford for the first time since 2010. Courtney, with the support of longtime sponsor and Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton has taken over the Ford Mustang previously campaigned by Tickford Racing customer team 23Red Racing with Will Davison in the driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seat. The deal starts at the June 27-28 Sydney Motorsport Park sprint round (a day before his 40th birthday) and is for the balance of a season that now extends until a Bathurst finale in February 2021. The drive became available when naming rights sponsor Milwaukee Tool Australia ended its deal with 23Red Racing because of the economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. That prompted team owner Phil Munday to announced his immediate withdrawal from the Supercars championship on Friday May 15. In an exclusive interview with Auto Action on page 8-9 Munday explains his position. Courtney and Adderton had sat on the sidelines after exiting Team Sydney following this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Adelaide 500. They were negotiating a deal with

Erebus Motorsport to run a Holden Commodore as a wildcard entry in selected Supercars championship rounds, only for the pandemic to get in the way. Now, the coronavirus has played a role in reviving Courtneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s driving career and put him back in a Ford for the first time since he won the 2010 driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s championship in a Dick Johnson Racing Falcon. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also a case of fourth time lucky for Courtney and the Campbellfield Ford squad. The 39-year old negotiated with the old Ford Performance Racing back in the 2000s, nearly went there in 2011 with Charlie Schwerkolt - only to be snatched away by the Holden Racing Team - and then briefly and fruitlessly tested the waters in 2015. Courtney admitted he did fear his full-time Supercars driving career was over in the wake of his split with Team Sydney. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Being away for a little while and

accepting that (Adelaide) may have been the last time, I will look at it very, very differently when I come back,â&#x20AC;? Courtney told Auto Action. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I will come back probably a lot more humbled and excited.â&#x20AC;? In the press material issued with the announcement, Courtney confidently predicted â&#x20AC;&#x153;race wins, podiums and fastest lapsâ&#x20AC;? were achievable in the Tickford machinery. But he is realistic enough to know that it will take time to acclimatise. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are going to be some differences. In our sport we know how close our grids are with those few tenths of a second making all the difference,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Getting to know the engineers and also the team structure, how the car wears its tyres, what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like on the economy, what the drivability of the engine is like; all of those things I am going to have figure out quickly.â&#x20AC;? The deal announced last Monday

morning May 18 took about a week to pull together and keeps Tickford at a full four car squad. It was the only option Tickford pursued. The crew that worked on #23 led by engineer Brendan Hogan will transfer to the Boost Mobile entry. Tickford Racing boss Tim Edwards confirmed he had modelled racing with only three cars for Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq and Lee Holdsworth, but that four car entry made much more economic sense. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Three cars is achievable but that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t retain all those people like Brendan Hogan,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So the desired outcome was running those four cars.â&#x20AC;? Edwards also talked up his expectations for what Courtney can deliver. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He is determined to show people he has still got it. Call it ego, call it whatever you want, whatever drives people. But he is determined to show people that he

is not past it. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He is series champion and you can never take that away from the bloke. He is still hungry. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a major part of what you need from a driver.â&#x20AC;? The Courtney/Boost deal also means Supercars â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at least at this stage â&#x20AC;&#x201C; will recommence its championship with a full 24 car field. Munday retains ownership of the Racing Entitlements Contract (REC) underpinning what will now be the #44 entry and also still owns the car Courtney will drive. Munday has not decided what to do with his REC longer term yet and Adderton has made no commitment to buy it or any other REC. â&#x20AC;&#x153;My plan has always been to get involved in owning a (Supercars) team,â&#x20AC;? Adderton told Auto Action. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The issue is that buying a REC now is a liability. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You need to able to run a team as a viable business. Until Supercars significantly reduces the cost of going racing, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not happening.â&#x20AC;? Edwards has made it clear he is keen to secure Davisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s services as an enduro co-driver for Tickford. Frenchman Alex Premat is in doubt because he may not be able to travel from the USA. Jack Perkins had a deal with Munday to co-drive with Davison, but Edwards said Tickford had not committed to employing him for the enduros. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t got to all that stuff yet,â&#x20AC;? he said.

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TOWNSVILLE MAY SEE CROWDS RETURN THE RESCHEDULED Townsville street race round could be among the first Supercars events with spectators. Darwin is a better bet for the trackside return of fans as NT authorities have allowed the early resumption of motor racing and reopened pubs, cafes and restaurants. The Hidden Valley round has been rescheduled to August 8-9, followed by Townsville on August 29-30. Townsville is a key event because it

is a street racing festival highlighted by crowd atmosphere. The far north Queensland event has been put back from the end of June to give it the best chance of running under relaxed crowd restrictions. Queensland’s other street race event, the Gold Coast 600, has been cancelled for this year due to the coronavirus crisis. FNQ has had an extremely low incidence of COVID-19 and, amid easing regional travel and social

gathering limits, limited public access to the Townsville event may also be viable. It is a major regional event the Queensland and local governments want to keep going, to help boost the area’s economy. While interstate visitors would still be banned, as they likely would for Darwin, there is a mounting case for the Townsville event to be open to fans from within a 500 km or more radius.

It is understood that in recent years, the vast majority of spectators at the Townsville 400 have been from the surrounding region. Interstate visitors have been a declining proportion of the crowd. Supercars has advised that tickets already sold to events where fans can’t be admitted will be refunded on application by the ticketholder, as well as the cancelled Gold Coast and Newcastle events. Mark Fogarty

ENDURO CUP UNDECIDED

BATHURST FINALE WITH OR without the Bathurst 12 Hour, the final round of Supercars’ extended season will be run at Mount Panorama. The series will return to Bathurst for its delayed finale from February 5-7, which is the proposed date of the Supercars-run 12 Hour. It will be the first time a sprint race round of the ATCC/Supercars championship has been held at Mount Panorama since 1996. As first revealed by autoaction.com.au last week, the 12 Hour international GT3 race is in doubt BATHURST FINALE

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because it is unlikely international travel restrictions into Australia will be lifted by then. The 12 Hour relies on overseas entries for a full field and also to sustain its status as one of the world’s leading GT endurance races. Supercars is prepared to go ahead with the meeting as a V8-headlined event, possibly with a local GT support race. In any event, the Bathurst Supercars finale will be very different to the October 1000 km classic, with a series of sprint races planned. MF

SUPERCARS’ ENDURO Cup is up in the air amid the reshuffle of the remaining rounds. All revised rounds apart from the October 8-11 Bathurst 1000 are listed as two-day events, with a variety of sprint race formats likely. The OTR The Bend event was originally scheduled as the opening round of the Enduro Cup, with a 500 km warm-up to Bathurst. The third leg was supposed to be the Gold Coast 600, which has been cancelled for this year. While The Bend event has retained its immediate pre-Bathurst slot of September 19-20, there is no indication it will be an endurance race. The Bathurst 1000 will be followed by events in Perth, Tasmania and Sandown. The latter could be restored to an endurance race, although having sprint races in between would be awkward. MF

NO MORE MUTANT MUSTANGS Gen3 aims to deliver Supercars that look like the real thing

By Bruce Newton SUPERCARS THAT still look like the road cars they are inspired by is a key driver for the technical brains developing the new Gen3 regulations scheduled to debut as soon as 2022. The current Supercar Gen2 chassis changed the Ford Mustang coupe from a sleek road car to a humped racer with a giant barn-door wing on the back. But the aim is to enable large and small vehicles with different bodystyles to fit on the forthcoming Gen3 chassis without losing their production look or have over-sized aerodynamic tools draped on them. The plan was outlined to Auto Action by Triple Eight Race Engineering technical director Jeromy Moore, who represents one of two homologation teams working on Gen3. The other is DJR Team Penske, which is represented by Ludo Lacroix. Other key players are Supercars racing boss Adrian Burgess and Carl Faux, who is acting as Gen3 project engineer on secondment to Supercars from Walkinshaw Andretti United. Moore has just returned to T8 after five years with Porsche Motorsport in Europe, where he most recently led the development of the 911 RSR GTE racer. “The intention was always for Gen3 is to be able to have each manufacturer to have a shell that can drop on – the surfaces at least – and look exactly as they do in the magazine,” explained Moore. “So to do that we do need to change the chassis. We can’t use the same (Gen2) chassis, we saw that with the Mustang. You need to modify it.

“We are killing two birds with one stone, we are trying to make the chassis adaptable but also cheaper and lighter. “That’s the main task and that is where the biggest change will be on the car; having a chassis which can fit a two-door car easily but also can accommodate a longer car, or a wider car. “So it’s an engineering challenge but it is certainly something we believe we have solutions to and we are looking forward to when we get these on the track.” In parallel with the chassis redesign, the Gen3 technical group is working to dramatically cut aerodynamic aids. That would help cars of significantly different sizes and shapes race competitively against each other, Moore explained. “The challenge is not so much the downforce;

you can measure that, you can trim that, it’s the drag,” he said. “If you’ve got a car that is a big crosssectional car with a blunt body versus a small sports car, that’s where you need to tune the drag and that’s where we need the right tools to adjust the drag of each car and not have one that looks like a sleek sports car with a barn door on the back to slow it down. “So that’s going to be the challenge for Gen3 to equalise the drag before we get to the track and that’s going to be Supercars’ role in having a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) partner analysing the body shapes, already designing in the drag to reach a similar target, then having small tuneable items on the car when they go aero testing to correct and adjust.” Moore said the overall objective was to produce “a raw race car that is as simple as

possible yet still can be adjustable”. The economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic had sharpened the focus of the technical group and reinforced the need to get the new regulations absolutely right, Moore said. “We are definitely focussed on making sure we go down the right path because everyone’s jobs are relying on it,” Moore said. “We are super-focussed on making sure Gen3 is successful. The biggest focus is making entertaining racing but also costefficient racing. “All the bells and whistles we have on the car now that don’t make the racing any better - just make it more expensive - we are looking at getting rid of that.” For more with Jeromy Moore, read our News Extra on page 14-15

COYOTE CONSIDERED THE FORD Coyote has emerged as a possible control V8 engine package for Supercars racing. While not the only option under consideration for adoption under the new Gen3 rules, it is definitely on the list according to multiple Auto Action sources. A control engine to clamp down on costs while retaining V8 character has been pushed for years in Supercars. The economic downturn triggered by COVID-19 has helped reinforce it as an agenda item. While officially listed for introduction in 2022, there have been hints elements of Gen3 – which is exploring all aspects of racing to cut costs and improve the show – could be pushed forward or back from that date. AA has been told a complete Coyote package with Motec ECU and exhausts could be offered for about $60,000, compared to around $130,000 for a current Chevrolet or Ford Supercars engine. In Supercars trim, fitted with a dry sump, the engine would make around 630hp at 7250rpm. Minor maintenance would be due after 6000km. Some well-heeled Supercars teams had been fully rebuilding engines after only a few thousand kays. However, new rules introduced in 2020 limit them to three rebuilds per annum. That means the Coyote would almost match a current Supercars engine on output, but be

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significantly cheaper to purchase and maintain. Coyote engines are already well proven for reliability in international endurance racing, including in locally-built MARC car entries. The double overhead camshaft Coyote V8 has been in service in the Ford Mustang road car sold in Australia since 2015, but is not related to the pushrod V8 used in the Mustang Supercar.

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The Coyote is also offered as a ‘crate’ engine for racing by Ford Performance in the USA. In Australia a 5.2-litre version of the Coyote known as an ‘Aluminator’ is the control engine for the new S5000 openwheeler category. It is adapted for local use by Queensland-based engine shop InnoV8. Bruce Newton

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NEWS EXTRA

EXCLUSIVE

OVER AND OUT

23Red owner Phil Munday on why his Supercars campaign is over

The closure of 23Red Racing underlines the challenges facing Supercars during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phil Munday explains to BRUCE NEWTON why he and primary sponsor Milwaukee Tools agreed to end their deal early. On why 23Red Racing will no longer contest the Supercars Championship It’s the current climate we are in financially in in our economy. I don’t blame any sponsor for pulling out or what they have done. The reality is losing sponsorship ahead of schedule has a flow-on effect to what we all do. In my situation it has pushed me to a point where I don’t have the funds to run for the rest of the year without the sponsorship money behind me. I still have the REC (Racing Entitlements Contract) and my car still sits at Tickford. My announcement is we just won’t be running the car this season under what we have had. Prior to the end of this financial year we will make a decision as to what we do and where we go. On his preferred plan for the REC The ideal situation would be for someone to take over the REC for the rest of the season. Ideally, because there’s a spot there at Tickford, it would work well at Tickford and if that happened, I’d be happy for Tickford to run the REC for the rest of the year. Then we’d see what happened at the end of the year with all of this COVID-19 stuff. On expectations for this season before the COVID-19 pandemic hit

I don’t think people understand the expense it costs to run a car. Everyone talks about it, becoming a millionaire by starting as a billionaire; sure, it’s funny but the fact of the matter is it’s a very, very expensive sport. I have been involved in motorsport since I was 19 when I first started in the panel shop. So 40 odd years ago. And to get to the point of owning a team after sponsoring for years and years and years, it’s like ‘how good is this?’. I always wanted to see if I could make it financially even by the end of three years and if I could do that and it was a situation that didn’t cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to make it work, then it would be a good thing to do. But it’s pretty hard to get it to that point. Almost impossible. It’s not just the bills for the car, it’s everything about it, it’s transporting of the car to the circuits, it’s setting up of the race shop, it’s the clothes that they wear, it’s the race suits, it’s the helmets, it’s the corporate hospitality, it’s the food for the guys, it’s the accommodation, it’s the airfares, it’s everything. It’s very, very hard to balance the costs. It’s like any business I’ve ever had; you don’t spend more than you earn is a bit of an easy one. But in this situation it’s nearly impossible. You are always chasing more sponsorship, or you are always trying to save money somewhere. And if that doesn’t work then you take it out of your own pocket and put it in.

One hundred per cent this was our year and I was so excited. I always had a three-year deal with (driver) Will Davison, three-year deal with Tickford and a three-year deal with Milwaukee and so that meant we would end this season and I think we would have ended with a pocket full of podiums … and everyone leaves the season with a big of ‘how good was that!’.

On the downturn’s impact on his own business interests.

On why 23Red Racing was closing at the end of 2020 anyway

On the emotional impact of pulling out of the championship

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I think in the hospitality industry which I am in now – not the panel beating business – we’ve dropped nearly 100 per cent of our revenue. It’s hard. We still have bills to pay, we’ve still got rents to pay, expenses coming in every week. It’s pretty tough.

I don’t think people quite get or understand what the feeling is when you are so passionate about something like this; to be smashed by something you had no control over and recalibrates your whole life in that area. To come to this point as team owner where you have to re-evaluate everything… It’s not an easy decision to say ‘I am not going to continue in the sport for this season’, or ‘I am not going to continue in the sport’. It’s really tough. On his relationship with Will Davison I have the utmost respect for Will and we talk often. He is an awesome, great guy. Some people you meet in your life that you think when you with them you are ever going to hear from them again. I don’t think Will is one of those people. His family is just an amazing motorsport dynasty. His Dad is a cracking guy, (his brother) Alex is a great bloke and he and Will are just a credit to that family. On the 23Red crew retaining employment at Tickford Racing if a deal is secured for the team’s Ford Mustang to continue racing That is a positive. Look, (engineer) Brendan Hogan is an amazing guy and what he and Will have done together has been incredible. It just breaks my heart if everything falls apart and everyone gets scattered. But if something can come together with the REC for the rest of the year then those guys all have a job and can continue on. On his fears for the future of the Supercars championship and the teams involved I just think it’s a tough time. In business if you do something wrong you can usually capture and control the spiralling costs or the problems you’ve got, or the expenses in your business. You can address those to turn the business around.

This COVID-19 is something no-one could ever have expected to smash 80 to 100 per cent of your business revenue overnight. I think if the sponsors in any industry have all copped that sort of whack to their bottomline then that’s one of the things they all think of. Is it best put the money there (sponsorship) or keep staff employed and keep businesses running? So in some cases people have to do some pretty brutal things in business and I think sponsorship is one of them. That will feed into our sport here. I just hope when we get through the other end of this, the public and the fans get behind it 150 per cent. And then the sponsors go ‘this is something we have to do’ and it starts a new cycle again On 23Red’s highlight results The first podium at Ipswich (in 2019) was a highlight. I was at home watching it with my family. It was such a great moment. It was not just for me, but for the guys, for Will. It was such a confidence boost. Then blow me down he backed it up at Tailem Bend and nearly won it. I wasn’t there either! So they said I wasn’t allowed back at a race meeting after that, because they had such good results when I was away! I told them I was coming no matter what. On returning to the Supercars pitlane when racing resumes I love Supercars. I love the team owners. They are just great blokes and women who are out there doing their best at what they do. And it is great to sit round at a team owners meeting and chat with them all. They are all interesting people. Pitlane is fantastic, I know all of the drivers and most of the staff up and down pitlane. It is a big family. I am going to miss it for a little while because it is going to take a bit to get through what we are going through now.

Images: Ross Gibb/LAT

DAVO: “IT’S HARD TO GET MY HEAD AROUND” WILL DAVISON has vowed to return to Supercars racing “soon” following the shock closure of 23Red Racing. Davison was in the third and final year of his deal with team, but found himself left on the sidelines after naming rights sponsor Milwaukee Tool Australia departed last week and owner Phil Munday chose to close the doors. James Courtney and Boost Mobile will take over the Ford Mustang run by the team through a customer arrangement with Tickford Racing. You can read more from Munday in the exclusive interview on the opposite page. “I can guarantee you I will be giving everything I have got to get myself back on the grid, hopefully in the not too distant future,” Davison said in a social media post last weekend. “I still feel like I have a lot to offer, I feel at this stage of my career … I am driving really well, I feel like I have a lot of experience behind me and a good perspective on the way everything works. “So my aim is to be back and racing with you all soon.” Davison has already been linked with an enduro co-drive at Tickford Racing. He could be needed because Frenchman Alex Premat may be

stuck in the USA due to COVID-19. Davison’s preference would no doubt be to gain a full-time drive and his credentials and talent would certainly justify it. A two-time Bathurst winner who has five-times finished in the top five in the driver’s championship, the 37-year old started the 2020 season in red-hot form, qualifying and racing in the top five in the Adelaide 500 to be fifth overall in the championship. “It’s pretty hard to still get my head around the fact with the announcement today we are going racing again (that) I won’t be on the grid,” he said. “I have really loved my time with Phil and the team, we had built up such a great package going into this year and I was just so pumped in the off-season. “The crew I’ve got and my engineer Brendan (Hogan) that we’ve put together on our car has really invigorated me and we came out of the gate guns blazing.” Davison paid tribute to Munday, who signed him up at the end of 2017 when he thought his career as a full-time driver might be done, following a tough year at Tekno Autosports. “Phil, you are a great friend and a wonderful bloke and it’s been an absolute privilege and honour to have driven for you at 23Red. “I am sorry this has had to happen and I know how passionate you are and I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity.” BN

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PORSCHE HAS withdrawn its two North American Le Mans 24 Hour entries from the GTE Pro class. This means that Australian Matt Campbell will no longer make his debut in the pro class. The German brand has run four cars in the legendary endurance race the last two years, however, with concerns about travel, Porsche has elected to only run the two European based cars. Campbell may still run in the Dempsey Proton Porsche in the Pro Am class, while his teammates Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy are unlikely to race at all.

SUPERCARS SQUAD Brad Jones Racing and Tom Williamson Motorsport have announced the creation of a junior development program to help nurture the next generation of motorsport stars. The BJR – TWM Junior Development Team will see Williamson handpick 10 karters from around Australia to take part in the new program. These youngsters will attend Supercars rounds, see behind the scene aspects of BJR and have the opportunity to work with both Williamson and Macauley Jones who will act as mentors. The winner will get the chance to become the BJR Junior Ambassador and test drive a BJR Commodore.

THE INAUGURAL Bathurst International to be run from November 13-15 will celebrate Holden’s motorsport history. Eligibility extends out to Holdens in almost every circuit racing category that the Aussie brand has been represented in, including Sports Sedans, Touring Car Masters, Group N and Improved Production, as well as now defunct categories such as the V8 Utes, Commodore Cup and Future Tourers. The Australian Racing Group (ARG) run event will see up to 100 racing Holdens participate in the 60 minutes of track time.

10 AutoAction

REST OF RACING BACK BY AUGUST MOTORSPORT AUSTRALIA has targeted July/ August for the return of top-level racing below Supercars. The V8s will be back at Sydney Motorsport Park at the end of June, kick-starting a revised 11-round resumption that will extend to February 2021. MA is taking a more cautious approach to the sport’s emergence from the coronavirus crisis, beginning with grass roots competition. National championship series will resume once restrictions on larger gatherings are eased or waivers for professional sports are granted. MA is in discussions with federal and state health authorities for exemptions to allow major events without spectators to happen in as few as two months. Auto Action has learned that Supercars prepared its own submissions to governments and medical officials for a TV-only return starting at SMP on June 27-28. Supercars’ proposal is understood to have gone to federal and state sports ministers and their respective chief medical/health officers. Individual authorities have to agree to lifting some border exclusions and limits on large gatherings. NSW, Victoria and Queensland, plus the Northern Territory, are easing restrictions for professional sports. Tasmania is also amendable to opening its

border for major sports, but SA and WA remain closed. Australian Racing Group, which provides the leading second-level categories for the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships, is looking at a TV-only return in August. ARG’s category roster is TCR, S5000, Touring Car Masters, Trans Am and V8 Touring Cars. A Phillip Island round was originally scheduled for August 21-23, but MA and ARG are likely to look at reinstating a postponed venue like SMP, Winton or Queensland’s Morgan Park sooner. Following the release of MA’s ‘Return To Racing’ guidelines, the governing body is working with federal and state authorities for the resumption of major racing. Supercars and the ARG/MA national championships are a level above the RTR plan. “Any top-level motor sport will need specific exemptions,” MA chief executive Eugene Arocca told AA. “We need to give Chief Medical Officers and Chief Health Officers confidence of a safe return of events with larger numbers.” Restrictions on public gatherings would have to be waived, allowing up to 500 people for TV-only events. MA is working with Supercars to facilitate its early return. “The aim is to help Supercars lock in some dates,” Arocca said. “The main thing governments need to know is that the people in charge of these

events are prepared to stake their reputations on the safety of their events.” MA’s chief medical officer Dr Brent May is working with the federal government’s COVID-19 Sports Advisory Committee. MA is also in regular dialogue with Dr David Hughes, the CMO of the Australian Institute Of Sport and Sport Australia, which oversaw the 15 principles of the return of professional competitions. Current restrictions on public gatherings in most jurisdictions of 10-20 mean that racing above club level is not viable. Even moves in the next few weeks to increase that to 100 won’t be enough for major race meetings, requiring special exemptions. MA has put separate plans to the NSW, Victoria and Queensland governments, initially concentrating on the mainland east coast. According to Arocca, 500 is “the magic number” for total attendance at TV-only events, especially with support categories. MA is looking at the possibility of rotating support categories – for example, four in the morning, replaced by another four in the afternoon, or several split between Saturday and Sunday. Arocca also warned that large crowds in the thousands may not be allowed back at sports events until the end of the year, although he hoped limited public attendance might happen sooner for motor sport. MF

CIRCUITS REOPENING NATIONALLY

S5000 SET FOR THE MOUNTAIN Fast open wheelers poised for Bathurst return By MARK FOGARTY TOP-LEVEL open wheelers are set to return to Mount Panorama, with S5000 at the new Bathurst International in November “all but approved”. Australia’s revived ‘big banger’ V8 single-seaters are scheduled to be the major supporting category at the TCR 500 km enduro-headlined event, subject to final clearance by the FIA and Motorsport Australia. That formal approval is just weeks away, according to MA director of motor sport and commercial operations Michael Smith. “It’s all but approved,” Smith told Auto Action. “We’re still working through some minor things with the FIA. “We’ve been able to make it work within the circuit safety requirements. There’s no reason to think it won’t get approved.” Allowing the powerful S5000s to race at Mount Panorama will mark the comeback of top-level open-wheel racing to the famous hillside public road circuit. The last fast single-seater category to race at The Mountain was Formula 3, ‘banned’ for being too quick for the track’s Grade 3 safety certification. The Bathurst restriction is governed by a power-toweight ratio limit, which Smith is confident S5000 can meet. Simulations using FIA software that is part of the track licensing process have calculated how S5000s can conform. It is expected the GRM-built spec racers – using a state-of-the-art Ligier carbon-fibre chassis powered by a locally modified 560 horsepower Ford Coyote five-litre V8 – will be restricted to reduce outright performance. High-drag wings are likely to be mandated at

Mount Panorama to limit speeds on the track’s long straights. MA’s Smith confirmed no changes to the track are required to accommodate the S5000s. He also affirmed that there would be no lap time restriction, with controls targeted at corner entry speeds. Unfettered, the quickest S5000s – which are likely to attract ex-F1 drivers to Bathurst – would be expected to break the two-minute barrier for the 6.213 km circuit. The unofficial outright lap record is one minute 48.8 seconds, set by Jenson Button in an F1 McLaren-Mercedes in a demonstration run in 2011. The next best is a 1:59.291 set by Christopher Mies in an unrestricted GT3 Audi R8 LMS at the 2018 Bathurst Challenge sprint event. The official Mount Panorama lap record is Shane van Gisbergen’s 2:01.567 set at the 2016 Bathurst 12 Hour in a GT3 McLaren 650S. The open-wheel mark is 2:02.6701, established by Simon Hodge in an F3 Mygale M11-Mercedes in 2014. In 1970, Neil Allen set the long-standing outright lap record of two minutes 9.7 seconds in an F5000 McLaren M10B-Chevrolet on the old pre-Chase layout. Like almost all internationally certified Australian circuits, Mount Panorama meets FIA Grade 3 requirements, meaning they are licensed for Supercars, IndyCars, LMP2 and other major categories below F1 and WEC. The only Grade 1 track is the F1 Albert Park semistreet course. Smith is hopeful the FIA and MA will sign off on S5000’s Bathurst approval by mid-June. “There’s every indication that what we’ve done is acceptable,” he said.

