Motorsport eNews Issue 76 - October 14-20, 2008

BATHURST 1000: Everything you need to know

Issue No. 076 14 – 20 October 2008

REDOCTOBER How T8 Secured the triple Crown

Lions SHARE BIG

CHANGES AT HRT

Editorial Editor: Grant Rowley grant@mnews.com.au Deputy Editor: Andrew van Leeuwen andrew@mnews.com.au Staff Journalist: Phillip Mahoney philm@mnews.com.au Executive Editor: Phil Branagan editor@mnews.com.au

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Contributing Writers F1: Will Buxton, Mark Glendenning, Paolo Filisetti Europe: Quentin Spurring, David Addison US: Martin D. Clark, Phil Morris Speedway: Greg Boscato, Geoff Rounds, Darren Sutton, Tony Millard (UK) Rally: Ryan Lahiff Drag Racing: Dave Ostaszewski (USA), Ken Ferguson, John Bosher National: Mark Wicks, Mark Jones, Aaron Shaw, Daniel Powell

Photographers Sutton Motorsport Images, Dirk Klynsmith, Marshall Cass, John Morris/Mpix, AF1 Images, James Smith, Peter Bury, Neil Blackbourn, Chris Carter, Coopers Photography, Geoff Gracie, Ash Budd, Paris Charles, Neil Hammond, Joel Strickland, Mike Patrick (UK) Motorsport eNews is published by Australasian Motorsport News ABN 55 125 120 702 Publisher: C Lambden

Australasian

The ‘A’ Team

Issue No. 076 | 14 Sept – 20 Oct 2008

news 4 Tom Tom

6 Round and black 8 What a feeling!

10 The Rat’s Race 12 Helio’s coming!

18 Woody Wood

chat 22 5 minutes with ... opinion 23 van Leeuwen

Walkinshaw’s direction Tyres play B1000 havoc The Camry is close!

Photos of #15’s demise IRL star gets reprieve Glen to follow Bro to FV8 Jason Bright

25 Warrener

Hump Day! Smash and Crash

42 Dead Heat 46 That’s Fiore ...

48 Biff and Bargs

How Bathurst was won Canto/Webb get close Three for Dean in CCup Biffle in NASCAR, Bargs in MINI

race 26 Triple Great trade 50 Classifieds

Who is this doing a sun dance on the bridge at Mount Panorama? You’ll find out somewhere in this issue of eNews

Copyright: Material published in Motorsport eNews is copyright and may not be reproduced in full or in part without the written permission of the publisher.

Freelance contributions are welcome, and while all care will be taken, Motorsport eNews does not accept responsibility for damage or loss of material submitted.

Opinions expressed in Motorsport eNews are not necessarily those of Australasian Motorsport News or its staff.

International photos supplied by Sutton Images, www.sutton-images.com – click here to check out their exclusive poster deals

t n o c l l u f e k a t Tom to

Uncle Tom primed to assume HRT reins V8 SUPERCARS

Dirk Klynsmith

THE relationship between Mark Skaife and the Holden Racing Team looks set to change at the end of the 2008 V8 Supercar Championship Series. eNews understands that meetings this week will see Skaife’s 50 percent ownership of the team end. Pending the deliberations of the V8 Supercars Australia Board, which must approve such changes, Walkinshaw Racing, which was confirmed as a half-owner of HRT by TEGA in March 2007, will assume full ownership of the team.

Tom Walkinshaw was due to attend meetings to finalise what is being described to us as “formalisation” of the process today, and was unable to be contacted for comment.

At the same time, Walkinshaw is reportedly set to move Skaife aside from driving for the ‘formal’ two-car team, with the most likely option that he will race a third Holden-backed, E85-branded ‘green’ car, as eNews revealed some weeks back.

Skaife stepped into the ownership breach at HRT following the demise of the TWR Group in the UK five years ago.

After the future of the team was secured by Holden itself (which under TEGA rules could not maintain ownership), Skaife Sports became the formal stakeholder in HRT in mid-2003, with the security of a 10-year sponsorship contract from Holden. At about the same time, John and Margaret Kelly filled a similar role with what was then Kmart Racing (now the HSV Dealer Team) but under slightly different circumstances.

When Walkinshaw Performance

arrived to provide technical backup to the two teams in 2006, Skaife’s role in the team changed and his company’s financial commitments began to grow.

WP eventually took a 50 percent stake in the team in lieu of monies owed to it, but at the time of the partnership’s approval, TEGA laid down some strict guidelines.

“TEGA has not approved Tom Walkinshaw as a person suitable to hold a controlling interest in a licence nor hold a licence in his own right,” TEGA advised its member teams in a memo.

“Should Walkinshaw seek to acquire more than a 50 per cent interest in Skaife Sports at any time in the future he will be required to seek formal approval from the (TEGA) board at that time.”

With the adoption of a single board, the responsibility for such matters now lies with the V8SA Board.

While it is a possibility that Skaife may part with the team altogether – and reports suggesting just that have appeared in some media outlets since his Bathurst race incident on Sunday – a more likely scenario is that he will remain in the driving seat but that a new name will join Team Red next season.

FOR FORMULA 1, MOTOGP AND WRC NEWS, OPINION AND ANALYSIS CLICK HERE TO

trol of HRT

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Dirk Klynsmith

Davison in hot seat for Team Red

Dirk Klynsmith

WILL Davison appears to be the man best-placed to step into the Holden Racing Team next season.

Davison and Lee Holdsworth are thought to be the prime candidates to join Garth Tander, but there are factors external to both drivers that may play a role in determining which one gets the red racesuit next season.

Holdsworth, who has been a standout driver over the past two seasons, is still under contract to Garry Rogers Motorsport for the next two seasons and, because of that, a suitable deal would have to be made to release him early. GRM looks set to lose its Holden backing at the end of this season and team boss Garry Rogers will be looking for what he would consider to be appropriate compensation before he even considers letting his team leader go. There were even a few signs scattered up the Great Western Highway along the way to Bathurst, above, suggesting that Holdsworth would look good in red ...

Davison is effectively a free agent once the 2008 season concludes, and while the situation at Dick Johnson Racing (and the whole driver market!) has been complicated following the recent signing of James Courtney, a resolution to the situation is, according to sources at Bathurst, only days away.

The official line from the team remains that its 2009 driver line-up will not be announced until it is ready to do so, but we believe that a deal between DJR and Davison was, at the very least, agreed when the Courtney deal landed slightly more than two weeks ago. However, under the changed circumstances, we believe that both parties would accept a mutually amicable split, should Davison have an alternative on the table.

Davison, 26, made his V8 Supercar debut in a Holden with the now-defunct Team Dynamik in 2005 and has a number of admirers on the ‘red’ side of the fence. With two race wins already this season, he is seen as one of the drivers who will be a pivotal player in the series’ future – and Walkinshaw Racing’s future plans clearly revolve around having two race-winning drivers in the works Commodores next season.

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Is a pre-se the answ

Tyres on winner’s mind Triple Eight’s early tyre diagnosis made the difference V8 SUPERCARS THE tyre problems that crippled the ambitions of a number of teams at Mount Panorama were factored into Triple Eight Race Engineering’s plans as early as Thursday morning.

The dramas that saw a number of Dunlop tyres delaminate and force drivers to make extra pitstops during the race were picked up within 10 laps of the opening practice session on Thursday morning, according to the team’s senior engineer, Campbell Little.

From that moment, the

team modified the cars and all four drivers were instructed to avoid trouble spots, like the kerb at The Chase and the exit kerb at Griffin’s Bend, at all costs.

Team Principal Roland Dane declined to share the changes that the team’s engineers made to the set-ups of the two Fords, but eNews believe that the cars ran marginally less front and rear camber and that the tyre pressures were modified accordingly. The team deliberately focused on refining the new set-up in qualifying, from which Jamie Whincup emerged fifth-fastest in his

maiden effort at the Mountain.

With the set-up of the car’s SBR engine concentrated on fuel economy throughout the race, Lowndes was able to run four laps longer in his opening stint than the similarlypowered Falcon of James Courtney and, when Whincup returned car #888 to the race, he was ahead of Courtney’s codriver, David Besnard.

The Jeld-Wen car suffered a tyre problem not long after and, from that point, the SBR car did not get sufficiently near the TeamVodafone entry to mount a challenge.

– PHIL BRANAGAN

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eason Bathurst test wer to tyre troubles?

V8 SUPERCARS

Dirk Klynsmith

A PRE-SEASON test day at Bathurst could be the answer to curing the tyre problems that hurt many teams during last weekend’s Supercheap Auto 1000 at Mount Panorama.

That is the suggestion offered by Dunlop Motorsport manager Kevin Fitzsimmons, who came under fire for the delaminating tyres on the left-hand side of the cars, particularly the rear tyres, during the 1000km race.

Due to the unique layout of the circuit, and the importance of the event, Fitzsimmons has proposed an early-season test to give the teams, and Dunlop, a chance to gather data at the famous circuit.

“In the good old days where we had tyre competition, they had a full-blown test day here (at Bathurst) to get a real handle on things so we can do something if it’s an issue,” he said.

“It would be an unbelievable help to have a test like that to collect information early in the season.”

A track test at Bathurst would not be unprecedented.

In the mid 90s, local touring car teams would head to Bathurst after the season’s last round at Sydney’s Oran Park to attend a media test day, designed to give the teams a first-look at the track.

A similar session, held earlier in the year, would allow Dunlop, and the V8 teams alike, a chance to get more miles at the track.

“This track is so unique from a loading point of view, totally opposite to Phillip Island. The Island’s high speed corner loading compared to here is completely different. The pounding on the car that Bathurst offers going up and down the mountain and stuff like that is just incredible. And there are huge loads across the top, past the grate, but again, that loads the righthand tyres and it was the lefts which we had problems with.”

Dunlop officials will do a track walk on Monday (today) to see if they can find any further problems with the surface or its extremities to find a possible causes.

– GRANT ROWLEY For more on the 1000km tyre troubles, click eNews’s huge Bathurst report, starting page 26.

EXCLUSIVE

Ambrose: Toyota next week The Tasmanian’s new relationship will start in Atlanta next week in the #00 MWR Camry NASCAR THE Toyota era of Marcos Ambrose’s NASCAR career will start next week, at Atlanta.

Ambrose will step straight into Michael Waltrip Racing’s #00 Camry to qualify for the Pep Boys Auto 500 at the famed Georgia Superspeedway and will not race a Ford again in NASCAR’s top category, Sprint Cup. From now until the end of the season, the Wood Bros #21 Ford Fusion driven

by Ambrose will be raced soley by former Winston Cup champion Bill Elliott.

As first revealed exclusively in eNews two weeks ago, Ambrose will race one of MWR’s Camrys next season,

under the JTG Daugherty Racing banner. But as we reported last week, MWR’s #00 car is currently locked in a bitter battle to break into the all-important top 35 in owners’ points.

Following Saturday’s race at Charlotte, the entry is 36th on 2324 points. Haas CNC’s #66 is 32nd on 2489, followed

by Bill Davis Racing’s #22 (2469), Robby Gordon’s #7 (2402) and Team Red Bull’s #84 (2387). MWR’s other entries sit at 26th and 31st and Wood’s #21 is 42nd.

JTGD’s #47 is 51st.

The race for the top 35 positions is all-important, because those entries are guaranteed starts early in the season, including the famed Daytona 500 in February, and

Waltrip’s move in putting Ambrose in the car now is aimed squarely at doing just that.

With the early move, Ambrose will be in the unusual position of racing different makes of cars, for different teams, in different cities on successive days.

There is no Nationwide Series race this weekend, while the Chase for the Sprint Cup heads for Martinsville.

But the following weekend, the NW race is at Memphis in Tennessee, meaning Ambrose, currently 10th in that series, will have to drive JTGD’s Ford Fusion in Nationwide practice and then fly the 630km to drive MWR’s Toyota in the Sprint Cup Series.

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Bright commits to

BRITEK Former Bathurst champ will drive for his own team with his own cars in 09 V8 SUPERCARS BRITEK Motorsport will build its own Ford Falcon FGs in 2009 – and Jason Bright will remain as the driver.

Amid pit lane speculation, Bright told eNews that he will definitely drive with his own team next year, adding that the Dandenong-based squad will do the majority of the construction on two new Ford FGs chassis.

Also, his team’s major sponsors Fujitsu and IRWIN Tools will be back, after IRWIN re-signed for a further season recently.

Bright said that leaving Britek wasn’t his first option, however, he admitted that any move was going to be against his will.

“There were discussions going on, but it wasn’t my preferred option. My preferred option was to stay at Britek,” he said.

“In the end, I was able to lock away everything I’ve needed to lock away to be able to stay at Britek.”

With Bright’s future firm at his team, he has been busy securing appropriate chassis

for the introduction of the FG next year. Pace Innovations, directed by respected engineer Paul Ceprnich, is in charge of constructing the floors for all of the FG chassis, but Bright said there is a slight concern with supply and may not get a floor until December.

But according to the former Bathurst champ, his aim is to have a new FG ready for the March 9 test at Winton.

