MOTORSPORT: V8 Supercar racing at its best

NZ round at Pukekoke around ANZAC day a winner
The New Zealand round of the V8 Supercar Championship was what Australasia’s premier motor racing series should be: A 3km permanent circuit, in a market with an appetite for it, an excellent format and terrific support races for the Kiwi fans.

V8 Supercar racing in NZ on and around Anzac Day is a huge winner. Now the pressure is mounting for a second round across the Tasman, and there’s talk of a new NZ team – with Paul Radisich involved – by 2016.

Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom has taken a handy lead in this season’s championship after a Pukekohe round that began badly for him on Anzac Day but ended up with two wins, a second and the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy.

In America, Marcos Ambrose has created controversy in NASCAR by punching rival driver Casey Mears – something that will generate promotional footage for years but may earn the Tasmanian a penalty in the next day or two.

Fellow Australian Will Power still leads the IndyCar series after starting a rain-delayed race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama from pole position but spearing off the track 16 laps into it and winding up fifth. The other Aussie in that race, Ryan Briscoe, finished 11th.

The winner was 2012 series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay ahead of his Andretti Autosport teammate Marco Andretti, with New Zealander Scott Dixon third.

Pendulum of success swings Winterbottom's and Ford's way
What a (long) weekend it was at Pukekohe. Four races – three of 100km and the last of 200km.

The opener, on Anzac Day, was won by Jason Bright, great mate of the late Jason Richards and winner of the memorial trophy named after the late, hugely popular Kiwi driver the first time it was awarded when V8 Supercar racing returned to Pukekohe last year after the disastrous street race experiment at Hamilton.

Friday was to be Holden’s big day – seven Commodores in the top 10, no Ford Falcons, a Mercedes fifth, a Volvo seventh and a Nissan 10th.

But then it became Ford and Mark Winterbottom’s weekend, winning the first of Saturday’s two races, taking second to Kiwi Shane Van Gisbergen in the Tekno Autosports Holden in the other, then winning Sunday’s longer race after the FPR crew outgunned the Volvo/Garry Rogers Motorsport outfit on the crucial pitstop.

For good measure, FPR had its young gun Chaz Mostert on the podium in the two races Winterbottom won.

Scott McLaughlin was a huge favourite with the Kiwi fans and was always on the pace in his Volvo S60 with two pole positions and eighth, sixth, third and second in the four races, making him a close runner-up to Winterbottom for the Richards trophy.

No championship race win yet for Volvo, but it can’t be far away. Nissan hasn’t won either this season, but it is a lot further away.

However, as highlighted earlier this season, the five-make series is providing a much better sporting spectacle, even if there are no signs yet of road-car sales spin-offs for the participating manufacturers.

Sunday’s race had all five makes represented among the first seven finishers (Ford first and third, Volvo second, Holden fourth and sixth, Nissan fifth and Mercedes seventh. And another Nissan eighth, ahead of two more Holdens – those of Kiwi Fabian Coulthard, who has slipped from second to third in the championship, and five-time champion Jamie Whincup, who is back down to sixth now.

Much has been made of long-dominant Triple Eight Race Engineering/Red Bull Racing Australia’s unusually poor results at the past two rounds, but there have been so many other positives for the series. And, in all likelihood, T8/RBR will bounce back.

FPR has come on strong – team principal Tim Edwards reckons it has been strong all season, but that it’s become more evident lately, with Winterbottom winning three of the past five races in the series. Winterbottom had taken the series lead by Saturday evening, with T8/RBR’s Craig Lowndes relegated to second, 49 points behind. After Sunday the gap was out to 107 points. Lowndes remains winless at Pukekohe and was on only one of four podiums there this year.

Two fourth places were the best Whincup could manage this time and it’s now seven races straight he hasn’t been on the podium.

Organisers claimed a total attendance for the Pukekohe event of 128,255 people – a huge endorsement for the category, the timing, the venue and the move back from Hamilton. V8 Supercars chief executive James Warburton said the reception of the Kiwis had been “quite overwhelming”.

“It was the right call to come back to Pukekohe,” Warburton said. “This circuit is not only a brilliant race track but superb for the fans.

“It has been an absolute privilege to race on Anzac weekend.”

May there be much more of it.