RACE CIRCUITS around the country have begun discussing with Motorsport Australia about hosting race events. Because the Covid-19 pandemic is being dealt with on a state by state basis, circuits are set to return to racing at different times. Auto Action spoke to the venues to give you a rundown on when the venues plan to be back in action. Due to the heavy restrictions still in place in Victoria, race tracks within the state has not been able to leap back into action quite as quickly as some other states. The Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit organisers are looking to begin testing shortly. The first PIARC run event targeted is a sprint in the final week of June, however this will be cancelled if current restrictions aren’t lifted in time. When contacted by AA Sandown Raceway did not reply, however it is known that the Victorian Sports Sedan Association which is organising the Victorian State Circuit Racing Championship meeting at the venue in July, has opened up expressions of interest, while Winton Motor Raceway in country Victoria is running private testing. In New South Wales the government run Sydney Motorsport Park venue is not hosting any private practice or events of any sort. However, from May 27 testing will commence with a maximum of five cars and an additional crew member per car allowed to test at a time. SMP organisers do not know when racing will resume at this stage but are in conversations with MA about acquiring permits to hold racing events. The first possible event could be the state racing series in June but this would have to be run under heavy restrictions. AA is yet to hear from Wakefield Park. Up north things are beginning to slowly get back to normal. Queensland Raceway reopened last week for

testing, and the venue organisers plan to run small race meetings as soon as government restrictions allow for outdoor gatherings of over 100 people. At this stage the other Queensland Raceways’ venue Lakeside has not opened to private testing or practice. The popular Morgan Park venue believes a Queensland State level meeting could be run with less than 250 people in attendance if government restrictions permit. The venue will not host any big events until the end of July. At The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia, small motor sport activities continue with a strictly limited capacity of cars and no spectators allowed at the venue. The Northern Territory was the first state/territory to announce a return to motor racing. At Hidden Valley test and tune sessions have been running for a number of weeks, and from June 5 clubs can start competition events again. Once the stage three regulations come into effect the venue can run events under 500 people without further approval. If more are expected to attend, Hidden Valley representatives need permission from the department of health to host the meeting. Tasmania has had a surge in Cornonavirus cases recently and as a result the two Motorsports Tasmania venues, Symmons Plains Raceway and Baskerville, remain closed. It is hoped that by mid-June practice can get back underway as restrictions will be loosened to allow a gathering of up to 15 people. It is planned that club events could take place in August, but at this moment state championship meetings have not been considered. Western Australia’s Wannaroo Raceway has remained open for the circuit members to contest private testing sessions, however no race events are planned until the government allows mass gatherings of 500 people or more. Dan McCarthy

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THE ACO (organisers of the FIA World Endurance Championship) and IMSA have announced more joint regulation details for the LMDh class. The minimum weight of the LMDh prototypes will be 1030kg, with the internal combustion engine and a common rear-wheel hybrid system set to produce 500kW. As is the case in the IMSA DPi class currently, the bodywork of the LMDh cars can be styled by the manufacturers, who can also replace the spec Gibson LMP2 powerplant with their own engines. All LMDh cars will run to Balance of Performance measures, meaning that no car will have a clear advantage. It is still unknown if the IMSA cars are allowed to run in the World Championship.

TOYOTA GAZOO Racing will field five Yaris’s in the Finnish round of the FIA World Rally Championship in August. This will be the most amount of cars that the Japanese manufacturer has entered in a round, with regular drivers Sebastien Ogier, Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanpera joined by Takamoto Katsuta within the factory team, while home hero Jari-Matti Latvalais also entering in a privately run Yaris. In other WRC news, the Safari Rally in Kenya has been cancelled this year but will make its long awaited return in 2021.

MUSTANGS SADDLED UP RYAN MCLEOD Racing Cars has remained busy during the Covid-19 pandemic, building no less than three Ford Mustangs to compete in the Bathurst 6 Hour event in November. New owners George and Andrew Miedecke, Tony Quinn and Kyle Alford completed their first test of the Mustangs last week at Queensland Raceway went seamlessly according to car constructor Ryan McLeod. “First day on the job with the new cars was very good, no technical problems, nothing, they ran almost faultlessly, so I’m very happy,” McLeod told Auto Action. “The cars performed fantastically; we have just got to adjust the cars to that very low grip tyre. We had goal target time which they achieved straight away. Then it was just a matter of calibrating a few things and looking at fuel consumption. “They are the most finished production car and

are the only ones built to maximise the new rules. Most of the other production cars that are around are adaptions of road cars especially with the electronics, our cars take advantage of the new regulations which allows you to replace nearly all of the electronics.” The trio of Mustangs were set to debut at last month’s Bathurst 6 Hour, which has been moved to November due to the pandemic, which also delayed the builds slightly due to the changing work requirements. “Once we knew the 6 Hour had been postponed, we had to restructure our work environment here we went back to a skeleton staff,” McLeod told AA. “The composites team was working from home, my data systems guy was in Sydney working remotely and I was being his eyes and ears here. Some of the freight took longer to get here coming from America also.”

The Mustangs are equipped with MoTeC electronics, motor sport sump, oil cooler and all safety gear required by Motorsport Australia including an on-board fire extinguisher system. An event previously dominated by the BMW marque, McLeod is unsure the Mustangs will give the M3 and M4 thoroughbreds a run for their money, but the maiden test has given him a sense of confidence. “I think the cars will be reliable, from where we are now, had we gone to the race when it was supposed to straight out of the box they would have been good,” he said. “Obviously the goal is to win the class, the priority against the Aussie V8s which is what they will compete against so I would look more at the Commodores. With the BMWs it is going to be more about how the race plays out.” The team are hoping to complete another test within a month. DM

ALEX BOWMAN has re-signed with Hendrick Motorsports to continue racing the #88 Chevrolet in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series. Bowman announced the one year contract extension on his social media channels. The 27-year-old took over the #88 car when Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired at the end of 2018, since when he has claimed two Cup Series wins including one earlier this year at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

RETURN DISCUSSIONS ADVANCE

IMSA HAS released its revised schedule which will see racing resume mid-July at Sebring. The American Series began with the 24 Hours of Daytona in January, before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The Sebring race effectively replaces the Canadian Tyre Motorsport Park round, while the rest of the 10 round calendar remains much the same. FORMULA E has announced the cancellation of its season finale on the streets of London, which was set to take place on July 25-26. The docklands venue in which the race was set to be held has become a temporary hospital providing 4000 extra beds for COVID-19 patients.

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A NUMBER of national motor racing series’ are beginning to fire back into life and Motorsport Australia is making sure that it keeps up to date with the state-by-state guidelines and advice in terms of mass gatherings. Motorsport Australia CEO Eugene Arocca hsaid that the organisation is having conversations with all levels of government, to make sure that racing can get back under way safely as soon as possible. “We are doing everything we can to stay up to date with the latest restrictions and also provide state, territory and federal governments with as much information about the plans for our sport, including discussing our Return To Race strategy,” Arocca said. “Each state and territory is doing things differently and we are making sure that we are

across those differences to determine what motorsport events we can sanction and how our event organisers and clubs can meet their required obligations for running any events in the future.” Arocca stated events such as national and state championship meetings could receive exemptions from restrictions. “Like many major sporting codes, there are going to need to be exemptions for the larger motorsport events to proceed,” he said. “We believe these events, such as our state and national level events, can go ahead safely, without spectators and do so with limited risk based on the guidelines we have in place.” The Motorsport Australia CEO pointed to the governing bodies Return To Race document as a step forward towards competitions resuming.

“As we’ve outlined to the various representatives, and highlighted in our Return To Race strategy, motorsport is unlike many other sports,” Arocca said. “We are getting feedback from the various government representatives that understand our situation and appreciate the information we have provided. “They have also been impressed by the standard of our Return To Race document and the level of detail we have gone into. We believe this will help facilitate a return to action in the short term. “Of course, the health and safety of our competitors, officials and event organisers is our first priority – and we want to make sure that when the sport starts to slowly return, no one puts themselves at any significant risk,” he concluded. DM

REAL RACING RETURNS ALTHOUGH RACING hasn’t quite gotten back underway in Australia, over in the United States of America NASCAR has fired back into life! The fifth round of the NASCAR Cup Series, The Real Heroes 400 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina was the first of eight NASCAR Cup Series races that will take place within the next month. The race took place within an atmosphere that we may have to get accustomed to in coming months as empty stands surrounded the 2.198km track. No spectators were allowed to enter the circuit and all drivers were required to wear face masks, but despite the oddities once racing got underway and drivers were in their cars it was business as usual. Qualifying did not take place, a random draw was made a number of days prior to the race determining who would start where for the 400 mile encounter. The race in itself was quite notable, Matt Kenseth made his NASCAR Cup Series return replacing Kyle Larson who was banned by NASCAR for using a racial slur during an e-Series race over the break between races. Ryan Newman also returned to the series after suffering at serious injury in the season opening Daytona 500 in mid-February.

Kevin Harvick took the win after leading more than half of the race, in doing so the Stewart-Haas Racing driver took his first win of the season and his 50th in the top-tier NASCAR Cup Series. The Ford driver fought off a strong challenge from Alex Bowman who came home in second position the same place in which started. Kurt Busch was third from Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr, Tyler Reddick, Erik Jones, John Hunter Nemechek and Kenseth who impressively completed the top 10. Newman also made a strong return finishing the race in 15th despite suffering a puncture in the closing stages. A number of key contenders finished out of contention with pole sitter Brad Keselowski 13th, Ryan Blaney 16th and Kyle Busch 26th. William Byron won Stage 1 and Keselowski Stage 2, before Harvick charged to victory, the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series winner celebrated the win by performing multiple donuts in front of the empty stands. As Harvick arrived in Victory Lane he leapt onto the roof his Ford Mustang with a face mask on and no crew around to congratulate him, a truly bizarre sight, but nevertheless real racing is back but not quite as we know it. Dan McCarthy

TCR ROOKIE EYES EXPANSION

as a job then that would be the best of both worlds.” A second entry in TCR Australia is the initial aim, but Clemente hopes to emulate the likes of Sonic Motor Racing Services as a step in the development pathway. “Hopefully within the next couple of years we can take on a second car and run our own suite of cars in different classes in future years,” he explained to AA. “I don’t think Supercars is quite achievable, so we will race in TCR, plus a few more race cars in the area of Porsches. That would be really good.” Clemente completed one session in his TCR debut at the Australian Grand Prix Asia Pacific Cup support race, impressing in qualifying by finishing just outside the top 10. “We didn’t have any expectations being a new track for myself and obviously first race in the car, we weren’t expecting to be anywhere. “To Qualify 12th, we were absolutely over the moon,” he recalled. DM

MAKING HIS debut in this year’s TCR Australia Series, Michael Clemente has ambitious expansion plans for his privateer outfit. Last year, Clemente and his family-backed operation purchased the ex-Wall Racing Honda Civic Type R Nestor Girolami drove to a clean-sweep at Sandown. Clemente’s new venture initially will focus around his entry, but the young Victorian’s goal is to develop and grow the operation into a business across multiple platforms. “We do seek our own parts off Wall Racing, but we won’t share our data or anything like that,” Clemente told Auto Action. “We are very much privateers that are trying to do it on the cheap side, we hope in the future we can start to build our own team. “Obviously, if I have the opportunity to make driving a career, I would definitely do that, but with the way things are these now I would really just like to be involved in the sport. “If I can run my own race team and do that

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EXCLUSIVE

SETTING THE DIRECTION Back in Australia after five years at Porsche Motorsport, Jeromy ‘JJ’ Moore tells BRUCE NEWTON how the experience improved him as an engineer and what he’ll bring to his new role as Technical Director of Triple Eight Race Engineering.

YOU MIGHT think the pandemic-driven pause in the motor racing season is a chance for a little enforced relaxation. Well, it has been for some, but not Triple Eight Race Engineering’s new Technical Director Jeromy Moore. “I have been busier than I would be racing,” he tells Auto Action. “We’ve been doing late nights and a couple of times worked right through the night into the next afternoon.” What’s taken up Moore’s attention along with other members of Australia’s most consistently successful Supercars racing business, has been Project Conrod, the emergency ventilator developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s been an impressive feat and one that’s been featured on high-profile mainstream media such as 60 Minutes. But, to be honest, the thought of Moore – or ‘JJ’ as he is almost universally known – working harder than ever before is a bit hard to grasp. A constant in his career has been a willingness to work really, really hard. At Bathurst in 2009 he engineered the lead T8 entry for the first time, as Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes went-for the record-breaking four-peat. You could have comfortably added up the hours he slept

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Moore was a prime mover behind Triple Eight’s recent development of a prototype emergency ventilator in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

that week on your fingers and toes. The other constant is his smarts. Moore is just about as smart as anyone in the paddock. As T8 boss Ronald Dane insisted to AA last year, he’s even smarter than Ludo Lacroix, the Frenchman who was Dane’s long-time technical director before defecting to DJR Team Penske in 2017. “He (Moore) is the single biggest engineering intellect I have ever worked with,” Dane declared.

While his view may be coloured by the fractious way his working relationship with Lacroix ended, Dane is undoubtedly in a very good position to judge Moore’s capabilities. When Dane took over the Briggs Motorsport Ford team to form Triple Eight Australia in 2003, Moore was there working as a data and design engineer. Another young fellow by the name of Mark Dutton made the transition with him. These days ‘Dutto’ is team manager of

the Red Bull Holden Racing Team and one of the best known members of the Supercars circus who doesn’t actually steer a car in anger. JOINS LOWNDES Moore continued as a designer engineer at T8, became Craig Lowndes race engineer in 2008 and then engineered Lowndes and Mark Skaife to victory in the Bathurst 1000 in 2010, the first year the team had swapped to Holden. He race engineered Lowndes until the end of the 2014 season, the same year he also became the team’s chief designer. Moore and Lowndes finished second or fourth in the driver’s championship all seven years they were together. In the same timeframe Whincup won six of his seven titles. It was understandable then that Moore eventually sought new challenges. With Dane’s support he secured a position at Porsche Motorsport as the performance (number two) engineer working on the world endurance championship 919 LMP1 co-driven by Mark Webber to the world championship. In 2016 he became race engineer on the #2 Porsche 919 that won the Le Mans 24-hours and secured the world endurance championship. He continued

Jeromy Moore celebrates another World Endurance Championship race success with the factory Porsche team (above) before returning home to more familar Triple Eight colours (left). Images: Porsche Motorsport/Triple Eight Race Engineering

in that role the following year. When the WEC LMP1 program shut down at the end of 2017, he was promoted again to become technical manager of the new-generation 911 RSR GTE racer that debuted with a double podium at the Daytona 24-hour last February. By then he had already accepted his current gig back at T8’s Banyo shop, after deciding with wife Michelle it was time to come home with their two young kids. Indeed, Moore dropped the family at home in Queensland and headed to the Newcastle street race late in 2019 for some reconnaissance. His job is one of the most senior and important in the Supercars championship. It’s also simple in theory; ensure the engineering team is focussed on making the cars T8 race faster, be it the Holden Commodore ZB Supercars, the VF II Super2 entry or the Mercedes-AMG GT3 racers. “It’s about delegating and trusting everyone to do their part as well as they can,” he says. NO SILVERWARE Moore fills a position left vacant for three years. He joins after a year in which T8 won no championships or the Bathurst 1000 for the first time since 2005.

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Lacroix, as sporting director at DJRTP, was part of a brains trust that oversaw a clean sweep of key Supercars silverware 2019. “Roland is never just looking at the short term,” says Moore. “He knows with Penske coming in with all these resources and lots of clever people you need to keep improving, you need to keep increasing the strength of the team. “Over the long term you need someone in that role to keep pushing the development and bringing the guys up. It was a situation where he was aware the position should be eventually filled and we have always been in discussion with each other and are good friends. “So when we decided it was time to come back, he got me.” Moore rejects any suggestion he and Lacroix will wage some bitter feud when racing resumes. He appreciates Dane’s praise and backing but makes clear he and Ludo will be friendly rivals. “Ludo and I get along pretty well ... we’ve been out bike riding a few times since I’ve been back and when I was away, my dad went sailing with him,” says Moore. “I don’t have such a big ego that I believe it’s a one-man show. If I come back and we win it’s because of what the whole team has done. If they (DJRTP) do well it isn’t because Ludo is the smartest guy in the world.” So, how different an engineer is the 2020 version of Moore versus the one that left for Europe in 2015? After all, he went from being one of five engineers at Banyo to one of 250 at Weissach. “I think quite a bit,” he reflects. “V8 Supercars is a small pond. Especially with the restrictions on sensors, with testing, with control this and control that, you get into a loop of doing the same sort of thing and iterating away. “It’s challenging for sure, it’s a series where it is very challenging to beat someone else because you have got almost the same train-set. “But to go to a manufacturer and especially LMP1 at a time where it

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was at the highest point of almost any motorsport in terms of engineering freedom… there were four different manufacturers with four different powertrain concepts and almost unlimited budget. “You can look into detail of a lot of different things and understand things a lot better. There is tyre testing, there is aero development, there is powertrain development, there is strategy, there is so much out there. “It was a huge eye opener and I certainly learned a lot.”

“The closer things are, the tougher the job that engineers have to do” Moore worked within a cultural crosssection of global motorsport, alongside engineers with backgrounds in virtually every major category on the planet. “You see what’s in Formula 1, what’s in GT, what’s in DTM, what’s in WTCC. It was a very enjoyable time in my life as an engineer.” Moore is clear a lot of what he learned doesn’t translate to Supercars. After all, hybrid deployment strategies aren’t relevant – at least not yet. But he is sure there are benefits that can flow back. Some things are valuable whatever the size, budget and resources of the organisation. “A lot of the processes, a lot of the simulation, it’s all relevant, it all applies,” he explains. “It’s just there are a few less knobs to turn in the car.” More than once, unprompted, Moore mentions simulation. It is already developed in-house at Triple Eight in what he calls a “raw” form. But he has identified it as worthwhile of a substantial upgrade. In a championship with almost

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no testing and ever-tightening budgets, being able to refine and tune in the digital space makes a lot of sense. “By using simulation you can get the car where it needs to be quicker than your competitor, so it hits the track as best as it can,” he explains. “There is less and less design in Supercars going forward. The cars are almost control. But you can still have adjustment on the kinematics; on the spring rates, on the roll rates, on the ride heights. It’s understanding where you want all those points at a particular track is the most critical thing. “So I think more and more control the series goes, the more important simulation becomes. “It’s not super-expensive compared to engine development or designing new uprights and iterating away there. It’s better to measure twice and cut once and that’s what simulation does.” Even as more and more items on a Supercar such as dampers are controlled, Moore remains absolutely confident the engineering is still critical to success. MORE IMPORTANT In fact, he believes engineers could even be more important than ever in the post-pandemic era. More two-day race meetings, even less practice before qualifying, shorter races with restructured pit stops or without them altogether and reverse grid races of some kind have been mooted. All that to be considered on top of that never-ending process of adapting the car to the changing track and the driver’s requirements and then coaching that driver up to speed as quickly as possible. “The closer things are, the tougher the job is that the engineer has to do,” says Moore. “The better engineer will still have an influence. “There will be a lot to think about and a lot to react to. It’s definitely not going to be a case of rolling the car out of the truck, putting fuel in and go. Having a good engineer there will be even more critical.”

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FIA PROPOSES SAFETY UPGRADES THE FIA has announced proposals to improve the safety of racing globally, including a coloured rain light system and a design to ensure large debris is contained and/or retained with the crashing vehicle. The motor sport governing body has completed the investigation of all 28 serious and fatal accidents that took place in circuit racing last year. Findings gathered in these investigations will lead to improved safety in the next generation of cars and will be implemented by the FIA Serious Accident Study Group, chaired by FIA President Jean Todt. One innovation that has been proposed is the introduction of a coloured rain light, which changes depending on the track status. It is thought that the rain light mounted to the rear of the car could be used to display the track status, for example if there was a crash that cars are approaching the light would flash yellow warning drivers behind of the impending incident, quickly and reliably informing them of the circuit conditions. This would inform drivers who are unable to see the next flag point due to the circuit configuration or because of another car blocking their drivers view. Only a minor upgrade to the rain light hardware would enable this to be achieved. This light could also be used to indicate to the preceding car that it is slowing down under the yellow flag conditions. It is suggested, however that although the rain light concept is strong it does require further testing and research. The FIA also suggests deploying a range of advanced marshalling systems, incorporating features such as automated yellow flag generation, direct car-to-car notification of dangerously positioned stationary cars and even a coordinated power reduction to cars.

Another FIA recommendation being looked into is increased tethering of large objects that frequently come depart the vehicle during crashes, for example the front wing. Increased tethering would see the front wing remain intact, this way it is less likely to fly into the path of drivers. In 2015 English IndyCar Series driver Justin Wilson was killed when he was hit in the head by a front wing that way flung from the wreckage of Sage Karam’s Chip Ganassi Racing Car. The FIA statement read ‘to mitigate and/or prevent debris ejection from cars during an accident, technical solutions will be developed which aim to ensure large debris is contained and/or retained with the crashing vehicle.’