“We’ll build everything for two cars, or three cars, but the priority is to get one car to the test in March,” he said.

“It would be great to have two cars on the grid for Clipsal, but the timing of that isn’t in our hands.”

The driver of the #26 Britek Falcon for 2009 is still yet to be agreed, although Marcus Marshall is the likely driver. The second Britek car has been occupied by different drivers every year since the team’s inception in 2005.

– GRANT ROWLEY

Both pics: Dirk Klynsmith

Jarrod Moore

Jarrod Moore Jarrod Moore

The Rat Attacked

Jarrod Moore

This is gonna hurt: Paul Radisich had the throttle stick wide open over the top of The Mountain, crashing into concrete.

Radisich wheelchair-bound after massive McPhillamy Park crash V8 SUPERCARS FOR the second time in two years, Paul Radisich will be wheelchair-bound after a head-on crash at Bathurst.

The Rat was due to be flown from Orange Hospital to Melbourne as eNews

10

went live, and he faces further treatment for injuries to both ankles after his Friday crash.

The #15 HSV Dealer Team Commodore suffered a stuck throttle as the car crested the rise at McPhillamy Park during Saturday’s first practice session. His factory

VE hit a concrete wall unprotected by tyres.

In 2006, Radisich hit a tyre barrier when his Team Kiwi Commodore was knocked off-line exiting The Chase. He broke his left ankle in the crash and spent weeks in a chair, mainly because he had also suffered a broken sternum.

news

V8 SUPERCARS

Safety First

John Morris?Mpix

IN my opinion, you can’t go far enough when it comes to safety.

And in the case of making V8 Supercars safer, there have been some big goals kicked since Mark Porter’s unfortunate passing at Mount Panorama two years ago.

The best proof, or perhaps test, of the revisions made to cabin safety after Porter’s crash came at Bathurst last weekend, in the form of Chris Pither slamming into the side of Paul Weel’s car. It was a huge impact – the kind that makes the blood drain out of your face when you see it. For me, I felt like I did when I saw Porter’s crash in 2006, and Ashley Cooper’s Adelaide crash earlier this year …

But within no time we had good news about Paul, and when his car returned to the pits at Bathurst you could see why. As

John Morris?Mpix

THERE was a plethora of crashes at Mount Panorama this year, but thankfully none resulting in permanent or serious injuries.

The luckiest man of the weekend was Paul Weel. His PWR Commodore was struck at almost full speed by Chris Pither at Sulman Park during Thursday practice, the impact coming just inches behind the driver’s door. Weel was extricated by safety crews and airlifted to hospital, before being given the all clear, apart from bruising and a cracked rib.

Pither also emerged unscathed, and was later handed a $6000 fine ($3000 of which is suspended) for careless driving.

With Paul Radisich having set an anklecrunching precedent (see separate story), MINI Challenge driver Darren Berry crashed heavily during the series’ final race and broke his ankle. The roof of the MINI had to be cut off to extract Berry, pictured right, who went straight to hospital to have the joint plated and screwed.

He was released from hospital today (Monday), and has no other injuries.

– ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

Mark Willard

Mount Crashorama opinion

Andrew van Leeuwen mNews National Editor trashed as the Commodore was, the ‘safety cell’ where the driver sits was almost unharmed. At the time I was standing with the car’s regular driver Andrew Thompson, whose telling remark was “at least the car did its job.”

Would Weel have survived the same crash before the revised cockpit regulations came into play? You couldn’t possibly say.

But what is highly evident is that moving the driver’s further towards the centre of the car and installing some more side protection has been a huge positive for the sport.

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THE POWER OF FOUR INDYCAR FOURTH time is the charm for Will Power who contests Australia’s Gold Coast Nikon Indy 300 just a two-hour drive away from where he grew up in Toowoomba.

Power has won two pole positions with a highest finish of 12th overall.

“I’ve been there now three times,” said Power, determined to win and one of nine rookie drivers in the IndyCar series.

“First year I got taken out by my team-mate (Alex Tagliani), second year I got taken out by Sebastien Bourdais, and last year I was sent out in front of a car (from his pit box), and that basically put us in the back. We had a damaged

front wing, damaged suspension and later ended up being taken out by Katherine Legge.

“It’s a track where I’ve been very quick but just can’t break that streak of bad luck there. So I want to go there and finish that race in a good position.

“It means a lot to me to be racing in Australia, especially considering it’s basically a hometown for me,” continued Power, finishing 12th in the 2008 IndyCar championship with two top-five finishes.

“We have a house there on the Gold Coast. I’ve been going there my whole life, been hanging out there. It’s a great event for me. I just want to finish what I’ve started for the last two years.”

Honda Racing

GORE RECOVERING INDYCAR ONE Aussie who will miss the race on the Gold Coast is Craig Gore.

The 41-year-old Queensland entrepreneur is recovering from emergency surgery for a perforated bowel in a London hospital. Gore was in London working with his UK partners on several of his current developments including the Townsville Ocean Cruise Terminal, Breakwater Marina,

12

and Hope Harbour Marina.

Doctors have ordered two weeks recovery time before travelling. Last year Gore, who suffered an innerear injury from a helicopter flight the week before the race, had to watch from an off-site location because his physician banned loud noises.

KV Racing Technology will carry on with its drivers, Will Power and Oriol Servia. eNews wishes Gore a speedy recovery and a safe trip home.

Helio free to

Castroneves will head south – wit INDYCAR HELIO Castroneves will make the trip to Australia to race in the Nikon Indy 300 after all.

The Team Penske driver has successfully had his US$10million bail modified, allowing him to travel to Queensland. The Brazilian native and long-time Miami resident was last Friday granted a hearing reversing his restriction from travelling outside the USA so that he

could compete in the final race of the season. The U.S. Attorney, however, has until this Wednesday to appeal the Miami judge’s decision.

Runner-up to the 2008 IndyCar championship, Castroneves has Roger Penske’s support as the long-time pilot of #3 Team Penske entry.

“We weren’t going to throw someone in the car that we hadn’t tested,” Penske told The IndyStar.

“We had made an internal

news

IndyCar Media

o race at Indy

th Penske – to take on the streets decision not to run.”

The 2007 Dancing with the Stars TV winner hopes he can soft shoe his way out of serious felony charges for conspiracy and six counts of tax evasion after being indicted by a U.S. grand jury two weeks ago.

Under U.S. law, defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Castroneves, having declared he’s “not guilty” to tax evasion through his off-shore accounts and that he relied on advice

of tax experts, doesn’t know when his case will go to court, leaving team owner Penske in limbo about a team-mate to Australia’s Ryan Briscoe for next season.

“It’s way too early for that,” Penske said about next year’s driver lineup, indicating no decision would be made until after the Australian race.

“We don’t even know when this thing might go to trial. It might not even be next year.”

– MARY MENDEZ

Who’s your Mate?

INDYCAR

RAFAEL Matos, the 2008 Firestone Indy Lights Champion, has signed a multiyear deal with Luczo Dragon Racing, the team co-owned

by Roger Penske’s son Jay and Steve Luczo.

The team has competed twice at the Indy 500, earning fifth with Ryan Briscoe in its only 2007 outing and competing in a limited sixevent season with Tomas Scheckter this year.

Matos, 27, will make his 2009 IndyCar debut in the #12 Symantec entry in the first full

season commitment for the team.

The 2007 Champ Car Atlantic champion won a $2m budget for an ‘08 Champ Car ride, but surprised everyone by instead signing with Andretti Green Racing for the 2008 Firestone Indy Lights season, months before the open-wheel merger dissolved Champ Car. Could Roger Penske be auditioning Matos in his son’s satellite team in the event his long-time driver Helio Castroneves be unable to avoid the consequences of tax evasion?

– MARY MENDEZ

Honda Racing

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NASCAR Media

MERGER MAY CUT FIELD NASCAR

Kahne and spons

NASCAR Media

A POTENTIAL merger between General Motors and Chrysler may reduce the number of cars and teams in NASCAR’s series.

General Motors Corporation and Chrysler LLP and its majority stakeholder Cerberus Capital Management LP have held preliminary talks about a possible merger, according to media reports in the USA. It has also been reported that GM and Ford earlier this year discussed merging and that Cerberus is continuing to hold talks with other automakers including Renault SA, the owners of Renault and a stakeholder in Nissan.

Should a merger occur, it is likely that teams already facing difficulty with sponsorship

support would be forced to merge or close, and talk at Lowe’s Motor Speedway at the weekend was that Cup field could be cut from the current 43 cars to 38 over the next two seasons.

The talks come as the US auto industry approaches another probable crisis point. At the end of the second quarter of the US financial year, GM reported it had US$21 billion in cash reserves, but it was losing more than $1 billion a month. Last Thursday, the US credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s put GM on negative credit watch.

Cerberus owns slightly over 80 percent of Chrysler, which has had its market share cut to 11 percent, while GM holds 22 percent, down from its high of 50 percent.

Red

Saving Private Ryan Newman NASCAR

NASCAR Media

14

RYAN Newman will be sponsored by the US Army for 22 Sprint Cup points races in 2009.

Stewart Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart and Newman, left, made the announcement official at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last Thursday. The team already confirmed running two Chevrolets, and that Stewart’s sponsors will be Old Spice and Office Depot.

In what is becoming an increasing trend in a series demanding higher sponsorship dollars, what is not yet known is who will be the primary backer of Newman in the remaining 14 points events, in which the Army will be an associate sponsor.

– MARTIN D CLARK

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NASCAR

sor set to move to Toyota

Bud

THE Sprint Cup driver market leapt into action at Charlotte over the weekend, with one of the series stars, Kasey Kahne, apparently set to switch teams and makers.

Kahne, currently the team leader at Gillett Evernham Motorsports, has asked for a release from the team and is set to move to Team Red Bull. Current sponsor Budweiser is apparently not only backing his move, but willing to buy out his multi-million dollar contract. Were the move to happen, it would mean an all-new driver lineup at RBR, with Kahne joining Scott Speed.

Such a move would put Brian Vickers out of a drive but he may stay within the Toyota fold. eNews believes that GEM is considering switching from Dodge to Toyota next season, with younger charger Reed Sorenson already signed for 2009.

One man who will not be driving a GEM car next season is Patrick Carpentier. The French-Canadian had a major argument with his crew chief Mike Shiplett when the team failed to qualify at Talladega, and GEM replaced him with Mike Wallace at Charlotte last weekend.

A.J. Allmendinger, who ran for Michael Waltrip Racing at Charlotte, will drive for GEM the remainder of the year.

Beauty is only skin deep. But stupidity goes through to the bone NASCAR

Martin D Clark

NO, this is not an excuse to run a photo of Jessica Simpson in eNews. Really.

Seems that the Bathurst announcer who found the task of correctly pronouncing a name as intricate as ‘Matt Neal’ too difficult during the driver intros was not the only person to go into ‘blonde mode’ with a microphone over the weekend.

About the same time as our buddy was slaughtering the

names of many V8 Supercar drivers on the mountain, the American singer and reality TV star put the US National Anthem in for repairs at Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s round of the NASCAR Sprint Cup. It seems that she sang, “Who brought stripes and bright stars through the perilous light.” The correct words are, “Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight.”

Zero out of 10 for both.

Never again, please?

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Rick to drive his old ride

John Morris/Mpix

After The Rat’s Bathurst prang, HSV’s old girl will play on the Surfers streets V8 SUPERCARS RICK Kelly will drive the Toll HSV’s spare Commodore VE at Surfers Paradise after Paul Radisich’s horrifying McPhillamy Park accident on Saturday at Bathurst.

Kelly will drive WP002, the car that Kelly drove last season and is the same specification chassis to Paul Dumbrell’s Autobarn Commodore.

“The spare car isn’t ready to go, but it’s close to, so we’ll

press that into service,” team manager Erik Pender told eNews.

“It’s probably more important to do that and have the guys a little more rested before Indy.

“The car will have no problems at Indy. It’s the same spec as the other car and that was good enough to be fourth in the shoot-out here, so there’s no issue at all. There are only some small updates to be made to the electricals, but that’s all. Rick goes well at Surfers, too.”

The car that was crashed at McPhillamy Park, which debuted at Hidden Valley this year, was trucked back to Melbourne on Sunday for further assessments and repair.

The incident was caused by a stuck throttle.

Rick entered the Bathurst round in fourth place in the series, but after the disastrous weekend, the team has written off his title chances. He now runs in eighth place, 524 points off the leader.

“Yeah, he’s dropped to eighth now, so it’s over,” Pender said.

“The other one we were pushing for was teams points, because we’re dropping down the pit lane a fair way, and at the start of the weekend it was looking good for us.

“But that’s the way it goes.

The strength of this team is that no one ever spits the dummy or drops their lip. They just press on and make the most of what they’ve got.”

– GRANT ROWLEY

Jones: Driving future uncertain V8 SUPERCARS BRAD Jones may have driven his last motor race – but even the man himself is not certain.

Jones and co-driver Max Wilson charged to fifth place in the Bathurst 1000 and were impressively fast all weekend but the Albury veteran will still mull over calling it quits and ending his long career on a high.

