MOTORSPORT: carsales TCR Australia Series goes off with a bang

Baby-faced Will Brown is the new touring car poster boy after twin wins at the opening event of the carsales TCR Australia Series at Sydney Motorsport Park yesterday.

The 20-year-old was quick from the kick-off in a Hyundai i30 N and, after running third in series’ debut on Saturday afternoon, backed-up for a pair of victories on Sunday that also gave him the championship lead and the inaugural TCR lap record.

Old-timer Jason Bright looked to have upset the hopes of the youngest starting grid in touring car memory when he bagged the landmark first TCR win in a Volkswagen Golf GTI, but he was pushed back by a horde of 20-somethings in the follow-up races.

Despite dire predictions, and an opening race which was mostly a procession, the Sunday contests were lively with two and three-wide running, touch-ups and a couple of entertaining incidents. Brown also had to work his way to the front, not just drive away from pole position.

There were 17 cars in action at varying speeds with drivers of varying experience and ambitions, all of them adapting to the front-wheel drive challenge of the new-age TCR cars.

“We had fun and put on a good show. It was awesome this weekend,” Brown told carsales.

“If I hadn’t won I probably would have said it sucked. But I did and it didn't,” he laughed.

Comparisons with Supercars racing are inevitable, and the crowd was only around 5000 people, but for a rare motorsport start-up, it created a good first impression with well-built cars, some impressive professional teams including Kelly Racing and Garry Rogers Motorsport from Supercars, good racing and lap times which were quick enough to prove it’s not just a tin-top non-event.

Brown’s record lap time was 1min 34.8437sec, which seems slow compared to Jamie Whincup’s Supercars mark of 1:29.8429, set last August at the category’s night meeting in his ZB Commodore.

But the quickest of the TCR cars were making it through Turn One without lifting during qualifying, at around 225km/h, and the smaller and lighter cars were also able to brake later.

They sound good too, with a deep bark from their turbocharged engines and predictable new-age pops and bangs during braking.

The cars move around in corners, cold Michelin tyres brought some lurid sideways slides, and it’s easy to see how the drivers are battling to make speed and launch passing attempts.

The crowd was different from a Supercars event, not just in size but content. There were plenty of young people and the carparks were crowded with hot-rodded Japanese speed machines and a surprising number of N-cars from Hyundai.

A healthy contingent of car company chiefs also joined to watch, with representatives from Honda, Renault and Audi the most obvious.

“We were taking a giant leap. But the feedback has been pretty good,” said the director of the Australian Racing Group, Matt Braid.

There are currently 18 TCR cars in Australia and 17 of them were in the pitlane at SMP.

More are sure to follow, but the range of brands was a ray of sunshine after generations of Ford-versus-Holden (with a sprinkling of Nissan and Volvo and even Mercedes-Benz) in Supercars land. And there was no griping or sniping about parity or wings.

It’s easy to tell the cars apart, particularly the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, and they are a closer match to the cars driving out of showrooms in 2019 -- if you ignore dual-cab utes. There are flared guards and wings, with carbon-fibre bodywork, but the cars are clear spin-offs from something you can buy and drive on the road.

During testing there were worries that all of the cars would have plain vanilla bodywork, but there were some significant sponsor splashes (particularly the good-looking Castrol livery and Renaults in racing colours adapted from Formula 1) while Honda Australia had a low-key but high-value presence on a pair of smooth looking Civic Type Rs.

The Hyundai i30 N was expected to be the car to beat, based on international successes and the early arrival of the HMO Customer Sport cars.

They had also had more opportunity to test, although all the cars and crews were new to SMP and its layout is massively different from stop-start Winton where most of the TCR cars had been shaken-down.

“It’s taking a while to learn what they need to go fast,” veteran engineer Richard Hollway reported from the Garry Rogers pit.

Honda learned a lesson after a pair of front-tyre failures for the Wall Racing cars during practice on Friday.

