MOTORSPORT: V8 Supercars, ARC title deciders

There was a time when the Australian Touring Car Championship and the Australian Rally Championship were the two major titles in national motorsport.

In those days CAMS, the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, wouldn’t allow rounds of the two championships on the same weekend.

Now these championships not only run on the same weekend sometimes, but in the same state – and in Victoria this weekend barely 100km apart. (And next February a 12-Hour race for performance and production cars and a V8 Supercar test weekend will clash a couple of hundred couple kilometres apart in NSW).

While the Australian Touring Car Championship – awarded now to the V8 Supercar season’s top driver – remains the biggest national crown to win, the ARC is but a shadow of what it was up until the early 2000s when it had serious manufacturer participation and name drivers. There was the late Possum Bourne, Neal Bates, Ed Ordynki and later Cody Crocker and the hell-raising Simon Evans.

It’s not so much that the ARC’s place in the pecking order of championships has been usurped by other categories, but rather that it has dwindled – even the weekly Auto Action magazine pays it scant regard these days – and the gap between the premier touring car series and the rest has widened.

National-level open-wheeler competition dropped down the order long ago as touring cars boomed in the era of Peter Brock, Allan Moffat and Dick Johnson.

Nowadays the seven-year-old Touring Car Masters is perhaps the second most popular series in the country, and the V8 Supercar development series arguably the second most important. There’s the Australian GT Championship, with its exotic cars and some quality – and, at times, big-name – drivers. And the Porsche Carrera Cup. Etc, etc.

But back to the V8 Supercars “main game” and the ARC.

The titles could be decided in both this weekend. Certainly the ARC will be, unless – heaven forbid – there were to be protracted wrangling as there was more than 20 years ago over one that eventually was awarded to West Australian Rob Herridge rather than Neal Bates.

The ARC’s sixth and final round based at Warragul in Gippsland starts today (Friday), with a Power Stage this morning and then heat one this afternoon, and concludes with heat two tomorrow.

The experienced Scott Pedder and his co-driver Dale Moscatt in a Renault Clio lead young gun – and reigning American two-wheel-drive rally champion – Brendan Reeves and his sister Rhiannon Gelsomino in a Mazda2 by 27 points, with 80 points to play for at this final round.

Last year’s champions, Eli Evans (younger brother of Simon) and Glen Weston, are back in a Honda Civic Type-R after a layoff and could add some spice to the tussle, but whichever way it goes there will be a new ARC champion.

And, for the future, the ARC will move away from its priority on two-wheel-drive cars, although to what specifically is not yet decided – but it will be back towards four-wheel-drive cars. And next season the championship will contract to five rounds, with Victoria dropping off the calendar.

More importantly in the immediate future, Jamie Whincup is on the cusp of a record sixth V8 Supercar crown.

The penultimate round of this championship at Phillip Island is the last Super Sprint format of the season and the cars are back on the harder Dunlop tyres.

Whincup could clinch the title in Saturday’s two 100km sprints. If not, then most probably in Sunday’s 200km race.

Whincup and his Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden Commodore arrive at the Island 402 points ahead of Mark Winterbottom and his Ford Performance Racing Falcon, with third-placed Shane Van Gisbergen in the Tekno Autosports Holden and Whincup’s veteran teammate Craig Lowndes still mathematical chances to win the championship.

It will be Whincup’s if he is more than 450 points clear of his rivals on Saturday night or 300 points on Sunday night, although there still will be the Sydney 500 to run early next month. That’s the event at which Marcos Ambrose will reappear in V8 Supercars after almost a decade in America’s NASCAR.

While Whincup can be ultra-daring on the track, he’s ultra-cautious in his public predictions, even to the extent of saying he won’t consider the championship won until the chequered flag is waved on the season because of the possibility of points being taken away from a driver.

Now let’s get real. This title isn’t going anywhere other than to Whincup.

A sixth season triumph will put him one ahead of the late Ian Geoghegan, Dick Johnson and Mark Skaife. Lowndes and even the late, great Bathurst “king” Brock have only three ATCC titles to their names. And Whincup will equal Geoghegan as the only driver to win four in a row.

It will be a fabulous achievement, yet when it happens Whincup probably still won’t get the full kudos he deserves. Or perhaps the acclaim he gets just won’t stick in some minds.

Lowndes could notch another achievement at Phillip Island too – a record 10th race win there, which would surpass Skaife’s nine. Lowndes also has his sights on getting back to second in the championship, but he has more than 100 points to make up on Winterbottom – and Van Gisbergen is in there fighting too.

Walkinshaw Racing, Triple Eight and FPR have won the past 17 races at the seaside circuit since 2006 – eight, six and three respectively. Triple Eight’s half dozen have come in the past nine races. But, somehow, Whincup has had only three wins at the Island.

A major driver development in the V8 Supercar world this week has been that Lee Holdsworth will depart Betty’s Klimenko’s Erebus Mercedes camp at the end of the season to take Jack Perkins’ place in Charlie Schwerkolt’s fourth FPR Falcon.

It had been announced in August that Holdsworth and Erebus would continue together, but when it came to the detail terms could not be agreed. And there have been a couple of significant crashes in the past couple of months.

Perkins will be out of a “main game” drive again, while Ashley Walsh is being tipped to fill the Erebus vacancy as Will Davison’s teammate.

But before all these changes, and those to be announced in coming weeks regarding engines and bodywork in the longer term, there is this round at the Island, the track with the second highest average speed in the championship after Bathurst.

Its long straight should suit Kiwi youngster Scott McLaughlin’s Volvo S60. The Nissan Altimas have had a couple of podiums recently, but that straight heading down to Bass Strait may tax them a little too hard.

There have been 11 different winners in the championship so far this season, but even if that tally is added to this weekend the spotlight inevitably must fall on Whincup becoming a six-time champion.

And, sad to say, not much attention at all on whoever is the new ARC champion just 100km away.