Wheel tethers have been used in top-tier open wheel racing for over a decade ensuring that the suspension system and wheel do not detach from the car and cause further incidents. The French organisation is also further investigating its front and side impact structures, as it aims to improve the energy that these structures can take in a car-to-car impact. ‘This process is already underway for Formula 1, Formula 4 and Formula E, with actions for Formula 2 and Formula 3 being incorporated into the next car update,’ the statement read. These changes are more than likely in response to death or FIA Formula 2 Championship driver Anthoine Hubert at Spa-Francorchamps last year. Dan McCarthy

SXS MOTORSPORT AUSTRALIA CHAMPIONSHIP SETS RETURN DATE THE SXS series was the first national championship to announce its revised calendar and start date, which will occur on July 25 on the Victorian-New South Wales border. The shortened season will kick off at the Albury Wodonga Motorcycle Club, followed by another two rounds held both in Victoria at Monza Park on September 12 and Mafeking Rover Park a month later on October 10 Championship founder Sam Beck is excited at the prospect of continuing the season under the new regulatory guidelines. “It’s been a difficult time for many Australians over the past few months due to this pandemic, however it’s great news knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel and we can begin our season soon,”

Beck said. There was a distinct chance the title may not have competed for the rest of this

year, Beck is pleased that the action will continue on July 25. “I didn’t think we would

race in 2020, but because of Australia’s fantastic attitude in combating the virus, we have been able to return earlier than

anticipated,” he said. “Credit must also go out to all those who worked really hard in putting the Return To Race strategy together, which will ultimately get us all racing again. “It gives us a solid action plan to work off and will beneficial to not just the SXS Championship, but to all levels and competitions across the country. “We will be implementing many of these actions at our remaining three events for the year, which at this point are staying as the same date to what they were originally scheduled.” Spectator will be excluded from the three events, while social distancing laws will be enforced, hand sanitiser made available and each driver is limited to a maximum of three crew members. DM

F1 NEWS

VETTAL TO RETIRE? LIKE MUCH of the world, Formula 1 was on lockdown in May. But that didn’t stop a seismic change in the F1 driver market happening in just a few days. It started when Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel jointly announced that they would not renew their deal for 2021. Vettel has been with Ferrari since 2014 but was never able to win the world championship with the famous Scuderia. Immediately there was rampant speculation about who would replace Vettel, but it soon ended with the announcement that the talented Carlos Sainz would leave McLaren and go to Ferrari on a two-year contract. It was then announed that the other main candidate for the job – Australian Daniel Ricciardo – will leave Renault and head to McLaren for 2021, on a long-term contract. Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul is clearly unimpressed with Ricciardo jumping ship. The Renault/Ricciardo partnership was supposed to be one that built the team back into a winner. Abiteboul didn’t even mention Ricciardo’s name in a brief statement from the team, announcing his departure. Abiteboul said: “In our sport and particularly within the current extraordinary situation, reciprocated confidence, unity and commitment are, more than ever, critical values for a works team. I am

confident that the 2020 season will allow us to accomplish even more together. Our ambitions and the strategy of Renault DP World F1 Team remain unchanged.” By contrast there are no hard feeling at McLaren about Sainz departing. So what does Vettel do now? He is only 32-years-old, so has several racing years still left in him. But then perhaps he will retire and thus be able to finally spend more time with his family. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff is on the record saying that Vettel must be considered. But why would he ruin the harmonious relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas? McLaren had no interest in Vettel, either, as it snapped up Ricciardo. “Obviously Seb’s an awesome driver and a four-time champion,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports. “But I think we were pretty far down the path in the off-season, and knew we would either land with Daniel or (keep) Carlos. We never really entertained anyone beyond that, and especially with Seb’s late breaking news, we were pretty far down the path at that point.” Red Bull, meanwhile, is fully focused on Max Verstappen and does not want Vettel back. The only obvious seat for Vettel would be at Renault. But then there are rumours that Fernando Alonso might make a return to F1 and return to Renault for a third time.

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NOT AT LIBERTY TO GIVE ‘CHARITY’

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FORMULA 1’s commercial owner Liberty Media is not going to become a charity. “Whether it’s the teams or promoters or sponsors, we’re not going to be handing out ‘candy’ to everybody,” Chase Carey, Liberty’s F1 chairman and CEO, said in a conference call. Just about every entity in F1 including Liberty is facing financial difficulties because of cancelled or postponed races. But Liberty is not going to act as a charity to give everyone financial aid or fee reductions. “We’re going to expect to be treated fairly, we’re going to deal with it as adults, and with the expectation that 2021 is going to look like the business that we all knew four months ago,” Carey said. It is not yet known how many F1 races there will be in the 2020 season, but it certainly won’t be the 22 originally scheduled. Carey even admitted that there is the possibility that there might be no races at all. But the aim is to have 15 to 18. Race promotors who have to hold grands prix with no fans won’t pay their usual hosting fees. Sponsors, both those who advertise at the race tracks and those who advertise with the teams, will want discounts because they paid for a full season. The television broadcasters’ contracts stipulate a minimum of 15 races. If it dips below 15, then Liberty will have to start refunding – on a pro-rated scale – some of

that money back to the broadcasters. The ‘prize money’ the teams get paid is based on a 63 per cent portion of what Liberty earns each year from racing hosting fees, the television money, trackside sponsorship, trackside hospitality, merchandising and other things. So when the number of races is reduced, so too is the income earned by the teams and Liberty. Indeed, Formula 1’s commercial income was reduced by 84 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of 2019. Revenue last year was US$246 million compared to US$39 million this year. The first 10 races of 2020 – two in the first quarter of the year and eight in the second – have all been canceled or postponed. But the teams have been partially paid in 2020. At the end of the year it is calculated how much prize and commercial money each team earned during the season. That money is then paid to the teams in 10 equal installments from February through November the following year. So the teams have been paid four installments this year based on what they earned last year. And Liberty has advanced several payments to the smaller teams. But with the overall commercial income pot really taking a battering this year, the teams will inevitably take a big hit next year.

TENTATIVE RACES THE REGULATIONS state that there must be at least eight Formula 1 races on three different continents for a racing season to be an official “World Championship.” Now that Austria and Great Britain are both poised to host two races each, it means that there will already be at least four races in the 2020 season. The governments in both countries have given tentative approval for the circuits to have races with no fans attending, and with strict rules with regards to containing the virus. There are still challenges to overcome, however, as the British government has stated that anybody entering the country must undergo a 14-day quarantine. The FIA and Formula 1 are currently in negations with the government to get F1 personnel, who would be already tested for Covid-19, exempted. Furthermore, there are factions in the Austrian government who are definitely against the race happening. They could still send F1’s plans to start the season tumbling down. Britain’s Silverstone circuit managers had intense negotiations with F1’s commercial owners Liberty Media. Silverstone was not, of course, going to pay Liberty for the privilege of hosting an F1 race. But Silverstone also wanted Liberty to pay the track’s expenses of operating

the entire race weekend. The two race weekends in Austria will be July 5 and 12. The original scheduled date for the British Grand Prix was July 19. But it would be a huge strain on the teams to do four consecutive race weekends, so it is likely that the Silverstone dates would be July 26 and August 2. “We are not talking dates because F1 are still trying to knit their calendar together and there seems to be a certain amount of flexibility,” Silverstone’s managing director Stuart Pringle told Reuters. “It is very much subject to government approval,” he added. “If the government aren’t happy, it won’t happen.” But then the Hungarian Grand Prix, which will also be staged behind closed doors, is scheduled for August 2. In other news, the Belgian government has given permission for Spa to host its F1 race, with no fans, on its scheduled August 30 date. But at the moment the Italian Grand Prix scheduled for September 6, is planning to have spectators. Meanwhile, the street tracks in Montreal, Singapore and Baku, which require many weeks to build and have no chance of any sort of social distancing, will almost certainly be dropped from any revised 2020 calendar.

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THE SAINZ SOLUTION

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WHY DID Ferrari choose Carlos Sainz instead of Daniel Ricciardo to replace Sebastian Vettel next year? Mark Webber has hinted that perhaps fellow Aussie Ricciardo turned down a Ferrari offer because he was not sure of how competitive the car would be in 2021. Or did Ferrari have its sights set only on Sainz all along? Ferrari and Sainz have been negotiating for months, because the team was not sure if Vettel would accept a contract extension of just one year with a serious pay cut. Vettel wanted a two-year deal and millions more euros. McLaren knew about the Ferrari approach and gave Sainz permission to talk to the Italian team. The risk of bringing in Ricciardo into Ferrari as Charles Leclerc’s teammate is that Ricciardo would be gunning for wins right away. And as Vettel well knows, Leclerc -- with his contract through 2024 – is the Scuderia’s chosen one. That’s not to say that Sainz won’t be capable of challenging Leclerc, but Sainz should fit more seamlessly into the team. Ferrari wanted a Valtteri Bottas

situation. Bottas is a very capable driver who quietly goes about his job at Mercedes. Bottas can and does win races, but Lewis Hamilton is the star at Mercedes. Plus Ferrari will pay Sainz millions less than it would have had to pay Ricciardo. Still, both Ricciardo and Sainz have had good relationships with young, fast teammates – Max Verstappen and Lando Norris respectively – and have been able to handle the situation. So a Ricciardo/Leclerc partnership would work. Ferrari has heard good things about Sainz’ car development skills. Leclerc is still learning that process, which is why the team depended on Vettel’s skills in that department. Sainz will be 26 next year and Leclerc will be 23. So Ferrari can build a longterm future with its youngest ever F1 driving pairing. “Carlos has proved to be very talented and has shown that he has the technical ability and the right attributes to make him an ideal fit with our family,” said Ferrari principal Mattia Binotto. So, all in all, Sainz is a good solution to be Vettel’s replacement at Ferrari.

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Contributing Writers Australia Garry O’Brien, Mark Fogarty, Bruce Newton, David Hassall, Bob Watson, Bruce Moxon, Garry Hill, Craig O’Brien, Mick Oliver, Martin Agatyn. Formula 1 Dan Knutson, Photographers Australia Ross Gibb, Rebecca Hind, Mick Oliver, David Batchelor, Randall Kilner, Rhys Vandersyd, Richard Hathaway, MTR Images, Bruce Moxon 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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FIRST LOOK

BOOST MOBILE MUSTANG

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EX-CHAMP WITH FORD

MEBACK COURTNEY CO REUNITES

MORE AJ REVEL ATIONS!

Aussie legend lifts lid on F1 duds

Issue #1786 May 21 to June 3 2020 $8.95 INC GST

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Timeline for racing’s return

HOMEGROWN HEROES HOW HOLDEN LED V8 REVIVAL

Cover images; LAT/AA Archives

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with Dan Knutson

RICCIARDO’S ‘FINAL CHOICE’

Bruce Williams

Editor-At-Large Deputy Editor

F1 INSIDER

DURING THE Canadian Grand Prix weekend in June 2019, I sat down with Daniel Ricciardo for an interview that appeared in AA1774. The Aussie had shocked many in August 2018 by announcing that he would leave the winning Red Bull team to join Renault for the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Was there any time since August, I asked him, that you regretted your decision to leave Red Bull? “As soon as you said ‘was there any time,’ I knew that was going to be the question!” he replied. “And really, really hand on heart, no regrets. It is like a gut feeling. If you know you have done something the right way…as soon as I made the call in August, I was like, wow, and whatever stress I was carrying, it felt like it was gone. I get asked about this, and people say look at Max (Verstappen at Red Bull) this year – he has had a couple podiums and you are far from the podium. This is not criticising Red Bull, but that is what they have been doing the last five years. At this time last year I had won two races (in China and Monaco) already with them, and they had only had two podiums in first part of this season. So I would not be any better off staying there. That is really my argument. “And the truth is unless you are at Mercedes, no other driver on the grid is completely happy right now because Mercedes are dominating. I definitely do not regret it. Even though we have not had amazing results, I am actually really happy with the Renault team and happy with what I am seeing. And most important happy with myself with what I am doing and trying to build around me with the engineers. It is quite nice as well to answer that knowing that it is really how I feel, and that I don’t

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need to answer it politically correct. It felt right.” Well, obviously, something has changed in Ricciardo’s perceptions in a few months! Because now, as we all know, he has signed a multiyear contract with McLaren. At Silverstone during the British Grand Prix weekend, just one month later after our interview in Montreal, Ricciardo rather wistfully talked about how McLaren was achieving what Renault had hoped to do – be the fourth best team behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. While I was in Britain during that time, I also had an exclusive tour of the Renault factory at Enstone for a feature that was in AA1766. Renault is investing millions in upgrading its entire F1 operation. It all looked quite optimistic to me, but obviously Ricciardo Image: LAT started to see things last year that gave him misgivings about Renault’s long-term potential. It is not a money thing. Renault is paying him north of 40 million pounds ($75m) for two years. I doubt the McLaren Group, which recently applied – and was rejected – for a loan of 150 million pounds from the British government to get through these difficult coronavirus times, has a lot of spare cash lying around. During the six February days of preseason testing in Spain this year, Ricciardo was still very positive about Renault’s potential. But he must have had qualms about Renault’s long-term potential. And then those were compounded by concerns that the worldwide recession might lead Renault to withdraw from F1 – just like Honda, Toyota and BMW did in 2008 and 2009. Ferrari? Well, the Scuderia was already leaning towards Carlos Sainz to replace Sebastian Vettel. Riccardo had enough misgivings that he gave up a ride with a manufacturer team to drive for an independent team that last won the world championship in 2008 and last won a race in 2012. Did the Perth native make the right choice? Time will tell. But at age 30 he has probably made his final choice of which top F1 team he wants to join.

Up Front With Foges; The Cost of Racing - AA looks at the cost of Formula Vee; Holden Motorsport History- Project Blueprint; Law in Motorsport Part 2; Alan Jones 1980 Championship Monaco; Privateers; Short Circuit; Young Guns and loads more

THE FOGES FILE

with Mark Fogarty

AA’s pining pundit is looking forward to the return of real racing AT LAST, some clarity. All going well, Supercars will resume at the end of next month. Finally, we’ll be able to watch real racing. Don’t get me wrong. The Eseries has been entertaining and one of the very best virtual racing presentations. But it wasn’t real. Now we have proper Supercars competition to look forward to in just a matter of weeks. I can’t wait, even though I won’t be able to attend. Sydney Motorsport Park will be closed to non-official broadcast media. It’s an on-site numbers thing. Still, I’ll be happy to sit at home watching any kind of local racing. Or sport, for that matter. AFL is scheduled to return from June 11, a couple of weeks after the NRL. NASCAR is already back, with a series of rapid-fire events, while IndyCar is looking at a June 6 return at Texas Motor Speedway. Formula 1 is planning a TV-only return in July and August with back-to-back events at Austria’s Red Bull Ring and Britain’s Silverstone. MotoGP will be in there somewhere, too. So in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to watch plenty of crowd-free racing – if you subscribe to Foxtel or individual series’ streaming services. It will be a big relief to have big-time racing back. Supercars has done a good job with its revised calendar, spilling into early 2021. From the end of June, the events run every three weeks until mid-December, then jump to NZ in January and back to Bathurst in early February. The return of V8 sprint racing at Mount Panorama is especially exciting. Has the potential to be a new blockbuster. Seriously, can’t wait. Leading Supercars team owners are

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happy with the recast calendar. I spoke with Triple Eight supremo Roland Dane and Walkinshaw Andretti United chief Ryan Walkinshaw, and both were pleased with the new schedule. “I’m happy with anything that gets us racing again,” said his RDness. “It’s a calendar borne out of necessity. It’s workable. We’re ready to go.” Observed Walkinshaw: “Getting us back to racing as soon as possible has been a priority. The reduction of events (from 14 to 12) optimises commercial support. “I’m particularly looking forward to racing at Bathurst – twice!” According to Dane and Walkinshaw, Supercars kept the teams informed all the way through the coronavirus crisis. “There’s been plenty of communication about the potential problems and impediments,” Dane said. “Supercars has done a good job keeping us posted.” Added Walkinshaw: “We’ve been in touch with Supercars every couple of days on many issues.” Triple Eight has so far worked through the crisis, employing its design talent to engineer medical equipment. “We’ve been back at work since Easter with the majority of our people,” Dane said WAU has also deployed race staff to medical R&D, with several team

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personnel working since Easter. Full staffing will be restored by late this month or early June. Dane warns that Supercars teams, like the rest of the world, won’t come out of the COVID-19 pandemic unscathed. “We’re entirely in the hands of the shape of the economy in six months,” he said. “We can’t take it for granted that we’ll still be here. “But history shows that under economic pain, the effect on teams tends to be delayed.” Triple Eight has been rocked by General Motors’ announcement that it is killing the Holden brand. Its Holden Racing Team deal was signed until the end of 2021. Dane revealed that the on-going relationship with Holden/GM is yet to be decided. “We’re continuing to have discussions and, in due course, hopefully there’ll be a resolution,” he said. “I’m not pressing them at the moment. “GM has much bigger priorities.” Part of that is the friction between GM and Holden dealers over closure compensation terms. It’s refreshing to be talking about the resumption of racing and the future rather than what’s not been happening during the lockdown. Just five weeks to go until our racing fix is back!

WIND TUNNEL VISION FURTHER ON, you will read about Holden in the Group 3A era – the all-Aussie V8 Commodore versus Falcon revival from 1993. Interestingly, way back then, the rules still allowed Fishermans Bend and Broadmeadows to hone their designs in wind tunnels. Not that it was terribly accurate because the only ones available were for scale models at Melbourne’s RMIT and full-size cars at Monash University, which doesn’t have a rolling road. When talking to Group A era Holden Motorsport manager John Lindell, he confirmed the VN Commodore for the return of Holden versus Ford Falcon V8 racing in ’93, was wind tunnel-tested. According to Lindell, Holden’s design department made scale models that were tested in the RMIT tunnel, overseen by resident aerodynamicist Trevor Hird. A full-sized car was then measured at the Monash wind tunnel to verify the RMIT figures. The testing resulted in the aero package for the ’93 Commodore racer, which debuted at the ’92 Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000, running alongside the Group As. Ford also aero-tested the EB Falcon racer at Monash. Ironically, wind tunnel testing has been banned by Supercars for more than a decade.

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In the concluding instalment of the first of our new series with heroes of the past, MARK FOGARTY reminisces with 1980 world champion Alan Jones about his ill-fated returns to Formula 1

Reigning world champion in 1981, Alan Jones’ title defence was ultimately derailed by unreliability.

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THERE IS some confusion about when Alan Jones decided to retire from Formula 1 – the first time. Despite being fast in 1981, his title defence was derailed by unreliability and late in the season he began to have doubts about continuing. Exactly when Jones made up his mind to call it quits is unclear. It is reported in hindsight that he announced his impending retirement at the Canadian Grand Prix, the penultimate race. However, following the seasonending Las Vegas GP, which he won, Williams continued chasing Jones to re-sign. He may have informed Frank Williams in Montreal that he didn’t want to return in ’82, but the offer remained open and Jones continued to vacillate. It wasn’t until several weeks after the end of the F1 season that Jones, enjoying the onset of summer at his farm outside Melbourne, finally confirmed his seven-year F1 career was over. Jones, 73, now admits he regretted his decision within a few months, by which time he had been replaced at Williams by Keke Rosberg, who went on to win the ’82 world title. So a year later, he was rife for a return to F1 and was lured back by Arrows boss Jackie Oliver. That first comeback lasted just two races – the Long Beach GP and non-championship Race Of

Champions at Brands Hatch – before the money ran out. Jones’s second – and final – comeback was deep into the 1985 season with new big-money American squad Team Haas (not to be confused with the current Haas F1 Team). On paper, the enterprise looked a sure winner. Assembled by leading American team owner and Lola importer Carl Haas, it was backed by US food conglomerate Beatrice and Ford, which was to supply a Cosworth-designed 1.5-litre turbocharged V6. Tyre giant Goodyear was also on board and Lola supplied the chassis, with its design team including future star F1 technical directors Adrian Newey and Ross Brawn. Jones was handsomely paid, but the project was a disaster. The Ford V6 turbo was late, forcing the team to start with the overstressed Hart four-cylinder turbo. When the impressively compact Ford engine did arrive at the third race in ’86, it was under-powered and unreliable. In 19 starts, AJ failed to finish all but five in the Lola THL1 and Ford-powered THL2, with his only points-scoring results a fourth and a sixth in his final season. The end of Jones’s F1 career led to a chequered decade-long stint in ATCC/V8 Supercars in the 1990s before he finally hung up his helmet after the 2002 enduros.

When looking back on his first F1 retirement at the end of 1981, Jones is fixated on his disdain for Britain’s cold and wet climate. Why were you even thinking about retiring when, in your own estimation, you were driving better than ever in 1981? It’s not that I didn’t like living in England, it’s just that I hated the weather with a passion. There are a lot of English people I’ve made great friends with and love, but the weather was just getting me down. And I think the thing that really buggered it for me was I bought a farm 80 km northeast of Melbourne at a place called Glenburn (near Yea) and when I used to go back to the farm in the off-season, it was the Australian summer. So you’d be cutting hay, life was lovely and you’d go down to the pub afterwards and have a few cold beers, and I thought “This is great – I’m going to be a farmer”. It was only about an hour’s drive from Melbourne and I also had a house in Kew (well-to-do eastern suburb), so I thought I could have a really good lifestyle. Christian (his son) wasn’t that old and I thought “Well, I’m probably going to enhance my chances of being around for his 21st”. And also, I was a bit burned out, to be frank. I’d just spent three or four years literally belting myself up if I qualified any worse than about fourth or fifth position. So there was always that pressure and I was one of these sorts of drivers that when I went to a

At the height of his career, world champion and title contender, Alan Jones surprised the world by quitting F1 for the first time at the end of the 1981 season. He’s pictured above (right) with team boss Frank Williams (centre) and to his left, engineer Frank Dernie. Jones left Williams at the top of his game with a win at the Ceasar’s Palace Grand Prix, the final round of the 1981 Grand Prix season (left).

grand prix, I never even used to go down by the swimming pool in case I got sunburned or something. I never used to go out to play golf or even socialise all that much. And these were all pressures that I put on myself subconsciously. Had I relaxed a bit and gone out and played golf or gone down by the swimming pool, I probably would have been in a better state of mind. And, remember, in those days, there were no cell phones or cable TV, so you’d go back to your hotel room and twiddle your bloody thumbs until the Frogs would serve you dinner at about 9 pm or something. I think with cell phones and cable TV and all that shit, life would have been a lot more convenient and might have contributed to me staying on for another couple of years. But at that point, I was just a bit tired and, as I said, I used to come back to the farm and really love it. Of course, the first country Victoria winter I went through, I thought “Shit,

what have I done?” I used to spend half the day cuddled up in front of the fireplace. And in summer, you’d be asleep with one eye open waiting for a bush fire to rage through the joint. Then I got up one day and I had a 100 acre paddock next to the house and I had a couple of brand new Kubota tractors, one of which had a nice air-conditioned cabin with a radio and all that shit and I said to the farm manager “I’ll cut that”. I thought I’d just sit in that and make hay. I got about halfway through it and I thought “Shit, I’ve been on this thing for about five hours!” And then a plane flew over and I thought “Gee, I wonder where that’s going?” It was then that I realised I could go down to Melbourne and buy and sell a car and probably make more money than what would cutting grass to make hay. So I decided I wasn’t a farmer and then Jackie Oliver came along with this offer to make a comeback with Arrows. Of course, the way he explained it, it was going to be wider than Cinemascope and brighter than Technicolor, so I said, yes, I’ll give it a go. That was the first time I came out of retirement. As I recall, you strung Frank along for a while until you finally decided to retire. No, that’s not true. I just didn’t give him any notice. I didn’t string him along. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, to be honest with you. If I were stalling anybody, I was staling myself because one side of me wanted to knock it on the head and the other side didn’t, and I just wanted to string it along to see what

would happen. The other thing that helped me make my mind up is that at Las Vegas, Frank said “Oh, come back to England and drive the six-wheeler (experimental F1 car with four wheels at the back)”. I said to him that I just wanted to get back home. I was on the west coast of America and it was a one-flight deal to get back to Melbourne – 12 hours and I’m home. He kept at me and, to cut a long story short, I jumped on a plane to England, landed at Heathrow and, of course, it was overcast and freezing bloody cold. I went up to Donington Park to test the six-wheeler and I was staying at a motel nearby. When I got up in the morning, the locks on my car were frozen. This was before central locking, so I had to boil some water in a kettle and pour it over the lock just so I could get the key in to unlock the car. And then when I went to the circuit, the transporter was freezing and steam was coming out of my nose when I breathed, and I said to myself “Oh, I don’t know if I can put up with all this again”, bearing in mind I’d just left 28 degrees in Vegas. So I decided there and then that I was going home. I drove back to Heathrow and I’ll never forget it. Once again, it was overcast, drizzling, got on the Qantas flight and then the minute we broke through the

clouds, it was lovely and sunny. I was sitting there with a nice cold Foster’s and I thought “Nup, nup, I’m going home for good” and that was it. So it was quite late in the year when you told Frank, wasn’t it? Oh, absolutely. I think it was around October because Vegas was the last race (October 17). I think it might have been at the second last race (Montreal, September 27) that I told him. He knew before the end of the season that’s what I wanted to do, but then he kept chasing me and I kept putting him off until I decided I definitely didn’t want to continue. I could have given Frank more notice, but as I say, it was me being indecisive more than anything else. It wasn’t deliberate. It wasn’t as bad as (teammate Carlos) Reutemann. He re-signed for 1982 and then just quit after two races. Really left them in the lurch. Subsequently, you came to regret your decision, didn’t you? Well, I did. Which backs up what I just said. I really didn’t know whether I wanted to retire or not, but once you make that decision to do it, then you do it. And when I had done it, by around February the following year, I realised that I should have stayed on a bit longer. But by then Frank had got a new driver (Keke Rosberg) and that was it.

