V-Day draws ever closer... [Ford V8 Supercar preview]

Indulge me for a second and forge­t about the BLACKCAPS, Super 14 an­d N­RL. The best­ sports series in the world, IMHO, is about to kick off next weekend.

In a backward town in Australia, where driving across town means changing time zones, ­28 V8 monsters will power up and take to the track over three days.

For me this means the end of summer and the start of the sporting season proper. All the silly season rumours have been confirmed or quelled, and the last bean of curiosity has been picked as a result of photos taken by those who attended this week's testing at Queensland Raceway.

First up, Jamie Whincup. He's in the gun seat this year. Last year he drove phenomenally and had incredible luck - barring Hamilton, where he sat out after getting tagged by Todd Kelly in qualifying.

He's the defending champion and deservedly so - he drives like a bullet shot from a very high calibre rifle.

His team, Triple Eight Race Engineering/TeamVodafone, are under the pump a little this year. Late last year Ford announced they were withdrawing their funding of the team [guess they saw the Global Financial Crisis (capitals for scary emphasis) coming] and their team then seemed to go out of their way to criticise Ford. They will this year find out if their fan base was so large because they were with Ford, and winning, or because they were TeamVodafone and had the combination of Whincup and Craig Lowndes.

Next up is the young Shane van Gisbergen. While he hasn't achieved big-time success yet, he's the one I'll be rooting for after Mark Winterbottom [couldn't find any testing pics of him]. Why? Plain and simply, he's the future of NZ in V8's. He is a weapon in the wet, which is a skill I admire greatly, and he's driving for a Kiwi-owned team which has a history of turning nobodies into winners [Marcos Ambrose won two championships for them, and they nurtured Mark Winterbottom].

The only potential flaw I see is that he's getting teamed up with our next subject, Alex Davison.

Alex has had an on-again off-again relationship with the V8's. He tried driving a Perkins-prepared Commodore in 2005, with poor results.

He and Gisbergen both have limited main-game seat time and while they are professional drivers, I wonder how well they'll be able to dial in their cars in practice. Potentially this is where SBR's relationship with Jason Bright bomes in - more on that later.

Davison has been driving with his brother's [Will, who has taken Mark Skaife's spot at HRT this season] former team Dick Johnson Racing since, at the Bathurst, Sandown and Phillip Island endurance races.

Taking Will Davison's place at cult-favourite DJR and vacating the SBR seat for Alex is James Courtney.

Courtney is the V8's answer to an F1 driver - in fact, he 'almost' made it to the top-tier single seater series.

But almost isn't good enough, and now he's pottering around in torque dinosaurs for a ridiculous sum of money. The odd situation here is that Courtney is contracted to Ford, while his team DJR do not receive Ford money.

Courney received an insane amount of hype when he first entered the game. It's easy to see why - Marcos Ambrose was leaving and Courtney had a similar - but more successful - career. But over the past few years, he's yet to rack up a round win. Admittedly in same cases bad luck has robbed him, but he also has a tendency to drive too aggresively and put his car in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Second kiwi to be profiled is Fabian Coulthard. Now, I honestly thought his Paul Cruickshank racing team was going to be doomed to obscurity - they had little funding and a driver on his final year when they first set up.

But the two years of data gathering they had done when combined with Coulthard - Who is an absolute rocket in Porsche GT3's, but seemed to struggle when he drove for Paul Morris Motorsport in a Commodore - it just seemed to click. He acheived good, solid, top half results for most of the year and hopefully with a second car in his team and a driver [even if it is the trainwreck-waiting-to-happen Michael Patrizi] to share data with, he'll continue to get good points - maybe even march up the field.

The only change I wish to see him make is to become more aggresive. He's a ridiculously smooth driver and his lines are beatuiful, but he missed out a few passing opportunities and lost a few places last year when he wasn't willing to take a risk.

Finally, as promised, Jason Bright. His Britek team didn't work out as he intended, so he's back to the original arrangement with SBR-prepped machines, in search of good results. I'm guessing this is a two-way partnership, with Bright being somewhat of a mentor to van Gisbergen and Davison, and possibly the three working together with setups over the race weekend. Not saying they neccessarily need it/can't learn off other drivers, but logistically it appears to make sense.

The few times he had a car stay intact for a race last year he finished in the top 10, so with a better car, maybe those will turn into top 5's?

His biggest bug last year was qualifying. A lot of the time the crashes he got into were a result of starting so low down the order.

So, these are the 'Ford' drivers I'd be expecting to do well this season. Leave comments and I will do a similar writeup on Holden's top prospects [HAH!] if you like. :)

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pestering Daniel Gaunt on Facebook

11:07pmNaly D
Hey bro, just wanted to say congratulations on the NZGP win, and good luck in the Fujitsu's. Racing against Steve Owen should be a better learning experience than all of those rented drives anyway

11:12pmDaniel
thanks dude

11:16pmNaly D
No sweat, I'm loving the fact that we finally have guys around my age racing overseas.

11:17pmNaly D
You must have a pretty hectic schedule ahead of you, if you're contesting the next round of the GT3's, then Fujitsu the next weekend? Are you doing testing for McElrae over here or wracking up the airpoints?

