MOTORSPORT: Bigger audience sees Holden's Bathurst sweep

Big jump in numbers viewing race and Top 10 Shootout
Holden's clean sweep of the Bathurst 1000 podium came in front of a substantially bigger TV audience than the previous two years. Sunday's race, won by Garth Tander (and rookie Nick Percat) in a nail-biting finish ahead of Craig Lowndes (and Mark Skaife), was watched by an average 1.212 million TV viewers in Australia's five major state capital cities.

That was a 16.7 per cent jump on the 1.038 million average audience in those same five cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth - for last year's Bathurst won by Lowndes and Skaife.

It also was better than 2009's 1.182 million when Tander and Will Davison won.

However, it was still below the 1.249 million of 2008 and the better numbers of 2006 – the last year with Channel 10 as the telecaster, when it was 1.4 million – and '07, the year of Seven's return as the touring car telecaster, when it averaged 1.357 million.

From our records, the highest average in the five capitals in the past decade was 1.49 million in 2002.

While viewers tweeted vigorously during Sunday's telecast about the amount of advertising, at least the race was shown properly live this year.

Remember that last year there was an outcry at the action being progressively delayed as Seven met its advertising commitments, with the race finishing on TV screens almost half an hour after the chequered flag dropped at Mt Panorama.

There was cheerful news this year too on the audience for Saturday's Top 10 Shootout. It was watched in the five capitals by an average 718,000 – up 24 per cent on last year's 579,000.

This year's race telecast also went live to the US on Speed Channel, with American commentators including NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrel Waltrip, although it will be some time – and perhaps never – before we get accurate figures on the audience there.

It also was Tander's 50th victory in V8 Supercars and third Bathurst win, while his 23-year-old co-driver Nick Percat became the first driver to win at his first start in The Great Race since Belgian Formula One racer Jacky Ickx with Allan Moffat in 1977.

That was the year of the Moffat/Ford formation finish, but this year's was the closest competitive finish – just 0.29 seconds.

What Sunday proved was the wisdom – as we reported here more than 26 months ago - of Holden enticing Triple Eight Race Engineering into racing Commodores after years of Ford Falcons.

HRT won Bathurst in 2009, Triple Eight last year, and this year they were first and second.

While HRT's performances have been inconsistent, more so since the death of team owner Tom Walkinshaw late last year, it and Triple Eight are traditionally the best performers in the big races - and they are both in the Lion's camp.

Greg Murphy and Allan Simonsen in another Commodore – one of five from the Kelly Brothers stable – completed the clean sweep of Sunday's podium for Holden.

Ford has not been represented on the Bathurst podium since 2008.

And who was its victorious team then? Triple Eight, although it had dropped the Ford logo off its Falcons by then. In fact, Triple Eight delivered a hat-trick of Bathurst victories in Fords from 2006 to 2008.

It might have notched yet another win in the Great Race on Sunday if the Lowndes-Skaife pairing did not have to queue regularly behind the team's other Commodore driven by Jamie Whincup and Andrew Thompson in the pits, costing it valuable track positions.

Whincup and Thompson surely would have been in the mix at the finish too had it not been for the alternator problem that dropped them to 21st in the final classifications, allowing Lowndes to go 100 points clear of Whincup in the V8 Supercar Championship.

Holden has now won 18 of the 20 championship races this year.

The best of the Falcon finishers at Bathurst was the Ford Performance Racing entry of Mark Winterbottom and Steven Richards in fourth.

Still without a podium at The Mountain, Winterbottom said that fourth "from where we were (after Richards stalled on the start line) is a pretty good result, considering the setbacks we had."

Richards said that their Falcon was "good enough for the podium" but that "circumstances just didn't go our way".

"Bathurst is one of those places where anything can happen and today it meant we just missed out," Richards said.

Will Davison said the other FPR Falcon in which he led the race early had been "a rocket".

"We had the machinery to win the race," he said, but Mt Panorama bit co-driver Luke Youlden as only it can. Youlden was distressed at his costly excursion – "...my first major error here in more than a decade".

FPR team principal Tim Edwards also thought fourth by the Winterbottom-Richards Falcon was "a good result".

"We wanted to win and had the pace and strategy to do just that, [but] luck wasn't on our side. You need speed and luck here [at Bathurst] – disappointingly we had one and not the other".

Holden made its luck – a long while ago, by having HRT and Triple Eight on its side.