“I will think about it,” said Jones after the race.

“I am not going to make any decisions today but I will give

16

it some thought over the next week or so.

I am like a recovering alcoholic – I take it one race at a time.”

Jones, 48, was thrilled with the form of

Wilson, who was having only his second start of the year.

“He is unbelievably good. No stress, very impressive. We would love to have him back.”

But Jones was less than pleased with the hit he got from James Courtney while the two were fighting for position.

“I think that his move was a bit shitty, to be honest …”

– PHIL BRANAGAN

John Morris/Mpix

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Let me at it ...

FUJITSU V8

GLEN Wood is back on Australian soil – and he wants a V8 Supercar.

The Victorian has spent most of 2008 living in England, where he was racing an Aussie-built Spectrum in the British Formula Ford Championship for Kevin Mills Racing. But he opted to return to Australia to support brother Dale in last weekend’s Bathurst 1000 instead of competing in the final Formula Ford round at Donington Park.

And the move home is, at least for now, permanent.

“It was a massive experience racing in England,” Wood told eNews.

“The car’s a very different in UK trim. It has a lot of horsepower and

Congratulations V8 UTES

18

Dirk Klynsmith

THE ever-popular Yokohama V8 Utes celebrated its 200th race at Mount Panorama with Championship leader Layton Crambrook taking the win in the final race.

The category launched in 2001 and has since established itself within Australia as one of the most popular support categories.

One man who has been there from the beginning is Charlie ‘Handlebars’ Kovacs, who was part of the original nine drivers and still races in the category full-time.

“In all the years I have only missed a handful of races,” said Kovacs.

“I have watched the series develop into a respectable category and the fact that we have an international fan base is fantastic. I have enjoyed being part of the growth, especially the characters that have been and gone.”

The category continues to grow within Australia and has recently expanded to form a category in New Zealand.

Winslow for Macau?

the slick tyres take a lot of getting used to. But those things extended my driving ability completely, and I can’t thank KMR and Spectrum enough for that opportunity.

“But Australia is the option now.

We were a new team with a new car, and to be honest the results weren’t coming. It was tough.”

So what now? Wood is weighing up various options, including another stint in Aussie FFord, but has his sights set on a Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series drive. It would make sense that he might saddle up with Greg Murphy Racing, the team for which Dale currently drives.

“The plan is to get a development series drive, and we’re looking at Carrera Cup too,” he revealed.

“I’m not going to stop now.”

– ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

FORMULA 3 AUSTRALIAN Formula 3 Champion James Winslow is a likely starter in the Macau F3 race.

The Brit is currently finalising more sponsorship to compete in the famous street race with Ombra Racing.

Winslow told eNews that it’s a matter of money before he locks in his spot on the grid.

“I just need to raise the backing to do it,” he said.

“I’ve got half of the budget, I’ve just got to find the other half.”

The British racer also said that if he competes at Macau, it will be his last race in an F3 car. With an eye on a future in V8 Supercars, he wants to tick this box before hanging up his open wheel helmet.

“One of my racing ambitions has always been to get a result there.

I’m looking at this being my grand finale.

“I raced at Macau in 2006 and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a podium there, or a great result.”

– GRANT ROWLEY

news

It’s all about being Green V8 SUPERCARS

Dirk Klynsmith

V8 SUPERCARS will be as fast on E85 fuel next season as they are on conventional fuel now.

V8 Supercars Australia announced a partnership with CSR at Bathurst last weekend, the sugar and refining giant becoming the official fuel supplier to the category. From next March, all cars in the V8 Supercar Championship Series and the Fujitsu V8 Series will race on CSR’s E85 fuel, an 85/15 percentage blend of ethanol and petrol.

The cars will burn more of the fuel than used at present but the performance of the cars will not change accordingly, says TeamVodafone’s Campbell Little.

“The initial part of the testing [was to maintain performance and] within four hours of running, the horsepower and torque were where they are now,” said Little, who has been an integral part of developing the hardware necessary for the switch.

“It is nothing that the engine builders can’t get done in a day.”

While there will be a cost associated with the switch, V8 Supercar Australia Chairman Tony Cochrane said that the cost savings of the fuel would be $7000 per car a year, based on fuel prices in mid-2008. There will be changes in race strategy with the anticipated reduction in fuel range of up to 30 percent, and Stone Brothers Racing’s Ross Stone suggested that there would be “maybe another stop or so at Bathurst” in future years.

One fear that has been allayed in how the new fuel would burn.

“The first thing we did was to put some on the floor and tried to burn it,” explained Little. “It burns with visible flame.”

The change to the new fuel will not require changes to the long-time V8 Supercar technical features of a 10:1 compression ratio and a rev limit of 7500rpm.

Karting gun for TRS TRS ACE European karter Will Stevens will dodge the cold of the Northern Hemisphere winter by spending it in New Zealand.

The 17-year-old Briton is headed down under for the upcoming Toyota Racing Series season, where he will

compete in the three rounds forming the International Trophy. It will be in preparation for Stevens’ UK Formula Renault program for 2009, and has been organised by his management company 2MB, which is run by former Grand Prix drivers Mark Blundell and Martin Brundle.

“It’s fantastic to be able to

confirm this signing for TRS because of the exceptionally talented driver it brings to our down under summer of motorsport,” said TRS Category Manager Barrie Thomlinson.

Stevens is already signed to Honda’s F1 team through its young driver program, and will race in NZ for new team Giles Motorsport.

19

In this issue of GPWEEK By And

Seb on Corse for title

IF your name was Sebastien, you were French and you drove a Citroen, the Tour de Corse was a good event.

Seb Loeb was untouchable at his home event, little surprise given his advantage on tarmac. He led the whole rally, leaving Ford to play funny tactical games behind him.

The Blue Oval had to play games because Mikko Hirvonen, Ford’s best title chance, kept getting punctures. Late in the rally he found himself behind stand-in factory Ford driver Francois Duval, and regular factory driver Jari-

Matti Latvala, who was again sent to Stobart to allow Duval to drive a BP car. Duval was eventually forced to check in to time control early and Latvala late, leaving Hirvonen second ahead of his team-mates.

Aussie Chris Atkinson had some issues with punctures on the second day, but still came home an encouraging sixth, behind teammate Petter Solberg.

And the other French Seb in a Citroen?

Sebastien Ogier wrapped up the Junior World Rally Championship in his Citroen C2.

Just like

THE 2008 Japanese Grand Prix should have been a great chance for Lewis Hamilton to extend his championship lead. It turned out to be anything but.

Starting from pole, and with main title rival Felipe Massa a relatively lowly fifth, the Briton was in the box seat for the race. But when Kimi Raikkonen smoked Lewis off the line, he made an error in the braking zone, hit the picks too hard, and ran himself and

sutton-images.com

250 title set to go off at Sepang

sutton-images.com

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THE MotoGP and 125cc titles might already be done deals, but the 250cc title is still up for grabs, and might go off in Malaysia this weekend.

A podium finish for Marco Simoncelli will guarantee the bighaired Italian the 2008 crown, while fourth would be enough to force rival Alvaro Bautista to win on a second place countback, if he took victories at Malaysia and Valencia.

In other 250cc news, Mika Kallio is expected to get a MotoGP start next season aboard an Alice-backed Ducati, while Yuki Takahashi will replace Andrea Dovizioso at the Scot Honda team.

Iss

drew van leeuwen

news

e old times for Fernando And all the while, Fernando Alonso was cruising to his second GP win in a row. Again, the win wasn’t unmerited (he was fourth in qualifying), but he needed others to make mistakes. Which they did …

Robert Kubica finished second, moving himself within title contention with two rounds to go, and Raikkonen was third.

Full coverage is in this week’s issue of GPWeek.

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a handful of other frontrunners (Raikkonen and Massa included) off the road.

Then, as he and Massa attempted to move back through the field, they touched after Massa ran wide, sending Hamilton into a spin.

Combine that with the drivethrough penalties the pair received for their respective misjudgements, and it was game over. No points for Lewis, just two for Felipe.

sutton-images.com

w e nro sue #32 onlClin ick he e

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5 Minutes with ...

JASON BRIGHT

The paddock gossips have had Brighty leaving his own team at the end of this season, but according to the man himself, he’s staying put GRANT ROWLEY MOTORSPORT NEWS: There’s been chat about your driving future at Britek. Are you staying with your team for 2009?

JASON BRIGHT: There were discussions going on, but it wasn’t my preferred option. My preferred option was to stay at Britek. In the end, I was able to lock away everything I’ve needed to lock away to be able to stay at Britek.

This year, I’m pretty proud of what we’ve been able to achieve under difficult circumstances. We lost our Ford money at the start of this year, next couple of months. There’s a whole year before anybody nothing definite there, but it’s else, which put us in a pretty hard in this game – when you big hole for a few months. change drivers each year, it’s Our operating budgets, I hard to get them up to the know for a fact, would be less speed we need. than a third of the other top teams out there, but we’ve And there is the new FG still been able to make ground chassis coming on board for on those guys this year – and next year … there’s a lot more to come.

That’s a great thing for our For next year, our budgets team. It puts us on a level are going to be better than playing field with everyone else this year. I know that we can – development-wise and chassismake the last couple of steps wise. The Beehag chassis that we need to make to be really I’m running now is still a good competitive, so I wasn’t too chassis, but weight distributionkeen on giving up on Britek wise, it could still be a lot better. and going somewhere else And going to the new chassis when all it would have done is and being able to spend the made it look like someone else time to lay it out the way we had fixed our problems. We want to lay it out and optimise know what our problems are – it’s just time and money to fix it. everything in the car will be a big step for us.

So Britek will remain at two Are you building the new cars, Fujitsu, IRWIN and chassis yourself or will you Marcus Marshall to stay?

Yeah, definitely two cars. Fujitsu take on a customer deal?

We’ll do a certain amount will be with us again, IRWIN ourselves. Ideally, we’ll get has re-signed for another year (Paul) Ceprnich to do as much and the plan is to have Marcus as he can, but it’s just timing, here as well, but it all depends really. on what happens over the

22

We want one ready to go for the Winton test on March 9, and we’ll definitely have one on the grid for Clipsal. It depends on how much Paul Ceprnich can do and what we end up having to do.

We’ll build everything for two cars, or three cars, but the priority is to get one car to the test in March. It would be great to have two cars on the grid for Clipsal, but the timing of that isn’t in our hands.

The biggest problem at the moment is getting the floors made, more than anything.

Putting the cage and putting the bodywork on isn’t such a drama. We can probably start on that in November, but we probably won’t get a floor until late December. That’s the problem at the moment – when we are likely to see the parts that we need.

It shows you have a lot of faith in your guys …

We’ve got very good guys here. Over the last year and a half, we’ve been able to attract a lot of good team members

but for quite a while, we were very inefficient. In the last 12 months, we’ve become much more efficient.

Our machining capabilities and our fabrication capabilities really only kicked off recently.

The machines only went in 18 months ago and it’s taken a while to get them up to speed, working like they should. That takes time, and getting the right people takes time.

Now, we’re getting the most out of all those departments and the quality of work coming out of them is really good. The hard part is that we’re going into our first full-car build, really, with a fair bit of it inhouse and, unfortunately, it’s going to be a bit of a rush.

Most of my guys have been around for some time with other teams, so their planning is exceptional. I don’t see the building of the car as too much of a hurdle, although it’s obviously a big step for us. I’ve seen other teams do it but I’ve got more faith in my guys than some of the other teams that have been able to pull it off!

chat

23

On top of the world

opinion Andrew van Leeuwen mNews National Editor LAST week, I wrote an opinion piece about Wednesday being the best day of the Bathurst ‘weekend.’ And when Branagan, Rowley and I arrived at the track last Wednesday evening, we were reminded exactly why.

As we did our traditional hot-lap of the track in the hire car (that’s a joke, Avis), we stopped at Skyline, for our traditional Wednesday photo on top of the Mountain. And at Skyline we found a group of hardened Bathurst tragics, parked on deck chairs in the sandtrap, watching the world (and most of the V8 field) go by. They had a humorous sign

spruiking cans of beer for $16 each (a dig at the high prices of alcohol at the track, they explained), so we stopped to grab a photo or two.

As we got the digi cams out, the group inquired as to why we were taking photos of them. We explained what we did for a crust, and, after offering us a $16 discount on a can of beer, they proceeded to barrage us with theories and questions about all aspects of our sport.

These were knowledgeable, passionate people – passionate about V8 Supercar racing. They obviously followed the sport with eagle eyes, and were in the middle of a week-long stint camping atop Mount Panorama. You don’t do that unless you love the sport.

At the L&H 500 at Phillip Island, we

were introduced to the new V8SA CEO, Cameron Levick. He spoke of listening to the stakeholders as being his first priority when he took over the job. I hope he realises that the people on top of the Mountain are stakeholders too.

They buy the merchandise, they buy the tickets, they make the sport appealing to sponsors. They are vitally important to our sport, and should be treated as such.

