MOTORSPORT: GT-Supercar frictions out in open

The new Australian GT Endurance Championship has ventured to New Zealand, with a strong line-up for this weekend’s Hampton Downs 101 – and some strong talk from the circuit and category owner, Tony Quinn.

Not surprisingly proclaiming that “the GT category worldwide is the place to be”, Quinn has delivered if not a broadside then at least a backhander to (V8) Supercars.

Quinn painted Supercars as a category in decline “that don’t have the product that appeals to anyone anymore” and just “trying to stop the rot”.

Supercars chief executive James Warburton has hit back, calling GT “a gentleman’s category” and “a niche sport”.

It began with Quinn being quoted by Fairfax Media in NZ saying: “The V8s are still good, but … manufacturers aren’t investing in V8 Supercars – they’re all investing in GT cars, and that’s the future.”

Supercars and GT3 seemingly had been co-existing happily enough in recent times, since the clash of the V8 Supercar test weekend and the Bathurst 12-Hour that prevented the country’s top drivers participating at Mt Panorama early last year.

Supercars subsequently bought into the 12-Hour and became the event promoter. The GTs also sometimes run as a support act at Supercar rounds.

But frictions surfaced with the GT troupe heading across the Tasman for the final two rounds of the four-round Australian GT Endurance Championship, which “sandwich” next weekend’s NZ round of the Supercars Championship at the Pukekohe circuit near Auckland.

The trigger seemingly was Supercars blocking its top drivers, especially  championship-leading Kiwi Shane Van Gisbergen, from participating, certainly this weekend at Hampton Downs – the still relatively new circuit between Auckland and Hamilton which Quinn reportedly spent $NZ13.5 million buying and another $NZ20 million upgrading – including a 1km extension to the track, taking it out to 4km.

“They (Supercars) are trying to protect their equity. It’s their intellectual property, and I get that,” Quinn said.

“[But] they’re almost restrictive in what they’ll let their drivers do, because they obviously don’t want GT to devalue the V8 category.

“But it’s happening anyway. All they’re trying to do is stop the rot.

“They’ve got the stars in the cars, but they don’t have the product that appeals to anyone anymore.

“We’ve got the product that appeals to everyone, but we don’t have the stars in the cars yet – although we do have Greg Murphy here [at Hampton Downs].”

Murphy, hugely popular in his native NZ, especially for his Supercar successes as Pukekohe, hasn’t raced competitively since 2014 but will co-drive an Aston Martin Vantage V12 with owner Quinn in Sunday’s 101-lap race.

Supercars chief Warburton, speaking to the same Fairfax Media sports journalist (David Long) as Quinn, dismissed GT racing as “an enthusiasts-based thing and it doesn’t have the magnitude of a major race series”.

While GT racing has developed in Australia in the past decade, initially with primarily sprint races but this year adding a CAMS-sanctioned endurance series with two rounds on home soil and two in NZ, the Quinn-owned category’s races are separate from the Bathurst 12-Hour in which Supercars is now partnered with the Bathurst council.

Warburton boasted of Supercars: “We have an accumulative TV audience of 70 million in Australia, 230 million homes globally and we’ve just cracked through 600 million Facebook impressions.

“We’re the No.3 sport in Australia and are globally regarded.

“We’ve got deals in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia that we’re finalising to work into the calendar from 2018.

“So from that perspective, it’s noise people want to create.

“We have them (GTs) on our support card, but it’s just this hysteria that people want to continually create.

“They are always after our drivers to drive in it, and our drivers always win the races, because they’re always that good.”

However, the first GT endurance round at Phillip Island was won by Grant Denyer and Nathan Morcom, the second at Sydney Motorsport Park by Andrew Miedecke and his son George.

Warburton continued: "We had just under 120,000 over the three days last year (at Pukekohe, the NZ round of the Supercars Championship). I believe they (GT) are looking for about 10,000 [at Hampton Downs this weekend].”

There have been predictions in the GT community of 15,000 at Hampton Downs. The final GT endurance round a fortnight later is at Quinn’s other NZ circuit, Highlands near Queenstown on the South Island.

Among the verbal punches thrown this week, Quinn made known that the sponsorship of the recent Bathurst 1000-winning Tekno Autosports Holden Commodore by his Stix confectionary brand (part of his Darrell Lea business) is unlikely to continue next year.

“I very much doubt we’ll be on the [Super]car next year, so it (the Bathurst 1000 win by Will Davison and Tekno owner Jonathan Webb) is a fitting exit,” said Quinn, who began backing that entry when Van Gisbergen raced for Tekno in Supercars.

“My focus needs to be with the GTs now,” Quinn added.

“If we look back four years ago there were eight GT cars in Australia. There are now over 50 and that will grow.”

