Geoffrey Harris•19 Oct 2012

NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Worries in V8 Supercar's paradise

Gold Coast 600 under microscope of its benefactor, the Queensland government, as the northern state's legendary Dick Johnson told a Mazda6 V8 Supercar is no-go

Surfers’ needs some of that old Indy fever to survive

South-east Queensland is a stronghold of V8 Supercar racing, drawing strong attendances and sometimes more TV viewers than Sydney and Melbourne, yet the sport is at crunch time in that area.

The Gold Coast 600 this weekend is the second last under the existing contract with the Queensland government. The still-newish Newman conservative government is casting a close eye over the event’s value.

At the same time the oldest team in Australian touring car racing, Dick Johnson Racing, is again fighting for its survival. Mazda has ruled out letting DJR use the shape of its new 6 model under next year’s Car of the Future rules, even without any financial contribution from the manufacturer.

“We don’t think it (V8 Supercars) is a good fit for our brand,” Mazda’s national marketing manager Alistair Doak has said. “We’ve looked at, we understand what the category’s about, but there’s no interest from Mazda to be involved in V8 Supercars.”

In making those comments to Auto Action magazine Doak revealed that Mazda had not even been approached by DJR or south-east Queensland car dealer and Johnson supporter Maurie Pickering, who had been keen on backing a Mazda V8 Supercar project to promote his Mazda dealerships and finance company. The project would have needed Mazda’s blessing but clearly that was not going to be forthcoming.

So V8 Supercars won’t have more than four marques next year, with Nissan Altimas and customer AMG Mercedes-Benz E63s taking on Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons.

DJR probably will be scaled back to a two-car operation, still running Fords (such as the one pictured) with which it has been synonymous for Steven Johnson and Steve Owen, but without factory support as another loyal team supporter, Steve Brabeck of Crimsafe, strives to sort its business platform for long-term survival.

Meanwhile, the Gold Coast carnival – still called Indy by many people, but which hasn’t had the American open-wheelers since 2008 – is about to held for the third time with visiting international drivers partnering the V8 Supercar regulars in 300km races on Saturday and Sunday. The 28 internationals are from 12 countries. Five are from France, four American, three expatriate Australians, three Italians and three Englishmen, two Dutchmen, two Scots and two Germans, a Canadian, a Finn, a Northern Irishman and a Brazilian.

Thirteen of the 28 have raced on the streets of the Gold Coast the past two years, while Frenchman Nicolas Minassian drove in the Sandown and Bathurst enduros almost a decade ago, but for 14 this weekend will be the first V8 Supercar racing experience.

Organisers are boasting of having 11 ex-Formula One drivers, but none of them has won a grand prix. The best-performed of them is German Nick Heidfeld, who was dreadfully unlucky not to have notched a win in his 183 GP starts. Many of the visitors are from IndyCar racing, but the notable absentee is Rubens Barrichello, who has just completed his debut IndyCar season after two decades in F1, a record number of GP starts, 11 wins and a few others he had to hand to Michael Schumacher when they were Ferrari teammates. Rather than on the Gold Coast, Barrichello is back in his native Brazil preparing to race a Peugeot 408 - in a V8 stock car event!

Charismatic fellow Brazilians Tony Kanaan and three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves also are missing from the Gold Coast line-ups, probably at the same Curitiba circuit as Barrichello.

As accomplished as the list of visiting internationals is, this format already is looking rather tired in just its third year. Despite the noises made about the international coverage these drivers attract for the GC 600, this weekend’s races will be shown in the US a week later at 11pm eastern time on Speed TV.

Tony Cochrane, departing executive chairman of Gold Coast-based V8 Supercars Australia, remains a passionate advocate of the event he recast on a shortened Surfers’ Paradise street circuit after the loss of the IndyCars. As the Newman government weighs the worth of its contributions to V8 Supercar racing on those streets, as well as in Townsville (another street circuit) and Ipswich (the permanent Queensland Raceway), Cochrane insists it gets “a pretty good return” on the $6.5 million a year it puts into the GC600.

“What the Gold Coast event proves through thick and thin is how resilient and how strong it is,” Cochrane told the Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper recently. “It has survived for 20-odd years and it has simply survived for one core reason – it is a major economic generator for the Gold Coast.

“Until something can come along and knock it out of the park with something bigger and better that’s going to do more for us in terms of money spent on the Gold Coast in that week and more for us in terms of international exposure and interstate exposure I suggest they should shut up.

“What we have got now is an affordable and shining example of a good event, with a good return on investment that delivers for the Gold Coast community, particularly for tourism.”

In the Gold Coast Bulletin this week columnist Daniel Meers made a rather desperate plea for this weekend’s event to succeed to ensure its future beyond the existing contract.

“The 2013 race will be nothing more than a glorified funeral if the V8 Supercar bosses can’t make the numbers stack up this week,” Meers wrote. “The event has struggled to recover since Indy left the streets of Surfers. As novel as the international drivers competing in V8s are, it’s not the same. The event is arguably not strong enough to save itself.”

Surfers’ Paradise Alliance chief executive Mike Winlaw has said the tourist hub is just a shadow of what it was in the days of Indy fever. It’s a sentiment echoed by many others.

Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais - partnering V8 Supercar top gun Jamie Whincup this weekend, a two-time open-wheeler winner on the Gold Coast, a four-time champion in Champ Cars (which amalgamated with IndyCar), and briefly an F1 racer – says the GC600 has struggled to transition without the open-wheelers.

“It (IndyCars and V8s) was a great combination for the event,” Bourdais said.