All that space on top of Mount Panorama could be used more efficiently when it comes to spectators, with some grandstands, or even, dare I suggest it, corporate hospitality. After all, it is one of the most classic pieces of racing road in the world.

But I hope that never happens. There are sacred sites in V8 Supercar racing, and the top of the Mountain is one of them.

Letters

Have your say, email us at mail@mnews.com.au. Keep letters to the point!

Congratulations Congratulations to Triple 8 on their Bathurst win.

Maybe Ford will now pull their heads in and somehow find some money in their budget to sponsor the number one Ford team.

But I digress … What is with all the ads on Channel 7’s TV coverage?

Quite frankly, if the coverage of Bathurst is to continue as it did this year, I think I would

24

be better off taping it and watching it the next day!

Apart from maybe the first hour and last hour, Channel 7 put in consistently five minutes of racing (approx. two laps) followed by four minutes of ads. It was really pissing me off. I realise that motorsport wouldn’t survive without sponsors, but this was ridiculous!

Smarten up your act Channel 7, or you may end up losing

more viewers than you gain.

Dean Turner datvjt@bigpond.net.au Murph’s lap Why is everyone going on about Murph’s lap?

Sure it was a good but I feel John Bowe’s lap was better.

Murphy’s car was a hybrid and had to get special permission from avesco to race.

The car did not comply with

blueprint therefore and no aero tests were done on it.

Even more laughable is Murphy’s use of the rewind button regarding the clash between, he and Lowndes in Sundays race. Had he held the rewind button another second or two, he would have seen his attempt at sticking Lowndes into the wall because he had the gall to attempt a pass.

Kyren Welsh kwe38@aapt.net.au

opinion

Marshall Cass

Out of the wall and onto the track

TONY Warrener started the NRMA Smash Repair project many moons ago.

Set up to fix broken race cars at the circuit, the project had humble beginnings, but when Warrener decided to introduce apprentices to his trackside services more than 30 years ago, not only has the sport felt the benefits, but so has the development of many crash repairers around the country.

And as Tony explains to eNews, he’s dealt with and overcome a lot of twisted metal.

IF you are a competitor at a V8 Supercar meeting, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a MINI, a Porsche, a V8 Ute, a Historic Touring Car, whatever

opinion Tony Warrener NRMA Smah Repairer is on the day, the NRMA Smash Repair Team will look after your damaged car.

There have been some big crashes at Bathurst over the years, and the biggest crash that my team ever took on was the Ross Palmer-owned Honda NSX that Wayne Gardner put into the fence in one of the 12 Hour races here in the early 90s.

When the car arrived in our garage, Wayne was dressed and ready to go home for the weekend. The Honda representative that was with us at the time said there would

be no way that we fixed the car. I turned around to Palmer and said “We work when we can, what do you think?” He said go for it.

The team worked all night to fix the Honda, and when I say all night, that’s 10 hours work, but when you walk all night with six blokes, that’s 60 hours work.

Anyway, we got the car to the startline, it started one lap down, finished third in the race and later won its class in Targa Tasmania. Without doubt, that was our greatest achievement.

The hardest V8 Supercar that we fixed was, again, a Wayne Gardner car! In the very wet morning warm-up of 1994, Wayne crashed on oil

at Griffins Bend. We had two hours to fix that car.

But one of our proudest moments was helping prepare Dick Johnson’s car after his main Falcon hit the trees in 1983.

We didn’t actually repair the car, we just made major changes. We transformed the Andrew Harris Falcon and made it look like Dick’s Falcon, and then made a Commodore look like Harris’s Falcon! Techniques were a little more primitive back then, we actually worked out of a tent! Now, we have the best of facilities, 30-odd years experience, and hopefully, many more years to come.

eLETTER OF THE WEEK Doing it easy With Channel Seven fully ensconced as V8 Supercars’ host broadcaster, there seems to be no valid reason for why the Bathurst 1000 race should remain as a round of the series.

Run it as a stand-alone event, the door opens up many possibilities: The grid could be filled out to capacity by including the top percentage of Fujitsu cars.

A mandate could be set that each Championship driver must drive their own vehicle.

If any team writes off one of their cars prior to the race, they can transfer both drivers to their sister car (ie no pairing of number one drivers) Filling out the grid would force teams to look deeper into the talent pool, including more international drivers. More international drivers

would equal more international exposure.

Rather than cause more carnage, the inclusion of the Fujitsu cars would force all drivers to be more circumspect about the way they conduct themselves on track.

P.S. If Triple Eight wins next year, will that count as a Ford victory?

Matt Treacy matttreacy@bigpond.com

Send your creative letters to mail@mnews.com.au, or Motorsport News PO Box 7072, Brighton, Vic 3186 25

V8 SUPERCAR CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES SUPERCHEAP BATHURST 1000

It’s Good to be Three Another win for Triple Eight at Bathurst brought joy to Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup, despair for others and confusion for anyone responsible for headlines involving mobile phone companies ...

By PHIL BRANAGAN

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race

e

27

Practice/Qualifying

No scratches, just pole for HRT The Holden Racing Team didn’t rate its qualifying set-up. Garth Tander had other ideas IT was just like 2007 all over again – except, not.

The qualifying battle was between Ford Performance Racing, with Mark Winterbottom taking the role of Top Gun, and the Holden Racing Team. The only difference was that this year, Garth Tander drove and Mark Skaife was his wingman.

Oh, and the result. GT ruled the day; after topping qualifying, again, Winterbottom was last out in the shoot-out and fell an inch short.

All this in a car that no-one at HRT, particularly, thought was a good qualifying car.

“I told Garth we wanted a race car, brought back without any scratches,” affirmed team manager Rob Crawford.

That is what he got.

There were some other contenders but they shot down their own hopes.

After an aggressive out lap, Jamie Whincup wound up fifth, sharing the third row with Jason Richards. The Sprint Gas Commodore was the pick of the litter, recording the second-fastest lap of the

28

track in history in practice, but when it counted, both fell short.

Whincup probably created race history for apologising for a rough first sector to engineer Mark Dutton, even while accelerating out of Forrest’s Elbow on his shoot-out lap.

What was missing was the ‘home run’.

Perhaps it is the evenness of the cars, or maybe it is the shadow of Greg Murphy’s 2003 shoot-out lap that makes anything else pale into insignificance?

Any hopes that time may have been eclipsed were put away when the session started and finished late by about 20 minutes and, by the time the fastest cars came out to play, the track had lost a few tenths worth of temperature.

The cause was the salvage of Darren Berry’s crashed car from the MINI Challenge, which resulted in debris on the road and a lower track temperature as the Big Hitters headed out.

Perhaps there will be a longer period of ‘clean air’ (ie, no track activity) in the future.

– PHIL BRANAGAN

That close: The scene was set for Frosty to repeat his 2007 pole, but he fell just short.

race

Marshall Cass

opinion

Nothing between them ...

Phil Branagan Executive Editor

Dirk Klynsmith

T

Dirk Klynsmith

DON’T you just hate it when the fridge goes on the fritz, and you call in a technician to fix it – and while he is there, it works perfectly? That appears to be happening to Holden.

In the build-up to the next round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series on the streets of Surfers, the matter of parity will again be examined.

The category’s Technical Director Andy Bartley is due to report to the board following the submission made by HRT on behalf of the Holden teams which, in brief, claims that the Commodore VE is at a disadvantage to Ford’s BF. After the submission was made, HRT won at Winton, then again at Phillip Island.

Garth Tander topped the Top 10 shoot-out at Bathurst but maybe more telling was the fact that the field lined up for The Great Race in pairs; five rows, each with one of each brand of car.

In motor racing, it is sometimes difficult to see the important things, because they are so minute. It may well be that the Holden teams really do believe that they are fighting the Ford foes with one hand tied behind their backs. But, on the face of it, whatever bumps there may be in absolute parity were pretty well smoothed out over 6.2km of New South Wales mountain.

BATHURST 1000 | QUALIFYING Pos # Driver 1 1 6 Mark Winterbottom 2 3 Jason Richards 3 888 Jamie Whincup 4 4 James Courtney 5 1 Garth Tander 6 15 Rick Kelly 7 18 Will Davison 8 16 Paul Dumbrell 9 111 Fabian Coulthard 10 39 Russell Ingall 11 14 Max Wilson 12 25 Jason Bright 13 9 Shane Van Gisbergen 14 33 Lee Holdsworth 15 17 Steve Owen 16 12 Cameron McConville 17 5 Luke Youlden 18 7 Todd Kelly 19 11 Jack Perkins 20 2 Craig Baird 21 777 Michael Patrizi 22 26 Marcus Marshall 23 34 Greg Ritter 24 55 Tony D’Alberto 25 88 Fabrizio Giovanardi 26 51 Mark Noske 27 67 Matt Neal

Driver 2 Steven Richards Greg Murphy Craig Lowndes David Besnard Mark Skaife Paul Radisich Steven Johnson David Reynolds Alex Davison Paul Morris Brad Jones Adam Macrow Jonathan Webb Michael Caruso Warren Luff Andrew Jones Dean Canto Shane Price Nathan Pretty Glenn Seton Karl Reindler Matthew Halliday Steve Ellery Jason Bargwanna Marc Hynes Tim Slade Boris Said

Team/Car Ford Performance Racing Falcon BF Sprint Gas Racing Commodore VE Team Vodafone Falcon BF Jeld-Wen Motorsport Falcon BF Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore VE HSV Dealer Team Commodore VE Jim Beam Racing Falcon BF Autobarn Racing Team Commodore VE Glenfords Racing Falcon BF Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore VE WOW Racing Commodore VE Fujitsu Racing Falcon BF SP Tools Racing Falcon BF Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore VE Jim Beam Racing Falcon BF Team BOC Commodore VE Ford Performance Racing Falcon BF Jack Daniel’s Racing Commodore VE Jack Daniel’s Racing Commodore VE Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore VE Ausdrill Ford Rising Stars Falcon BF IRWIN Racing Falcon BF Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore VE Rod Nash Racing Commodore VE Team Vodafone Falcon BF Sprint Gas Racing Commodore VE Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore VE

Time 2:07.1920 2:07.2333 2:07.2699 2:07.2972 2:07.3645 2:07.4401 2:07.4599 2:07.6094 2:07.7321 2:07.7974 2:07.8022 2:07.9395 2:07.9627 2:07.9968 2:08.0369 2:08.1141 2:08.1676 2:08.2226 2:08.4667 2:08.5766 2:09.4965 2:09.6397 2:09.7451 2:09.9264 2:09.9779 2:10.2930 2:11.3259

BATHURST 1000 | TOP 10 SHOOT-OUT Pos 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Driver Garth Tander Mark Winterbottom James Courtney Paul Dumbrell Jamie Whincup Jason Richards Will Davison Russell Ingall Fabian Coulthard Max Wilson

Split 1 51.7113 51.8811 51.8482 51.8845 52.0781 51.9169 52.0359 52.0591 52.4581 52.2075

Split 2 1:26.1325 1:26.0701 1:26.1762 1:26.3190 1:26.4577 1:26.3625 1:26.9863 1:27.1347 1:27.3576 1:27.4443

Time 2:07.2963 2:07.4206 2:07.7025 2:07.8022 2:07.9513 2:07.9876 2:08.2511 2:08.7800 2:08.8051 2:09.1940

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Practice/Qualifying

The Mountain bites hard ... again THE PWR Racing Commodore wasn’t the first car to hit the wall at Mount Panorama this year, but it was the first to be deemed a definite non-starter for Sunday’s race.

It all started with an innocent spin. Paul Weel lost control of the car at Sulman Park, nudging the wall and coming to a rest on the exit of a blind crest. Several seconds later, Chris Pither’s Team Kiwi Racing Falcon made hard contact just behind the Commodore’s B-Pillar. After a nervous wait, Weel was extracted and deemed to be relatively uninjured (given the severity of the impact). The same couldn’t be said of the car, which is unlikely to see a race track ever again.

“At least the car did its job,” said Weel’s team-mate Andrew Thompson moments after the crash.

“Everyone makes mistakes. We would have got away with the first hit, but that’s the way it is. Motorsport is not always fair. At least Paul is okay because we can just throw the car away, but the same doesn’t go for him.”

Pither might have been unhurt in the crash, but his wallet took a heck of a beating after he was hauled in front of the stewards, and admitted to driving in a careless manner. He was handed a $6000 fine for his troubles.

As for his Falcon, the decision was, quite remarkably, taken to fix the car. It was a remarkable decision because, at Phillip Island a few weeks back, the car mis-fired once and was withdrawn immediately. This time, they prevented guys like Sam Walter, whose FV8 entry wasn’t even that badly damage, from starting races because the panel beaters were too busy.

Having tied up the smash repairer’s rig for a couple of days, the all black Ford made the start of the 1000 – but you have to ask; should they have bothered?

– ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

30

Seconds from disaster: It all started with an innocent spin by Paul Weel, above, before C Pither came in way too hot and collected the PWR Falcon, below. Pics: Mark Willard

race

Qualifying to the Max AS it turned out, Max Wilson took part in the Top 10 shoot-out thanks to the withdrawal of Rick Kelly and Paul Radisich’s car. But the tiny Brazilian was almost a shoot-out starter based on his own car speed.