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“I equate it to getting all the best ingredients and giving it to a chef that ****ed it up.” A year later, Jones was back with Arrows – briefly. Then Beatrice beckoned in 1985, with former Williams commercial guru Charlie Crichton-Stuart dangling a huge driving fee – always an incentive for AJ. In hindsight, both those decisions appear ill-advised. Were they? I think the first decision was probably illadvised, but both times, the great motivating factor was money. As a professional racing driver, I think you have to have a bit of prostitution in you, anyway. Jackie Oliver said he had this billionaire backer and it was all going to happen, blah, blah, blah. As I said, by then I’d more or less decided I’d retired from F1 prematurely, so I went back with Arrows. Of course, that didn’t work out the way it was supposed to. There was no billionaire. I think Jackie was using the fact that he’d got the ex-world champion out of retirement as a bit of a bait to get a sponsor. I did Long Beach and the Race Of Champions, but nothing was appearing, so I just said the Jackie “Hey, look, I’m out of here unless I see something”. Nothing appeared, so I retired once again. As I keep saying to people, I’ve had more comebacks than Dame Nellie Melba.

F1 comeback number two was with the new Haas team. On paper it looked good with mega funding, proper resources, a Lola chassis and a new Cosworth-developed, Ford-funded V6 turbocharged engine. The reality was disappointing if financially rewarding, says Jones.

wasn’t rubbing quite as hard on my femur. That’s the reason for the modification. How did your second comeback eventuate? Charlie Crichton-Stuart rang me up and said Carl (Haas) is forming a team and he wants you as the driver. I told him “Mate, I’ve retired mentally and physically”. But he said he’d come out to Australia so we could talk about

it. So he came out and said “Look, I’ve been told to offer you this, but I can go to that, so why don’t I just offer you that now and I’ll have a week here with you and we’ll have a bit of fun?” He used to ring them up every day and tell them “I’m getting close, I’ve nearly got him”. Of course, we’d be out on the boat having a grand old time. Mind you, knowing Charlie, it was probably a bit of reverse psychology. He probably could’ve

gone to even more, anyway, but he got me with the original figure and he had a week in Australia, and everyone was happy. So I threw myself into the gym and lost some weight and got fit. He told me we were going to have top Goodyear tyres, we were going to have the might of Ford behind us, and it all sounded fantastic. It was going to a powerhouse American team and it all sounded pretty good – and the money was pretty huge. So I thought “Well, what have I got to lose, really? Bugger it, I’ll give it a go.” How much were you being paid? It was $1.6 million a year. Thirty odd years ago, that was big money in F1 (equivalent to about $3.6 million now).

Is it true that you’d put on a bit of weight and they had to widen the chassis so you could fit in it?

It all looked good on paper, but it turned out to be a bit of a disaster, didn’t it?

No. What had happened was, I’d fallen off a horse and broken my femur. It wasn’t 100 per cent healed and when I went back, my left side was rubbing up against the tub and it was aggravating my broken femur. So I got a mallet and bashed in the inner side of the left-hand side of the monocoque so it

I equated it to getting all the best ingredients you possibly could and giving it to a chef that f***ed it up. I was told “You’re going to see American muscle at its best”. Cosworth designed a beautiful little engine – beautifully put together, but completely f***ing gutless. The electronics were done by Ford

Jones’ first F1 comeback was with Arrows in 1982. He was promised a lot but it wasn’t delivered. He retired again after two races.

OVAL RACING: ‘I HATED IT’ Wh y AJ never tried to conquer the Indy 500

Jones was given the honour of being the first F1 driver to do a lap of the then-new Adelaide street circuit, ahead of the 1985 Australian Grand Prix.

in America and the mechanics by Cosworth in Northamptonshire. It either drive out of the pits beautifully and wouldn’t go on the circuit or it’d kangaroo hop out of the pits and go reasonably well on the circuit. I remember at Monza we were something like 30 km/h slower down the straight than the Ferraris. Old Keith Duckworth (Cosworth co-founder and DFV V8 designer) came up to me and said “But how much rear wing are you running?” I said “Oh, f***, Keith, please. Have a look at my rear wing and then go and have a look at Ferrari’s. They’re running a barn door at the back and they’re 30 kays quicker. Please. What sort of a question’s that?” Well, it was all off to a bad start with the Hart engine, wasn’t it? I described the Hart engine as a boy trying to do a man’s job. It was a Formula 2 engine stretched and teased into an F1 engine. It was never a matter of if it blew up, it was always when. It was a hand grenade. Through all the difficulties, a highlight was when Bernie let you be the first F1 car on the Adelaide street circuit for the first world championship Australian GP in 1985. It was indeed a highlight. It really made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. To go around by yourself before first practice with everyone in the crowd screaming and yelling was fantastic. Funny thing was, Ken Tyrrell kicked up a fuss, claiming I was getting an unfair advantage. I said to him “Ken, you obviously haven’t been watching too closely, have you? I could start last night and I’m still not going to win.”

How did you think you were driving in that period? I thought I was driving all right. I mean, I got a fourth in Austria in ‘86 when the bloody thing didn’t blow up for once. I f***ed the start of the Australian Grand Prix and got up to sixth or something. Mind you, I had the boost turned up because I thought “This thing’s going to shit itself, so I may as well put on a good show”. We got up to fourth before it did inevitably shit itself. So I was relatively happy with the way I was driving. I honestly thought that if I’d been in a Williams or a Ferrari or something, I could have been a frontrunner. Tell me again about the time when you had so little faith the car would finish, you arranged for your driver to be waiting outside a particular corner to take you straight to the airport. It was Portugal in ’86 and at that stage I had my own plane. So I just told Jeremy, who became Frank’s driver/pilot for many years afterwards, to get the plane fuelled up and warmed up, and make sure there are some beers in the fridge, because we’re going to be out of here. On lap four or five, I threw it into the boonies at the hairpin behind the pits, jumped out, went to the motorhome, got changed and pissed off. By then I’d decided that if they weren’t going to do

their job, I’m not going to do mine. I’ll give a 105 per cent, but I want to be sure the people I’m working with give 105 per cent. If it’s just a complete and utter waste of time, well then, count me out. I’m going home. So the car didn’t actually fail? No! I threw it into the bloody ditch. And I don’t know if I’m proud of it or not. I don’t care. Obviously, if there was a chance of even getting some points, I wouldn’t dreamed of doing that. It’s the first and only time I’ve done anything like that, but I was so pissed off and so bloody fed up with it all, it drove me to that sort of measure. I love that story. You couldn’t make it up. Niki (Lauda) was worse. He was invited to go over to the International Race Of Champions, where you drove those horrible f***ing Pontiac stock cars. They used to pay really good money and expenses and everything. So Niki said to them “I want you to pay for my fuel and the regauging of my Lear jet”. He needed new instruments for his plane. They agreed, so he went over to do a race at Riverside. He had Lear put in all new instruments and then he went to Riverside and clutched it. He said see ya later and flew straight back to Austria.

RENOWNED AS one of the most fearless F1 racers of his time, Alan Jones had no stomach for American open-wheel oval racing. Jones tried it once – and never returned. Before he was an F1 star, he sampled USAC Indycar at the opening round in 1977 at Ontario Motor Speedway in southern California. The now long defunct track was a west coast replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Jones was entered by wealthy Hong Kong backer Teddy Yip in an ageing McLaren M16C. He was non-plussed from the start. “I hated it,” he recalled. “A plane would fly over and because it would cast a shadow, they’d stop practice. I just didn’t like it. It was just going around in circles.” Jones decried the insular attitude of Indycar racing. “I’ll never forget, I ran up close to the wall and cut down to take a line through a corner, like you would on a road circuit,” he said. “Afterwards, AJ Foyt came up to me and said ‘Hey, boy, we don’t take lines, we just go around’. And I thought ‘Well, that just about sums it up’.” Jones pulled out after struggling in qualifying – with no regrets. “I wasn’t real keen on the idea that if I crashed, I’d hit the bloody wall and come back as a crowd,” he said. “The gearboxes had a habit of flying off the bloody things if you hit the wall. I didn’t really want a gearbox coming back and hitting me in the face. “It was like bloody Rollerball. It was just going around in circles.” Typically, Jones just walked away. “After qualifying, I said ‘Nuh, this is not me, I’m not doing it’. And Teddy Yip said ‘Right, well let’s go to Las Vegas for the weekend’. I said ‘Mate, you’ve got me’.” Not even F1/Indycar legend Dan Gurney could convince Jones to reconsider Indycars. “Dan came up to me and said ‘Hang on, don’t make a judgement too soon’,” he remembered. “He said ‘Stay on an extra couple of days, and come back and have a drive of one of my cars because the car you’re in is a pile of shit’. “And I said ‘Oh, Dan, look, thanks very much, really appreciate it, but it’s just not me, mate. I don’t want

to do it’. “So I went off to Vegas and had a nice weekend with Teddy and on the Monday or the Tuesday, Steve Krisiloff, who took my place in the car, said to me ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, it’s the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever driven’. “But even if it had been the best car on the circuit, I just didn’t like that form of racing. Also, at that time, I’d just walked out on Surtees (in F1) and I didn’t really know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. “So I thought I’d try USAC racing to see if I liked it. I didn’t like it, so I thought, nuh, bugger it.” Jones doesn’t dismiss Indycar oval racing – it just wasn’t for him. “I’m not decrying that form of racing,” he said. “I do believe it’s a black art and I do believe you still have to be bloody good to win races in it. But it just wasn’t me. “I didn’t like it at all. I hated it.” He was never tempted to try the Indianapolis 500, despite offers. His only Indycar start was in 1985, when he was drafted by Carl Haas – his Beatrice F1 boss – to stand in for an injured Mario Andretti at the Road America CART race at the classic Elkhart Lake road course. Rating the track as “fantastic”, Jones finished third, then the best result by a rookie until F1 refugee Nigel Mansell won on debut at Surfers Paradise in ’93. Even then, former F1 world champion Jones had to earn his stripes under autocratic CART chief steward – and ex-accomplished Indycar racer – Wally Dallenbach at a rookie test at Firebird Raceway outside Phoenix, Arizona. “Good old Americans,” Jones remembers. “I’m there to do a road race, but I still had to pass a rookie test. I have to show them I’m actually capable of circulating around Firebird Raceway without crashing and that I can do a pit stop safely. “It was only after that that they allowed me to race. Presumably, if I’d crashed or stalled it going out of the pits, they wouldn’t have allowed me to race at Elkhart Lake.” Jones proved his class in what was a flashback to his success with Carl Haas in 1978, when he won the Can-Am Challenge Cup for what were by then full-bodied F5000 racers. MF

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And I said “F*** symmetry – how about just doing it so we can save the gearbox or save my knuckles”

Jones drove for F1 legend Graham Hill (pictured with Jones at left) early in his career and describes him as “difficult” but good to drive for.

Early in his F1 career, Jones drove for ex-world champion team owners Graham Hill (1975) and John Surtees (’76) – both renowned as divas. He harbours special contempt for Surtees. Going back, you drove for Hill and Surtees. First off, how was Hill to work with? Difficult. Not as difficult as Surtees. Surtees was bloody impossible. The problem with driving for ex-drivers is that they really want to go back into the cockpit via you. John was just impossible. To give you an idea, I couldn’t change gear without rubbing my knuckles on the side of the cockpit. So I asked him if we could put a bubble there so it gives me a bit of room to change gears because I’m either missing bloody gears or I’m coming out with bleeding knuckles. He said “That’s a very good idea. Write these sorts of things down and next year we’ll put a bubble on either side so it looks symmetrical’. And I said “F*** symmetry – how about just doing it so we can save the gearbox or save my knuckles”. At the Nurburgring, I actually touched wheels with Brambilla because I was having trouble getting it into gear. Touched wheels and spun over the Adenauer bridge. I went straight back to the pits and said to Surtees “Look, this is a f***ing joke” and he said “That’s good, you write that down”. You’d go to a grand prix and by the end of qualifying, because it had that bull nose on it, you’d have the splitter all the way out, the sliding side dams would be fully up and the flaps at the back of the nose would be fully raised, just to stop the understeer. Then you’d go to the next grand prix and all that stuff would be at their minimum settings again. “John, what are we doing?” “Oh, Goodyear have brought out some new tyres and I think that’s probably what we need”. Sure enough, by the end of qualifying, everything on the nose was back up again and you’d have achieved nothing. It was just a complete joke.

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Jones respects what John Surtees achieved as the only world champion on two and four wheels, but says he was impossible to drive for. He hid in his hotel room so Surtees couldn’t find him to sign a new contact!

Then we’d go down to Goodwood and he’d test the car without any wings. I’d ask him what we were going to learn and he’d tell me it was a good way of testing the actual chassis. I said to him “But without the wings, the cars going to feel totally different than with them and the suspension’s going to act differently”. He disagreed. F***ing hopeless. It was just impossible. You talk to any driver who’s driven for him and they all say the same thing – complete f***ing lunatic. You have to admire what the man had done – only person to win a world championship on two and four wheels. Absolute admiration in that respect, but a nightmare to drive for. Hill was also difficult, but he actually wasn’t a bad bloke to drive for. He would carry on in the motorhome abusing someone and then there’d be a knock on the door and it’d be a journalist. Suddenly, he’d be all smiles and offering them a cup of tea. Did Hill try to tell you how to drive? No, he didn’t try to get in the cockpit with you like Surtees did. He was just a little bit difficult sometimes. But a helluva nice guy away from the track. Did your time at Surtees put you off F1 for a while?

Well, it never put me off F1, but it nearly stopped me because I didn’t know what I was going to do after that. I was so fed up, I thought I’d worry about that later. In Canada, I was up in the room hiding because he had to renew my contract by midnight that night. In the end, I decided it was bloody ridiculous and I went out to get a hamburger. Typical Jones’s Law, the lift doors open at the ground floor and who should be standing there but bloody Surtees. I’ve more or less bumped into him and he had the contract with him. I made up some bullshit and managed to avoid him until it was too late to get me to re-sign. What made the ’76 season interesting was the Durex sponsorship of your car and the controversy that caused in the UK. The BBC wasn’t going to televise the Race Of Champions (non-championship event at Brands Hatch) because I was sponsored by a condom manufacturer. As luck would have it, it was wet and greasy – conditions in which I’m normally pretty good – and I was right up behind James Hunt for the majority of the race, so they had to show the car because I was battling with Hunt for the lead. Durex were rapt out of their brains. [Jones finished second.]

Did you use the product? I was their test pilot for a while. At the other end of his F1 career, Jones was briefly considered to replace (ironically) Keke Rosberg at McLaren alongside Alain Prost in 1987. I seem to recall there may have been some chance for you at McLaren? That was the second time. When the deal with Arrows in ’83 fell apart, I was still in England and Ron Dennis rang me up and said “Niki’s got a really bad cold and I’m not sure if he can race at Monaco”. He offered me X amount of dollars to go there on stand-by and Y amount of dollars if I actually had to stand in for Lauda. Once again, I made a silly decision. I just said no, I’m going back home. At worse, I could’ve swanned around Monaco and got a few bob, and at best I would’ve been in a relatively competitive McLaren in the Monaco GP. I just said no. And then I was kind of in contention after Keke retired at the end of ’86. Ron knew I’d had a gutful of the whole Beatrice farce (the team subsequently folded), so we had a talk about me driving for him in ’87. It didn’t go anywhere, though, and the drive went to Stefan Johansson, who was Marlboro’s golden-haired boy. They loved him.

No matter what he did with it, Jones could not cure the Surtees F1 car of terminal understeer. His team owners didn’t understand or care.

AJ FACT FILE

The final chapter in Jones’s direct F1 involvement – after years as an acerbic pundit on Australian TV coverage – was as one of the rotating ex-driver stewards. Predictably, his outspokenness didn’t wear well with the FIA. You were an F1 steward for several years, but you quit in 2018. What happened there? Well, there were a number of contributing factors. Mainly, though, I was getting sick and tired of the stupid penalties and a lot of the time there were people that were so-called stewards that didn’t know one end of a race car from the other. And now I’m really glad I’m not a steward because with all these silly bloody penalties, the racing is suffering. You have to admit, the stewards

have been getting a lot of flak because of the inconsistency of their decisions. And it’s extremely hard to criticise and pull to pieces something if you’re working for the people you’re criticising and pulling to pieces. So now they can’t sack me because I’ve left. This unvarnished discussion of Jones’s F1 exploits only scratches

the surface of his diverse and controversial career. In the future, we will return with recollections of his years in F5000, Can-Am and tumultuous time in Australian racing, as well as his early struggles to succeed in the shadow of his famous father Stan, a local hero in the 1950s and early ’60s.

Age: 73 Born: Melbourne Lives: Gold Coast Status: Retired with young second family Activities: Lexus ambassador; legend-for-hire Racing career: 1966-2002 Honours: MBE, Sport Australia Hall Of Fame, FIA Hall Of Fame, Australian Motorsport Hall Of Fame Legend Championships: 1978 Can-Am (Haas), 1980 F1 (Williams), 1982 Australian Sports Car (Porsche) F1 race wins: 12 (1977/79/80/81) Other: 1980 Australian Grand Prix Jones was in discussions with Ron Dennis about driving for McLaren but the drive ultimately went to Stefan Johansson (left).

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FAREWELL HOLDEN MOTORSPORT 1948-2020 - PART SIX

Jim Richards powers the Gibson Motorsport VP Commodore through the first chicane at the Adelaide Grand Prix street circuit. He was the first to win for Holden in the new V8 era.

AUSTRALIA’S Th start The t t off 1993 19993 heralded h ld d a new dawn d for f touring t i car racing i in i Australia. A t li But B t as HEATH McALPINE discovered, it brought with it an equal mix of innovation and bickering that formed the basis of future dominance IMAGES: AA Archive

BY THE end of 1992, the Holden Racing Team had been largely unsuccessful. Its 1990 Bathurst victory had taken some of the heat off but the Group A era was a largely forgettable period for the Commodore, bar a couple of unexpected international success. Locally, it was outclassed by its turbo and evolution homologated rivals. However, plans were hatched in 1991 to revolutionise touring car racing in this country by CAMS to arrest falling entries and spectator interest. Initially, the plan was to combine the five-litre Commodores and the two-litre formula used in the British Touring Car Championship in an equalised format, but this displeased Holden in particular.

A Toyota Camry matching a Holden Commodore V8 down the Conrod Straight? Not going to happen. In the middle of all this was Wally Storey. The vastly experienced engineer is now semi-retired after a celebrated career in Supercars, most recently at Brad Jones Racing. But back in 1992, Storey was part of the furniture at HRT, after joining three years earlier when Win Percy took over the team. “I was very involved in the regulations and the actual getting it off the ground in the first place, because CAMS was really keen to run an everyone together category, the two-litres and five-litres,” Storey told Auto Action. “CAMS were going to go out of its way to match the two-litre and five-litre cars.

Tomas Mezera was the HRT’s primary driver in 1993 aboard the VP-model Commodore, seen here at Phillip Island. This was the first official season of the new V8 two-make formula.

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“I was invited along to a meeting by Holden’s John Lindell as a technical consultant. One day he stared John Keefe in the eye and said to him ‘If you think you’re going to have a Toyota Camry racing a Holden Commodore five-litre down the straight at Sandown, you can forget it. It doesn’t happen in real life and it isn’t happening here. If this where you’re heading with this, Holden will not be here’.” Support for a solely a Ford versus Holden formula was thus very strong, with the Blue Oval’s motor sport division headed by Peter Gillitzer indicating interest in returning to racing under such regulations. A meeting between Storey, Lindell and Gillitzer revealed Ford’s plan for an initial three-year program, but knowing its history in Australian motor sport of only committing in short spurts, Holden demanded a further pledge. A five-year commitment was later agreed. What was to be known as Group 3A was now starting to take shape, with Holden having the advantage of a ready-made racing model in the form of the Commodore Group A, while Ford was forced to build a new V8 Falcon racer from scratch. This posed a problem when Dick Johnson Racing team manager Neal Lowe designed and built a radical prototype. “CAMS came out with some regulations and we didn’t agree with them,” Storey recalled. “CAMS was saying it didn’t want hot rods, it wanted the category based on standard cars.

“Neal Lowe built a car at Dick’s and he built it like a sports sedan. He had an engine plate at each end of the block and tied it to the roll cage, and CAMS rejected it.” This new Falcon caused difficulties at HRT as well after Tom Walkinshaw viewed it, blueing with Storey about the direction in which he was taking their program down, even though HRT’s workshop manager had the inside information from CAMS. “He’d [Lowe] been in Tom’s ear telling him CAMS would accept it,” said Storey. “Tom and I had a huge blue about it as, through my contacts at CAMS, I knew it was going to get rejected. I had been told it had been flung and I actually had a copy of the defect notice, with all the names chopped off on the top and bottom, faxed to me. “So, I knew. But to hold faith with the people that had told me, I could only say I was very sure. Tom rang me and said, ‘They’ll put this thing on the track it looks like a race car and yours looks like a road car’. “I told him the brief that CAMS had given us, it has to be based on a standard car and this is what we got. We put it forward and CAMS has accepted it.” Although Storey had reasoned with Walkinshaw that his design direction was to the maximum of the new regulations, the head of HRT remained paranoid that DJR’s concept would be accepted. Walkinshaw even redesigned a radical new Commodore, much to Storey’s displeasure.

“Tom got together with a TWR guy by the name of Kenny Page and redesigned the cage, put a horizontal watts linkage and various other pieces,” Storey recounted. “They had this other bodyshell half built, we had one bare bodyshell that hadn’t been tuned, one that had half been tuned and one that had been chopped up. “Finally, CAMS came out with a defect notice because Tom had redesigned one of our Commodores, moving the shock points as well as this, that and the other. “Graham Hoinville came out and inspected it, and rejected it.” Although Storey never received a verbal apology from his British boss, he did provide help in the form of two workers. “Sandown was two weeks away and we didn’t have a car,” he said. “He sent two blokes from England to come help prepare a new car.” As it was a known quantity, Storey and his team were able to innovate when designing the upgraded VP. The model debuted at the 1992 Sandown 500 alongside a Falcon for Seton, while DJR went back to the drawing board. “The basic bodyshell wasn’t that different to a VN because it was proven,” Storey explained. “We had a pretty known product, all the struts, brakes remained the same and by that stage I was into developing twin calipers. I had two front calipers and I had quite a few projects on the go.” A big change, though, was the replacement of the venerable Holden V8

Larry Perkins partnered with Gregg Hansford to score the last-ever Holden-engined win at Bathurst in 1993 (above). At left HRT Workshop Manager Wally Storey consults with driver Tomas Mezera.

with a Chevrolet version, due to Ford’s equivalent having a better cylinder head. HRT’s engine development took place in England and was headed by Rob Benson, though relations were strained between the two workshops. When the engines arrived at the HRT workshop in Notting Hill, there was a problem. “We put a bonnet on the car and climbed up through the engine bay to do dimensional measurements of everything, of where the bonnet was relative to the crankshaft centre. But when the engine turned up, we couldn’t shut the bonnet,” said Storey.