“We were too aggressive on the suspension settings. We called Europe overnight and we’ve dialled it back,” D’Alberto reported.

He bounced back strongly to claim pole position on Saturday, ahead of Bright in the Golf, Dylan O’Keefe in an Alfa and Brown in the quickest of the Hyundais.

There were six different brands in the top 10, separated by 1.17sec. The overall spread for the field was 3.65sec, which was reasonable with so many rookie drivers in untried cars.

A little sadly, the three slowest qualifiers were the three women in the field. But rally champion Molly Taylor was having her first circuit race, Chelsea Angelo was coming across from Supercars and New Zealander Alexandra Whitley was new to everything.

D’Alberto discovered the hard way that a TCR car is much different to a Supercars V8 on the start line, as he was jumped by Bright and forced to settle for second in the first race.

“I found the bite point but then I slipped the clutch too much. I won’t do that again. I’ll dump it,” he lamented.

Brown looked racy at first, Dutch driver Rik Breukers moved up three places in his Audi RS 3, but mostly the drivers played safe as they learned the behaviour of their cars over 16 laps.

Apart from James Moffat, who became the first TCR retirement on the grid when his Renault Megane RS popped a turbo seal on the formation lap.

It looked like the drivers were fearful of tyre degradation in race one, so they played it safe and learned to cope with progressively more understeer.

The TCR format is all about 30-minute action sessions, from practice and qualifying to the three races. A big difference is just 30min between the two rapid-fire Sunday races, with 10min when nothing can be changed. There is no refuelling either, except for the Subaru WRXs which cannot carry enough fuel for back-to-back heats.

Bright leaned his start-line lesson in race two as he faltered and Brown showed it was possible to pass, moving by Dylan O’Keefe’s Alfa and early leader D’Alberto to take the lead. Andre Heimgartner also went well forward in his Subaru, although he came unstuck in race three.

“The car was faster yesterday when it was loose so that’s what we did with the settings,” Brown reported.

But he was too open with his assessment, as O’Keefe overheard him and copied the move for race three to advance to the podium places.

Both youngsters also reported from the pack on how the cars were racing.

“I can see my car is obviously faster down the straight. Some of the other cars rotate harder and can carry more mid-turn speed,” O’Keefe said.

“They have more grip and more aero than some other types of cars, and they are not as heavy, so you can make passes around the outside. There seems to be more grip and they are not as wide, so there is more room,” said Brown.

There was some carnage in the final race, and penalties for Nathan Morcom in a Hyundai for contact, as five cars failed to finish.

But the first TCR weekend was a success, and a successful start, for a series which shows more potential than anything else that’s been introduced since the Touring Car Masters and Porsche Carrera Cup.

It needs to get better, which it will, and there needs to be more cars, but they are coming.

The carsales TCR Australia Series continues at Phillip Island on June 7-9.

RESULTS
Race 1:
1. Jason Bright, Volkswagen Golf GTI
2. Tony D’Alberto, Honda Civic Type R
3. Will Brown, Hyundai i30 N

Race 2:
1. Will Brown, Hyundai i30 N
2. Dylan O’Keefe, Alfa Romeo Giulietta
3. Tony D’Alberto, Honda Civic Type R

Race 3:
1. Will Brown, Hyundai i30 N
2. Dylan O’Keefe, Alfa Romeo Giulietta
3. Michael Almond, Hyundai i30 N

Pointscore (after three races):
1. Will Brown, Hyundai i30 N, 122 points
2. Dylan O’Keefe, Alfa Romeo Giulietta, 110
3. Tony D’Alberto, Honda Civic Type R, 101
4. Jason Bright, Volkswagen Golf GTI, 97
5. Aaron Cameron, Volkswagen Golf GTI, 76
6. Michael Almond, Hyundai i30 N, 74
7. Nathan Morcom, Hyundai i30 N, 57
8. Alex Rullo, Holden Astra, 51
9. James Moffat, Renault Megane RS, 49
10. John Martin, Honda Civic Type R, 48