Brad Jones Racing being fast at Bathurst isn’t anything new, but the fact that Wilson almost qualifyed the WOW Commodore in the shoot-out, while the lead McConville/Jones car was down in 15th, certainly raised some eyebrows.

And not making the shoot-out was a close run thing. Wilson was 11th fastest in the end, and was on to displace

Russell Ingall from 10th place on his last attempt when he had a moment at the last corner.

“It was pretty close,” said Wilson.

“On my second set of greens in the second phase of qualifying I had a lot of traffic – without that we could have made the top 10 shoot-out. And then I had another set of good tyres, but not green, and that’s when I did my best lap, which was just one-hundredth behind.

“On the last corner [of the last lap], I locked the rear wheels. You know, that lap was maybe going to be good enough. I had to try and I tried a little

bit too hard. I might have made it and I might have not, it’s hard to say. I need to go and have a look at the data.”

But while keen observers were surprised to see Wilson’s splits placing him on shoot-out pace, the Brazilian himself felt right at home.

“When you drive a good car, the results come, and I’m driving a good car so I’m not really surprised.”

By the time the shoot-out did roll around, Wilson had no greens to go out with, and promptly qualified at the back of the top 10. Still, not a bad effort.

– ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

Chris

Dirk Klynsmith

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The Big Race

C

RAIG Lowndes gets paid a lot of money to drive a V8 Supercar. At Bathurst on Sunday, he again underlined why.

When the race was on the line and the drivers with Bathurstwinning pedigrees – like Steven Richards and Greg Murphy – were snapping at his heels, he again showed that he is the best ‘closer’ in the sport, perhaps in its history.

In a second 500km pockmarked with Safety Car periods, Lowndes leapt away to safety time and time again, leaving the chasers in his wake.

That, and tyres, were the key elements of the 2008 edition of The Great Race. Others suffered tyre failures; Lowndes and co-driver Jamie Whincup did not, even when Lowndes and Murphy clanged together on the opening lap of the race.

The two men reverted to their differing default types after the incident, an emotional

32

Murphy venting his feelings on his winning co-driver from 1996, and Lowndes shrugging it off.

Three years, teams have raced at Bathurst for the Peter Brock Trophy. As yet, only two fellas have won it.

Despite wonky steering, Murphy jetted home to give Jason Richards and Sprint Gas Racing second, hope and validation of its recent trials, tribulations and upheavals.

For the third straight year, James Courtney was on the podium in a race where the fortunes of the #4 Falcon waxed and waned so much that, at one driver change, JC told co-driver David Besnard that there was no need to rush out of the car because he believed that they were out of contention!

There were a thousand disappointments in the race and many of them involved delaminating tyres. Car after car headed for the pits with a problem, which many of the

teams blamed on the current spec Dunlop tyre itself. Other teams, including Triple Eight, identified the issue in their prerace planning and worked it to their advantage.

The glummest of faces, no doubt, would have been the ones that returned to Clayton. The Toll HSV car failed to start and the other was out of contention early with the team’s second throttle drama of the weekend.

At HRT, Garth Tander immediately proved true his own prediction that at 4:30pm on Sunday, no-one would remember who started from pole position by stalling at the start, earning him a good view of the rest of the field on the opening lap and a 10-second pit penalty. When Mark Skaife walled the car at Forrest’s Elbow, the pair’s chase evolved into ‘Salvage’ mode, the reward for which was 12th.

Even a potentially restorative top-five result for the Craig

Baird/Glenn Seton car was derailed when the Kiwi ended with impact at Griffins Bend.

Into the top five, almost unbelievably, came Brad Jones and Max Wilson. Neither are full-timers these days but you would never have known, the car leading the race at one stage of what will be, in all likelihood, Jones’s last Bathurst in a helmet.

Mark Winterbottom maintains his championship ambitions with a strong fourth place, Steven Richards doing a sterling job until the FPR Ford ran short of pace not just to catch Lowndes but to hold out Murphy.

The internationals failed to shine much, the second Triple Eight car hanging on until nerfed out of the race late in the going by Fabian Coulthard, while Matt Neal and Boris Said again demonstrated that the particulars of driving a V8 Supercar around a rural tourist road against a bunch

race

Dirk Klynsmith

V8 Supercar | SuPERCHEAP BATHURST 1000 Dirk Klynsmith

of people expert at just that are as demanding as any sporting challenge in the business.

Racing is rarely about numbers, but Lowndes proved his are as good as anyone’s. Following the race-forming eighth and final Safety Car, he reeled off a 2m09.8s, another 9.8, an 11 (when he lost time lapping Karl Reindler); then 9.8, 9.6 and 9.6. The fastest lap for #888 was a 9.4. In a setting sun, after having driven 600kms, on a dirty track and on worn tyres, noone has ever performed that part of the task better. Despite breaking the lap record on the final laps of the 1979 race, even Peter Brock never did that. He usually won his races much earlier than that.

The championship is still a threeway fight over the final four rounds, starting at Surfers in two weeks’ time. The hope that shines for the other teams is that Triple Eight’s long suit, endurance racing, is now behind them – but only until talk of a ‘four-peat’ starts, probably sometime in January …

Pos # Driver 1 Driver 2 1 888 Craig Lowndes Jamie Whincup 2 3 Greg Murphy Jason Richards 3 4 James Courtney David Besnard 4 6 Steven Richards Mark Winterbottom 5 14 Brad Jones Max Wilson 6 18 Will Davison Steve Johnson 7 5 Dean Canto Luke Youlden 8 11 Jack Perkins Nathan Pretty 9 25 Jason Bright Adam Macrow 10 111 Fabian Coulthard Alex Davison 11 17 Warren Luff Steve Owen 12 1 Mark Skaife Garth Tander 13 51 Mark Noske Dale Wood 14 26 Matt Halliday Marcus Marshall 15 88 Fabrizio Giovanardi Marc Hynes 16 34 Steve Ellery Greg Ritter 17 7 Todd Kelly Shane Price 18 39 Russell Ingall Paul Morris 19 777 Micheal Patrizi Karl Reindler 20 16 Paul Dumbrell Rick Kelly DNF 55 Jason Bargwanna Tony D’Alberto DNF 2 Craig Baird Glenn Seton DNF 67 Matt Neal Boris Said DNF 33 Michael Caruso Lee Holdsworth DNF 9 Shane van Gisbergen Jono Webb DNF 12 Andy Jones Cam McConville DNF021 Kayne Scott Chris Pither

Team/Car Race time Team Vodafone Falcon BF 6:26:00.4291 Sprint Gas Racing Commodore VE 6:26:02.9269 Jeld-Wen Motorsport Falcon BF 6:26:05.0115 Ford Performance Racing Falcon BF 6:26:05.6179 WOW Racing Commodore VE 6:26:10.7530 Jim Beam Racing Falcon BF 6:26:11.3879 Ford Performance Racing Falcon BF 6:26:22.0821 Jack Daniel’s Racing Commodore VE 6:26:31.2682 Fujitsu Racing Falcon BF 6:26:33.0971 Glenfords Racing Falcon BF 6:26:55.2568 Jim Beam Racing Falcon BF 6:27:44.7865 Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore VE 160 laps Sprint Gas Racing Commodore VE 160 laps IRWIN Racing Falcon BF 160 laps Team Vodafone Falcon BF 159 laps Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore VE 157 laps Jack Daniel’s Racing Commodore VE 157 laps Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore VE 156 laps Ausdrill Ford Rising Stars Falcon BF 156 laps Autobarn Racing Team Commodore VE 127 laps Rod Nash Racing Commodore VE 159 laps Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore VE 5000 146 laps Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore VE 5000 140 laps Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore VE 136 laps SP Tools Racing Falcon BF 91 laps Team BOC Commodore VE 5000 40 laps Team Kiwi Racing Falcon BF 8 laps

Points: Whincup 2316, Winterbottom 2283, Tander 2234, Lowndes 1923, Davison 1865, S. Richards 1834, Courtney 1802, R. Kelly 1792, Johnson 1471, Ingall 1464, Holdsworth 1399, Skaife 1364, T. Kelly 1347, Coulthard 1333, Van Gisbergen 1208, J. Richards 1178, Murphy 1176, Bright 1020, McConville 1018, Morris 984, Caruso 957, Dumbrell 956, Price 843, A. Jones 829, Marshall 767, D’Alberto 658, Patrizi 582, Thompson 551, Besnard 459, Scott 362, B.Jones/Wilson 121, Perkins/Pretty 338, Macrow 259, Luff/Owen 259, Canto/Youlden 252, Ellery/Ritter 245, Noske/Wood 226, Halliday 225, Giovanardi/Hynes 222, Radisich 196, Webb 160, Pither 130, McIntyre 128, Baird/Seton 118, Denyer 102, Neal/Said/Weel 84, Bargwanna 38, Reynolds 22.

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The Analysis

Jeff Grech Sprint Gas Racing SPRINT Gas Racing would have easily won this year’s Great Race if we had not had to contend with the bent steering that was incurred on the first lap.

It hurt us massively. We were going to try and fix it during one of the Safety Car periods, but I the end we tried to tune the car around it so the drivers could push hard.

It’s good that we got through and finished where we did … but I would have liked to have had the same car without the bent steering.

We would have won the race, there’s no two ways about it – and I don’t say that lightly. This is the one that got away from us.

We never made a qualifying car this weekend. The car that we drove from Thursday onwards was our race car. You know when you’ve got a car that can produce what it did, that we could have won the race.

The owners here at Tasman Motorsport have poured a lot of their own money into the team, but hopefully now they can see that they are getting somewhere!

Having said that, we’ve still got a long way to go.

Sunday justifies the team’s investment and commitment. We’ve been very careful about where we spent our money.

We’ve tried to spend it in the right places, knowing that we haven’t got the biggest budget in pit-lane.

But that was one that got away …

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John Morris/Mpix

opinion

So close, and yet ...

TONY D’Alberto experienced the highs and the lows at Mount Panorama.

Partnered with the experienced Jason Bargwanna, D’Alberto ran a consistent race to be running in sixth place after the final Safety Car. Three laps from home, D’Alberto over stepped the mark at Griffins Bend, crunched the wall, and failed to finish.

“We didn’t qualify well and I knew we had a good car. Today we proved it,” he said.

“I’m so disappointed for the guys who did a really good job. For most of them, it’s their first 1000, and going into the last pit stop, we were under a bit of pressure

and they just lifted.

“We’re only a small team, so it hurts that we got so far …”

D’Alberto said that he had no one to blame but himself for the incident.

“The car was really good and I think I had a bit too much confidence in it and it bit me. I lost the rear a little on turn-in and got out into the marbles … once you’re out there, you’re gone.

“I’m absolutely gutted. I came here today to attack, to get out there. My general driving style is timid, so today, I just drove for it, and we were so close to making it pay off. ” – GRANT ROWLEY

John Morris/Mpix

Grech: We should have won

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Phil Williams

Shaping the race ...

The moments that mattered Thursday Practice Triple Eight has the first tyre problem. An early warning of what was to come would prove crucial. The team immediately consulted with Dunlop, made a few subtle changes to car geometry, and the drivers kept the car off the kerbs which would later damage the inside-left walls of many opposition tyres.

Saturday Qualifying Confirms what has become apparent from the start of practice – the Murphy/Richards Commodore has come from nowhere to be a serious contender.

Lap 1 – HRT bogged, Tasman biffed Two top contenders to the back of the field. It doesn’t matter how fast you are, it’s a long way back from there. Richards and Murph almost pull off a miracle; for HRT it only gets worse …

From the couch WHAT a great excuse Bathurst is to not to move from the couch – all weekend.

There were some great new additions to the telecast over the weekend, like a (relatively) new face in the commentary team in the form of Mark Larkham.

His insight makes it obvious ‘Larko’ is a former driver – from his comments during the shootout on top of the hill, to his whiteboard drawings, and his apparently unplanned tour of the BJR garage.

Channel Seven also came up with some new graphics to keep us watching at home in the know.

The new on-screen leader-board, featuring car numbers before

opinion Phil Mahoney Staff Journalist drivers, was aesthetically pleasing, and the green light by the name of whoever was in the car at the time made the race easier to follow.

Actually, it was a great weekend to be a motorsport fan. As the Great Race drew to its conclusion, the Formula 1 was on in Japan.

You needed two TVs to catch all the action on both channels.

So, that’s exactly what we did; two TVs, concurrently full of motorsport.

What a weekend.

Lap 28 – Courtney pits After a stunning opening stint JC hands over to Besnard but suddenly the car is struggling. The team thinks it’s a broken rear bar; in fact it’s a pair of delaminated front tyres. Courtney jumps back in on lap 57, with a heap of roll-centre adjustment to ‘fix’ the problem that isn’t, and still manages a fastest lap of the race to date. The car is put back to normal at the next stop and – with the aid of Safety Cars – fires into the top three late in the race. Fast … but just too late.