“The trumpets stuck out of the bonnet, however the requirement was to use a Group A bonnet without the bulge, and we couldn’t lower it.” After much back and forth between the two countries, a solution was found by staggering the length of the trumpets. The fit of the Chev engine into the VP Commodore also allowed Storey to display his engineering prowess, though politics played its part due to a change of management. Former rival Lowe had become HRT team manager ahead of the 1993 season. “There were a few difficulties because of

Ron Harrop came to head up HRT in 1993 and brought much technical innovation (left). Peter Brock returned to the factory Holden team, seen here leading teammate Tomas Mezera in inclement conditions at Sandown in 1995.

where the distributor was located because on the Holden motor it was at the front and the Chevrolet’s was on the back corner near the manifold, so putting an air box on isn’t that easy,” Storey described. “I ended up making a distributor with a sync sensor, so it knows where no.1 is, with the rotor button, cap and nothing else; it was a short thing that sat under the manifold. “The other thing I did for a while was put the dry sump pump in the oil tank, which politically ended up getting flung, but worked brilliantly. It was good from a centre of gravity, plumbing and weight point of view because you need a bellhousing anyway. “It ended up heavy because it had the heater and held quite a bit of oil. It got flung at Lakeside because an oil tank failed.” Development of the new aerodynamic bodywork was also another contentious issue. As TWR had experience developing Le Mans winning machines, the job of designing these new pieces was given to it. But when the revised items returned, Storey was left disappointed. “I wasn’t happy with the bodywork that was done by TWR in England,” Storey recalled. “A car was put in the MIRA wing tunnel but TWR didn’t maximise it by any stretch. “I’d sent TWR a wing that I had got from Malcolm Oastler, a wing profile and I’d actually made a wing. “I have a video of me testing this thing down the (Melbourne) South-Eastern Freeway and we took it to Phillip Island to run. It was in three parts because the air comes at the wing at a different angle

‘Captain Chaos’ ... World 500cc Motorcycle Champion Wayne Gardner switched to Touring Cars for season 1993 at HRT but then started his own team a year later, with Coke backing.

compared to the ends which comes over the roof in the middle, but comes around the sides of the cars at the ends. “I sent that wing over and this tiny little toy thing came back. There was no undertray, but there was a wide variety of gurneys. “The designers that ended up doing the job were the styling department because that was the department at TWR that needed the work and when it came back, I was politically stuck with it.”

Bodywork was also a sticking point for the Fords as Storey pointed out at the 1992 Adelaide Grand Prix support race. Bodywork samples had to be submitted by September, but what the Falcons of Seton and Johnson were running was different to what had been run at Sandown. “The rule was that you had to carry the homologation papers and I got in the habit of carrying ones for the other manufacturers as well, so when the Falcon ran at Sandown

I went looking for the papers after that event. But CAMS wouldn’t supply the papers and at the Grand Prix I found out there weren’t any yet. “I said, ‘How has this car done two meetings without any homologation papers?’ With evidence and the support of Holden’s director of marketing Rob McEniry, Storey took the case to the stewards and although he won, the result failed to help HRT. “At the end of the hearing I was asked what I wanted, I responded by requesting three months to do extra aero work, which Ford had done since Sandown,” Storey said. “I said that I’d come back before the first round with samples of the aero kit, but it was disallowed, as supply to the other (Holden) teams was a concern.” Larry Perkins ultimately debuted his VP Commodore later in the season with an upgraded aero kit that included a front bar with an undertray and a revised gurney on the rear wing. These additions were allowed only after plenty of politicking. Storey’s journey at HRT ended during

Larry Perkins and Russell Ingall famously came from last place on the opening lap after a puncture, to victory at Bathurst in 1995 aboard the VR-model Commodore.

Peter Brock’s HRT entry heads the field at Sandown in 1996 (above), chased by Wayne Gardner, Larry Perkins and Dick Johnson ... four absolute legends of the sport nose-to-tail.

the 1993 season, as he left to join good friend Neil Crompton at Bob Forbes Racing. However, his role was taken by another experienced engineer in the form of Ron Harrop. Joining at the insistence of Tomas Mezera at the Oran Park finale in 1993, Harrop arrived at a time when the team was emerging as a force, working alongside young engineers Richard Hollway and Chris Dyer. “I had a meeting with Tom [Walkinshaw] at the end of the year. At some stage TWR’s Andy Morrison and Eddie Hinckley came over to close up the whole deal because it wasn’t going so well,” Harrop told Auto Action. “I chatted to them and they must have gained a little bit of confidence, so it got turned around for whatever reason. Whether I had much to do with it or not, I don’t know.” A further meeting with Walkinshaw resulted in a formal deal taking place with Harrop, kicking off a five-year spell as HRT’s chief engineer. Results were hard to come by with Harrop admitting, “It was very frustrating because we could see the potential, but not the results.” b With the new VR model, though, it was clean sheet of paper and Harrop alongside his engineers developed an array of innovations. “It was a whole lot of engineering ideas that made more sense, more durable,” Harrop in describing the VR. “There were quite a few innovations we did from time to time; one was a linear bearing front strut that I designed and made way back. It was staggering the difference that made because of the stiction of the bushes of the normal strut tubes especially when it went from 40mm to the 50mm strut tubes. There was a lot more surface area, there was a lot more stiction even though they were Teflon bushes and then we put linear bearings in.

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“It was like 0.6-0.7s difference at Calder, it was just staggering. “I think the first time we used them was at Wanneroo. The car would turn, (it had) mid-corner and grip, whereas before it washed off speed because once there was lateral loading on it, things didn’t want to slide up and down. The fact that you still had suspension compliance made a huge difference.” Another innovation that was later banned, was adapted from a similar design to the spring wire clip of Harrop’s tea bag jar, which enabled brake changes to be made in 14s. “We made calipers that retracted the pistons during a pit stop, you didn’t need pliers to push the pads or pistons back,” Harrop explained. “Before the car was fully on the jack stands, the pistons were back and all you had to do was open the caliper, pluck the pads out and whack new ones back in. “It was just quite unbelievable, but a bit of a giveaway it was that it operated through air pressure from the air jacks. When it activated all this brake dust would fly out of the wheel!” For Harrop, Dyer (who went onto work in Formula 1 at Arrows, Ferrari and currently Renault) and Hollway (currently at GRM) it was about identifying a problem and effecting a cure. Several of Harrop’s developments included a revolutionary set of inlet manifolds featuring elliptical butterflies, and centre lock wheel nuts, which have now become the norm today. The icing on the cake during this period was taking the treble in 1996 with Craig Lowndes winning the ATCC, Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000 (joined by Greg Murphy for the latter two). For Harrop, it was time to move on to the next developments. “In some ways it was not that thrilling for me, it was just confirmation that what you were doing was heading in the right direction,” concluded Harrop.

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THE EARLY COMMODORE YEARS HOLDEN’S SUCCESS during the preSupercars era was mixed and not nearly as dominant as the late 1990s-early 2000s. In fact, it was Ford that held the ascendency early on. Glenn Seton and new teammate Alan Jones cruised to a comfortable 1-2 in the pair of blue Peter Jackson Falcons in the ‘93 Australian Touring Car Championship. John Bowe won the opening round of the new era at a packed Amaroo Park and finished third in the title fight for Dick Johnson Racing. It wasn’t until the penultimate round at Barbagallo when Jim Richards broke Holden’s duck, to give the new VP Commodore its maiden round win. The endurance events were split as the second-string Peter Jackson Racing Ford Falcon of Geoff Brabham and David Parsons won the Sandown 500 in a race of attrition. At Bathurst, Larry Perkins famously took the final Holden-engined victory alongside Gregg Hansford in the Castrol VP. If its debut season was lacklustre, 1994 certainly made up for it as Mark Skaife

dominated the title while Peter Brock moved back to the factory Holden team. Skaife won four rounds including the first three on his way to the second title, but the endurance events were both taken out by Bowe and Dick Johnson. The first model change for each manufacturer occurred the next year as the VR and EF lifted the competition stakes across the board. Aerodynamics were now a major talking point, with Bowe taking the title clear of Seton and Brock, the latter demonstrating improved performance from HRT. A forgettable Bathurst 1000 for HRT left Perkins and new co-driver Russell Ingall to take a come-from-behind victory, while Johnson and Bowe completed back-to-back Sandown 500 wins. HRT finally realised its potential in 1996 when young gun Craig Lowndes won six out of the 10 ATCC rounds to complete a dream championship debut. That then carried on to the endurance events where he and Greg Murphy completed the Sandown-Bathurst double. HM

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FAREWELL HOLDEN MOTORSPORT 1948-2020 - PART SIX

DOMINANCE

In Formula 1 there was Ferrari, in V8 Supercars it was the Holden Racing Team. Both teams enjoyed unparalleled success in the late-1990s and early-2000s. HEATH McALPINE discovered that the ground work had already been laid in the seasons before. IMAGES: AA Archive

THE EARLY years of the V8 Supercars era was dominated by the Holden Racing Team. Its ‘Red Devil’ VT and VX Commodores delivered soundly on the promise demonstrated by the Claytonbased squad during the early-1990s. Kicking off with Craig Lowndes’ success in 1996, HRT won five out of the next six titles, emerging into a force that left Ford and its teams in its wheel tracks. Between the VT’s debut at Calder Park in 1998 and the end of the VX in 2002, Holden won 45 rounds, including four Bathurst 1000s, massively more success that the AU-model Ford Falcon. HRT had begun building towards this success with team manager Jeff Grech overseeing its transformation, starting with the remarkable 1996 season. Though 1997 proved to be a disappointing one amid Brock’s farewell and Lowndes’ F3000 campaign in Europe, it spawned the remarkably successful era that followed including five driver’s titles on the trot, 26 round victories and back-toback Bathurst triumphs. Grech revealed that it was a combination of the right drivers and a young, passionate team that drove HRT to supremacy.

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GRM emerged as front runners in this era, this is Garth Tander (above left) at Bathurst in 2000 on his way to victory with Jason Bargwanna, while Craig Lowndes leads Russell Ingall and Mark Skaife at Barbagallo in 1998 (above).

“Well I guess a couple of the milestones during that era if you separate it, was the signing of Craig Lowndes and getting Peter Brock back into the factory team,” Grech told Auto Action. “The continuation of that, the drivers in that dominatant year, we were fortunate to have Lowndes and Mark Skaife for sure because they were the guys that won the championships. “On top of that, it was the staff that we had, we had a great team, everything was done in-house. Of that team, the engine shop was very good, the engineering and

design was great, and the car preparation, the running of the cars was good. It was the drivers and the people, which were the main factors.” Grech gave credit too to long-time Holden executive and HRT boss through that period John Crennan, who aligned the race team with the HSV road car business, creating greater opportunities for both. “The bloke who was really the conductor of that whole era was John Crennan,” praised Grech. “Certainly, as a leader of that

organisation he was the key to it all as well as linking HRT to the Holden Special Vehicles brand. At that time Ford were doing the same with Tickford, which had its road car business linking in with the racing. But it was not nearly as well done as what John was able to do with the branding between HSV and HRT.” This filtered back through the race team by increasing the budget and enabling HRT to continue developing the race package, remaining one step ahead of its opposition. “For the majority of HSV customers,

Mark Skaife in the HRT VX and pseudo teammate Todd Kelly in the Kmart Racing entry head th h i hi fi ld att O ft) Ab h d powers th the championship field Oran P Parkk iin 2001 (l (left). Above, St Steve Ri Richards the Gib Gibson Motorsport VT-model out of The Chase towards victory at Bathurst in 1999, in a car he shared with Greg Murphy.

motor sport was an important past time to them and it was an amazing link, which grew from there,” Grech continued. “It provided the funding to go racing as good as we could and on top of that, having the drivers around, we were able to do innovative things. We were leaders in a lot of that innovation in motor sport around that period and that’s what led to the success of, in the end both teams, HRT and Kmart.” Crennan set to work in 1993 on implementing a plan to create the underpinnings of a successful team. It began at Bathurst where Brock was attracted back to the factory operation, Grech was installed as team manager, and Ron Harrop appointed as chief engineer.

“John had a three-year plan and it was to get the best drivers, put the best team together, and (the) best innovations going,” Grech recounted. “That started with the contracting of Ron Harrop to start that process off and that was when it was said to England in a polite way, thanks, but no thanks, we want to go our own way. “That was hard, Tom believed that England was the best supplier of engineering and R&D, but one of the things at that transition point, he was getting more involved in Formula 1 and the British Touring g Cars. C

John Faulkner was one off m many anyy Co an C Comm Commodore ommod odor dor oree privateers during this era (above) (above), but it was Craig Lowndes (below) who emerged as Holden’s hero, seen here at the 1996 Sandown 500.

Mark Skaife, aboard HRT chassis 045 ‘The Golden Child’ (VX) heads Ford’s new charger Marcos Ambrose (AU Falcon) at Hidden Valley (above) while Craig Lowndes (VT) races towards title number three here at the championship round at Bathurst in 1999 (below left). Paul Morris (VT) was as spectacular as his sponsor was loud (below right) and took his solitary solo round win at Calder Park in 2001.

“In the end it looked like we’d taken a bit of pressure off them and they could do their thing over there and our thing here. “It wasn’t without breaking a few egg shells, we grew it, we didn’t actually go off and find it, we had to work hard. We employed some very talented engineers and good engine people so we were able to grow that well. “At the end of the third year which was 1996 that’s when we really started to punch above our weight from there on.” When the VT arrived towards the end of 1998, HRT was hitting its stride as a team with two hungry drivers in the form of Lowndes and Skaife. According to Grech, the inter-team rivalry between the duo drove the dominance rather than the slight improvements that had come with the arrival of the new model. “There was some architectural difference but the performance really came from Mark and Craig racing each other,” Grech enthused. “They just wanted to beat each other in the worse possible way and the team lifted with that.

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“They were two different people, two different styles. But the fierce competition just drove us to find more and more development, more and more speed. “I think it was more based around the engineering and the drivers rather than the model car. There was a difference, one had a slightly wider track and slightly longer wheelbase, but I think it was more around the bits that went on the car rather than the car itself.” Another advantage were the tyres, as prior to a control tyre being implemented for the 1999 season HRT had worked with Bridgestone to create a package that was strong at most venues. “Bridgestone were an amazing partner to the team and the product was a lot better at a few circuits than some of the other competitors,” Grech emphasised. “It was the perfect storm having the drivers, the team and the sponsors around at the time. “It just went from strength to strength.” The arrival of the VT signalled a new era in V8 Supercars and an increased level of professionalism and success. In its first two seasons of competition

the new shaped Commodore lost just one round, yes, a solitary round. HRT alone won 14 rounds in that time on its own, backed up by the strongest of support in terms of Perkins Engineering, a rejuvenated Gibson Motorsport, and an emerging Garry Rogers Motorsport. Ford had no chance of matching the Holden onslaught as Gibson and GRM took wins at the Bathurst. “It was really up to the teams and the rule makers at that time – AVESCO and TEGA – to set the rules and then the teams worked within those rules,” Grech said. “That era of car was probably more focused on the engineering and the team’s ability to get the speed out of the car, more so than the model itself. “The engineering was innovative but wasn’t as complicated as it is now. You could see a lot of the innovations on the car, it was at times hard to hide. “Other teams saw that or made the same or a better version of what we had. I think we were fortunate for our group we then threw down the gauntlet to the other teams to lift and start looking at engineering rather than the

mechanicals.” This manufacturer support was further bolstered by the addition of the sister Kmart Racing organisation in 2001, doubling the Clayton attack at the front, and by the start of the Project Blueprint era this second team was performing equally to its older sibling. Behind the scenes, Ford was mounting a substantial attack to overthrow Holden’s dominance, providing support behind Stone Brothers Racing and its lead driver, Marcos Ambrose. Headed by Howard Marsden, the Blue Oval then attracted Lowndes and Steve Richards, and increased its support of Glenn Seton and Dick Johnson, who by now had retired as a driver but his team continued. Work was underway to produce ‘Project Blueprint’, a plan to standardise various ‘control’ components to increase competition and decrease costs in the championship. Grech was a director of AVESCO and TEGA at the time and realised the situation was becoming dire for the category.

Garth Tander (VS) leads a Commodore train at Queensland Raceway in 1999, where he took his maiden championship round victory (above). Below, Todd Kelly in the Kmart VX heads Holden-defector Craig Lowndes (AU Falcon) in the 00 Motorsport entry at the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in 2001.

ONE KEY partnership that emerged during the final years of the VT-VX era was not driver and team, but rather car and driver. Holden Racing Team chassis number 045 made an inauspicious start to its career, when Mark Skaife spun during his Top 15 Shootout lap at the 2001 Queensland 500. However, two rounds later it began a reign of dominance that earnt it the nickname ‘The Golden Child’. That third meeting of its career just happened to be the 2001 Bathurst 1000. Chassis 045 took Skaife to 20 race wins (the most of any HRT chassis), including two Bathurst wins and a pair of V8 Supercar titles at a time when the HRT was at its zenith. “It’s an unbelievable car,” remarked Skaife on Shannons Legends of Motorsport. “To have won those races, that’s why it got the nickname ‘The Golden Child’, the boys knew not to do anything bad to that car. It was always pristine.” HRT Team Mananger Jeff Grech added that it was a matter of right place, right time for ‘The Golden Child’ as Skaife

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“We were heading towards ‘Project Blueprint’, where we tried to standardise a lot of specifications because at that stage, I could see there needed to be different winners. “We needed to be able to have the team that didn’t have an HRT budget to still be close, by means of rules rather than the team with the biggest budget. There were things like the control ECU and standardisation of engine specifications, where the newer engine had the same bore and stroke as what the Ford engine did.” This was leading into a new generation for the championship, where the number of variations between the different brands and teams was limited. The ‘Project Blueprint’-era certainly achieved its aim to break the monopoly HRT had, and it never returned to those heights again. “I think we were able to cover more of the rules,” Grech explained. “We were still winning a lot, but at that stage if other teams were smart about it and an example is Stone Brothers Racing. “It won championships and a lot of races, and that passed on to other teams like Dick Johnson Racing, Perkins Engineering, there was always five or six teams in the mix.” The legacy of the VT-VX era continued into the next through former HRT driver Jason Bright, who crossed to the Kees Weel-owned Team Brock for 2003, almost snatching the title in the superseded VX.

THE GOLDEN CHILD was at the top of his game during that period and the pairing just clicked. “Mark drove for most of that car’s

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history and he got the most out of it,” Grech related. “It was just that chassis number and the trophies that it produced, it was outstanding but it was nothing different than any of the other cars we’d built.” It is only the second chassis to take two Bathurst 1000 wins, which it did in 2002 amidst drama as plastic bags covered the air intake, forcing temperatures to rise during the closing stages. “That race at Bathurst for instance, I remember very clearly late in the race, two major things; the temperature was going mad and we used to be able to click the dash to cancel the number,” Skaife recalled. “It got to 114 degrees and the next one was 117, and it came

up 117 and I thought ‘this is getting bad’. “I clicked it off and they’re all yabbering in the background (on the radio) whether I was going to come in or not. “There was just no way I was coming in, it’s the biggest race in the country. “At that stage I was short shifting, doing all the right stuff and was able to get it home. I said to the boys ‘No more chat’ because I needed to get this thing home.” The chassis was then successful during the ‘Project Blueprint’ era when it was converted to a VY model and the new regulations, before being retired in 2004 and one of the few to be retained by Skaife after its racing life. HM

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EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING

George Russell arrived in Formula 1 with an exceptional record in junior formulas. He joined the struggling Williams team last season and still managed to impress despite its lacklustre chassis. Images: LAT

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George Russell told DAN KNUTSON what he has learned from driving an uncompetitive F1 car. EVERY CLOUD has a silver lining. And the silver lining for George Russell having to deal with a woefully uncompetitive car taught him a lot. At the conclusion of his rookie Formula 1 season he sat down with Auto Action to look back and also forwards. He knew even before the start of the 2019 season that it was going to be a tough challenge, because the Williams FW42 was not a competitive car. And it was indeed a tough season. Britain’s Russell scored zero points. His best finish was 11th place in Hungary. So what did he learn? “From these difficult experiences, not only from a mental side, but also from a team side, I have learned exactly what the team needs from me to improve,” Russell says. “I learned how to try and motivate and keep the morale of the team high in these difficult moments. When the performance of the car does come, these experiences will actually help me because I have had the experience of driving the best car on the grid, because I have tested five Mercedes F1 cars. “So I know what it is like to drive an incredibly good car. Quite often you finish a test run and you think: Yes, the car is good, and we just need a bit here or there to make it better. The feedback is almost vague. But having this opportunity, especially at the start of the year (when) the Williams was really difficult to drive, and I knew exactly what the feedback the team needed from me for them to improve the car. When we do get a car that is nailed and planted, I will be able to go into the smaller details, so that the team can find more performance.” The fundamental problem of the Williams FW42 was a lack of aerodynamic downforce.

George Russell took a lot away from his debut season (top). He experienced the highs as Mercedes test driver where he was able to watch and learn alongside six-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, opening his eyes to the extra work

“Everything becomes easier when you have downforce,” Russell notes. “If you have more downforce, when you hit a kerb, it is not as aggressive. It is much easier to warm the tyres up with more downforce. At the cooler races in 2019 we had to go flat-out on the out lap because as we didn’t have the downforce, we were not generating the energy through the tyre and we could not get the tyres working. In the race, because you didn’t have the downforce, you started sliding more, and then the tyres overheated. So everything just gets easier when you have more downforce.”

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OPENED EYES

When Lewis Hamilton arrived in F1 in 2007, McLaren was a top team. But he had to fight his way through the ranks to get to that opportunity. Is he, especially because he is also a British driver, a role model for Russell? “No, he is not necessarily a role model for me,” Russell replies. “There was never anyone that I particularly looked up to. When I used to watch F1 I knew that to get to F1 and to be successful in F1 you need to have the whole package. So I wanted to take a piece from everybody to create a top driver. But I have definitely come to really respect Lewis a huge amount in the last couple of years when I have seen him up close, and been in the Mercedes debriefs with him and seen how he works. He obviously has a huge amount of natural talent, but he does not fully rely on that. There is much more that comes with that. And he opened my eyes to that.” Robert Kubica, Russell’s teammate last year, is also very experienced. “I definitely learned things from Robert,” Russell says. “Especially in the engineering debriefs seeing how he interacted with the engineers, and the sort of feedback and details he gave. He is incredibly knowledgeable on the technical side. That opened my eyes that there are actually guys out there who are really on it with this stuff, and that can help improve my game moving forward. And I do need to improve that. Seeing him at that level made me realise that I can still be better.” What did Kubica learn from Russell? “I am not sure,” Russell says. “When you are teammates with a driver you always pick up on things. As I said, I picked up on his technical side. He probably didn’t even realise that I did that. So there must have been things he picked up from me that I don’t know of.”

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was a number of really great karters out there whom I raced against at the best level. You just keep pushing each other and yourself further. Whereas if you jump in and you are winning straightaway, you get used to that level and you can’t push yourself further if there is no one to push you. So racing against these guys pushed me further. So I think that is why the group of us are here in F1 now and doing a good job.”

A BETTER DRIVER

Alex Albon and Russell (right) lead the next generation of Formula 1 drivers that have made their mark during the past several seasons.