There had been 34 GTs entered at Hampton Downs, but the Mercedes AMG that Kiwi Craig Baird was to drive has been withdrawn because of injuries car owner Scott Taylor is overcoming after a Porsche Carrera Cup crash at the Gold Coast last weekend.

Previous GT endurance series round winners Denyer-Morcom and the Miedeckes are there, in a McLaren 650S and Aston Martin Vantage respectively.

Supercars veteran Garth Tander is there too, in one of seven Audi R8s (six of them prepared by Audi Sport Customer Racing). Tander reckons there is “enough room” for the GTs and Supercars to co-exist happily.

Racing at Hampton Downs too is the even more veteran Tony Longhurst, in another Miedecke Aston Martin rather than the BMW M6 he will race at February’s Bathurst 12-Hour with Mark Skaife and Russell Ingall.

However, Steven Richards is racing the M6 he has driven this year.
Hampton Downs also will mark the debut of Nissan’s GT-R in ‘Australian’ GT racing. Indeed there are two of the modern ‘Godzilla’.

The first is the factory-backed entry that will give Nissan Academy winner from last year, ex-Australia Post courier Matt Simmons, the nearest thing to a home start after racing in Europe’s Blancpain GT series this year. He is paired with Nissan’s top Altima Supercar driver, Michael Caruso, making his GT debut.

The other GT-R is an NZ entry for Kiwis Clark Proctor and Andrew Porter.

An international visitor is 25-year-old Frenchman Come Ledogar in a McLaren 650S. He was one of Van Gisbergen’s partners in winning the Blancpain endurance title – a success that the Kiwi was not at the final round to celebrate because of a clashing Supercar commitment.

Ten manufacturers are represented on the Hampton Down entry list – including several Ferraris and Lamborghinis, of course – and there are a dozen NZ drivers, even with Baird and Taylor out, as well as several Bathurst 1000 co-drivers.

The full entry list (prior to the withdrawal of the Tayor Mercedes) is here.

The mathematics on the Mercedes F1 men
The Formula 1 drivers’ world championship could be decided early Monday, Australian time, at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez in Mexico City.

But for Nico Rosberg to clinch the title there he will need to notch his 10th win of the year and his Mercedes teammate and champions of the past two years of the hybrid era, Lewis Hamilton, not finish – or at least not finish in the top 10.

Rosberg leads by 26 points and would go to an unbeatable 51 points clear if all went his way (as in previous para).

He won there narrowly from Hamilton last year when the Mexican GP was revived after a 23-year absence from the F1 calendar.

If it were to be the other way around on Sunday – Hamilton winning, Rosberg not scoring – the difference would be only one-point between them, still in Rosberg’s favour, with two races remaining – in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.

Mercedes has decided against any upgrades to its power units this weekend.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo’s teenage teammate Max Verstappen has been told by Red Bull Racing strong man Helmut Marko that he needs to find a balance between aggression and patience in races.

“Compared to Daniel he has substantially higher tyre wear – and it doesn’t make him faster,” Marko said.

Ecclestone utterances around the bend
F1’s long-time ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone turns 86 this weekend and has been making some statements that would make you think he’s … well, a man of very advanced years.

Firstly Ecclestone said this week, jokingly (we think), that corners in Grand Prix circuits should have walls at least 40cm high to keep drivers on track.

Then he made light – amazingly, in view of Jules Bianchi’s death last year from his horror crash in the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix – of dual world champion Fernando Alonso’s huge flip in Melbourne at the start of this season.

“When you have a big shunt like Fernando’s we ought to put up big sheets around the scene, bring in the ambulance and take him away. He goes to hospital and later on you announce that, thank God, he’s out. A bit of showbiz. People like that.”

Ecclestone is not only short in stature but in tact.

Chinese headache lingers for WRC
Word is that China is unlikely to be on the World Rally Championship calendar next year.

The WRC round scheduled in the Huairou region for last month was cancelled, supposedly because of flood-damaged roads but thought more likely to have been because of financial and organisational problems.

Uncertainty over next year has left the latter part of next year’s calendar uncertain – including the Rally Australia date, although it is likely to remain in mid-November.

The difficulties in getting a Chinese round up are of particular concern to WRC manufacturers, who are keen for a marketing edge in the potentially huge market for their road cars.

Citroen has run only occasional WRC events this year while it develops its new car for next year’s rules, but Citroen chief executive Linda Jackson has said previously that she would only approve a full-time return to the championship by the French marque once there was “a clear path” for a Chinese presence on the calendar.

Citroen rally team principal Yves Matton said this week: “What we want is a rally that is able to stay in the championship, not a rally that is for just one year. It’s a question of having a good one for a long time.”