MOTORSPORT: First showdown for new V8 Supercars

Dick Johnson has announced today that Tim Blanchard will drive one of the two FG Ford Falcons the struggling veteran of the sport vows will campaign for his long-running team this year. DJR will have only one car at tomorrow’s test day at Sydney Motorsport Park, formerly Eastern Creek, but says it will have news on the other driver next week. All eyes will be on whether it’s Steve Johnson or if he has to make way for another driver with financial backing to help keep DJR afloat.

When the flag drops, euphemistically, at 9am tomorrow to start the test day there’s no certainty the marketing bulldust will stop. Indeed, it’s likely to rumble on well into the season – perhaps all year-long. But tomorrow’s testing will give some indications of how the AMG Mercedes C63s and Nissan Altima L33s stack up against the new Holden Commodore VFs and the Ford Falcons. All have the new generic chassis and 18-inch tyres and, while Mercedes team Erebus (which is absorbing former Ford team Stone Brothers Racing) and Nissan are new to V8 Supercar racing, all may have a lot to do initially to adapt to the new rules.

A fan track walk is scheduled for 12.30pm, with testing to continue throughout the afternoon to 4.30pm – by which time there should be an early form guide to Adelaide’s season-opening Clipsal 500 on the first weekend of March.

Not only will there be the new cars on track tomorrow but driver changes to observe too – particularly Michael Caruso and James Moffat in Nissans, European recruit Maro Engel in a Mercedes, Shane Van Gisbergen in a Tekno Autosports Holden after his exit from Stone Bros, and Blanchard with DJR. It is pleasing to see 25-year-old Blanchard get a full-time V8 Supercar opportunity. He won the Australian Formula Ford Championship in his teens, went to Europe and was runner-up in the prestigious British Formula Ford Championship, but currency movements worked against him landing the sponsorship to take up a Formula Three opportunity there.

Since then he has had to spend a lot of time in the V8 Supercar development series, winning two races and finishing second overall in 2010, earning him a Mike Kable Award as the best young driver in the sport. He has been an endurance race co-driver and last year deputised for injured Todd Kelly in the Kelly Brothers team that ran Holden Commodores but has now transformed into Nissan Motorsport.

Despite its financial difficulties, DJR has technical support from Ford Performance Racing, the next-best team to Triple Eight Race Engineering last season and this year fielding four cars, with Alex Davison joining Mark Winterbottom, Will Davison and David Reynolds. Still without full funding for this year, Dick Johnson is fielding Blanchard’s car tomorrow with a livery representing Queensland’s flood relief appeal and, although he can’t attend because he’s recuperating from recent surgery, Johnson remains upbeat about his team’s future and prospects.

“With the engineering package provided to us by FPR, our two Ford Falcons will be competitive as any out there,” Johnson said. “I’m looking forward to seeing Tim give it a good shakedown tomorrow. He is an exciting young driver and with him on board, we can start to look to the future of DJR and not get a sore neck by looking back.

“I’m pretty fortunate to have a really loyal and committed group of fans who continue to stick with us through thick and thin and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that.”

The 18-year-old Brabham, grandson of Australia’s triple Formula One world champion Sir Jack Brabham, was almost three quarters of a second a lap faster than any other driver in the first of the Florida tests, at Palm Beach, and then more than 1.5 seconds clear of all others at Sebring, where his grandfather clinched his first world title in 1959. Brabham won the US F2000 Championship last year in his first season aboard.

He had four race wins, five seconds and two third places, set eight fastest laps, three track records and had six pole positions and won a prize of about $375,000 to advance to Pro Mazda, as well funded drives at a couple of European race meetings late last year. While he is on a pathway that could take him into IndyCar racing his ambition is F1.

Brabham said the Florida tests had been “quality”.

“My engineer, Yancy, and I have a good feel for the direction we need to go in, and I also was working on my driving style,” he said.

The Pro Mazda Series starts on March 1-2 at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas – where the V8 Supercars are to race in mid-May.

The American stock car season cranks into gear from this weekend for Marcos Ambrose, with the Daytona 500 next weekend (Sunday, February 24, US time).

Ryan Briscoe is yet to find an IndyCar drive this season and may have to settle for a part-time deal that would get him a start at Indianapolis, where he had pole position last year for the Indy 500.

Will Power remains with Penske Racing, for which he has been runner-up in the series the past three years.

Honda is believed to be keen on the 2014 F1 rules that will introduce turbocharged 1.6-litre V6 engines. It withdrew from F1 at the end of 2008 as the global financial crisis struck and it had not made a success of full ownership of a team – which was subsequently taken over by Ross Brawn and immediately won the world title with a Mercedes engine in its car.

Honda is being linked to McLaren in a renewal of a combination that enjoyed enormous success in the late 1980s and early ’90s with great drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

McLaren still uses Mercedes engines but the German manufacturer’s emphasis is increasingly on its own team – ironically that which was Honda and BrawnGP, and which has lured Lewis Hamilton away from McLaren to replace Michael Schumacher.

In the Japanese way, comments from Honda executive on fresh interest in F1 are measured.

“On a personal level I love racing, but there is a lot involved when you are in F1 – it is the very top of auto racing and that requires a large commitment,” Honda head of research and development Yoshihara Yamamoto said.

“But it is true that we do look up at those races and hope that one day we can take part again. I do not personally think we can just go straight back immediately, but there is potential for the rules to change and attract us.

“I follow the rules, certainly, and if they present an opportunity then it would be nice to go back. This is my personal view – not that of Honda – but I feel the first thing we must do is win in the World Touring Car Championship (with the Civic) – and then perhaps we can look further afield.”

As we mentioned here at the time of Honda’s exit from F1 in late 2008, racing is in the company’s DNA. The challenge of taking on Ferrari, Renault and Mercedes surely will bring it back to the grand prix circuits before too long.

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