THE NEW KIDS

Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen made the jump very quickly from a midfield or back of the field team, to a top team. And they have won races. Russell, who turned 22 on February 15, has raced against those guys so he must feel that he can do the same. “I am really happy for those guys that they have shown what they can do,” he says. “Also Lando (Norris) and Alex (Albon). I have raced against these guys. I raced against Lando and Alex in F2 last year. The better job they do in F1, the better it looks for me because I have competed against them. I think it really helps us to improve one and another at such a

young age because I was racing Max and Charles when I was 13-yearsold. Racing against these top guys helped us push one another. And we have really pushed each other to get to where we are now. We are quite a strong force at the moment.” That leads into the next subject. Normally just one or two really good drivers arrive in F1 at any one time. But in just a couple of years there has been a bunch – Russell, Norris, Albon, Leclerc. And Verstappen is also part of the talented group of young drivers. “It makes sense,” Russell says. “I came into European karting at age 13. I was racing against Charles, Max, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll. There

How much better a driver was Russell at the end of the 2019 season compared to that first grand prix in Australia? “Over one lap I think I am no different,” he says. “But I am a much better driver in the sense of understanding how to make the most out of the tyres during a race. Understanding how to set the car up to make it go quicker because in two races in 2019 I went in the wrong direction where I led the team down the wrong garden path with the setup. “We only recognised afterwards that we made the wrong decisions, and we understood that the things I said were incorrect. So I am better with things like that, and understanding how to deal with 75 people from the team who are at a race weekend, because I came from F2 where I had one engineer and two mechanics.” Russell is on record saying that he is happy to stay at Williams in 2020. But what happens if Mercedes comes knocking on his door asking him to join the elite team in 2021 or 2022? “Hmmm…every driver in Formula 1 wants to be the world champion and wants the opportunity to win the world championship,” he reflects. “I think if Mercedes knocked on the door of any driver, whether its Vettel, Leclerc,

FROM TOY TRACTORS TO F1

Verstappen or George Russell, the driver would have to think about it. Mercedes is the dominate force in F1. “We have to wait and see but I don’t like to look too far ahead because then you end up getting carried away and don’t focus on the job at hand. I know that if I just continue what I am doing, someone will knock on my door at some point. So I am just focused on race by race, practice session by practice session, because if I perform my best in every single session, and to a level I know I am capable of, then the opportunities will come.” For now, however, Russell is at home like the rest of racing world. And he will have to wait until later in the year to put into practice at the race track what he learned from his silver-lined 2019 season.

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Making the tyres last was one of Russell’s biggest challenges last season as was communicating with such a large team. The Brit is confident heading into his second season of Formula 1 and continues to be mooted as a future star of the sport, aided by his strong Mercedes connections.

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GEORGE RUSSELL has been around motor sport since he was age three. “I had an elder brother who used to race karts,” he recalls. “Just to keep me occupied my parents bought me a little pedal tractor. I used to have different styles of trailers on the back of it. One was a water tank. Every morning at the kart tracks I would go to the nearest tap and fill up the water tank. “And I would bring it back to the teams so that they had all the water they needed for the radiators in the karts. Usually they would take jugs to the tap to get the water they needed. So it was useful having a little three-year-old who could fit 25 litres of water in his little tanker trailer. So that is where it started.” It continued with him winning the GP3 championship in 2017 and the Formula 2 championship in 2018. Move forward to the grid in Melbourne and the start of the season-opening 2019 Australian Grand Prix. What were his emotions, having gone from a three-year-old delivering water at a kart track to being on the verge of starting his first F1 race? “I only really absorbed it afterwards,” Russell says. “As a driver, when you are there during a race weekend, you are so in the zone. It does not matter if you are in karting, Formula 4, Formula 3, Formula 2 or F1, you are there to do a job which is drive the car as quickly as possible. “But it was only after the race when I was looking at photos and seeing myself in the car on the grid, and seeing thousands of spectators, I thought blimey this is F1! This is what I have dreamt about my whole life. And here I am.” DK

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UNDER THE SKIN MAZDA RX-7 SPORTS SEDAN

The ultimate father-son project and one of the fastest sports sedans in the country, however this Mazda RX7 also follows some 'old school' principles as HEATH McALPINE discovers.

INSPIRED TO step up a level after writing off their production-based Mazda RX-7 sports sedan, Tasmanians Laurie and Alex Williams took five-years to build its replacement. This new space-frame RX-7 is the first of its kind built by the father and son team, and has since become one of the fastest sport sedans in the country. Surprisingly for such an advanced vehicle, the design method used to create it is rather old school in the way that Computer Aided Design was actually not used in its creation. Although not an outright entry during its initial campaigns, various upgrades including a large turbocharger combined with its 50-50 weight distribution has made it into an absolute weapon in the Sports Sedan category. Son Alex drives the RX-7 and in its limited mainland events is a regular thorn in the side of the class veterans, though this was not the initial aim for the build. “It was a big project in the making, it took us five years to do together,” said Alex Williams. “The thing for us was we didn’t realise how long it would take. When you’re making every bracket, it just takes so long. It wasn’t so much about upgrading as we went, it was more about using the parts that we had, but to do it to a standard we could achieve that we thought was high. “Our aim with the car was never to be a national contender, it was built as a state level car to the budget that we had. “What we’ve ended up with works well and much better than we ever anticipated.” While CAD is heavily influencing new sports sedan builds, that doesn’t mean that crafting the design of a chassis

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without CAD has been lost, as proven by the example adorning these pages. “The design for the suspension geometry and the chassis was all completed by dad in his head,” Williams told Auto Action. “We designed and built as we went. “Dad did up a 2D cardboard physical model to scale looking at camber change and experimenting with different length arms. He’d never built a space-frame car before so it was a big experiment and based on what he’d learnt over the years through research.” Due to the construction and design method there was considerable experimentation, which led Williams Snr to restart the whole manufacture of the front-end chassis section after the initial build failed to meet his expectation. Recent upgrades to the RX-7 means

the project is still educating the Williams pair, especially with the addition of a Garrett GTX45 Turbo. “We started with a 20B peripheral port non-turbo engine, which may have made 280kW on a good day,” said Williams. “We have the turbo engine in the car now, which we did a year ago and makes so much more than it ever has before. “Getting on top of those sorts of changes, there’s a bit in that. We’re learning every time we race; we look at the data and adjust things, trying to make it work as a package. We’re not focusing on making more power than others or any one thing, it’s more about making a better package. “The drivers that win have the best

Despite the lack of CAD input into its design, the Williams Mazda RX-7 is as advanced a Sports Sedan as you'll find in the field today.

package and make it to the end of the race.” An intriguing aspect of this RX-7 is the location of the turbo, which is found in an unlikely area. “The turbo is located down the back, it sits directly underneath the main hoop of the roll cage,” explained Williams. “We did that because it’s a bit better for the exhaust, there’s no silly angles going into the turbo, it’s straight and gives us a good path into the wastegate. “There’s a big pipe coming out of the middle of the car and out of the passenger

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side window. That’s where the air goes into the turbo, which is one of the defining features of the car in its latest phase. “This makes the exhaust very short, it’s only about 300mm long.” Heat and noise now two problems that have been encountered. “Packaging is important. There’s so much heat going on inside that trying to get a compromise between a lot of things, it’s hard to decide where to put it and how to duct everything,” Williams explained. “That’s the beauty of Sports Sedans, everybody comes up with their own

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solutions to these problems. “We’ve gone to a fair bit of trouble to try and insulate the inlet pipe from the turbo to the engine. It runs parallel to the exhaust, up the tunnel down the side of the car.” A custom Plazmaman intercooler is fitted at the front, perfectly placed in among the tanks, inlets and outlets. “The intercooler is at the front of the car so it runs out of the turbo up to the front, through the intercooler and into the engine,” Williams said. “It is very well ducted and the inlet temperatures that we’ve seen are pretty

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good, there even less than we expected. From that side of things, it seems to work pretty well, it’s not something that we knew the answer to, it was a bit of a lucky dip.” The heart of the RX-7 is a 20B triplerotor engine, which remains surprisingly unmodified and utilises many stock components, despite the high intensity environment it performs in. “It’s a 20B long engine, so it has the thick centre plate,” Williams said. “As an engine it’s fairly standard, it’s got Mazda 2mm apex seals just with an extend port on the inlet and inlet manifold we made ourselves.

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UNDER THE SKIN

MAZDA RX-7

Brakes are a carry over from the earlier car but little else is. The chrome moly spaceframe is self designed and built, and is a work of art. The body is an FD-model RX-7 shell from a Norm Lee mold. Scott Beaton from Aero Design did the rear wing, the Williams father and son duo built the diffuser.

“It's a standard crank, rotors, endplates, there’s no billet parts. Really, the only modifications are a bit of clearancing and a tidy up of the inlet ports, but other than that it’s a pretty standard engine.” The radiator is an off the shelf item, while the bellhousing is made out of magnesium, but based on the Mazda original. Sequential gearbox systems are now a staple of Sports Sedan competition as is a paddleshift, but Williams' use a Holinger H6S H-Pattern dogbox using a Tilton tripleplate 5 ½ inch clutch. An upgrade is scheduled starting with the transmission and a move away from the Mazda RX-7 FD diff, as the gearing is a limiting factor. “Not sure about paddleshift, but I believe there is a whole lot of added complications and I’m not sure it would make me any faster,” Williams reasoned. “I think a sequential is definitely a step up. We have a gear ratio problem at the moment where the tallest diff in the Mazda range that fits is a 3.9, which is an FD automatic crown wheel and pinion and we have a 1:1 sixth gear. “It means we’re pretty short on ratios at the moment. At Phillip Island last year in qualifying we did 294kmh down the straight on the rev limiter! “Although the FD diff has been great and I haven’t had any problems with it due to its strength, it’s probably borderline. “Down the track we need to look at a sequential Holinger with an over-drive

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sixth, or going towards an Albins transaxle and modifying the rear-end to make everything fit.” Penske three-way adjustable shocks are combined with Eibach springs, while an inbound rocker suspension system is featured all-round with an independent rear-end. Axles are also a Mazda product, while custom brake hats are mated to hubs also found in the Japanese manufacturer's catalogue. An anti-roll bar and sway bar were designed in-house, while blade adjusters for each were supplied by Mitchell Race Xtreme in New Zealand, and onboard levers beside the gearstick enable changes to be made on the fly. “When we first built the car, we came from a floor pan chassis class and had always had those sorts of cars, so when we went to the space-frame car the alignment was a fair bit different than we thought originally,” recalled Williams. “The result is we are running a lot less camber all around and different levels of toe front and back. We learnt about this by looking at the tyre wear and how the car felt. In recent times the shock travel sensors, for me looking at what the suspension is doing and relating that to what I was feeling in the car, really helped in getting a direction on the geometry and the shock settings.” So, what are the results of this setup? According to Williams it’s a work in progress as the aim is to increase the RX7’s corner speeds to bridge the gap that

remains to the leading competitors. “It’s very flat, it doesn’t roll a lot,” Williams described. “When we designed the car, we’ve tried to make the shock do as much work as possible so it has a fair bit of shock travel compared to the wheel movement. “It was a design that dad came up with early on and the rockers are designed to enhance that. It’s very direct in the steering.” Brakes are according to Williams ‘pretty small’ with 320x32mm front and 310x20 rear rotors, combined with AP 6-pot calipers front and rear, which were components from the written off RX-7. The brake lines are a stainless hard-line component braided on the ends, while after rigorous testing of various brands of brake pads, Williams chose the Project Mu items as his preferred option. “I found that they have quite a good bite compared to some other pads we used

to run,” Williams said. “Project Mu has definitely become a favourite of mine.” Telemetry and data logging are provided by a mixture of software. An AIM MXL dash and data logger is combined with a MoTeC M800 ECU, thanks to both systems being user friendly in different ways. “We look at data through the MoTeC logging software and data analysis as well as the AIM,” Williams summed up. “Not that long ago, we put some shock travel sensors on and that all runs through the AIM dash so we look at data through both platforms. “I found that the AIM software has some stuff that is easier to do than the MoTeC system, because a lot of it comes set-up such as track mapping, sector times, shock analysis and the like. “For a driver tool, I use the AIM a lot more than the MoTeC, but for systems on the car and monitoring everything, it’s a bit of mixture of both.”

MAZDA RX-7 SPORTS SEDAN ENGINE

20B triple-rotor, Garrett GTX45 turbo, Plazmaman intercooler, standard Mazda crank, rotors and endplates, dry sump, magnesium bellhousing Fuel System Gravity-fed surge tank, two Bosch 044 pumps, six Bosch 2200CC injectors

DRIVETRAIN Holinger HS6 H-Pattern dogbox,

Mazda FD RX-7 diff, Tilton triple-plate 5 ½ inch clutch, Mazda axles

BRAKES

Six-pot AP calipers, braided brake lines, Project Mu pads, Tilton brake-bias adjustor Rotors F: 320x32mm R: 310x20mm

SUSPENSION

Penske three-way adjustable shocks, inbound rocker suspension system, independent rear push-rod, Mazda hubs, custom hats, bespoke anti-roll and sway bars with Mitchell Race Xtreme blade adjustor and interior levers

BODY Fibreglass Mazda FD RX-7 body, spaceframe chassis, Aero Design rear wing, in-house designed rear diffuser

WHEEL AND TYRES Whitehorse inners and outers combined with Simmons centre wheels, Kumho control tyre F: 18x12 325/710 R: 18x11 280/650

INTERIOR

Cobra head restraint seat, Sparco steering wheel, Willans belts, Tilton pedal box

DIMENSIONS Length: 4485mm Width: 1960mm Wheelbase: 2425mm Weight: 1125kg with driver The 20B triple rotar engine is front-mid mounted but its Garret turbocharger is unusually mounted at the back, behind the driver. This arrangement delivers performance gains but creates its own challenges, like heat generation in the cabin.

A cold drawn welded unalloyed carbon steel cage protects Williams, while chrome-moly is featured throughout the spaceframe chassis. Many of the interior components are from the previous written off chassis, including the Cobra head restraint seat, while a Sparco steering wheel and Tilton brake bias adjuster sit in front, as does a Tilton pedal box. A fire extinguisher is placed under Williams legs in case the danger of fire occurs. The fuel tank is also a unique item to the RX-7 as it has had to be modified from its original specifications due to the turbo addition and the length of races it now competes in. “When we built the car with the naturally aspirated engine, we just had a fuel tank in there that was fairly borderline on capacity to do the longer style races, such as the 50K Plate,” Williams explained. “When the turbo was introduced, we

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changed it to run on E85 [before we used just 98 pump fuel] so we had to have a lot more fuel. It’s got an extension on the extension of the original fuel tank to get to capacity. “Another interesting thing about that is it has a gravity fed surge tank so the fuel drains into a surge tank, which is on the bottom of the original tank and it’s got a lip on it allowing the fuel to get in, but not escape. It then has two Bosch 044 pumps to the engine and six Bosch 2000CC injectors.” The body is obviously an FD RX-7, one of the more popular styles in sports sedan racing. In fact, this body was created by Norm Lee from Victoria and molds were bought by Williams in partnership with former fellow competitor Barny Newbound. All that has been changed is due to the ducting in the front splitter and the addition of canards, while the rear diffuser

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is an in-house item and the rear wing was produced by Scott Beaton from Aero Design. Hiding underneath the wide guards are wheels with Whitehorse inner and outer rim sections mated to a Simmons centre, while Kumho has taken over the control tyre rights of Sports Sedans, so a 280/650 tyre fits around the 18x11 inch front wheels and 310/710s wrap the 18x12 inch rears, which is a recent upgrade. “We went to the bigger tyre on the back and that really helped the drive of the car,” Williams enthused. “It’s pretty neutral in the corners now, we used to have a little bit of understeer in the corners, which we managed to get on top of.” As the environment in which this RX-7 competes in is very adverse, the servicing is rigorous with the team learning that the engine ideally needs to be taken out every three meetings for a freshen up, after previously stretching it out to five events.

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A gearbox lasts a season before it needs a going over, the diff is pulled out usually after each meeting to check wear, especially if it competes at Winton and Wakefield Park, when the shorter diff is required. This father-son project gone wild has been an enjoyable process, and one that Williams Junior hopes to undertake again with his father in the future. Next time, though, a CAD will be used for the design process. “I don’t think so,” replied Williams when asked if he'd follow the same build process again. “I’d try and use some CAD to at least get the chassis, engine and driveline package designed first. "I believe the more sports sedans you build the better you get, as there are so many little things you find along the way. If we were going to do it again, it would be a different car for sure.”

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ANOTHER FIRST TIME WINNER

Alan Jones was hoping to recover lost ground in Belgium after retiring from the previous two races, but the nimble Ligiers had other ideas. DAN McCARTHY recalls an epic battle between the Aussie and his French rivals. THE 1980 Formula 1 Championship was neatly poised heading to the fifth round at Belgium. After Nelson Piquet’s dominant victory at Long Beach, Rene Arnoux’s two victories in the hills of South Africa and Brazil, and Alan Jones’ win at the season opening Argentine round, it was all to play for. The Formula 1 circus was originally scheduled to visit Mexico for the fifth round, but this event was cancelled. What resulted was a five-week gap between Long Beach and Zolder, which kicked off the four-month European leg. It was expected that the Kiwi born, but Australian raised youngster Mike Thackwell would take the sole Ensign Grand Prix seat and become the youngest ever Grand Prix starter. However, a late change of plan saw the Despite starting on pole position Alan Jones was beaten to Turn 1 by Didier Pironi (right), however Jones was still able to secure some much needed pints for the championship. Images: LAT

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British team select now well-known motoring personality Tiff Needell instead, the Belgian Grand Prix becoming the Englishman’s one and only Formula 1 race start. Good news in the paddock was that McLaren youngster Alain Prost had returned from his wrist breaking accident at the South African Grand Prix. For the first-time allseason Friday practice took place in very wet conditions and necessitated the use of the grooved tyres. Conditions changed ahead of qualifying in what was to be an incredibly close session. The result was a 0.77s gap across the top six drivers, which was attributed to the banning of ‘qualifying tyres’ so that all teams had to use the same compound in all sessions. The nimble Ligiers dominated much of the hour-long qualifying session, until Jones eclipsed both Didier Pironi and Jacques Laffite in the final minute to snatch pole. The gap, just 0.23s.

Didier Pironi claimed his maiden Formula 1 race victory in Belgium, beating home Australian Alan Jones. Series contender Nelson Piquet spun out of a top five position, joining Jochen Mass in the catch fencing (below). Ferrari’s Gilles Villeneuve bagged his first point of the season, coming home in sixth.

Williams and Ligier filled the first two rows with Reutemann placed fourth, but where were the Renaults? Both Jean Pierre Jabouille and Arnoux filled the third row, while Long Beach victor Piquet sat behind, 1.11s off the pole pace. Over 72-laps of the tight and twisty Zolder circuit, Pironi was eyeing his maiden Formula 1 victory and made the better jump to sweep in front of Jones to lead by Turn 1. Behind, Laffite and Reutemann remained in their qualifying positions, and Jabouille was again struck down by mechanical maladies. This time the clutch failed, leaving the Frenchman’s record at four retirements from five races so far this season. His teammate Arnoux inherited fifth place ahead of Piquet, Jean-Pierre Jarier, Elio de Angelis and Gilles Villeneuve. At the start of lap 2 Jochen Mass lost his Arrows on the approach to Turn 1 and spun into the catch fencing. It was obvious in race trim that the JS11/15 Ligiers of Pironi and Laffite had

superior pace compared to the Williams FW07Bs. As a result Pironi began to edge away from Jones, who was being stalked by Laffite. Further back Reutemann was just ahead of Arnoux, Piquet and Jarier. On lap 17, Arnoux attempted to take fourth place from the struggling Reutemann, however the Frenchman ran off the circuit and dropped to 10th. An uncharacteristic mistake was then made by joint championship leader Piquet on lap 33, the Brazilian spinning out of fifth position to join Mass in the Turn 1 catch fencing, As the race approached half distance, Laffite was still on the gearbox of Jones, but began to drop into the clutches of Reutemann. The Argentine quickly dispensed with the ailing Ligier on lap 38 and was followed by Jarier in his Tyrrell a couple of laps later. At the end of lap 40, Laffite pitted to sort out a braking drama and lost four laps in the process, leaving Jones in a very comfortable second position. As the race neared its

conclusion, Pironi, Jones and Reutemann sat well clear of an exciting battle for fourth position. Jarier led Ferrari’s Villeneuve and the recovering Arnoux, the latter taking the Ferrari on lap 53 and battling his fellow Frenchman until forcing his way past on the final lap. Meanwhile, Pironi romped home to take his maiden Formula 1 victory and in doing so became the third first-time winner of the season. It was a comfortable 47.37s margin back to Jones, who bagged crucial points to strengthen his title aspirations, while Reutemann made his first trip to the podium this season in third. Best of the rest was Arnoux a lap down in fourth, ahead of Jarier and Villeneuve, who each scored their first points for the year. Heading to the next round in Monaco, four drivers from as many different teams were separated by four points. Arnoux still led but Jones jumped to second in the standings, ahead of Piquet, leaving first-time winner Pironi to round out the top contenders.

1980 B Belgian l i G Grandd Prix P i - Zolder Z ld Pos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NC Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret Ret DNQ DNQ DNQ

Driver Didier Pironi Alan Jones Carlos Reutemann Rene Arnoux Jean-Pierre Jarier Gilles Villeneuve Keke Rosberg Jody Scheckter Derek Daly Elio de Angelis Jacques Laffite Jan Lammers John Watson Riccardo Patrese Mario Andretti Patrick Depailler Nelson Piquet Alain Prost Emerson Fittipaldi Tiff Needell Bruno Giacomelli Ricardo Zunino Jochen Mass Jean-Pierre Jabouille Geoff Lees David Kennedy Eddie Cheever

Drivers’ Standings 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. = = 9. =

Arnoux Jones Piquet Pironi Patrese Reutemann Laffite De Angelis Fittipaldi Rosberg

Constructor Ligier Williams Williams Renault Tyrrell Ferrari Fittipaldi Ferrari Tyrrell Lotus Ligier ATS McLaren Arrows Lotus Alfa Romeo Brabham McLaren Fittipaldi Ensign Alfa Romeo Brabham Arrows Renault Shadow Shadow Osella

21 19 18 17 7 6 6 6 4 4

Laps 72 72 72 71 71 71 71 70 70 69 68 64 61 58 41 38 32 29 16 12 11 5 1 1

Result 1h 38m 47.4s +47.37s +84.12s +1 Lap +1 Lap +1 Lap +1 Lap +2 Laps +2 Laps Spun off +4 Laps Engine Not Classified Spun Off Gearbox Exhaust Spun Off Transmission Electrical Engine Suspension Gearbox Spun Off Clutch

Grid 2 1 4 6 9 12 21 14 11 8 3 15 20 16 17 10 7 19 24 23 18 22 13 5

Constructors’ Standings 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. = 7. = 9. 10.

