V8SC: Now for the long-distance action

The warm-up event for October 7’s Bathurst 1000 is this Sunday. It’s back at its traditional venue, Melbourne’s Sandown circuit, after several years of some excellent races but poor attendances at Phillip Island and the earlier switch to Queensland Raceway.

The event will revert to one 500km race, but with short qualifying races on Saturday to decide the starting line-up. Co-drivers will be required to do at least 54 of the 161 laps in Sunday’s event.

Seven of the co-drivers are stepping up from the V8 Supercars development series, including Nick Percat who won Bathurst on debut last year with Garth Tander for the Holden Racing Team.

The only co-driver from further afield than New Zealand this weekend, other than Danish endurance season regular Allan Simonsen, is Austrian ex-Formula One racer Christian Klien, partnering Russell Ingall in his Walkinshaw Racing Holden Commodore.

After Bathurst, of course, there will be 28 international drivers for the Gold Coast 600 on October 20-21.

The days of V8 Supercars being purely a Holden-Ford series are drawing to a close, with Nissan coming in at the start of next season under the Car of the Future rules with its yet-to-be-released-in-Australia Altima model with its VK56DE quad-cam engine adapted from its next Patrol SUV.

And just weeks after plans for an unofficial Mercedes-Benz multi-car entry appeared to have been scuttled it seems that an announcement regarding the entry of the three-pointed star may be just days away.

The cover of this week’s Auto Action magazine has the screaming headline: “Mercedes V8 Is Go!” That same cover then says: “Revealed: Why a Mercedes-Benz will be on the 2013 V8 Supercars grid” with artwork of how the cars might look.

In its lead story inside, written by AA editor Rob Margeit, the magazine says that Australian GT Championship team Erebus Racing “is close to finalising a deal that will see it -- along with Stone Brothers Racing -- campaign three AMG E-class sedans in 2013 [in the V8 Supercar Championship]”. It adds: “Unlike Kelly Racing’s deal with Nissan, the Erebus deal will not be a Mercedes-Benz factory-backed campaign, but rather a customer program.”

And, although the new season is only six months away now, AA says the target for the debut of the Mercs will be Adelaide’s Clipsal 500.

While Erebus campaigns a pair of Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s in the Australian GT Championship, its V8 Supercar plans have been strongly opposed within Mercedes-Benz Australia, which has not wanted to see its luxury brand competing against Commodores, Falcons and the Altima.

However, it appears that the weight of money spent by Erebus Racing’s Betty Klimenko with AMG on developing a V8 Supercar engine in Germany, and other pressure from there and Merc dealers in Australia, likely will see the  project come to fruition.

After it seemed last month that it had been defeated, it was V8 Supercar chairman Tony Cochrane who said: “They had 16 engineers at AMG in Stuttgart working on it, so I can’t see they would just walk away.”

Mercedes-Benz Australia’s position has always been that it would not be fielding a factory team in V8 Supercars as it did not fit with its Australian and New Zealand brand positioning and that it would only go touring car racing if the rules were those of Germany’s DTM series.

Meanwhile, Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone must be hot favourites for the Sandown 500 after eight straight sprint race wins -- and victory in four of the past seven pre-Bathurst 500km races and podiums in all of them.

Jamie Whincup -- the series leader, albeit by only one point -- will be partnered by Paul Dumbrell, who has only been out of full-time V8 Supercar racing this year and scored his sole victory at Sandown in a sprint heat. Craig Lowndes, who has run into a rich vein of form, is joined by experienced and accomplished endurance campaigner Warren Luff.

Ford Performance Racing remains the only other winning team in this year’s championship and has Mark Winterbottom, second in the championship, paired with its former full-time driver Steven Richards, while Will Davison is joined by New Zealander John McIntyre.

Holden Racing Team traditionally came to the fore in the enduros and, while its cars haven’t been winning this season, it again has a strong lineup. Apart from defending Bathurst champions Tander and Percat, James Courtney is to be partnered by Cameron McConville.

Sandown 500 lineup (with car numbers)

1 Jamie Whincup/Paul Dumbrell (Triple Eight Race Engineering, Holden Commodore).
2 Garth Tander/Nick Percat (Holden Racing Team, Holden Commodore).
3 Tony D’Alberto/Dale Wood ( Tony D’Alberto Racing, Ford Falcon).
4. Lee Holdsworth/Craig Baird (Stone Brothers Racing, Ford Falcon).
5. Mark Winterbottom/Steven Richards (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon).
6. Will Davison/John McIntyre (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon).
7. Todd Kelly/Tim Blanchard (Kelly Racing, Holden Commodore).
8. Jason Bright/Andrew Jones (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore).
9. Shane van Gisbergen/Luke Youlden (Stone Brothers Racing, Ford Falcon).
11. Karl Reindler/Daniel Gaunt (Kelly Racing, Holden Commodore).
12. Dean Fiore/Matt Halliday (Dick Johnson Racing, Ford Falcon).
14. Fabian Coulthard/David Besnard (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore).
15. Rick Kelly/David Russell (Kelly Racing, Holden Commodore).
17. Steven Johnson/Allan Simonsen (Dick Johnson Racing, Ford Falcon).
18. James Moffat/Alex Davison ( Dick Johnson Racing, Ford Falcon).
19. Jonathon Webb/Scott McLaughlin (Tekno Autosports, Holden Commodore).
21. David Wall/Chris Pither (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore).
22. James Courtney/Cameron McConville (Holden Racing Team, Holden Commodore).
30. Taz Douglas/Scott Pye (Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport, Holden Commodore).
33. Alex Premat/Jack Perkins (Garry Rogers Motorsport, Holden Commodore).
34. Michael Caruso/Greg Ritter (Garry Rogers Motorsport, Holden Commodore).
47. Tim Slade/Andrew Thompson (Stone Brothers Racing, Ford Falcon).
49. Steve Owen/Paul Morris (Dick Johnson Racing, Ford Falcon).
51. Greg Murphy/Owen Kelly (Kelly Racing, Holden Commodore).
55. David Reynolds/Dean Canto (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon).
66. Russell Ingall/Christian Klien (Walkinshaw Racing, Holden Commodore).
91. Michael Patrizi/Jonny Reid (Tekno Autosports, Holden Commodore).
888. Craig Lowndes/Warren Luff (Triple Eight Race Engineering, Holden Commodore).

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