MOTORSPORT: Triple Eight still streets ahead

Triple Eight Race Engineering, celebrating its tenth birthday and now in Red Bull guise, dominated the first V8 Supercar endurance race of the ‘Car of the Future’ era – as it has dominated the past several seasons.

There were other performances of note, especially an AMG Mercedes-Benz E63 finishing fourth and within 20 seconds of the victors, and plenty of hard-luck tales.

The Triple Eight combinations, Jamie Whincup-Paul Dumbrell and Craig Lowndes-Warren Luff, had moments of grief too but wound up first and second – emphatically. Whincup and Dumbrell, 25th beyond one-third of the 500km, finished eight seconds clear of their teammates, after Whincup had pounced on a mistake by Lowndes with little more than 10 laps to go.

The ‘wounded’ Ford Performance Racing Ford Falcon of Will Davison and Steve Owen haemorrhaged oil in the closing laps but hung on for third place, ahead of the AMG-Merc of Lee Holdsworth and Craig Baird – the best a tristar badge has finished in V8 Supercar racing.

But Triple Eight’s quinella reinforced its now-several-seasons-old dominance and, while a lot can go wrong in a long day at Mt Panorama, the Bathurst 1000 on October 13 is now it’s to lose.

FPR, Holden Racing Team, whose James Courtney and Greg Murphy were fifth at Sandown, none of the other Holden or Ford outfits, nor the new Nissan teams and Erebus Motorsport running the AMGs are not in the same league.

Whincup’s second Sandown 500 success came in a new Commodore, which he christened Elizabeth, and after his horror round three weeks earlier at Winton, where his championship lead was slashed. Now the series champion in four of the past five years heads to Bathurst with his advantage almost 100 points again – over Lowndes, who has Davison just one point behind him.  

When Whincup copped a drive-through penalty for Liz’s wheels spinning as co-driver Dumbrell alighted in a chaotic driver change after 66 laps, he could not see them winning from 25th.

“We did it the hard way,” said Whincup, emphasising the work the team had put in on both its entries since its Winton disappointments.

Likewise Lowndes thought his chances of what would have been a record thenth victory in the pre-Bathurst enduro were gone after having to watching Luff “double-stacked” at the Triple Eight garage early in the race.

While the fairytale did not come entirely true for Lowndes he said: “It was a great comeback just to be in contention – bring on Bathurst”.

While the Mercs and Nissan Altimas had longer pitstops to take on more fuel (E85 like the Holdens and Fords after they were refused permission to use E70), the Mercs were the race’s surprise packets, especially those of Holdsworth-Baird and Tim Slade-Andrew Thompson which headed the field mid-race.

The Holdsworth-Baird E63 progressed from 19th on the grid and its shock fourth-place finish was timely just a couple of days after the new AMG boss in Germany, Tobias Moers, cast doubt on the relationship with Erebus lasting more than two years without major - rapid - and improvement.

Moers compounded the fuel and minimum number of pitstops row by arguing that the newcomers to V8 Supercars running four-valve engines needed a maximum compression ratio higher than 10:1.

“That’s a two-valve compression ratio,” Moers said.

An exhausted Holdsworth said that, while unable to overtake Davison’s Ford in the closing laps, “coming really close to the podium was rewarding for all of us [at Erebus]”.

“It’s good to feel like we finally have some momentum,” Holdsworth said.

“The guys absolutely nailed the strategy, we’re at a huge disadvantage with fuel and spent more time in pitlane than the others… Some elements played into our hands with a bit of safety car luck but it was an all-round great team effort.”

And Slade said that, despite ending up 21st: “We had a solid car. We had a lot better pace than other people… [but] we lost some time in the pits with the fuel [not filling to the brim]”.

While the best of the four Nissans at Sandown, that of Todd Kelly and David Russell, finished 11th and more than a minute behind the winning Holden, the two Japanese manufacturers two two-car squads and Erebus are all in the top 10 in the teams championships.

The Nissan Hornets of James Moffat and Michael Caruso are seventh and the Jack Daniel’s Racing brothers Todd and Rick Kelly are eighth, while Erebus is tenth – with eight teams trailing it.

Despite the familiar refrain from FPR team principal Tim Edwards that “today didn’t quite pan out as we wanted”, the Blue Oval camp took solace from its car that started on pole position salvaging a podium after dropping to 22nd when farcically forced to “double-stack” in the pits and Mark Winterbottom-Steven Richards bring the other car home sixth after a shocking start.

