MOTORSPORT: Bathurst the pinnacle for Lowndes

Triple Eight/Team Vodafone continues to set the engineering benchmark in V8 Supercars and Lowndes is again paired with Mark Skaife, who has proven in his part-time role in recent seasons that (as stated here at the time) he retired from full-time racing too early.

Skaife is a six-time winner at Bathurst, including with Lowndes last year. Indeed, the multi-times champ is still driving so well that he seems likely to opt not to take up the chairmanship of the new V8 Supercar Commission so that he can continue part-time driving for three or four more years… And perhaps equal or even surpass Peter Brock’s record nine Bathurst 1000 wins.

Lowndes is only 92 points behind teammate Jamie Whincup in the V8 Supercar Championship and the Commodore-driving pair are well clear of the rest of the field. But as much as he would like a fourth series title, Lowndes puts greater store in winning at The Mountain.

“Bathurst, for me, is the ultimate race of the year… It’s even bigger and better than championships,” Lowndes said.

Whincup has been King of the Mountain three times too – in a Falcon hat-trick with Lowndes in 2006, ’07 and ’08. While he remains the man to beat in sprint races, this year he is at longer odds for the enduro paired with the young Andrew Thompson.

Holden Racing Team is the only outfit other than Triple Eight to have won the 1000 in the past six years – in 2009 and 2005.

While it has had a couple of wins this season, its form has been erratic and it is difficult to envisage either of its cars – driven by Garth Tander with young Nick Percat; and reigning series champion James Courtney with Cameron McConville – taking the chequered flag first.

Ford Performance Racing’s year has been even worse – winless – yet it goes to the Mountain shooting for the stars. Its cars are as good as new – the one to be shared by Mark Winterbottom and Steve Richards has done only one race, and the other shared by Will Davison and Luke Youlden two races. The latter car finished third at Phillip Island.

“I can’t remember a year when we’ve headed to The Mountain in better shape,” said FPR team principal Tim Edwards.

Winterbottom has the best qualifying record at Bathurst in the past four years but has never won.

“But Richo has won the race twice, so I have the perfect co-driver,” Winterbottom said,

Richards (like Skaife only a part-time V8 Supercar driver these days) reckoned it was “probably the strongest chance ever” for FPR.

“We have three really strong combinations and fast cars [the third driven by Paul Dumbrell and Dean Canto], though we all know you have to have your day at Bathurst,” Richards said.

“It doesn’t matter how well you prepare, how fast your car is or how good the drivers are, if you don’t have everything run your way on the day you can’t win it.”

Will Davison, a winner at Bathurst two years ago with Tander for HRT, said he and Youlden “certainly have a spring in our step” after the Phillip Island podium.

NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip, who is coming to the Great Race to commentate on the live telecast on Speed Channel, has boned up on The Mountain by talking to Australian NASCAR racer Marcos Ambrose.

“He is in awe of it,” Waltrip said of Ambrose, never a winner at Mt Panorama despite winning two series titles.

Waltrip has told the Australian motorsport writer for the Detroit Free Press, Mike Brudenell, he knows that Bathurst “will eat you up and spit you out… This is a treacherous place”.

But he has a lot more to learn about the world-renowed 6.213km circuit – he thinks he is coming to “an oval with esses”.

Waltrip will be introduced to the track in a couple of laps alongside Brad Jones Racing’s Jason Bright in the Holden Commodore he is sharing with Andrew Jones.

“I might need a change of underwear,” Waltrip predicted.

“But, hopefully, I might convince Jason to give me a shot [at a few laps].

“We’re gong to educate American viewers on a great sporting event. I hope this will be a start of an annual telecast [to the US].”

Auckland air base tip for NZ V8 Supercar round
New Zealand’s long-time V8 Supercar hero Greg Murphy has said it must be “an absolute priority” that a championship round continue in his homeland after last week’s new that Hamilton’s street race next year will be the last there.

And NZ reports are that the Royal NZ Air Force’s base, Whenuapai, 25km north-west of Auckland, is favourite as a new venue, while there is talk of returning to the capital city - but smaller - Wellington for a street race.

An Auckland street race was V8 Supercars Australia’s dream before it went to Hamilton and obtaining “resource consent” still appears a big hurdle in the big smoke,

NZ racing legend Frank Radisich and town planner Peter Sinton already have a deal giving them a right to hold racing at Whenuapai until 2014. They have had that entitlement since 2008 – the year the V8 Supercar round moved from Pukekohe on the southern outskirts of Auckland to Hamilton, a regional centre in the Waikato region.

NZ’s Weekend Herald newspaper reported that the Auckland Council has had informal talks with V8 Supercars officials but that it is understood it is not contemplating a central city street race – and ruled out a return to Pukekohe.

Meanwhile, there are ructions in the Hamilton City Council.

“We played a game of chicken [with V8 Supercars] and we blinked first,” said councilor Ewan Wilson of the deal under which the final two years of Hamilton’s contract were cancelled in exchange for V8 Supercars paying about $1.25 million and taking assets such as barriers and temporary grandstands.

Tony Roberts, one of the owners of the new Hampdon Downs permanent circuit between Auckland and Hamilton that will host the opening round of the NZ’s new V8 Super Tourers series in February, said his company would have paid more for that infrastructure.

“We didn’t get a chance… That was a really hasty move,” Roberts said.