MOTORSPORT: Ford’s V8SC title chances rise

There’s no doubt Ford Australia has timed its departure from V8 Supercars with its usual adroitness

As the championship reconvenes at Darwin’s Hidden Valley this weekend, it is the Blue Oval which sits atop of the drivers’ championship points table courtesy of loyal veteran Mark Winterbottom and his Prodrive Racing Australia Ford Falcon FG X.

Such has been the pace shown by the new Falcon, there is a real chance PRA could finally win the championship … in its last year as a factory Ford team.

Gosh knows what the marketing and sales crew at Ford make of the sight of the FG X sweeping all before it this year. Would Ford promote a car it is about to kill winning races for a team it is about to sever ties with in a championship it is about to divest itself from?

Probably not.  

During the interminable break since Winterbottom won at Winton in the last round and took the championship lead – while young teammate Chaz Mostert took three consecutive poles and then crashed out of the lead of the big points Sunday race – Ford has commanded plenty of the headlines.

Or more specifically the Ford Mustang, the iconic two-door coupe that goes on sale in Australia at the end of this year and will be eligible for the V8 Supercars championship from 2017 under the new Gen2 regulations.

It’s become clear that American motor racing and transport industry icon and new V8 Supercar team owner Roger Penske wants to race the Mustang here and is using his considerable influence within Ford in the USA to try and make it happen.  

It’s an endeavour that PRA would be keen to get involved in, given it has more than a decade invested in being a Ford team.  

As appealing as the prospect of a Mustang V8 Supercar might be to blue blooded Aussie racing fans (and V8 Supercars itself, which is nervously watching to see who will be on the grid in 2017), not only is the local Ford division not interested in the idea, it actively opposes it.

That diminishes severely the chances of the project ever getting off the ground, as we reported earlier this month.

And clearly Ford Australia is not turning on its decision to withdraw from motorsport, as newly appointed local president Graeme Whickman made clear to motoring.com.au.

“We have a great relationship in the States, in terms of between Penske and ourselves, and that's something that the team honour and value,” said Whickman. “We've had discussions over time with a number of different people, including Roger, and at the same time our global motorsport group and ourselves had the same conversations.

“And we collectively came to the decision as you know it, in terms of how best to go forward with our relationship with motorsport in this country and do that in a dignified and graceful way. We wish everyone the very best, but our decision stays the same.

“Roger has a relationship with Ford which obviously extends throughout the States. If any relationship were to be had, it would be with Ford Australia, not Ford US, or Ford global, because at the end of the day we make decision in tandem. So I speak to the US reasonably consistently, and we're aligned in the decision we took. That's how I would characterise it.”

There is great irony in the fact that PRA could win its first ever championship only after Ford has announced its pull-out. Especially in the early days, Ford threw millions at what was until this year Ford Performance Racing.

Gradually the team has become more competitive, to the point where it has won the last two Bathurst 1000s. But the consistency to win the championship has always been beyond it.

As the Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney so pithily put it recently, there is plenty of time left for PRA to “step on its dick”.

While Courtney copped plenty for his comments – not least because he ran into teammate Garth Tander at Winton and put them both out of contention – only the most one-eyed Ford fan wouldn’t concede he has a point.

And you only need to look back to last season to find it.

Winterbottom won on Sunday in Darwin to extend his lead to 161 points. It was his last win for the year as his Falcon FG II ran out of development and by season’s end he had dropped to third, an astonishing 596 points behind perennial champion Jamie Whincup in his Red Bull Holden Commodore VF.

This year the FG X looks much more convincing. Importantly it has qualifying as well as race pace. In this most paratised of championships where passing is at a premium, starting from the front is crucially important.

Running today at the resurfaced Hidden Valley track emphasised that, with three Falcons in the top four after David Reynolds topped the times with a new lap record in his Bottle-O Falcon, followed by Winterbottom, Fabia Couthard's Freightliner Commodore and Chaz Mostert in the the second Pesi Max Crew Falcon.

Returning two-time champion Marcos Ambrose even did some wheel work in the #17 DJR Team Penske Falcon for the first time since March, completing 14 laps to end 24th before handing the car back to Scott Pye.

V8 Supercars has tweaked the rules and swapped the second 60km Saturday race on to soft tyres in an attempt to spice up the racing. It is recognition that while the move to the shorter races and more hard tyres in 2015 might have saved teams some money, it has also short-changed trackside spectators and TV watchers.

Speaking of the latter, the move to the controversial new Foxsports live/10 delayed telecast deal will get another test in Darwin. Viewing numbers will continue to be down compared to last year’s FTA 7 coverage. But will Darwin deliver an uptick?