“The two pairings drove incredibly well in circumstances which were not ideal and kept the (championship) points gap nice and close,” Edwards said.

“We know we have multiple cars in with a chance of fighting for the win at Bathurst.”

However, Triple Eight boss Roland Dane, back in a more hands-on role at Sandown after the recent loss of Adrian Burgess to Holden Racing Team next year, has pointed out that his outfit – with Fords previously and now Holdens – and HRT are the only teams to have won Bathurst in the past 12 years.

He’s expecting HRT to mount a challenge at The Great Race next month but is entirely comfortable heading there as the red-hot favourite – and with good reason.

Format changes again in 2014 – dates close
Next year’s V8 Supercar Championship calendar is due by the end of this week – and all eyes will be on whether the series goes to Texas for a second time.

New V8 Supercar chief executive James Warburton already has given some clues to next season.

Gone will be the 60/60 Saturday format used at several rounds this season.

The Townsville 400 will be stretched to a 500 like Adelaide and newly-renewed Sydney street event, all with 250km races on Saturday and Sunday.

Other sprint rounds will comprise two 100km races on Saturdays and one of 200km on Sundays, with pitstops for tyres and fuel.

Warburton is pressing on with plans for some twilight racing, perhaps as early as this year’s finale at Sydney’s Homebush.

V8 Supercar Championship driver standings after 28 races: 1 Jamie Whincup (Holden) 2147 points; 2 Craig Lowndes (H) 2051; 3 Will Davison (Ford) 2050; 4 Mark Winterbottom ( F) 1981; 5 James Courtney (H) 1909; 6 Fabian Coulthard (H) 1901; 7 Shane Van Gisbergen (H) 1770; 8 Jason Bright (H) 1715; 9 Garth Tander (H) 1680; 10 Scott McLaughlin (H) 1498.

V8 Supercar team standings: 1 Triple Eight Race Engineering 4238 points; 2 Ford Performance Racing 4056; 3 Brad Jones Racing 3661; 4 Holden Racing Team 3604; 5 Tekno Autosports 3199; 6 Garry Rogers Motorsport 2583.

Rally Australia had a point to it all
The weekend’s World Rally Championship and national rally series round at Coffs Harbour will be covered extensively elsewhere, but in a nutshell French ace, Sebastien Ogier, is still a point away from clinching the world title despite winning Rally Australia in his Volkswagen Polo R.

Locally, Eli Evans notched an 11th straight ARC round victory in his Honda Civic.

Evans this week will step up efforts to replace the withdrawing Honda Australia, while Ogier can clinch maiden world titles for him and VW at his home event, Rally France, on the first weekend of October.

Ogier already would have done that had not Citroen driver Mikko Hirvonen had a puncture on his Citroen DS3 in the final kilometers of Rally Oz, allowing Thierry Neuville in a Ford Fiesta RS to finish second and keep the championships mathematically alive.

Ogier’s legendary countryman Sebastien Loeb will be back for Rally France – the fourth and last of the nine-time world champion’s abbreviated WRC schedule this year.

The last non-French world rally champion was Norwegian Petter Solberg in 2003.

World Rally Championship driver standings after 10 of 13 rounds: 1 Sebastien Ogier (France, Volkswagen Polo R) 212 points; 2 Thierry Neuville (Belgium, Ford Fiesta RS) 129; 3 Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland, Volkswagen Polo R) 110; 4 Mikko Hirvonen (Finland, Citroen DS3) 103; 5 Daniel Sordo (Spain, Citroen DS3) 96; 6 Mads Ostberg (Norway, Ford Fiesta RS) 77; 7 Sebastien Loeb (France, Citroen DS3) 68; 8 Martin Prokop (Ford Fiesta RS) 49; 9 Evgeny Novikov (Russia, Ford Fiesta RS) 47; 10 Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway, Volkswagen Polo R) 34. 16 Australia’s Chris Atkinson (Citroen DS3) is 16th on eight points.

WRC team standings: 1 Volkswagen Motorsport 299 points; 2 Citroen Total Abu Dhabi World Rally Team 251; 3 Qatar World Rally Team 145; 4 Qatar M-Sport World Rally Team  142; 5 Jipocar Czech National Team 51; 6 Abu Dhabi Citroen Total World Rally Team 41; 7 Volkswagen Motorsport II 34; 8 Lotos WRC Team 20.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.