Lap 44 – Tyre dramas start Steven Johnson pits the Jim Beam car with the first of many delaminated tyres. A podium opportunity is gone.

Lap 90, 92, 106 – Safety Cars A huge Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card gets a number of troubled cars back on the lead lap and back in the contest. It also allows the Lowndes/Whincup car, with a 33-lap minimum fuel range, to set itself up for just one more stop. It temporarily costs lead track position but, accidents aside, it’s looking a lock for Car #888.

Lap 159 Having finally slipped past a slithering FPR Falcon and closed marginally on Lowndes, Murph is told to nurse it home – there are question marks on the engine after running hot in Richards’ tow. It’s over. Triple 8 are triple winners …

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John Morris/Mpix

The Analysis

Tyring old story weekend, and most of the problems occurred on the left rears.

“We had a few issues last year with a few of the teams and we thought we had cured them,.

“But honestly, I really don’t know. It’s all very similar things that are happening. The cord around the tyres is breaking, which then promotes a weakness in the case and the construction of the tyre. And where that weakness is, you get a lot of flex in it and the tyre gets a blister.

“When the blister splits open, that cord then raises above the tread and actually tears away at it, either tearing a chunk of the tread away or whatever.

“We’ve usually seen it on the front, but what it is on the left rear, I really don’t know.

Whether it’s something on the circuit, a kerb or whatever, but its very frustrating. I can’t give you an exact answer.”

– GRANT ROWLEY

Dirk Klynsmith

DUNLOP Motorsport manager Kevin Fitzsimmons was a popular man on Sunday – for all the wrong reasons.

Left side tyres, particularly the rears, were under fire from drivers and teams after the treads were being torn away.

Some teams were having reccurring tyre issues, some teams had it happen just once, and others got away with no problems.

Track inspections on Saturday night revealed a sharp kerb on the inside on turn 21 – the mid point of The Chase – a corner that drivers traditionally like to cut.

Also, there were suggestions that the small amount of run off on the exit of Griffin’s Bend had a surface that may have contributed.

Post-race, Fitzsimmons could not put his finger on the exact reason for the delaminations.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“The whole situation is totally confusing, given that we supplied 1208 tyres this

Nat Lowndes: The winning wife

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opinion Natalie Lowndes Craig’s wife Craig when he’s a little down. But other than that, the Triple Eight boys put in all the hard work and make the car go as quick as it is and their hard work shines through.

It’s such a great effort by the team to make the car so reliable and get

it home. It’s an awesome job. It’s a lot of work to get it to this point and the whole team deserves it.

At big race meetings like this, especially Bathurst, Craig is like a three-year-old child on red cordial.

He’s like that for a week before the race. He’s hyper! He loves this race.

But there will be no red cordial tonight. I think the boys will kick back and celebrate with a couple of Crownies …

Dirk Klynsmith

THIS is the third time in a row that Craig and Jamie have won Bathurst.

Craig’s mentor Peter Brock did it many years ago, so it’s a massive achievement and one which Craig will treasure..

Sitting on the sidelines, I’ve got the easiest job, even after three wins! They don’t get any easier!

All I have do is look after the kids in the background and cheer up

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Pit-lane eyes Former B1000 podium finisher and Seven pit-lane expert Mark Larkham saw the Great Race won by the most-deserving team THE Phillip Island 500 and the Bathurst 1000 are the toughest races on the V8 Supercar calendar, and just by watching Triple Eight in the pit-lane, they stand out above all other teams. They seem to go about their racing in a much more business-like fashion.

They seem to be just that little bit better prepared and by that, I mean when the shit hits the fan, they seem to almost have a predisposed

opinion Mark Larkham Pit-lane reporter position and they act very quickly and very decisively.

While some of the other teams run around and punch numbers into computers to work out scenarios, Triple Eight make decisions and act on them. During the race, I saw again, when a Safety Car was out, some were contemplating,

while Triple Eight were first out in pit lane with tyres ready to go. At Phillip Island when the rain happened, others were calculating how much time they’d lose on slick tyres, Triple Eight knew it and made a decision. To me, it’s that decisiveness that is winning them endurance races.

I tried to watch them in their pit bunkers at Bathurst to see who was making the tough calls and how it was done. I wanted to see

how the calls were being made, if they had a lot of different outcomes planned, or whether it was just their clever guys, including Roland Dane sitting in the middle, in their own little world, with their finger very much on the pace. And I actually think it’s a combination of all of that.

They are this category’s standout team, certainly in endurance trim, and they deserve their three Bathurst crowns.

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Dirk Klynsmith

The Analysis

The nightmare 1000

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to no avail. The Autobarn car endured early throttle problems (not related to the #15 car’s issues) and went down many laps To rub salt in the wounds, the team was penalised for having too many men in pit lane while working on the car.

Team manager Erik Pender was diplomatic when he spoke to eNews post-race: “It’s just one of those things, it’s motor racing,” Pender said.

“We had pretty good pace, and at the end, PD was equaling the lap times of the guys at the front when he had a clear track. We probably didn’t have the pace to win, but I think we could have looked at a podium place if things had gone our way.”

Over at Team Red, Tander had apparent clutch problems at the start, Car #1 recovering well until Mark Skaife crashed at Forrest’s Elbow.

HRT lead engineer Matt Neilson said that Tander and Skaife would have looked good without the incident: “The car was pretty good, we were just

tight on the fuel window, but so was everyone else,” he said.

“We had the car to go with them. GT was pretty quick and Skaifey was good, and they both thought it was a good race car.

“It’s pretty frustrating. All weekend we focused on getting the race right.

Getting pole was good, but our race package was our goal and I thought we had a good one, but it’s not to be.”

The team’s second duo, Craig Baird and Glenn Seton, looked set to be the team’s saving grace, but were taken out of fifth place by Jim Beam driver Warren Luff.

Luff was penalised, and Baird was stuck in the tyres and out of the race.

“They did a wonderful job,” Neilson commented.

“Both of them popped up with a chance when no one thought they were going to and took some big risks on strategy, but they were looking good, so the incident was unfortunate.”

– GRANT ROWLEY

Dirk Klynsmith

THE factory Holdens had a meeting they would rather forget, with three of its four Commodores leaving The Mountain with significant damage.

In Saturday morning practice, Paul Radisich had the throttle stick open at high-speed across the top of the mountain, sending the Toll HSV car careering into the wall at high speed, breaking The Rat’s ankle (see news pages).

Things got better later in the day when Garth Tander put the #1 Holden Racing Team Commodore on pole, but really, that’s where the good news ended.

Due to the significant damage caused to the Radisich/Rick Kelly car, David Reynolds was pushed aside to allow Rick to drive with Paul Dumbrell in the Autobarn Commodore.

Before Sunday’s racing got underway, the pairing were being genuinely considered as a podium favourite after Dumbrell’s stunning top 10 shootout lap that saw him leap from eighth to fourth.

In the end, the late driver shuffle was

race

There, but not quite there ...

THE lead Ford Performance Racing car of Steven Richards and Mark Winterbottom was in the hunt for victory all day, but this time it was only ever going to win through the misfortune of others.

In the end, the duo finished fourth, having run in second place until the final 10 laps.

While Richo and Frosty failed to secure a podium spot, the FPR team was successful in getting both its cars in the top 10 – the only team to achieve that feat.

Driving the #5 FPR Falcon, Luke Youlden and Dean Canto took seventh place, having delivered on the instructions set by team manager Tim Edwards to ensure the car finished so the team could consolidate its healthy team’s championship lead.

Youlden offered an insight into why both cars finished in the top 10.

“The second car is not treated as a second car,” he said, despite the #5 Ford suffering fuel pump and temperature problems.

“It is treated as an equal. And obviously, Dean is a Level 1 driver, and I like to consider myself one as well but I haven’t had the opportunity, so having good drivers, good cars, there’s no reason why this result isn’t possible.

“The team is fantastic, really good for us and I can’t thank them enough for the chance to drive with them.”

While FPR secured fourth and seventh, special mention also goes to Dick Johnson Racing, which at various stages of the race, could have had both its cars in the top 10, and possible better, only for tyre problems to thwart their chances. The team’s lead #18 car finished sixth, while the second car of Steve Owen and Warren Luff was 11th.

Paul Cruickshank Racing was another Ford team to suffer, dealing with fuel problems late in the race.

It meant that Fabian Coulthard could not attack, eventually finishing 10th when a top five place was in the offing. The #111 Glenfords car, partnered with Alex Davison, had looked strong all weekend, making its very first Top 10 shoot-out.

– GRANT ROWLEY

Phil Williams

Season of Suffering IT has been a disastrous Season of Endurance for Andrew Jones.

The Team BOC driver had a monster shunt at Phillip Island, and another accident at Bathurst put paid to the chances of the #12 Holden.

Jones had not long taken over the reigns of the car from Cameron McConville, but lost control and hit the outside wall on the exit of Griffin’s Bend.

“It’s not good at all,” Jones said.

“I was getting into a rhythm and only 40 percent on the throttle, but it just cracked into violent oversteer.

I’m a little surprised as to why. It’s not

a natural thing. It’s not like I got up on the kerb or anything …”

While there was bad news for the BOC car, it was all good news for the sister WOW machine. Their result was a great boost for the team – and Jones was happy to concede that the BOC car had been the team’s second entry all weekend.

“They’ve had our measure all weekend,” he said.

“Our car hasn’t had mega speed, it’s been tough on our side of the garage, and I don’t really have a reason why.”

– GRANT ROWLEY

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Dirk Klynsmith

The Analysis

Cutting a fine line opinion

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‘ONCE-A-YEAR’ racers aren’t anything new at Mount Panorama and, in 2008, there were significant efforts from cars that had two non-regular V8 Supercar drivers paired together.

Heading the list was Max Wilson and Brad Jones, driving the #14 WOW Commodore. Wilson started the race and ran as high as fourth in an outstanding opening stint – passing Steven Richards and leaving him for dead. Jones maintained fourth place for the majority of his first stint, but a tyre issue saw him pit on lap 51 for tyres and fuel.

From there, the only problem the team had was ensuring the car stayed out of trouble. Jones was involved in a few close calls with rivals, but when Max stepped in at the end, he did not look out of place, racing to fifth place.

“Our car was strong

throughout the entire race,” Wilson said.

“In the final laps, I tried everything I could to narrow the gap. However, it’s a very satisfying outcome.”

The next best non-regulars were Dean Canto and Luke Youlden (see breakout), who were followed in eighth place

by Jack Perkins and Nathan Pretty.

The Jack Daniel’s racers backed up their impressive Phillip Island top 10 with another fine effort, confirming that there is still place in Australia’s Great Race for drivers who don’t compete week in, week out.

And with the introduction of between four and six ‘Wildcard’ entries in the 1000km race next year, the opportunity for more people to sample modern day V8 Supercar racing at Mount Panorama will be more apparent – adding another angle of interest to the race.

– GRANT ROWLEY

John Morris/Mpix

RACE drivers are officially meant to drive their race cars between the white lines, Tim Schenken using some amount of kerb – Race Director but once you go over the back of the kerbs, then you accept responsibility for it.!

Behind the kerb at Turn 2 at Bathurst, there was reportedly some rough surface that was causing punctures, although we were never able to clarify that (I believe the Bathurst Council is going to repave that anyhow).

On Saturday night, we found on the inside of the kerb at Turn 21 (The Chase) there was quite a sharp area, but it was on the inside of the kerb.

The problems that some teams were having with tyres during the race were on the inside of their left front and left rears. That means they would have to have had all of their tyre over the kerb.

Technically, then, you’re off the track.

If you bring dirt onto the track, you are liable to receive a kerbhopping penalty – but there were no penalties for kerb hopping.

I don’t think the drivers were necessarily being ‘greedy’. They are racing drivers. I know what it’s like. They were using every piece of asphalt and whatever else they could use to be as competitive as possible. I understand that. It’s a street circuit, and there are other obstacles that you might not find on a permanent circuit and you deal with them differently.

Beyond the tyre and kerb issues, I thought the driving standards over-all were quite good. We only had a couple of penalties.

Bathurst, being a 1000km race, settles down some of the driving standards. It’s good, aggressive, fast racing. In the shorter races, drivers have to take their opportunities immediately because you haven’t got as much time to sit back and work out a strategy to pass the car in front.

With race lengths being extended next year, it will encourage better racing, less penalties, more entertainment and better television.

The yearly itch

Ev

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No mistakes = win

Dirk Klynsmith

Yet again, Bathurst has been won by an experienced combination of drivers, in a well-drilled and prepared team.

They might not have been he fastest throughout, but they made no mistakes, absorbed loads of pressure, stuck to a strategy and were deserving winners – which might be a matter of some embarrassment to a little car company out in Broadmeadows which has chosen not to back them in 2009 …

Craig has put in some strong drives before but this was one of his best.

He showed restraint in the opening 30 laps (other than that opening lap moment with Murphy), and coped with all the late-race restarts perfectly.

Jamie too did exactly what was required – the two were, as I like to put it, ‘in sympatico’.

