MOTORSPORT: It's farewell to all that

What a quirky end to the V8 Supercar Championship.

Shane Van Gisbergen crashes into the medical car, David Reynolds has to change his race boots because of a hole burned in one of them by the heat of his foot pedals.

Frenchman Alex Premat, unaccustomed to a sweltering Australian day, has to retire from dehydration, opening the door for the new development series champion Scott McLaughlin to take his place in the last race of the “main game” season.

There was a fuss over team orders too, with Ford Performance Racing team principal Tim Edwards bleating – but not lodging a formal complaint - about the favour now four-time champion Jamie Whincup did his Triple Eight Race Engineering teammate Craig Lowndes on Saturday.

Unlike Formula One the past two seasons, V8 Supercars has a rule that still precludes team orders. There is much irony in FPR complaining though.

Less than 15 months ago, in one of the most blatant examples of team orders in motorsport history, Ford’s factory World Rally Championship team instructed one of its drivers, Jari-Matti Latvala, to slow down and surrender the lead of Rally Australia at Coffs Harbour to teammate and countryman Mikko Hirvonen, who duly won that event.

There also has been a famous orchestrated one finish by factory-backed Ford Falcons in Bathurst’s Great Race and by Ford GT40s at Le Mans.

Those on the other side of the V8 Supercar fence from Edwards also had recollections of David Reynolds lending Mark Winterbottom a bit of assistance at Winton two weeks before the weekend’s Sydney 500.

The bottom line from the Sydney event is that Triple Eight won one race and FPR the other, and that over the course of the championship those teams and their four full-time drivers won all 30 races.

Whincup, still not 30 years of age, ended up taking his fourth title by more than 339 points from veteran teammate Lowndes, although Whincup still hasn’t won on the Olympic site while Lowndes is the only multiple winner from four years of racing there.

Winterbottom finished the championship third and 259 points ahead of his teammate, Will Davison – although the latter was the more winning of the FPR pair with his eighth victory of the season on Sunday.

What this season proved is that Triple Eight is in a league of its own and FPR the only one anywhere near it.

Stone Brothers Racing and Holden Racing Team have finished third and fourth in the teams’ championship.

Tim Slade ended up fifth in the drivers’ championship for Stones after excellent second and fourth places in Sydney (and his first pole position on Saturday). Teammates Van Gisbergen and Holdsworth wound up sixth and eighth respectively for the season.

James Courtney scored two belated podiums for HRT in Sydney, while teammate Garth Tander had pole position on Sunday. Tander finished the season seventh and Courtney 10th.
But there was a big gap this year between the two winning teams and Stones and HRT – and even bigger gaps to the rest.

In the middle of last year Archer Capital paid a huge bundle of money to buy 60 per cent of V8 Supercars in a deal that handed the owner of each licence to run a car in the championship $4 million.

Archer was not buying into the teams, but rather a large slice of their right to participate in the V8 Supercars Championship.

The teams were treated equally in that deal. Triple Eight had long been the dominant team in the sport by the time of that Archer transaction, yet it was valued for the purposes of that Archer transaction at the same price as teams at the back of the field and bottom of the points table.
As has been so starkly demonstrated this season, there is no such equality between teams on the track.

It is a sad reflection, at the end of 20 years of a two-make parity category, that there can be such discrepancy in the performance of those competing.

Those running the series for most of the past two decades, especially recently departed executive chairman Tony Cochrane, have constantly boasted of how wonderful it all has been after the supposed “basket case” they took over in the mid-1990s.

Touring car racing back then was far less than perfect, and certainly there were not 28 cars on the grid at every race, but there were more than two teams winning then – Dick Johnson Racing, Holden Racing, Glenn Seton Racing in a couple of incarnations and Gibson Motorsport.

There were stragglers then too, but without the sponsorship of today’s tailenders.

Some involved or looking on, even many, will lament the end of the Holden-Ford years, while others will say that the arrival of Nissan with its Altima, in a takeover of Kelly Brothers, and Stone Brothers and Erebus Motorsport with customer AMG Mercedes-Benz E63s are just what is needed.

Fans got something of a taste of the new era in Sydney at the weekend, with the Altima demonstrated by Rick Kelly – although not in top gear – and AMG ambassador and German touring car legend Bernd Schneider dominant in an SLS  Merc in a couple of Australian GT Championship races.

For sure there will be interest next year in how each of the four marques fares in the Car of the Future era. Time will tell how much interest, and how enduring it is.

While there were some encouraging signs in the latter part of this year’s championship that the sport was regaining some of its lost TV audience, Saturday’s average of 354,000 viewers in the five major Australian capital cities was less than for the Saturday of the round at rural Winton two weeks earlier. Sunday’s figures are awaited. Winton scored 467,000 on the Sunday.

Another challenge for the next era of V8 Supercar racing is for it to generate car sales for the manufacturers.

Sales of Holden’s Commodore and Ford’s Falcon are way below what they were 20 years ago.
Mercedes-Benz Australia has been at pains to distance itself from the Stones-Erebus race program with the E63, while John Crennan of Nissan/Kellys – and previously long-time head of Holden Special Vehicles and HRT – reckons racing can do wonders for the Altima.

The road version of the Altima won’t go on sale until after its track debut. Getting on the track is one thing. Then the new players have to win. And, even if they do, only time will tell whether the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” adage can be rediscovered.

V8 Supercar Championship top 30 drivers after 30 races - 1. Jamie Whincup (Holden) 3861  points; 2. Craig Lowndes (H) 3522; 3. Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 3457; 4. Will Davison (F) 3049; 5. Tim Slade (F) 2790; 6. Shane Van Gisbergen (F) 2554; 7. Garth Tander (Holden) 2462; 8. Lee Holdsworth (F) 2189; 9. David Reynolds (F) 2187; 10. James Courtney (H) 2153; 11. Fabian Coulthard (H) 2035; 12. Jonathon Webb (F) 1987; 13. Russell Ingall (H) 1960; 14. Rick Kelly (H) 1894 ; 15. Michael Caruso (H) 1770; 16. Jason Bright (H) 1737; 17. Steve Johnson (F) 1621; 18. Michael Patrizi (F) 1397; 19. Dean Fiore (F) 1395; 20. Steve Owen (H) 1393; 21. James Moffat (F) 1354; 22. Todd Kelly (H) 1263; 23. Tony D Alberto (F) 1176; 24. Karl Reindler (H) 1147; 25. David Wall (H) 1142; 26. Taz Douglas (H) 1079; 27. Alexandre Premat (H) 942; 28. Greg Murphy (H) 649; 29. Paul Dumbrell (H) 534; 30. Warren Luff (H) 527.

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