Stoner declares interest in racing V8 Supercar
Australia's MotoGP world championship leader Casey Stoner visited Bathurst over the weekend and declared his interest in turning to four-wheel racing eventually.

"Racing a V8 Supercar is definitely something I'd like to do in the future," Stoner said.

"There's only so many more years I can do two wheels, so I would love to set myself a new challenge and see if I can become competitive enough even to race with these boys.

"But that would be a long way away - and a lot of hard work, I think."

This week Stoner heads to Phillip Island chasing a fifth straight Australian MotoGP victory – where there's a chance he may clinch his second world title.

One F1 double in bag, another coming up
Another Formula One grand prix next Sunday, at Yeongam in South Korea, where Red Bull Racing should wrap up its second constructors' title after Sebastian Vettel became the youngest dual drivers' world champion at the Japanese GP.

Sunday's podium at Suzuka largely encapsulated the F1 season – Jenson Button on the top step after his third win of the year, having extracted the maximum again from his McLaren-Mercedes, Fernando Alonso on the second step after another superb drive to a close runner-up finish in a Ferrari that is only the third best make of car in the field, and Vettel on the third step.

Vettel hadn't won the race this time, but third place was a sign of his maturity and consistency since taking his first world title at the end of last year.

Apart from winning nine GPs this season he's had 12 pole positions – an 80 per cent strike rate, with teammate Mark Webber taking the other three – and been on the podium 14 times. And he's just 24 years and three months old.

Behind the podium trio at Suzuka came Webber, in fourth place after starting sixth, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton after yet another clash with Ferrari's Felipe Massa, and Michael Schumacher in sixth.

Webber has lost a little more ground to Button and Alonso in the race for second place in the championship, while Hamilton faces being beaten in the season standings by his teammate for the first time since he entered F1 in 2007. Michael Schumacher remains a gallant battler in a Mercedes car not yet on terms with the Red Bulls, McLarens and Ferraris – and may yet overhaul young teammate Nico Rosberg in the championship.

"It was still an enjoyable race, because it's such a fantastic racetrack. Suzuka is one of the best tracks in the world - you could drive around it all day.

"My first stint was very strong, but unfortunately I was quick in all of the wrong places.

"I was very fast through sector 1, but found it hard to stay close to Fernando [Alonso] and Felipe [Massa] through Spoon, which gave them a gap on the run up to 130R.

"The DRS [drag reduction system, or driver-adjustable rear wing] didn't really work for any of us today, and tyre wear was pretty similar among the frontrunners.

"Maybe Lewis [Hamilton] suffered a bit more than the rest of us, and I feel for him. When your tyres are falling apart, like they were for him, it's so frustrating. It's a vicious circle because you try to push and you go slower.

"The biggest drama for me came during the second stint, just before the safety car period, when I made contact with Michael Schumacher at turn seven.

"It was the lightest of light touches. I lost a little bit of the front wing, but it didn't affect the balance of the car too much. It wasn't disastrous and I was able to continue driving at a good pace.

"I crossed the finish line about eight seconds behind [third-placed] Seb. It was inevitable that he would win the title here. It's a great result for the team, with Seb backing up his first world title last year.

"He's a double world champion and he deserves it because he's had a phenomenal year, cracking it down the middle of the fairway all season. Hats off to him.

"It's a quick turnaround for everyone this week [going promptly to Yeongam]. It's a good little track in Korea and I'm looking forward to it."

"The race went quite well - we've got to be happy about being only a few tenths of a second a lap behind the Virgin cars," said Ricciardo, who was classified 22nd and finished ahead of his vastly more experienced teammate, Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.

"At one stage I was in front (of the Virgins) but the safety car didn't help. It came out at times that didn't suit us. But I'm happy with the performance and I'm pleased with the way I drove.

"I don't think I could have done much more. The car was good - with every run we made adjustments that improved it. I'm happy for the team because it was a strong race for us.

"We have made good progress since the last few races, when we had incidents in the first few laps, so I'm satisfied to have had a clean race."

HRT team principal Colin Kolles said: "Overall, this race has been what we were hoping for - a race without major problems and fighting the Virgins, which we did.

"Daniel kept a good pace from the beginning and fought both Jerome D'Ambrosio and especially Timo Glock throughout the race. With the blue flags and traffic we ended up behind them, but all in all Daniel did a very good race and took another step forward."

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