Cars may be almost bullet-proof these days, but it is still a deft hand which doesn’t thrash a car to within

opinion Allan Moffat Bathurst Legend an inch of its life – while some others were dealing with the tyre problems mid-race, I didn’t notice the Triple 8 car having any such problems. They managed each situation as it arose.

It was faultless.

I felt for Garth. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of dollars those fancy clutches cost, but they do need to find one that doesn’t melt on the line … It shows how an otherwise well-managed and funded team can trip up over the smallest thing … and for them it set the tome for the day.

But the day, and the triple-crown, went to a deserving team and pair of drivers. There was no luck involved.

The right car won.

ven outright speed isn’t enough these days Dirk Klynsmith

THERE’S no doubt the right team won on Sunday, but there will as usual have been a couple of genuine chances rueing ‘what-ifs’ in the hours after the race.

Such is the pace and competitiveness of the modern Bathurst race that, even if you do recover well from early adversity, it is so much harder than it used to be to get back in the game – even with Safety Car help.

Such was the case of the two podium runners up.

The Tasman car (totally and understandably overlooked in the prerace form) was a rocket from the moment it hit the track. Without that first lap contact – with, of all people Lowndes, whose rear wheel/tyre stayed together despite the hefty smack – the Sprint Gas car would have been in contention throughout and maybe, maybe not have fallen that tantalising few seconds short.

And Courtney. With that tyre problem bouncing the car to virtually the back of the field after its devastatingly impressive first stint, it took the rest of the race to

opinion Chris Lambden mNews Publisher recover. And recover both drivers did.

Yes, Safety Cars helped, but the JeldWen car had the speed, as evidenced over the late laps, to do the business.

But in the modern Bathurst race, it’s now not even enough to be on the same lap at the final Safety Car and in the queue. Late in the day, track conditions level things out even more and make it even harder to pass, to gain track position. Even if you have a weapon, you’ve got to be at the front of the queue when it gets serious if you want to win.

In the past, the speed of either of these two cars would have been enough to recover and win, but on this day they were up against a third hot car which had a completely (so it seemed) faultless run, even sticking to strategy when it meant a temporary loss of track position.

It was the Lowndes/Whincup combo’s most impressive win of them all.

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FUJITSU V8 SUPERCAR SERIES ROUND 6 – BATHURST

Close as close can be

After two sprint races at Mount Panorama, absolutely nothing separated Jono Webb and Dean Canto. ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN reports 42

race

Dirk Klynsmith

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J

ONATHON Webb came painfully close to winning his first Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series round at Bathurst on the weekend, only to be cruelly denied by a hard-charging Dean Canto in the second race.

The Ford pair finished equal on points for the round after winning a race and taking a second place each. But thanks to Canto’s win coming in the second race, he, not Webb, was deemed the round winner.

Their wins were remarkably similar.

Webb was the aggressor in the first race, shadowing early leader Canto for the first two laps before a confident move at the end of Conrod straight. Once in the lead, Webb weathered two Safety Car periods (including a final lap sprint) to take his second FV8 win.

“There was a lot of stopping and starting with Safety Cars but every time we got the green flag I was able to get away cleanly,” he said at the conclusion of Race 1.

“The car was great. We haven’t really touched the car since we got it out of the truck on Thursday. We’ll just put some

44

new tyres on it and put it back on and hopefully do the same tomorrow.”

It wasn’t to be. The race actually started under Safety Car due to a late shower soaking the bottom half of the track, and even when it started the track was half wet, half dry. Having to pioneer in the trying conditions ended up being Webb’s downfall, Canto getting a better drive out of Hell Corner on Lap 5 and forcing his way into the lead into CAT Corner. Again Safety Cars were prominent, but Canto was too good out front.

“I didn’t know what to expect [in those conditions],” he said, “so I was glad Jono was the pioneer. He pushed a bit hard there and I got through, although he was a bit kind on me at turn 2, so thanks for that mate!”

Runaway title leader Steve Owen was, surprisingly, third for the round. Why was it surprising? Because Owen’s pole time of 2:07.71s was light years quicker than the rest of the pack (or an FV8 car has gone before), so it was expected he would sprint away with the two races. But his team decided to leave the reliable

‘old’ engine in the car, and when the races started, Owen couldn’t keep up.

“The idea was to change the engine after qualifying,” said Owen.

“But when we did such a fast time we decided to leave it in.”

It was a move that didn’t pay dividends, but with only a couple of points required from the final round to seal the title, Owen was hardly upset.

Jack Perkins was unlucky to get a result after finishing third in the first race. But he finished sixth in the second race after a desperate move on Steve Owen at the bottom of the chase (“I figured that would happen,” remarked Owen, when asked if he thought Perkins would run wide).

Unusually for the FV8s at Bathurst, there was little carnage (despite a glutony of Safety Cars). The worse damage happened in the second race when Geoff Emery suffered a critical brain explosion following a spin at the dipper, attempting to turn his Commodore around right in front of a hapless Andrew Fisher. The pair locked doors hard, fortunately to no-one’s physical detriment.

race

Phil Williams

Marshall Cass

If you only win one, make it the last one: Dean Canto, left, was lucky to walk away with the official round honours after tying with Jono Webb on points – because he won the final race. Andrew Fisher, below, was less fortunate, ending the weekend with a broken Commodore thanks to a Geoff Emery mishap. The rain also played its part, soaking the front straight while the rest of the track was dry, above.

John Morris/Mpix

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CARRERA CUP ROUND 8 – BATHURST

A long way f

Dirk Klynsmith

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race CARRERA CUP

from the West Dean Fiore dominated at The Mountain taking three wins, but it was Craig Baird who clinchied his second title

James Smith

HE may have played second fiddle to Craig Baird for most of the season, but Dean Fiore chose the perfect place to stand out in the Carrera Cup field – Mount Panorama.

Fiore was nigh on untouchable for the whole weekend at Bathurst. He was only second fastest in qualifying to an in-form David Russell, but was on the Queenslander’s tail right from the word go in Race 1, and was soon in the lead and sprinting away to his second race win of the year.

But it wasn’t all good news for Fiore. Second place for Baird was enough for him to put the title beyond doubt, becoming the first ever twotime Aussie Carrera Cup Champ.

The championship being decided didn’t seem to bother Fiore, who was on-song again in Race 2. He fell behind Baird at the start, but the Kiwi’s advantage was negated when he was handed a drive-through for jumping the start, leaving Fiore to lead home Sonic team-mates Bryce Washington and James Moffat (who was enjoying just his first visit to Bathurst).

The final race was the most straightforward for Fiore. He led the field away at the start, had a gap built up by the end of lap 1, and cruised it home.

“I was really happy after yesterday to have two wins under my belt, but I really wanted to complete the job and make it three,” he said.

“I knew I had to nail the start because I was pretty confident I had the pace, which meant if I got the start I wanted it would almost be job done because the guys with the quickest cars, ‘Bairdo’ and Russell, were a bit further back.

“Now it’s on to Indy and hopefully more of the same to really finish off the season on a high.”

Behind Fiore, Baird wasn’t doing any cruising.

Starting from P13 thanks to the Race 2 penalty, he stormed through the field to finish third, right on the tail of Moffat.

Despite Baird’s charge, he still had to settle for fourth for the meeting, Fiore, Moffat and Washington claiming a historic Sonic 1-2-3. But with the title already in his back pocket, ‘Bairdo’ still left Bathurst happy with his work.

“It’s a fantastic feeling to win the title again,” he said.

“Me and the Fitzgerald Racing Team have worked really hard all season for this so for it to come to fruition is sensational.”

Meanwhile, Theo Kondouris won the Pilatus Challenge class, and finished seventh in the final race.

– ANDREW VAN LEEUWEN

John Morris/ Mpix

Done and dusted: Although Dean Fiore won all three races on the mountain, main, it was Craig Baird, left, who took his second Carrera Cup title, becoming the first man to do so.

While, David Russel, far left, continued his recent good form on the mountain.

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Dirk Klynsmith

Bargs bags another one MINI CHALLENGE

James Smith

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Marshall Cass

JASON Bargwanna has taken out the Bathurst round of the MINI Challenge, winning two races in a truncated program.

The weekend’s first race was shortened to three laps as a result of the Friday V8 Supercar Weel/ Pither practice crash, while Race 3 was red-flagged after two laps due to a nasty incident between Ryan McLeod and Darren Berry exiting the Dipper. Berry was transported to hospital after the crash, and the race was declared a non-event, with no points awarded.

The highlight of the weekend was the second race, in which guest driver Matt Neal, New Zealand MINI champ Brett Collins and Jason’s cousin Scott Bargwanna battled intensely for the lead for most of the race, until Jason crept into contention on the last lap, and then went from third to first in the last corner!

The effort was particularly impressive for Jason, who was handicapped with a maximum 50kg of success ballast.

“I really enjoyed that race,” Jason said afterwards.

“All the other drivers were battling, and I was able to take advantage towards the end.”

The first race was also won by Jason, with Brett Collins second ahead of Scott. The series leaders Neil McFadyen and Nathan Geier had consistent, if unspectacular weekends, with McFadyen 11th and sixth in the two races, and Geier chalking up a pair of eighth places.

The current trend: Jason Bargwanna, main, continued to dominate the MINI Challange at the Mountain and duly won the round.

Matt Neal, left, made an apperance in the MINIs in an effort to learn the track for the main game and faired well battling right up the front for most of the weekend.

As usual the MINIs had plenty of action including some three-wide running, above.

– LACHLAN MANSELL Points: McFadyen 687, Grant Denyer 648, Geier 633, Paul Fiore 600, Paul Stokell 588, J.Bargwanna 480, Gary Young 438, Todd Fiore 417, David Turner 285, S.Bargwanna 243, Nathan Callaghan 243.

race Marshall Cass

Crambrook takes controll V8 UTES

“I think we were doing about 240kmh rubbing mirrors, which sets you alight. I really, really, really liked it,” exclaimed Miedecke.

Johnson’s weekend started well with a lights-to-flag win in Race 1, but headed south when Charlie Kovacs hit the wall at Forrest’s Elbow in Race 2. Kovacs, under pressure from the 2007 Champion, pinched a brake, ran wide and bounced back into Johnson’s path.

“We won’t be seeing the #1

on the Grove car next year,” conceded Johnson.

Kurt Wimmer got off to a good start in the Commodore that he recently acquired from Matt Kingsley to win Race 2 from the front row of the grid, and maintain his Race 3 starting position of fourth to the chequered flag.

– DANIEL HERRERO Points: Crambrook 632, Jane 589, Johnson 533, Baxter 507, Harris 465, Corkery 460, Elsegood 457, Robinson 435, Dontas 415, Miedecke 404.

Phil Williams

LAYTON Crambrook has tightened his grip on the 2008 Yokohama V8 Utes Series following the penultimate round of the Championship at Mount Panorama.

The Lamont Constructions driver took the round win to marginally extend his advantage over Kim Jane, below, while Grant Johnson’s championship defence is all but over after a Race 2 DNF. Crambrook drove to a comfortable second place in the opening encounter, just avoided the Race 2 incident that claimed Johnson, and led for all but three-quarters of the first lap in Race 3 to consolidate his championship lead.

“It’s exactly what we wanted from the weekend,” Crambrook said.

“We wanted to beat Kim and get a few more points on him and make the last round just that little bit easier.”

Jane’s opening race was anything but easy, and he was lucky to finish after clouting Clint Harvey, who missed a gear exiting Hell Corner on lap

4. He recovered with second in Race 2, but an understeer moment at Forrest Elbow in Race 3 gave the race and round to Crambrook.

“Obviously we were praying for him to blow up, crash, smash, shoot himself,” joked Jane, “but Layton’s a great driver and he’s deserving of the Championship.”

Jane was also involved in two spectacular drags down Conrod Straight with George Miedecke in Race 1, which left the young gun buzzing.

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NASCAR SPRINT CUP ROUND 31 – BANK OF AMERICA 500, LOWE’S

THANK YOU FOR 50

On a great weekend to be sponsored by a mobile phone company, Jeff Burton took a telling win in Charlotte.

By MARTIN D CLARK

NASCAR Media

CHOOSING AT&T

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Martin D Clark

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JEFF Burton was a somewhat laps and, although he challenged surprising – and surprised – Burton on the final restart, he fell winner on Saturday night back to sixth at the end. at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, “The first two-thirds were good Charlotte. for us,” quipped Johnson, who Except for Greg Biffle, Burton was maintains his lead in the allthe only drivers to run in the top important Chase.

10 all race but never looked a likely “But we were junk at the end. I winner. Aside from heading one just hate that last third of the race lap early in the race, Burton did not got out in left field and couldn’t take the lead until lap 278 of the get it back. ” 334, but held off a challenge from Just like last week at Talladega, first Jimmie Johnson and then some of the Chase contenders May Lowe’s winner Kasey Kahne in encountered issues. Carl Edwards the closing laps. Kurt Busch in his suffered ignition box gremlins Penske Dodge rallied to finish third, that put him down 17 laps and followed by his younger brother dropped the Roush Fenway driver Kyle and Jamie McMurray. from second to fourth in the A two-tyre final pit stop proved standings, while Dale Earnhardt Jr pivotal in gaining Burton valuable cut a right front tyre and hit the track position off pit road for the wall on lap 103. final 57-lap run to the flag.