11:21pmDaniel
yea we testing on 11th, then back to nz to finish gt3 season

11:23pmNaly D
Jeez! That's a bit of a mission. Good luck, sorry to hassle ya late at night!

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Team Kiwi Racing make no sense... No sense at all.

I make no secret I don't like David John and the current Team Kiwi Racing establishment. They aim for that 'underdog' tag, but for many years they've been outed by the public, fingered by their former drivers and taken to court for their dodgy business dealings, while managing to maintain a stable base of casual V8 fans, who don't realise the team is actually getting no results.

The latest press release from Fortress TKR suggests that John has forgotten about these fans and is just gonna do whatever he wants anyway. After all, wadda you know about running a V8 team?

"The questions that were asked of the New Zealand public where [sic], did they want the team to chase results this season (which would require the services of an Aussie driver with previous V8 Supercar championship experience) or are the public happy to see the TKR machine run in the second half of the field while providing the opportunity for Kiwi drivers who simply do not know the Aussie circuits or have the experience/track time in a V8 Supercar". Said Mr John

Despite there being plenty of support for putting an Aussie in the car for one season and getting results we have decided to keep providing Kiwi drivers with opportunities to break into the top Touring Car Championship in the world.

So in a brief history of TKR, you've been operating for nine years, you've thrown out one long-term driver in favour of another who left when you didn't pay FPR, Ford and Holden AUS will not sponsor you, the Ford factory team [FPR] and Stone Brothers Racing have both taken you to court for monies owed, you've been using kiwis [bar Adam Macrow, Steve Owen and Fahad Al Musalam] for these years and yet your best round result since 2005 was when Owen drove at Indy last year, gone from Holden to Ford to Holden, your owner has been declared bankrupt and yet you still manage to hold on to a licence, denying other teams the chance to compete and now you decide to put out a spun press release painting you as some sort of patriot, when we know a green kiwi driver will be cheaper than someone with experience. This is ignoring the fact that four drivers are in the series this year, and one only had a small link to you.

What the fuck?

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Why the NZRU should not go to Denver

As was reported while I was on holiday, it appears that Denver is pushing for the long-discussed, never-realised All Blacks match in the US. Over the past two years this has been linked to New York, Chicago, Boston and now Denver.

Well of these places, it most certainly shouldn't go to Chicago or Denver.

Denver has a huge basketball and football college fraternity. Going off anecdotal evidence from an ex-American flatmate of mine, it will be very, very hard to tap into that market. Rugby Union enjoys a small following in the Denver area, and Carl Hayman's long lost brother also lives there, but I think simply running over to Mile High Stadium and hosting a match between two countries that they think are joined together is a dumb idea.

Instead, I would like to see the ARU and NZRU each send an Under-20 or Under-23 team, maybe even a combined Oceania XV, and have them go on a college tour. UCLA have a huge team, as does the University of Connecticut. The UCSC Slugs would be keen for a match I imagine and having seen the BRFC play, I imagine some Air NZ Cup teams would struggle in a match against them, let alone any youth team.

The costs would be a lot lower than sending NZRU contracted players over too, I'd imagine. Heard of billeting? Yeah, I thought so. Oh and you've got a much higher chance of getting a crowd to an eventual All Blacks, Springboks, Wallabies, Welsh, whoever match by getting the kids talking to their parents about it [Imagine 'Hey dayad, I played rogbay agenst some noo zealenderz today. Man, they're fayast'... Ok that was New York, but near enough to Boston.] than just showing up with posters reading 'OMG EXTRAVAGANZA LOLZ COME SEE TWO OF THE BEST TEAMS IN THE WORLD PLAY A SPORT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND'.

Although, it's not like I expect either union to lose money from the venture. If there's something Steve Tew does exceptionally, it is run a business. If anything goes ahead, I expect the USRU will have agreed to pay a lump sum to the ARU and NZRU, with the USRU allowed to keep a percentage of the gate takings. Because it would be a very optimistic or stupid person who decided to expand their sport to other countries without thinking about possible financial repercussions when the fans in that country didn't start rolling up. [Please refer to Exhibit A]

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The World Cup hits NZ

[Also posted at The Dropkicks]

In case you missed the extraordinary media fanfare surrounding the arrival of the A1GP in New Zealand ahead of this weekend's round in Taupo, I'm going to talk about it some more.

The A1GP is the 'brainchild' of Dubai's Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum. In reality it's just little bits of other motor-series thrown together to make a super-series. The 'world cup' idea is sort of the same concept as Premier 1 Grand Prix/Superleague Formula, the 'power boost' is taken from Formula Renault, the sprint/feature format has been used by BTCC and many of the drivers are former F1 or other open-wheel series competitors.

The series works around the idea that each country is given the exact same car and is not allowed to work on these outside of designated sessions. Also, I've heard, but not been able to confirm, they are limited in how much they may change settings. This is supposed to make the success or failure on track reflect solely on the driver [barring the fact that the pit crew do the setup and compulsory pit stop work - which anybody who saw the first series will know was a farce as there appeared to be something suspect going on with the wheel nuts].

France took out the first season in convincing fashion, Germany the second and A1 Team Switzerland were rewarded for their constant backing of Neel Jaani with last year's crown. New Zealand has finished fourth, second and second in the championship over those three seasons.

Teams were originally purchased by a licence holder, who fronted up with $1m to secure the seat. