V8SC: Vale Jason Richards

MOTORSPORT REPORT

Richards had fought the bravest of fights against adrenocortical carcinoma, a rare and particularly aggressive form of cancer, for more than a year. He had the most indefatigable spirit but finally succumbed late last week.

Richards was only 35. He leaves a wife, Charlotte, and two very young girls, Sienna and Olivia.

It was always going to be a terrible tragedy, but so close to Christmas it is even more so. A family funeral will be held this week and a memorial service in the new year at the Sandown circuit. And there is an opportunity in that to make it a very special send-off to this champion bloke.

Inevitably there will be a trophy or medal named in Richards’ honour. Perhaps it will be for V8 Supercars’ most inspirational character each year, or perhaps the person who best represents the sport. But what Richards deserves – and so too his army of fans – is for his memorial service to be televised, preferably live.

The logical day is the scheduled season launch and test day for the V8 Supercars at Sandown on Saturday, February 11.

That is almost eight weeks away, but it will be the first time the V8 Supercar community comes together in the new year. Victorian fans will be out in force, more so if they know it is to be the day of tribute to Richards.

And if an hour, say, is devoted to the memory of this most extraordinary character it’s only right that fans elsewhere around Australia and in Richards’ homeland, New Zealand, get to share in it too, through television. A free-to-air channel may not devote an hour to such an event - even the sport’s host broadcaster, the Seven Network, although it deserves first option.

A live telecast might interest Ten, especially if it is keen on regaining the V8 Supercar TV rights in 2013. It would make some sense for Ten’s digital OneHD, although that is no longer purely a sports channel – and, in any case, Ten’s financial constraints may make it unfeasible.

The most appropriate outlet is perhaps pay TV provider Fox’s Speed channel.

Pay TV still has a quite limited audience in Australia, but Speed is a dedicated motorsport channel and might play an increasingly important part in the telecasting of V8 Supercar racing in the next TV deal to be negotiated soon.

Televising a Jason Richards memorial service, around Australia and probably quite easily to NZ through Fox/Sky, would be a show of commitment to the sport that Speed can, in such circumstances, be more than a recycler of race telecasts from far and wide with a weekly studio show.

The man filling the V8 Supercar chief executive’s seat in the new year will be David Malone, who for a decade headed the Premier Media Group that produces and broadcasts Fox Sports. Arranging a live telecast of the Richards tribute on Speed could be an ideal starting point for Malone.

V8 Supercars has its own TV unit which could look after the production. It's then only a matter of placing the telecast.

While Speed has the narrowest audience of the options mentioned, it would lend itself to fans getting together around a subscriber’s screen in the way they do for the annual Bathurst 1000 on a Sunday each October.

Sandown is the ideal location for Richards’ public send-off. It’s in Melbourne, the city he adopted as his home. It’s also where there was such a successful and memorable public farewell to Peter Brock a little more than five years ago.

And it would combine perfectly with the new season launch. Not in a morbid way, but as a celebration of the life of a guy who was such a huge and popular part of the scene for so long. What a pity Richards won’t be seen again in a V8 Supercar – or any kind of racing car.

Richards' championship career came to a close at Symmons Plains in Tasmania in November 2010, but somehow he still found the strength to race several times. In Adelaide early this year, driving one of his old Tasman Motorsport Holden Commodores for Greg Murphy Racing, he won a Fujitsu development series race.

He drove a Ferrari in the Australian GT Championship the same weekend.

In Melbourne, at the Australian Grand Prix, he led a non-championship V8 Supercar race and finished an astounding second.

At times he tested for his beloved Brad Jones Racing and then at Bathurst in October raced an HQ Monaro in the Touring Car Masters and was runner-up to Glenn Seton.

How appropriate that his final race was at The Mountain. It was one of the biggest thrills of his life.

Three times Richards had been second in The Great Race at Bathurst – with Jamie Whincup in 2005, Greg Murphy in 2008 and Cameron McConville in 2009. But as Brad Jones - the face of the last of four V8 Supercar teams Richards raced for over a decade – has said, the history books won’t do justice to Richards.

He wasn’t the very best race driver, but those Bathurst podiums, a victory at Winton in 2006, other podiums and three NZ touring car titles before he moved to this side of the Tasman Sea, are testimony that he was a damn good driver.

Richards will be remembered more for his personality, however. As Jones again said, one who had the ability to be both competitor and friend. He was more than universally liked – he was loved. Inspirational, passionate, endearing, infectiously enthusiastic, always smiling, hugely energetic, yet self-effacing and without an ounce of self pity.

He lived every minute to the max.

The day before he died he played a round of golf in the Australian Masters pro-am.

Five days earlier he joined other Holden drivers for their annual Christmas party. He wouldn’t have missed that get-together with his contemporaries.

Richards was a hero to many, and especially to many drivers with greater records than him. John Bowe, a Bathurst and national championship winner, called him his dearest friend. Fellow Kiwi Greg Murphy said Richards’ boundless enthusiasm was a lesson to everyone.

Jason Bright - of Brad Jones Racing, like Richards - said: “God now has my four favorite drivers in his team - Gilles Villeneuve, Senna, Brock and Jason Richards.”

In motor racing that is the most exalted company.

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