Matt Kenseth was the third “This is an awesome race track, ‘Chaser’ involved in the largest it’s so much fun racing here,” wreck of the night on lap 196 commented Burton, who moved when Bill Elliott nudged Tony from fourth to second in the Raines on the frontstretch and standings with the win. swept Kenseth and Travis Kvapil “Clean air was real important into the melee. and Scott Miller, my crew chief, Brian Vickers in his Red Bull made a great call for two tyres Toyota had an exceptionally and that won us the race. We are strong run, leading 64 laps to racing for wins, but we have got a the midpoint but a cut tyre and championship in the back of our subsequent slap with the wall minds all the time. We certainly dropped him a lap. In the sister want to put ourselves in position Red Bull car, sub Mike Skinner took to win a title, there is no question a lick in one of the other eight about that. accidents after three-wide move “Everybody keeps wanting to didn’t pay off. give someone the trophy, but it’s only halfway (Chase) through. It is Credit Due: not done yet.”

Burton took an overdue win, left, With qualifying rained out, point and bumped his Chase ambitions leader Jimmie Johnson started on up two spots in the process. It was a pole and led the first 31 laps before tough evening for Dale Earnhardt Tony Stewart showed his hand.

Jr, above right, and Carl Edwards, Johnson came back strongly again, whose electrically-challenged Roush leading four times and the most Fenway Ford needed a push.

NASCAR | BANK OF AMERICA 500, LOWE’S, CONCORD NC 1 31 2 9 3 2 4 18 5 26 6 48 7 16 8 24 9 8 10 6

Jeff Burton Kasey Kahne Kurt Busch Kyle Busch Jamie McMurray Jimmie Johnson Greg Biffle Jeff Gordon Mark Martin David Ragan

Chev Dodge Dodge Toyota Ford Chev Ford Chev Chev Ford

Childress/AT&T Mobility GEM/Budweiser Penske/Miller Lite Gibbs/M&Ms Roush Fenway/Crown Royal Childress/Lowe’s Roush Fenway/3M Childress/DuPont DEI/US Army Roush Fenway/AAA

Q4 15 19 11 21 1 3 8 14 13

Mister Popular NATIONWIDE

THE CHASE FOR THE SPRINT CUP | points Johnson 5878, Burton 5809, Biffle 5792, Edwards 5710, Bowyer 5693, Harvick 5671, Stewart 5650, J Gordon 5633, Kyle Busch 5552, Earnhardt Jr. 5524, Kenseth 5518, Hamlin 5498.

NASCAR Media

A THREE-lap shoot out to the chequers, a spirited drive from Jeff Burton, two red flags for rain and 13 caution periods were not enough to stop Kyle Busch taking his ninth series and 20th NASCAR win of the year at Lowes Motor Speedway, Charlotte last Friday night.

Burton in his RCR Chev finished second ahead of Brian Vickers (Braun Toyota), and points leaders Clint Bowyer and Carl Edwards.

After a solid seventh place qualifying effort, Marcos Ambrose ended the long night 15th. He was 11th on the final restart, but when the field bunched up, he had nowhere to go and hit the rear of Mike Bliss, dropping Bliss to a 19th place result and Ambrose four spots.

Busch led the most all night and he kept the same speed as the pace car until the green flag unfurled. His 55mph moves were legal, but his slower-than-usual restarts caused a concertina effect, even after NASCAR had issued him prior warning.

“I waited until Burton got to my rear bumper and then I went,” said Busch.

“He had to stop and that’s what jumbled up the field back there. I kept my speed to the restart point. I apologise to those guys back there, but I have a race to win too.”

Point standings; Bowyer 4552, Edwards 4356, Keselowski 4266, Bliss 4017, Ragan 4013 (Ambrose 10th 3574).

NASCAR Media

NASCAR Media

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Championship over

BRITISH FFORD

sutton-images.com

JAMUN Racing’s Wayne Boyd has won the British Formula Ford Championship at Donnington Park last weekend.

After a season long battle with his team-mate, Australian Tim Blanchard, pictured, Boyd proved too good securing the title with some consistent driving taking a third and two second places.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet, but mostly it’s a feeling of relief that the job is done,” said Boyd.

“It’s been a great season for me and Jamun have been fantastic.

“This season has taught me an awful lot that I know I will put to good use in my future career.

Many of the teams I am talking to for next season have told me that they welcome drivers

from Formula Ford because they believe it's the best training you can get.”

Blanchard could not overcome the deficit and made life almost impossible for himself with a DNF in the first race while trying to push towards the front.

However, third place in Race 2 and sixth in Race 3 was a good way to end the season.

Victor Correa won the first race, while David Brown grabbed two wins in the last two races of the season.

Australian Glen Wood chose not to race in the last round in the Championship and returned to Australia.

Points: Boyd 634, Blanchard 584, Chris Maliepaard 463, Correa 414, Linton Stuteley 409.

Youngest ever ...

BRITISH F3

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Points: Alguersuari 251, Turvey 234, Hartley 208, Perez 195, Ericsson 141, (11th Abay 71, 13th Martin 45).

sutton-images.com

SPANISH driver Jaime Alguersuari has come from behind to become the youngest ever British F3 Champion.

Alguersuari won both races at Donnington to take the title from Oliver Turvey in the final race of the year.

Victory in the first race enabled him to close the gap in the championship to just three points after Turvey could only manage third behind Brendon Hartley.

Round 22 was even worse for Turvey. After starting down in 14th position he climbed through the field, only for his

season to end with retirement just three laps from the finish.

Nick Tandy grabbed second place while Sergio Perez was third.

For the two Australians in the field it was a mixed weekend.

Sam Abay, pictured, had his most consistent weekend of the year placing a very competitive fifth in both races to end the season on a high, while John Martin seemingly struggled only managing a pair of 12th place finishes.

race

The show continues NHRA

David Ostaszewski

TONY Schumacher, Cruz Pedregon, and Dave Connolly raced to wins at the 3rd annual NHRA Virginia Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park.

Schumacher scored his 14th victory of the season and can clinch a sixth Top Fuel championship just by qualifying in Las Vegas.

Pedregon and Connolly each stopped the incoming point leaders in eliminations to keep themselves in the running in Funny Car and Pro Stock following the fourth of six events in the 2008 Countdown to the Championship playoffs.

Schumacher and the U.S. Army team have reached 10 straight final rounds, every final since the NHRA switched to the 1,000foot distance last July.

In Virginia, Schumacher collected his eighth win on 1000-foot tracks, stopping Hillary Will in the final, 3.81/316 to 3.84/307.

Schumacher also became the first

driver in the 3.7second range, clocking a 3.771 for the number one qualifying spot and dipped into the seventies five more times, including three straight in the opening rounds to trailer Scott Palmer, Antron Brown and Morgan Lucas.

Pedregon, who had been runner-up in his last seven final rounds, won for the first time since 2006, defeating Jack Beckman with a 4.11/296 when Beckman smoked the tyres.

Pedregon, the low qualifier, defeated points leader Tim Wilkerson in the semifinals to end the Levi, Ray, Shoup driver’s 10-round winning streak and minimise his points lead. Wilkerson won a monster first-round matchup with Ashley Force in round one and beat Melanie Troxel in round two, but hazed the tyres against

Pedregon’s Advance Auto Parts Solara. Prior to besting Wilkerson, Pedregon stopped Tony Bartone and Tommy Johnson Jr. Cagnazzi Racing team-mates Dave Connolly and Jeg Coughlin faced off in the Pro Stock final, with Connolly keeping his championship hopes alive by taking a 6.57/209 to 6.61/206 win.

Connolly, on the verge of falling out of championship contention after the first three events of the playoffs, jumped up to third place with his Richmond outing, which included wins over fellow Countdown competitors Greg Stanfield, Kurt Johnson and Greg Anderson.

– David Ostaszewski

Ricciardo looses lead FRENAULT WEC

DANIEL Ricciardo has surrendered his championship lead to Roberto Merhi after a less dominant weekend in the Formula Renault West European Cup at Magny-Cours.

In Race 1 Ricciardo, pictured with Merhi, could only manage sixth, while his title rival took a comfortable win ahead of Albert Costa and home-town driver JeanEric Vergne.

Race 2 was a little better for Ricciardo finishing fourth, but he still found

himself one spot behind Merhi to loose more points heading into the final round of the championship next weekend.

Ricciardo’s SG Formula team-mate, Andrea Caldarelli, took the win ahead of the consistent Costa.

Aussie Ashley Walsh had a good weekend in France making positions throughout both races after qualifying low down in the field to come home in 15th and 16th respectively.

Points: Merhi 164, Ricciardo 161, Caldarelli 102, Vergne 82, Costa.

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Cody wins in Malaysia

ASIA PACIFIC RALLY CODY Crocker and co-driver Ben Atkinson have won the Ancom Malaysian Rally 2008 ahead of the Japanese pairing of Hiroshi Yanagisawa and Yoshimasa Nakahara.

After building a buffer early in the rally, Crocker took it easy, conserving his lead on some of the slippery Malaysian stages.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself to finish the race without making mistakes, which is not

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so easy to do in such a tough event,” said Crocker.

“But we are very happy and I couldn’t have wished for a better result, and on our home turf too [Crocker races for the Motor Image Rally Team, based in Singapore].”

“We benefited when [Katsu] Taguchi went off yesterday. He gave us the Championship, really.”

His main rival coming in to the rally was Taguchi just, six points up the road but his

problems in Leg One left the door well and truly open for the Australian and he took full advantage.

Crocker’s team-mate, Indonesian Rifat Sungkar, finished in third place, almost 10 minutes down on the Australian.

The search for the Pirelli Star Driver wrapped up in Malaysia, with New Zealander Mark Tapper taking out the coveted title, giving him the chance to compete in the World Rally

Championship in 2009.

“It was a battle to keep my mind on the job in the last few stages,” said Tapper.

“I just stuck to a place where I felt comfortable and didn’t take any risks. It’s pretty hard to describe my feelings right now.

But yeah, awesome!”

Aussie hopeful Eli Evans looked good in Leg 1 scoring the most points, but an excursion off the road in SS10 did some major damage to his car and ruled him out.

race

VICTORIAN SPEEDWAY THE opening round of the Victorian Sprintcar Racing Association (SRA) Eureka Garages and Sheds Sprintcar Series was won by Sydney driver Ian Loudoun in emphatic fashion at Avalon Raceway last Saturday night.

Loudoun qualified third highest on points at the end of the heat races, then set the fastest time trial of 11.297s to go from

Geoff Gracie

third position to pole sitter for the 30-lap final.

From there, he impressed the large crowd to win from Victorian Grant Anderson and reigning SRA series champion Matthew Reed, below left.

Reed, who was top point scorer after the heats, was the biggest loser in the time trial, setting the fifth fastest time (11.597s) which put him on the inside of the third row.

Simpson’s Tim Rankin was fifth-highest on points leading into the top six time trial and in his first race meeting utilising a 410 cubic inch motor, he set the second quickest time (11.402s) to earn the right to start the final from the front row.

Two laps into the feature, Ballarat’s Rod Matthews rolled, while moments later, Rankin broke a front torsion bar while running in the top five.

Back at the front though, Loudoun was doing everything right and the win backs

Geoff Gracie

Loudoun just too good

up his solid third-placing at the recent Australian Sprintcar Championship.

“We came down here to pull off a win and we accomplished that, we had a strong car all night and we were fast,” Loudoun said.

“It was going to be tough having Grant Anderson and Matty Reed behind me who are pretty quick around Avalon. But fortunately I worked my way through lap traffic well which helped.”

Although Loudoun took line honours, it is Reed who sits 19 points atop on the SRA leader board.

The second round of the championship will be at Heartland Raceway, Moama on November 8.

– GEOFF ROUNDS Points: Reed 393, Loudoun 374, Anderson 366, Mike Van Bremen 366, Darren Mollenoyux 354, Brett Milburn 341, Carl Ludeman 329, Eddie Lumbar 313, Glen Sutherland 286, Harley Bishop 284.

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rear of grid

Odd Spot

Cheap Thrills. Three-day growth optional SOMETIMES, photographers take the greatest shots. Sometimes, they are even in them …

Far be it from us to suggest that Dirk Klynsmith resembles anything photogenic.

DK has a look that could be politely described as ‘outdoorsman’, which usually means that he has been making the hard

yards in all kinds of weather to get the money shots at an awkward point of some racetrack. And looks like it.

But this tops them all. Klynsmith was at Mount Panorama before the sun came up on Sunday and mounted a camera atop the SuperCheap bridge on the pit straight.

When the flag dropped, the camera was

activated remotely and the shot you see below happened.

We reckon that both images are pretty flash. We also reckon that Dirk is a trooper; somewhere along the process of all the climbing and shooting, his back got hurt but he pressed on without a word of complaint. Top effort, that …

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