Williams Ligier Renault Brabham Arrows Fittipaldi McLaren Lotus Tyrrell Ferrari

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EXPECTAT This year is a step out of the comfort zone for former Hyundai Excel ace Michael Clemente as he has entered the ultra-competitive world of the TCR Australia Series as a privateer. DAN McCARTHY spoke to the 19-year-old about the challenges. FROM RACING an Excel to competing in a factory-developed Honda Civic Type R TCR, the past year has been a story of polar opposites for Michael Clemente. A former frontrunner in what is Australia’s most populous class of racing, Clemente has now joined an array of Supercars race winners and Bathurst 1000 victors on the TCR Australia grid. Clemente’s love for the sport stems from piloting his dad’s golf cart around the backyard, before an incident with a fence forced his parents to buy him a go kart at age eight. Since then, Clemente enjoyed success in state level karting, before electing to step into the Hyundai Excel Series in which

he established himself as a category frontrunner. The decision late last year to purchase an ex-Wall Racing Civic Type R TCR has provided a big step up from his Excel roots, but Clemente

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is confident the foundation he built in the Hyundai class can be further emphasised in TCR. So far this year, he has completed just a sole practice session as part of the TCR Asia-Pacific Cup at Albert Park, as support the Australian Grand Prix. This a long way from Winton or Phillip Island, where he previously battled for wins on a regular basis. “In our first race meeting we didn’t have any expectations,” Clemente said. “Being a new track for myself and obviously the first race meeting in the car, we weren’t expecting to be anywhere and to qualify in 12th, we were absolutely over the moon.” The rookie bettered Bathurst 1000 winner Jason Bargwanna and previous TCR Australia podium finisher Hamish Ribarits in his maiden session. The opportunity to jump into a car that is in some ways similar to the Excel was one of the attractions to the new touring car class. “We saw the TCR Series to be quite similar to Excels, being a front-wheeldrive class they are still a low

horsepower race car,” Clemente explained. “The racing is really good and the category has a lot of potential, we thought it was the best bang for money class to join.” The 19-year-old began to consider

IONS EXCELLED Michael Miicha M chae ch ael Clemente Cllemen C emen em ente te is is a former Hyundai Excel national series winner (right) who has made the jump to TCR Australia this season (left).

the category midway through last season with a plan to run his own team. “August last year we started to quite seriously look at TCR. We approached Wall Racing to do a test day in one of its Honda Civic Type Rs. We ended up doing a test the Monday after the Winton round,” Clemente told AA. “That whole test day was about seeing if we could run in the category as privateers and not have to be factory backed. Dad and I thought it was doable. “We went with a deal on the car and purchased it off Wall Racing before we took delivery early December.” Clemente reflected on his contrasting emotions the first time he hopped behind the wheel of his Honda. “Once I pulled out of pit lane and put my foot down it was the first time I had experienced proper horsepower in a race car, the front wheels lit up,” Clemente recalled. “The smile was from ear to ear the whole session.” “I was really scared, I knew there was a lot at stake. I didn’t care about my times, I just wanted to make sure I finished the session.” His Civic Type R TCR has few similarities with his previous racer, however the key formula behind each car is still the same. “If you look at the TCR compared with an Excel they are massively different but the cars still have the same fundamentals,” he explained to AA. “They are both front-wheel drive, the Honda has a very loose rear end during the first couple of laps (on cold tyres), the same as the Excel. The Honda is still quite low powered and not a lot of grip. “It’s really fun to drive. Everyday I’m learning more and more, hopefully I get some more opportunities to go out and do a couple of test days.” When stepping out of go karts,

Clemente had his heart set on entering Formula Ford, until he watched the Excels race at Sandown Raceway. “We were sitting in the pits on the main straight and we saw 50 of these little buzz boxes come down pit straight, we didn’t know anything else about them,” Clemente recalled. “We went and watched the Excels race and they were so enjoyable; the cars were so close throughout the grid. “That night we were supposed to do a deal on a Formula Ford, but instead we stayed at the track and spoke to a few of the guys in Excels, that was where it started. “We learnt a whole bunch about the cars. The Excels appeared to be more

Michael Clemente is used to racing against close competition from his days in the Excels.

affordable and the racing seemed to be a lot closer than in Formula Ford. That was when we were won over, so we ended up building our own Excel from there.” A moderately successful year in 2017 yielded 12th place in the Victorian State Championship and a race win in the Excel Nationals, before Clemente joined the Excel Racing Australia team in 2018. “After the first year we joined Excel Racing Australia under David Burn,” he said. “As soon as we joined them, we had a lot of success. It was really good for my motivation and confidence levels, it has really pushed us to where we are today.”

The 2018 season was a successful one for Clemente, who won the Victorian and South Australian state titles, but also capped it off by winning the Excel Nationals. But with VCE studies last year, his racing took a backwards step to education. “I was completing year 12 so I really had to balance the massive motor sport side and the school side,” he explained. “I come from a realist approach. A year ago we still thought motorsport was never going to end up going anywhere. I had to focus on school ‘cause that was more likely going to shape my future.” Since the purchase of the Civic Type R TCR, Clemente has decided to pursue a motor sport career and admits that if he can’t make it himself, then he aims to build his own team. “We have started that, but hopefully within the next couple of years we can bring in a second car and run our own suite of cars in different categories in future years,” he said (more on Clemente in the News). The team Clemente has built up for his maiden TCR Australia tilt is a strong one and he has set modest goals for the season ahead. “Our goal is to be around that top 10 section. We have got a really good team behind myself and the car is quite fast, (so) hopefully we can put a surprise look on a few people’s faces, but we will just have to wait and see,” he concluded.

At the Australian Grand Prix Michael Clemente was set to compete in the TCR Asia Pacific Cup (right). Images: Revved Photography/supplied.

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LATE BLOOMER When the name Peter McLeod is mentioned, 1987 Bathurst comes to mind immediately. A late starter in motor sport, he certainly made his mark, as he recounted to HEATH McALPINE. IT MAY come as a surprise to many that when Peter McLeod secured the 1983 Australian Endurance Championship ... in only his third full-season of competition! It all began with the sight of the then new RX-7 in his dealership showroom and encouragement from mechanic John Cleary inspired McLeod to build one of the new coupes into a race car. Although he failed his License Observation test at Amaroo Park due to a flat tyre, he was so determined to get it he drove to Winton overnight to secure it the followingday. “It got serious the first time I put a helmet on,” Peter McLeod told Auto Action. Racing hadn’t impressed McLeod during his youth, but cars did. He holds fond memories of tearing around his grandparent’s yard in a pedal car and sitting on his grandfather’s knee steering his Austin. Even when he witnessed practice for the Tasman Series at Warwick Farm, he failed to catch the racing bug.

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Creating a successful car dealership, marriage, building a house and raising seven kids meant McLeod had his hands full. But things changed when Cleary, had worked with the Geoghegans, built the RX-7 after hours. It was a very basic build even for its time, the car still containing its air conditioning, radio, KMAC suspension and a roll cage. Things progressed quickly, such that he lined up on the grid for that year’s Bathurst 1000 partnered by Mal Brewster. Sadly this was without Cleary, who suffered a heart attack mid-season. These early results encouraged McLeod to expand his racing program for 1981 as he could see the potential, having known little about motor sport a year earlier. By this stage, leading rotary guru Barry Jones was involved on the engine side and the 12A peripheral port engine was approved by CAMS. A failed clutch at Bathurst prevented the McLeod and Peter Dane combination

from getting a strong result, and then worse was to come at Surfers Paradise when a monumental accident could have had dire consequences. Contesting the International Resort 300, which was alsos notable for Dick Johnson later rolling the Tru Blu Falcon. Earlier in the event McLeod hit a patch of oil, which triggered the accident. “I’ve come rocketing around, absolutely flat biscuit on someone’s tail and I’ve hit the oil,” recalled McLeod. “All I can remember to this day (was that) there was bitumen in front of me, then all of a sudden it was green and that was the end, and I ended up in hospital. “Apparently from what people have told me, I hit the end of the earth mound, (went) up in the air, barrel rolled along the top of the earth mound and then crashed back down onto the inner part of the circuit, (with the car) on its roof with me unconscious inside. “All the fuel houses had been ripped off; the whole car was full of around 100 litres of fuel. I’m strapped upside down and

soaked in fuel, when they took my helmet off the marshals tipped fuel out of it and all we needed was a spark. “You can only imagine the inferno it would have been and to do this day I don’t know how I’m alive.” The extent of his luck was revealed when the wrecked RX-7 was taken back to the workshop. “When we got the car back to Wollongong to tear it apart, the steel braid radiator hose we’d put in had been arced across the top of the battery,” McLeod explained. “The only thing I can assume is (that) because the car was upside down, all the fuel had leaked out and the back was at the higher level, so when the accident stopped, the hose fell off the battery.” A new car was built for season 1982, and McLeod was eager to become a contender and had spotted a mechanic at Amaroo that could just help him achieve that. “I had to get someone serious and I’d seen this guy around the pits at Amaroo,

Peter McLeod claimed the 1983 Australian Endurance Championship with his Mazda RX7 -- in only his third full season of motor racing!

Peter McLeod found fame with this Slick 50 sponsored Mazda RX7, one of the highest profile and most successful privateer Touring Cars of its era. Images: Autopics.com.au/AA Archive.

who seemed to have it,” explained McLeod. “I didn’t know who he was, but I’d just seen him around and one day we were in line to get a pie, so I introduced myself. I quizzed him about what he did then asked him if he’d like to help me with the Strongbow RX-7. “It was Ron Krause.” Ninth at Bathurst coincided with Slick 50 taking title sponsorship for 1983, replacing Strongbow. Mazda had supplied a new shell and Krause set about building the now famous Slick 50 RX-7 that transformed McLeod into a frontrunning contender. “Out of this world,” gushed McLeod when reflecting back. “It was a work of art.” Coming on stream mid-1983, the new RX-7 was a significant upgrade on his previous mount and it showed. Although he failed to take a win during the Australian Endurance Championship, McLeod was a consistent annoyance to the

front runners, plus his reliability was unrivalled. Another piece in the puzzle came with the addition of former class leader and future Bathurst 1000 winner Graeme Bailey as his co-driver. “He just rang me up out of the blue,” McLeod recalled. “I’d sort of nodded at him in the paddock but I’d never really taken notice of him. In his laconic way he asked, ‘I thought you might want me as a co-driver, I have a bit of money that I can help with.’” The partnership nearly snagged a podium at their first Bathurst attempt, until the Watts Linkage broke forcing them to finish fifth. This was one of two innovations that McLeod, Krause and Wally Storey had developed, advancing the RX-7 significantly compared to its rivals “He was Ronnie Krause’s mate,” McLeod said about Storey.

“The RX-7 was renowned for being tail steery and it was the biggest problem with the car. Wally drove it Oran Park and said ‘you can’t drive that thing; it steers from the back’ so he did something about it and reversed the Watts Link that came on the diff.” The other innovation was provided by one of McLeod’s service crew at his dealership, who has since gone on to bigger things in the air industry. “What we were finding was we ran a 48mm peripheral port, IDA carbie and manifold, but when we went to Bathurst each year we found we couldn’t get uphill as fast as the V8s,” McLeod continued. “Barry Jones said we needed to go bigger so he bored everything to 51mm, but then it couldn’t get out of the corner at Amaroo and Oran Park, so we had two engines to suit each type of circuit. “My man Greg Wooten convinced me he could fix this issue by designing a

venturi port that will give you more power than the 51mm and as much torque as the 48mm. He came up with this port that was 51mm closed to 48mm and opened to 51mm, that works like a two-stroke engine in reverse and where he located it in the system it gave it a boost.” Both these innovations and Slick 50’s sponsorship allowed McLeod to take on the established frontrunners during the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship. “Winning the Australian Endurance Championship wasn’t its greatest achievement, rather it was the 1984 ATCC,” McLeod said about the car. It was a case of what might have been as incidents impacted a number of results throughout the year, including an accident at the opening corner of the title race at Sandown. But he recovered well to narrowly miss round wins at Surfers Paradise and Oran Park.

Peter McLeoad shared this Commodore with son Ryan at Bathurst in 1994 and 1995.

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McLeod lamented incidents that occurred which cost him second in the title to Peter Brock, falling short by just a solitary point. “Any one of those would have given me one or two extra points to overtake Brock for second in the standings,” McLeod reflected. “It was a great result, third for a genuine privateer in the ATCC was terrific.” Bathurst that year failed to give the Slick 50 RX-7 a successful send off, after a clash with Steve Masterton at Griffin’s Bend caused enough damage to force it to retire. It did however win the NSW Hillclimb Championship for McLeod that year. The new season started with an overseas jaunt courtesy of Mazda Australia, where McLeod joined Allan Moffat, Kevin Bartlett and Gregg Hansford in the Daytona 24 Hour. Although it was an enjoyable experience for McLeod, the engine blew during the race, ending its chances. “It was a good thing and it was great to receive that recognition from Mazda,” he said. While a new Group A specification Commodore was built at Gosford’s Precinct Performance workshop under the watchful eye of Peter Pattenden, McLeod kept his eye in by contesting GT events in the RX-7. The new Group A Commodore was an entirely different beast compared to the RX-7 and it took time for McLeod to get his head around the different driving style required. But by Bathurst, the entry was a leading contender and resulted in one of the more impressive privateer performances during that era until, while lying fifth, the gearbox failed. “Only five Getrags came into the country and I pretty much mortgaged the house to buy one at $12,000 Then I sent it to Holinger who converted it to Commodore ratio and supplied the gears,” McLeod said. “He had five to do for Bathurst; two for Brock, two for Roadways and one for me. When one of them came out of the heat treating it was a couple of thou out of true and Holinger didn’t have time to fix it, so the plan was for Roadways to use it at practice.

Peter McLeod rates his 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship campaign as one of many career highlights. Here he is contesting the Symmons Plains round.

unnamed, though Peter Fitzgerald was lined up for the seat. Before the event, Alfa Romeo pulled its World Touring Car Championship program, which elevated the McLeod entry into the race, opening the door for Captain Peter Janson to join Fitzgerald. McLeod brought his Roadways engine with him, but the weekend nearly ended early when a steering failure at Griffin’s Bend sent the Brock Commodore he was to share with Jon Crooke, straight ahead and through a gate opening. “The steering rod snapped and somehow good fortune rather than good management I think kept it off the wall,” McLeod said. “It was that close it took the rear vision mirror off.” The cash strapped Brock squad The advent of the global Group A regulations saw Peter McLeod run a Holden Commodore, placed a large number of worn out parts sharing the 1985 Bathurst race with fellow future race winner Graeme Bailey. in McLeod and Crooke’s entry, which “Holinger cold pressed it and returned it Heroes and ran in the top 10 during the featured none of the updates that the to true, but there was risk that it may have early stages, but a mistake during a wheel Brock/Parsons had. cracked the mainshaft and that’s what change meant he had a monumental “Unbeknownst to me, they pulled the happened at Bathurst on lap 126, when accident at the top of The Mountain. motor out of Brock’s car after qualifying we were fifth.” The Commodore required a complete and fitted it to our car, because Brock For the next year, a lack of sponsorship front-end and was repaired in 11 days. had told them it had nothing compared to meant McLeod’s upgraded VK was rarely This car again competed in the 1987 what he was used to,” said McLeod. seen on the track, though Autopart came edition but not with McLeod behind the “The motor had a lack of power, but to onboard for the endurance events where wheel, as he had received a call from me it seemed fine.” Kiwi Glenn Clark took over co-driver Bev Brock to join the beleaguered former The race started well for McLeod as he duties. Holden Dealer Team at Bathurst. made quick work progressing through the Again, proving to be one of the top McLeod’s entry had been placed field, while the team’s other car was retired privateers, McLeod just missed Hardies on the Reserve list as a co-driver was with an engine failure.

Peter McLeod suffered an early set back to his career when he crashed heavily at Surfers Paradise during 1981, destroying his original RX7 and putting him into hospital. To this day he says he doesn’t know how he survived the huge crash.

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Six weeks after Bathurst 1987, Peter McLeod learned he was a Bathurst winner, when his Brock team Holden Commodore shared with Jon Crooke and a car-swapping Peter Brock and David Parsons was elevated from third to first with the disqualification of the race-dominating but ultimately deemed illegal Eggenberger Ford Sierras. “I went from 22nd and to 11th very quickly, then by the time of the first pit stop it was in the top 10. They couldn’t believe that the car was still going let alone in the top 10, so they kept me in,” McLeod continued. “I had good dices with reputable drivers like Jim Richards, Gary Brabham, Johnny Cecotto and Graeme Bowkett, I had it flowing beautifully.” McLeod’s double-stint elevated the Commodore to fifth and Glenn Seton in fourth was his next target, but he was called to the pits. “I really wanted Seton, he was half of pit straight away, and then they stuck out the pit board calling me in. I was sure I could get Seton,” McLeod said. “I didn’t know about Brock at this stage, so I thought I’d be cheeky and do a couple more laps, I had an argument with myself whether to do it, but I had to do what I was told. “I barrelled into pit lane and I see a driver in a Mobil suit waiting, so I helped him in the car yelling ‘the car’s brilliant, the track’s clean, don’t f*ck the thing up Crookey, oh hi Pete!’ I’d been wrestling Brocky around telling him not to f*ck the thing up!” From there, Brock and David ‘Skippy’ Parsons took over the Commodore to take third across the line, but when the

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Eggenberger Sierras were booted, this became a race win a month and a half later! It etched McLeod’s name in the history books. The reigning champion returned to Bathurst in 1988 in the same Commodore from 1985, upgraded to Walkinshaw-specs and with Yellow Pages sponsorship and the experienced Jim Keogh as co-driver. But the whole campaign was a disaster. His next Bathurst start was in a Citroen BX16 at the Bathurst 12 Hour which again brought McLeod success at The Mountain, winning his class in 1992. In doing so, the small team defeated Brock’s factory Peugeot squad, earning McLeod a trip to Dijon to contest the Citroen one-make Cup. Now notable for establishing MARC Cars Australia, McLeod’s son Ryan aimed to replicate his father on the racetrack. The two shared three Bathurst campaigns, 1994 in an ex-Lawrie Donaher VL Commodore, then an ex-HRT VR Commodore featuring ENZED sponsorship during the next two years, though all failed to bring a result. He also shared a Holden Astra with sons Ryan and Gerard in the 2010 Bathurst 12 Hour, winning the class, “that was a nice thing to do and a benchmark,” said McLeod.

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Although he failed to pass his Observation test at Amaroo Park, the now defunct Sydney circuit always features strongly in Peter McLeod’s racing campaigns. McLeod then embarked on the build of a Mazda RX-7 sports sedan in the spirit of the Slick 50 example. However, after upgrading the car progressively, McLeod ran out of money and today it remains under a tarp at Racer Industries, after racing just a few times. “He builds a beautiful car, thorough and meticulous,” remarked McLeod aboiut son Ryan’s abilities. “I think he’s learnt a lot of it not from me personally, but working with

people that I had.” After being a car dealer for most of his life, McLeod now drives trucks and at 72-yearsold is returning to the wheel in November with the third-generation of family racers. “I’ll be joining young (grandson) Nicholas in a Holden Astra SRi in the Bathurst 6 Hour,” McLeod explained. “He’s done a bit of Formula Ford and half a dozen Excel races, so I’m looking forward to doing that.”

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MUCH MORE THAN A COUNTRY CIRCUIT Morgan Park has hosted national categories before but remains little known to the motor sport mainstream. As the circuit ramps up for a national return, Garry O’Brien takes a closer look at the rural Queensland circuit.

RUMBLINGS LAST year that the Shannons Nationals would include Morgan Park Raceway as a round of its series for 2020 left many people in the southern states wondering about this Queensland country circuit. With COVID-19 restrictions beginning to lift now, Morgan Park could in fact host the opening round of the rearranged Shannons Motorsport Australia National Championships. Situated on Old Stanthorpe Road the Morgan Park complex is almost within walking distance of the Darling Downs township of Warwick. The venue dates back to 1968. Current owners and operators, the Warwick District Sporting Car Club which was formed in late 1954, had been running rallies and hillclimbs in the region and was gifted the use of a parcel of land in 1965. By 1968 a dirt course had been laid out, closely resembling today’s Course A. The first race meeting on the dirt track was conducted in March of the following year and events were put on there throughout most of the 1970s, with relatively primitive facilities. After that, activities fell away due to waning interest and the difficulties of securing public liability insurance. However, fortunes began to swing in the right direction in 1997. The club secured a low interest loan from Warwick Shire Council and the circuit was given a bitumen-sealed surface for the first time, creating a 730-metre permanent circuit. A further loan in 1998 saw the circuit extended to 1.2km, and included a sealed pitlane for the first time. In 2000, the first stage of pitlane garages were constructed, and the track introduced the Queensland

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Super Sprint Series. A further lengthening came in 2002 when it went to 2.1km, which allowed for up to five circuit variations to be used. That year Morgan Park hosted its first Queensland Motor Racing Championships round on Circuit E. In 2007 the circuit put on national championship events for the first time, with the Formula Vee and the Improved Production Nationals. That was a big development year for the circuit as it already hosted the Southern Downs Road Racing Series and the state’s biggest historic motor racing festival, conducted by the Historic Racing Car Club of Queensland. Further improvements to Morgan Park included the removal of a kink on the start/ finish straight and extension of the pitlane, before a full circuit resurface in late 2006. The paddock area also received bitumen roads and Parc Ferme was enlarged and sealed. Tyre barriers and gravel traps were also extended, and the concrete pit wall was replaced with an armco barrier along its entire length, featuring a 20m long designated signalling area. One unusual aspect is that while the main amenities/timing centre is adjacent the start/finish line, race control is located in the commentary tower on the outside of Turn 3. The extended 3.0km layout was then first used in August 2009 for a round of the Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Championships. It track was so new that much of the kerbing was still to be laid! Strict instructions were relayed to all competitors that running off the track in the new areas wouldn’t be tolerated! Needless to say racers being what they are, off-track excursions did happen and a visit to the stewards was mandatory. There

was no live timing for this meeting either, as that was being utilised by the Truck Racing meeting held at Queensland Raceway on the same weekend. Despite these obstacles and the appearance of several kangaroos bounding across the track in the midst of one of the Australian Drivers’ Championship races, enthusiasm wasn’t dampened for first time visitors. With these extensions, the venue now encompasses five different layouts. Circuits B, D, E and K are now the most frequently used, with the latter designated for state championship and national status events. K is the most used, about 80 per cent of the time. The national series which, along with the ADC Gold Star, featured the Manufacturers Championship, Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge, National Sports Sedans and Saloon Cars together with local categories, returned in 2010 and 2011. From 2012, Queensland Raceway was the preferred option due to its nearer proximity to Brisbane and Gold Coast airports and the fact that it could piggyback off the Supercars’ meeting held there a week earlier. However, since 2018 the AASAsanctioned Australian Motor Racing Series has made Morgan Park its preferred venue. There are also a trio of Supersprint Series (A, B, and C) run there as well as the state Supersprint Championship and 24 Hours of Lemons is another to feature at Morgan Park. The Circuit K configuration is the most often used. From the start line, it is a straight run to Turns 1 and 2 which is more like a double apex single corner with a slight negative camber.

Turn 3 A

From there it is an upward incline to the sweeping turn three to the left, very fast but one that catches many on the exit just after the bridge. “Trying to take the corner flat can have serious ramifications, particularly in a powerful car,” says former Bathurst regular and now Trans Am competitor John English. It is slightly downhill run to Turn 4, commonly referred to as Gumtree Corner, a hard-braking into tight right-hander that then sweeps down to another tight, hairpin-like right-hander called Siberia. The track then heads to The T-Junction, a 90 degree turn to the left that leads down to the latest extension. “The addition is a long sweeping right-

Turn 3 C

Turn 3 B

Turn 3 A

Turn 1

FAST FACTS

Turn 3 B

Turn 3 C exit

Morgan Park features impressive facilities and five different circuit configurations to suits everything from sprints to national championship events. There’s even a drag strip. These series of photos shows turn three, which is a fast left hander that rises A, up until passing under the bridge B, then drops away C, and is a challenging corner for many. Images: Supplied/Trapnell Creations.

hand curve which is taken at a fast speed, then comes down to a 90 degree right hander. It is hard on the brakes for this one, then up a gradient to a right, left combination (chicane style) up the hill a bit more, to the pit straight. “It’s a great track with a few challenges that can catch out the unwary. I love it,” English added. Competitors are well catered for with carports on either side of the main tower, which line the pitlane. There is a large undercover area that houses scrutineering at the southern end, behind the tower and pre-grid area. There is also an ample paddock area where crews can set up along with their trailers and service vehicles. Power is

provided throughout. Spectators are also well looked after with grandstands on pit lane and at Turn 3. There is bridge access to the middle of the circuit, though it is closed off during the racing to stop patrons using it as a viewing platform whilst cars are on the track. The Morgan Park facility has an excellent café, with quality food at very reasonable prices (possibly the best value for money in Australia) and undercover seating. It is situated behind the pits, while there are additional food options also on the outside of Turn 3. Whilst around 160km and a two-hour drive from Brisbane, accommodation options in Warwick (population over 15,000) include

at least 14 hotel/motels, over half dozen bed and breakfast establishments, four caravan parks, plus guest houses and self-contained units. Outside of Warwick and 84km to the north is Toowoomba (pop 137,000) via the New England Highway, and Stanthorpe (pop 5,500) 60km to the south. Morgan Park Raceway has now been transformed from a very basic dirt facility to a multi-functional and flourishing venue, and is a worthy choice for national championship race meetings. And credit too for the development of the facility to the late Bill Campbell (grandfather of Matt Campbell) whose passion and guidance helped make Morgan Park happen.