Greg Murphy, the “King of Pukekohe” for his V8 Supercar successes there years ago, was the face of this year’s event, as well as clinching his second straight title in the NZ V8 SuperTourers – the main support act at Pukekohe this time.

V8 Supercar driving standards official Jason Bargwanna won a couple of NZV8 Touring Car races in a Toyota Camry, although Kiwi Nick Ross claimed that championship in a Holden Commodore – but will switch to a Nissan Altima next season.

V8 Supercar drivers – the three Kiwis and the Aussies alike – are keen on a second NZ round in the region’s premier championship, although opinion among them is divided on whether it ought to be on the streets of capital city Wellington or on the South Island, perhaps at Tony Quinn’s new Highlands Park. It will need the blessing of the Paris-based Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), but there is no logical reason for it to oppose the idea.

Irrespective of whether another NZ round is added in the near future, a push for a new Kiwi team in the V8 Supercar Championship has become public. Paul Radisich, NZ’s two-time world touring car champion and former V8 Supercar driver, made it known at Pukekohe. He stressed that nothing was certain yet, but the project has a name – Super Black Racing  and an announcement is expected soon.

Meanwhile, the fifth round of this year’s championship is the Perth 400 at Barbagallo Raceway on May 16-18.

Ambrose lands blow in NASCAR
Marcos Ambrose finished 18th in the NASCAR race at Richmond, Virginia, the ninth round of this year’s Sprint Cup.

One place behind the dual V8 Supercar champion was Casey Mears, a nephew of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick “Rocket Man” Mears. Ambrose and Mears had an argument in the paddock after the race, the American shoved the Aussie and Ambrose responded with a punch to Mears’ face. NASCAR officials are looking into the incident and may penalise Ambrose, if not both of the pair.

Ambrose has not spoken publicly about the incident, but Mears has said: “He got me good.

“Some things happened out on the track that we weren’t real happy with. I guess both of us weren’t right.

“We were talking and it turned into not talking in the end. Things happen ... [but] I don’t think it’s something you just forget.”

Veteran NASCAR reporter Bob Pockrass wrote on Sportingnews.com that, while the punch will make excellent promotional footage, Ambrose should be fined – although not as heavily as the US$150,000 team owner Rick Childress copped in 2011 for hitting Kyle Busch or the reported US$50,000 on Ryan Newman for his altercation with Juan Pablo Montoya the same year.

Pockrass said on the Ambrose case: “NASCAR doesn’t need to punch him back, but a hard slap on the wrist is certainly warranted.”

Joe Logano won the Richmond race in a Ford – his second victory this season and the third for Roger Penske, the iconic team owner believed to be considering entering V8 Supercar racing as well.

Jeff Gordon led 173 laps and finished second in a Chevrolet, ahead of the Toyota of Kyle Busch, with Penske’s 2012 champion Brad Keselowski fourth. Gordon leads the championship, five points ahead of Toyota driver Matt Kenseth, but neither has won a race this season.

Ford man Carl Edwards is third in the points, followed by Kyle Busch, Chevrolet’s early-season leader Dale Earnhardt Junior, Logano, Keselowski and multiple champion Jimmie Johnson. Ambrose, who has had two top-five finishes this season, is 16th.

V8 Supercar Championship standings after 13 of 38 races - 1. Mark Winterbottom
(Ford) 941 points; 2. Craig Lowndes (Holden) 834; 3. Fabian Coulthard (Holden) 824; 4.
James Courtney (Holden) 781; 5.Shane Van Gisbergen (Holden) 777; 6. Jamie Whincup
(Holden) 775; 7.Scott McLaughlin (Volvo) 651; 8. Jason Bright (Holden) 592; 9. David
Reynolds (Ford) 592; 10. Will Davison (Mercedes-Benz) 572.

V8 Supercar team standings – 1. Triple Eight Race Engineering 1634 points; 2. Ford
Performance Racing 1493; 3. Brad Jones Racing 1416; 4. Holden Racing Team 1337; 5,
Erebus Motorsport 1134; 6. Nissan Motorsport II 1071; 7. Volvo Polestar Racing 888; 8.
Nissan Motorsport I 858; 9. Dick Johnson Racing 823; 10. Tekno Autosports 802.