Many others – fans, drivers and businesses – would like to see IndyCars back, but it’s a pipe dream. The costs would be prohibitive, the October timing is unworkable for the IndyCar organisers, and in any case the exposure was grossly over-rated. Which leaves V8 Supercars as the main act for this weekend and another year. That’s the V8 Supercar show in which Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone has won the past 10 races, most recently the Bathurst 1000 two weeks ago. Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes are first and second in the championship and look set to fight out the title between them.

Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom has slipped to third and is danger of losing touch with the leaders. His teammate, Will Davison, won six of the first 11 races this season, but has gone from early championship leader to a now-distant fourth.

Triple Eight, FPR and Walkinshaw Racing have dominated at the Gold Coast in recent years, winning 17 races straight from 2005. The visiting co-drivers inject greater likelihood of that changing, more through carnage than talent, but last year they were pretty well behaved – and next year will need to be even more so, with the Abu Dhabi round scheduled just a week after the GC600. The three traditionally dominant teams have solid line-ups again for this weekend, but perhaps the most interest will be on the customer FPR Falcon to be shared by David Richards and Nick Heidfeld. Reynolds’ brilliant second place at Bathurst and extrovert personality have been a boon for V8 Supercar racing while Heidfeld is a massive talent but an unknown quantity in a V8 Supercar much heavier than anything else he’s raced. And it is his first outing in a right-hand-drive race car.

Heidfeld is about the best the GC600 can expect to attract. Already there has been an attempt to drum up a prospect of Michael Schumacher racing on the streets of Surfers’ Paradise next year. But F1’s seven-time world champion, winner of 91 GPs, soon to retire from the most elite category of motorsport after a less than auspicious comeback, would command many more zeroes on his fee than any other driver to have raced at the Gold Coast.

And that might be too high a price for the Queensland government.

Gold Coast 600 line-ups

1. Jamie Whincup-Sebastien Bourdais (France) TeamVodafone Holden Commodore VE II

2. Garth Tander-Ryan Briscoe (Australia) Holden Racing Team Commodore VE II

3. Tony D'Alberto-Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy) Team Hiflex Ford Falcon FG

4. Lee Holdsworth-Simon Pagenaud (France) Irwin Racing Falcon FG

5. Mark Winterbottom-Will Power (Australia) Orrcon Steel FPR Falcon FG

6. Will Davison-Mika Salo (Finland) Tradingpost FPR Falcon FG

7. Tim Blanchard-Marco Andretti (US) Jack Daniel's Racing Commodore VE II

8. Jason Bright-Stephane Sarrazin (France) Team BOC Commodore VE II

9. Shane van Gisbergen (NZ)-Jeroen Bleekemolen (Holland) SP Tools Racing Falcon FG

11. Karl Reindler-Franck Montagny (France) Fair Dinkum Sheds Racing Commodore VE II

12. Dean Fiore-Gianni Morbidelli (Italy) Jim Beam Racing Falcon FG

14. Fabian Coulthard (NZ)-Nicolas Minassian (France) Lockwood Racing Commodore VE II

15. Rick Kelly-Graham Rahal (US) Jack Daniel's Racing Commodore VE II

17. Steven Johnson-Max Papis (Italy) Jim Beam Racing Falcon FG

18. James Moffat/Peter Kox (Holland) Team Norton DJR Falcon FG

19. Jonathon Webb-Marc Lieb (Germany) Tekno Autosports Commodore VE II

21. David Wall-Jamie Campbell-Walter (Great Britain) Wilson Security Racing Commodore VE II

22. James Courtney-Darren Turner (GB) Holden Racing Team Commodore VE II

30. Taz Douglas-Mike Conway (GB) Team iSelect Commodore VE II

33. Greg Ritter-Ricky Taylor (US) Fujitsu Racing-GRM Commodore VE II

34. Michael Caruso-James Hinchcliffe (Canada) Fujitsu Racing/GRM Commodore VE II

47. Tim Slade/David Brabham (Australia) Lucky 7 Racing Falcon FG

49. Steve Owen-Boris Said (US) VIP Petfoods Falcon FG

51. Greg Murphy (NZ)-Justin Wilson (GB) Pepsi Max Crew Commodore VE II

55. David Reynolds-Nick Heidfeld (Germany) The Bottle-O Racing Team Falcon FG

66. Russell Ingall-Peter Dumbreck (GB) Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore VE II

91. Michael Patrizi-Lucas di Grassi (Brazil) Tekno Autosports Commodore VE II

888. Craig Lowndes-Richard Lyons (GB) TeamVodafone Commodore VE II

V8 Supercar Championship top 10 drivers after 21 of 29 races - 1. Jamie Whincup (TeamVodafone) 2772 points; 2. Craig Lowndes (TeamVodafone) 2611; 3. Mark Winterbottom (Orrcon Steel FPR) 2584; 4. Will Davison (Tradingpost FPR) 2302; 5. Shane van Gisbergen (SP Tools Racing) 2020; 6. Tim Slade (Lucky 7 Racing) 1854; 7. Garth Tander (Holden Racing Team) 1824; 8. David Reynolds (The Bottle-O Racing) 1680; 9. Lee Holdsworth (Irwin Racing) 1629; 10. Fabian Coulthard (Lockwood Racing) 1613.

V8 Supercar teams championship - 1. TeamVodafone 5408 points; 2. Ford Performance Racing 4886; 3. Stone Brothers Racing 3649; 4. Holden Racing Team 3424; 5. Brad Jones Racing 2982; 6. Jack Daniel's Racing 2639; 7. Tekno Autosports 2376; 8. Fujitsu Racing-GRM 2361; 9. Lucky 7 Racing (car 47) 1854; 10. The Bottle-O Race Team (car 55) 1705.

MOTORSPORT: Worries in V8 Supercar's paradise

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