Track Length: 730 metres to 3.0 kilometres, depending on configuration. Track width: 10 metres average. Track Corners: Four to 14, depending on configuration. Track Density: (Motorsport Australia approved) K Track- Group 1 (24), Group 2 (32), Group 3 (40), Group 4 (46), Endurance Regularity 40, Modern Regularity 46, Historic Regularity 60, Supersprints 20; Trucks not Permitted. Track Licence: AASA, Motorsport Australia, and Motorcycling Australia Nearest major town: Warwick, 5 kilometres to Post Office. Minimum race licence requirements: AASA Clubman Licence/Motorsport Australia L2S. Biggest event held: Currently ASBK and Historic Winter Nationals. Track Operators: Warwick District Sporting Car Club Inc. Track Manager: Callum Espie. Circuit Hours: 7.30am – 3.30pm, seven days per week. Website: www.morganparkraceway. com.au Email: info@morganparkraceway. com.au Address: 228 Old Stanthorpe Road, Warwick, Queensland.

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LATEST e-Series RACE COVERAGE

VAN GISBERGEN CLOSES IN Report: Dan McCarthy Images: Supercars THE SUPERCARS All Stars Eseries has crept past the halfway point, with the two most recent rounds at current Formula 1 venues. Scott McLaughlin still sits on top of the points table but his lead is being trimmed by Shane van Gisbergen. In both the fifth and sixth rounds, current McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris joined the grid and certainly showed his experience behind the wheel of a simulator. The fifth round at Spa-Francorchamps proved to be a controversial one with a notable incident in Race 1. The opening lap was surprisingly clean, van Gisbergen leading from pole ahead of Anton de Pasquale, McLaughlin, Norris and Cameron Waters. On lap 4, all of the top five aside from de Pasquale elected to pit, the Erebus driver felt he was faster and thus attempted the overcut by pitting the following lap. De Pasquale emerged ahead of the Triple Eight driver but down the long Kemmel Straight van Gisbergen got in the Penrite Racing carâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s slipstream and retook the position. De Pasquale hounded van Gisbergen for the remainder of the race, and then on the final lap into the Bus Stop Chicane the Penrite racer made a superb move. Firing around the outside of the right hander, de Pasquale had the inside line around the left and briefly retook the lead, however on the exit van Gisbergen tapped the 24-year-old into a spin. Van Gisbergen just held onto take the win ahead of McLaughlin, Waters and Norris, while de Pasquale crossed the line fifth. The following day van Gisbergen was stripped of victory and demoted to fifth for the incident, handing McLaughlin the win. The second race was a reverse grid affair. In the midfield it was the usual chaos but up front Super2 Wildcard entry Broc Feeney held back a train of cars to take the race victory. Will Davison came second ahead

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Lando Norris tips Scott McLaughlin into a spin at turn one in the final race at COTA (above) while Shane van Gisbergen leads the field through Eau Rouge at Spa Francorchamp (below).

of Garry Jacobson, Chaz Mostert, van Gisbergen and de Pasquale. Waters finished in eighth, while series leader McLaughlin was caught up in an incident and finished in 21st. In Race 3 history repeated itself once again on the final lap as into the Bus Stop Chicane de Pasquale and van Gisbergen collided. This time de Pasquale ran into the back of van Gisbergen, spinning himself, but was able to hold onto second finishing behind the Kiwi. McLaughlin came home third ahead of round winner Waters and Mostert,

who threw away third at the final turn. The Supercars drivers travelled virtually to America and Circuit of the Americas for the Round 6, racing around the shorter layout used by Supercars back in 2013. Once again it was the van Gisbergen and de Pasquale show in Race 1 as the pair took off into the distance. Waters and Norris fought for fourth place, with the former Formula 2 runner-up turning around the Tickford Racing driver at Turn 9, for which he received a drive-through penalty.

Out front van Gisbergen took the win from de Pasquale, McLaughlin and Aussie IndyCar star Will Power. Waters finished 21st with Norris in 28th, however, this gave the pair strong starting positions for the reverse grid affair. Multiple incidents took place within the first 15s of the race in what was a chaotic start as usual. One of the many drivers caught out was McLaughlin who had the rear wing torn from his DJR Team Penske Mustang. At the conclusion of lap 1 Todd Hazelwood led Norris and Waters. Norris and Hazelwood battled hard with the F1 driver eventually taking the lead around the final turn on lap 3. From that point Norris was unchallenged and became the second Wildcard winner, beating home Waters and Hazelwood. De Pasquale came home fifth and van Gisbergen seventh, while McLaughlin was only able to recover to 18th position. Van Gisbergen and de Pasquale collided on the final lap for the third time in a week in Race 3. De Pasquale led from pole without coming under any great threat from van Gisbergen. With slightly fresher tyres in the final stint van Gisbergen closed to the rear of de Pasquale by the start of the final lap. Into Turn 14 van Gisbergen made a bold lunge and turned de Pasquale around, then pulled over and allowed his rival back into the lead to take the victory. Van Gisbergen was second ahead of McLaughlin, Waters and Power.

Supercars Standings 1 McLaughlin 2 Van Gisbergen 3 Waters 4 De Pasquale 5 Mostert 6 Heimgartner 7 Davison 8 Jacobson 9 Coulthard 10 Fullwood

1419 1363 1336 1179 1094 996 937 937 880 866

Virtual chaos at the much lamented Oran Park, just like it once was with the real thing.

HABER HOLDS ON OUT FRONT Report: Dan McCarthy Images: ARG AFTER ROUNDS 6 and 7 of the ARG eSports Cup, Harley Haber continues to lead the series despite only winning one of the four races. For the seventh round of the series at Phillip Island, the Australian Racing Group shook up the race format. Drivers completed a qualifying session and a race in the TCR cars, before qualifying and racing a Formula 3 car. Race 1 was won by former British Touring Car Champion Ash Sutton. The Englishman took to the Aussie circuit like a duck to water, locked in a race long battle with fellow series contender Jaden Ransley and Wildcard Cody Burcher. In the closing laps Ransley dropped back leaving Sutton and Burcher to duel up front. Sutton showed his extensive Touring Car experience to take the race win ahead of Burcher and Ransley. James Golding finished fourth after starting from pole, beating home Ben Bargwanna and title challenger Dylan O’Keeffe. The Formula 3 race did not run as smoothly, with cars spearing off track everywhere and a number of the series front runners caught out.

Burcher took a remarkable 12.5s win, Trans Am driver Nic Carroll and Nathan Herne were locked in a titanic battle for second position with Carroll pipping Herne by 0.006s. TCR driver Jordan Cox was fourth ahead of Haber, who recovered from an opening lap excursion. Another notable performance was TCR Australia driver O’Keeffe who was able to finish 13th despite losing his rear wing early in the race when he was hit from behind by John Martin. Drivers remained in TCR machinery for the following round which was quite nostalgic for a number, as the series took to the now defunct Oran Park Raceway. Haber bagged pole position for the opening encounter, starting alongside Garth Tander who won the final Supercars Championship round at the venue in 2008. The series leader was never threatened from the moment the lights went out and cruised to an 8.5s victory. Sutton came home in second ahead of Tander and the consistent Cox. Golding had a poor start and fell well outside the top 10 early in the race, but a good use of the uncut strategy gave him fifth position ahead of Ransley. The reverse top 20 grid format returned for Race 2, therefore reigning European TCR Series

winner Josh Files started from pole after finishing the first race in 20th. Chaos descended with crashes a constant throughout the 15 minute race. If drivers stayed out of trouble they could easily collect a big haul of points but many of the series front runners failed to do so. Lachlan Mineeff became the latest Wildcard to win an ARG eSports Cup race, beating home Englishman Files. Chelsea Angelo sat in third position coming out of the final corner but ran out of fuel on the pit straight, and crawled across the line in fifth. Ransley pipped both Haber and Angelo to the final podium position, the trio separated by 0.5s at the line. Just outside of the top 5 was James Golding and reigning TCR Australia Series winner Will Brown. Title contenders Sutton, O’Keeffe and Herne were all buried down in the pack after being involved in separate accidents.

ARG Standings 1 Haber 2 Ransley 3 O’Keeffe 4 Sutton 5 Herne 6 Cox 7 Tander 8 Golding 9 Brook 10 Carroll

398 378 354 343 332 309 286 279 234 232

ARG virtual racers stepped back into Formula 3 cars for a race at Phillip Island, and it was a close fought affair at the front. 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 x x x Xxx x x x Xxx x x x Xxx xxx

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This issue Auto Action kicks off a new feature called ‘What’s In The Workshop’ that will showcase just that. If you have a new racing project during this enforced break in on-track action, drop us a line at editor@autoaction.com.au

The Peters Motorsport workshop is full to the brim with projects.

PETERS MOTORSPORT LEADING TOURING Car Masters team Peters Motorsport has been busy completing a range of projects, including one shrouded in mystery, during this enforced lay off from racing. The team’s roots can be traced back to the popular GT-Performance category of the early 2000s, where team co-owner Brett Peters drove successfully to back-to-back titles in 2001 and 2002. A second bugeye Subaru Impreza

WRX STI was built late in the season by the team’s co-owner and mechanic Rod Dawson. It was driven by Peters in the final two events of the year at Phillip Island and the Gold Coast to secure his second title on the trot. The WRX STI went onto compete in the 2003 Bathurst 24 Hour and later a 12 Hour, before it was mothballed. The car is still owned by Dawson and is now being restored to its former glory by the team.

“It’s still early days,” Peters said of the refurbishment status. “The very first part of the process was the engine because the last time it was run it was definitely not sounding terrific and at the Bathurst 24 Hour race it actually didn’t finish, whereas the year before in my two-door WRX we had a terrific result. “It clearly had an issue because when they re-built it, it still wasn’t right, so the first thing to do was to rip the engine

out, which is what the photo of me in the engine bay was all about. Rod’s nephew Pete, who’s our number one man and an engine builder by trade, is currently giving it a big freshen up.” The Subaru has bought back special memories for Peters as it was built very quickly, and was a rapid car straight away when it debuted at the penultimate round of the Procar Champ Series 2002. “The GT-P category was a parity class

MILLDUN MOTORSPORT AS RESTICTIONS begin to ease across the country, Milldun Motorsport is eagerly awaiting the resumption of racing. First coming to prominence due to its involvement in S5000 with Barton Mawer and taking over the Subaru program in TCR Australia, Milldun is a team that also competes in rallying, historic racing and much, much more. “We’ve got heaps going on,” team owner Liam Dunn told Auto Action. “At the minute we’ve got 48 cars across our two workshops.” The team’s S5000 is prepared and ready to go after a short run at the Australian Grand Prix, where inroads were made in the chassis set-up thanks to its participation in other classes of racing. “There’s the S5000 of course, we can’t wait to get back out there in that category, it is just

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awesome,” Dunn enthused. “We’re finding that through competing in a wide array of classes, changes can be adapted from one category to another. An example of this came about when testing the S5000 at the Grand Prix, where we implemented a change from one of other programs but we haven’t really exploited it yet. “We know it’s going to benefit us, but we didn’t know it was there and I don’t think without running other programs we’d learn it.” Milldun has just completed repairs to the MARC Mazda 3 V8 that it runs for owner Tony Groves, after an accident in the Combined Sedan races as support to the Bathurst 12 Hour. A further expansion into Super2 is also planned. On the rallying side, a fresh arrival is a Ford Fiesta R5 import-

ed from Europe that will contest selected rounds of the Australian Rally Championship. A returning champion has got together with Milldun to return, making it an exciting prospect. “The AP4 Mini of Eli Evans in the workshop. That’s a bit quiet at the moment, but it will be competing again at some point, which is exciting,” Dunn said.

The historical side of the team is just as busy, featuring projects mainly focused on Australian designed and developed sports cars, one of which is a Norax Group C C2 sports prototype. “We restored a Group C Norax and it was a part of the demonstration at the Bathurst 12 Hour,” Dunn explained. “It was the first time the client had ever driven it

after a five-year restoration and we’re really proud of how it came out. “It’s a gorgeous car.” Also, in the workshop are the Molina Monza built by Lou Molina in 1957, which is surrounded by a variety of Bolwells and JWSs. Another piece of Australian history is currently undergoing

Team co-owner Brett Peters has got his hands dirty restoring a faithful old companion (above, left). An exciting new project is also being built, though it’s a secret for now. and for various reasons because the two-door STI was a very lightweight car, Rod believed it went against us,” Peters explained. “He volunteered to fund the build, which occurred over three weeks. “It was a crazy scenario. “We drove it to Queensland Raceway at 6:30am on the Tuesday and if it tested well, we kept going to Phillip Island and if it didn’t go well, we were back to pick the two-door up and off we went. “It was quick. We went to Phillip Island and smoked them so that’s a great memory.”

Once the refurbishment of the Subaru is completed Peters hopes to test and then a decision will be made on whether it is kept or sold. The next project is a bit of a mystery as Peters was unwilling to reveal much more than say it features some Supercars componentry and is an entirely new build. “We’ve got an exciting project that we haven’t entirely revealed yet,” Peters told Auto Action. “It’s a complete ground up build of a car, including design and all will be revealed fairly soon.”

The chassis is expected to be tested in the coming weeks and appears to be similar to a time attack or MARC Car in its design. “It’ll be shaken down within the next couple of weeks as soon as track time is available. If it’s as successful as we hope it to be, it’ll be the start of many more builds.” The team has both its TCM entries right to go, Ryal Harris having rewrapped his Chevrolet Camaro after its Adelaide accident. The lack of racing has also enabled Peters to return to the workshop, something

he hasn’t done since his Formula Ford days. “This situation has meant I’ve had to get my hands dirty,” Peters laughed. “The admin side of the business with the V8 experience and other things, has kept me chained to the desk apart from going away racing.” Not only has it got Peters out of the office, but it has allowed the team to expand. “We’ve been busy enough to put a young fellow on,” Peters said. “It’s been pretty good to put someone on, there aren’t many businesses doing that at the minute.” HM

Milldun Motorsport is busy with 48 cars in its workshops at the moment, a mix of historic and modern racing machinery. a complete restoration is the Globe Wheels Ford Escort BDA. “There are a few jobs that have come about because clients feel this is the right opportunity to get jobs completed, one of these is the famous Globe Wheels Ford Escort,” said Dunn “It’s a Mark I BDA Escort run as a production car by the Globe Wheel Company, then it went through subsequent owners including Garry Rogers, who raced it as a sports sedan. “It’s quite an iconic car.”

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With a steady stream of projects, the team hasn’t downsized and is instead aiming to expand its workforce by at least one. “We’re currently looking for one maybe two staff members at the moment,” said Dunn “We did a fairly big restructure in terms of everyone having their own designated work areas. We’re quite fortunate we have a bit of space across two premises, so we can space the team out. We haven’t needed to stagger work, which is good.” HM

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We take a look back at who and what were making news in the pages of Auto Action 10, 20, 30 & 40 years ago

Have you being paying attention?

1980: ALAN JONES crossed the line a winner in Spain, but after an Executive Committee of the International Automobile Federation meeting in Athens, the Grand Prix held at Jarama was deemed illegal. The war between FISA and FOCA forced manufacturer teams Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Renault to not compete. CAMS was also in the midst of a dispute after it approved the peripheral port Mazda RX-7.

1990: A NUMBER of Bathurst contenders scored a coup with a tyre-test prior to the 1000. Dunlop and Bridgestone runners tested on the newly resurfaced circuit, after Touring Car Entrants Association chairman Allan Moffat organised with the Bathurst City Council the hire of the circuit. The Coca-Cola World 600 failed to provide fortune for three Australian entrants as Dick Johnson found out. 2000: FORD TICKFORD Racing was making a big play for the ‘Wollongong Whiz’ Wayne Gardner. After switching from bikes, Gardner had stuck with Holden since his debut in 1993 but had turned his attention to Japan in recent years. Was Toyota making a play to join V8 Supercars? Its recently launched Avalon large sedan met the criteria and Toyota’s Australian boss backed a proposal to join the strictly Ford vs Holden battle. 2010: THE WAR between Vettel and Webber continued to ramp up their inter-team battle after a collision in Turkey, cost a Red Bull Racing 1-2. There was further conflict in V8 Supercars between James Courtney and Jamie Whincup, as the championship battle heated up between the pair. There was also a plan for the top-tier to return to Perth after the Western Australian Government provided $5 million for Barbagallo track redevelopment.

ACROSS

4. From what team did Michael Clemente purchase his Honda? 7. What was the highest position George Russell finished a Grand Prix in his debut Formula 1 season last year? 9. Who was Mark Skaife’s teammate at the Holden Racing team in 2001? (full name) 12. Prior to 1987 Peter McLeod’s highest finish in the Bathurst 1000 was fifth in 1983, who was his co-driver? (surname only) 13. Who won the 1999 Bathurst 1000 alongside Steven Richards? 14. How many race wins did Alan Jones collect in the 1981 Formula 1 season? 17. With what team did George Russell win the both the GP3 Series and FIA Formula 2 Championship? 18. In what brand of car did Peter McLeod make his Australian Touring Car Championship debut? 20. Peter McLeod won the Bathurst 1000 in 1987 alongside Peter Brock and David Parsons, but who didn’t drive the car? (full name) 21. After karting Michael Clemente made the step up to a one make series, what was the brand of car used in this category? 22. What Formula 1 team did Jones drive for in 1976? 23. Jones competed with the Haas Lola team in the 1986 F1 season, what was his highest finishing position that season?

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26. How many times did Peter McLeod race in the Bathurst 1000 with his son Ryan? 27. Who won the 1994 Australian Touring Car Championship? (full name) 28. What was the controversial sponsor on Alan Jones’ F1 car in 1976?

DOWN

1. How old is British Formula 1 driver George Russell? 2. Before the Australian Grand Prix was cancelled, in what position did Michael Clemente qualify in the TCR Asia Pacific Cup? 3. Who will be George Russell’s rookie teammate at Williams this year? (surname only) 5. In 1985 McLeod contested the Daytona 24 Hour with Gregg Hansford, Kevin Bartlett and who? (full name) 6. In the TCR Australia Series Michael Clemente will race in what model of car this year? 8. Who was Mark Skaife’s Bathurst winning co-driver in 2001? (surname only) 10. How many times was George Russell out qualified by his teammate Robert Kubica in 2019? 11. In the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship what was Peter McLeod’s highest race finishing position? 14. In what position did Peter McLeod

finish in the 1987 Bathurst 1000 before inheriting the win a number of months later? 15. George Russell won the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2018, who finished runner-up that season? 16. Which Supercars Championship team won the 2000 Bathurst 1000? (abbreviation) 19. In 1981 Nelson Piquet pipped both Jones and Reutemann to the Formula 1 title, what team did he drive for? (full name) 24. Craig Lowndes won three championships with the HRT but how many times did he win the Bathurst 1000 with the squad? 25. In what model Commodore did Craig Lowndes win his first Australian Touring Car/Supercars Championship? 26. What was the car number of the VL Commodore that Peter McLeod took to the 1987 Bathurst 1000 victory?

Jones Crossword Answers #1785

1 down – Shadow 2 down – South African 3 across – Sandown 4 down – Austria 5 down – Reutemann 6 down – Brabham 7 across – Denny Hulme 8 across – Calder 9 across – fourteen 10 across – Ritter 11 down – Hockenheimring 12 across – Australia 13 down – Allan Grice 14 across – Porsche 15 across – second 15 down – sixth

16 across – Caesars Palace 17 down – Williams 18 down – Nelson Piquet 19 across – third 20 down – Colin Bond 21 down – Team Haas (Haas Lola) 22 down – Alfa Romeo 23 down – Ferrari 24 across – five 25 across – Symmons Plains 26 across – Oran Park 27 across – Monza 28 across - Arrows

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Relive the golden era of Australian motor sport with these fantastic ’Bathurst Photographic History’ books These A4 landscape books are full of rare action images taken by some of Australia’s best motorsport photographers, which you won’t see published anywhere else. Start your own library or give as a gift.

BATHURST GROUP A COMMODORES 1985 TO 1992.

MOFFAT AT THE MOUNTAIN A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY

With over 180 colour and black and white images this 192-page book capturers Allan Moffat’s stellar Bathurst 500/1000 career as both a driver and a team owner – from 1969 to 1996.

Or buy any 3 and pay only $99.00 plus $10 postage, saving $23.00

This 192-page book features imagery of every Group A Commodore that started in the 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992 Bathurst 1000 races. The book has a Foreword by Graham Moore and has a great mix of black and white and colour images.

BATHURST 500 1963 - 1964 - 1965 - 1966 - 1967 192 page book features imagery of every car that started in the Bathurst 500 races from 1963 to 1967. HARDIE FERODO 500 - 1970 A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY 160 page book features imagery of every car that started in the 1970 event. PHILLIP ISLAND TO BATHURST - THE TRADITIONAL YEARS RESULTS 160 page book features detailed information on every car that started in the original/traditional Phillip Island and Bathurst 500/1000 races from 1960 to 1999.

BATHURST XU-1 TORANAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE GIANT KILLING XU-1s

This 176-page book features imagery of every XU-1 Torana that started in the 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973 Hardie Ferodo Bathurst 500’s. Foreword by Colin Bond and a good mix of colour and black and white images.

BATHURST ROTARY MAZDAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY This 176 page book features imagery of every Rotary Mazda that started in the Bathurst Hardie Ferodo and James Hardie races from 1969 to 1985. The book is foreworded by Don Holland.

BATHURST HARDTOP FALCONS A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY This 192 page book features imagery of every Hardtop Falcon that started in the 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979 Bathurst Hardie Ferodo 1000 races. The book is foreworded by Kevin Bartlett.

A mix of colour and black and white images.

BATHURST XD AND XE FALCONS This 160-page book features imagery of every XD and XE Falcon that started the 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984 Bathurst 1000 races. Bob Morris and Garry Willmington have written the Forward to this colourful book with a great mix of colour and black and white images.

BATHURST A9X TORANAS BATHURST GT-HO FALCONS A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY This 176-page book features imagery of every This 160 page book features imagery of A9X Torana that started in the 1977, 1978 and every GT-HO Falcon that started in the 1979 Hardie Ferodo Bathurst 1000 races. 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972 Hardie Ferodo With a Foreword by Bob Morris, it features an 500 races at Bathurst – with a good mix of colour and black and white. The foreword interview withJim Richards who won Bathurst three years in a row with Peter Brock in the is by John Goss. mighty A9X Torana.

BATHURST GTS MONAROS This 144-page book features imagery of every Monaro that started in the 1968, 1969, 1970, 1973 and 1974 Bathurst Hardie Ferodo races. The book has co-Forewords by Bruce McPhee and Colin Bond and has a good mix of colour and black and white images.

BATHURST CHARGERS AND PACERS This 160-page book features imagery of every Charger and Pacer that started in the 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1973 Hardie Ferodo Bathurst races. The book’s Forwarded is by Leo Geoghegan and has a good mix of colour and black and white images.

To place an order via email send to: bruce@autoaction.com.au or give us call at Auto Action HQ on 03 9563 2107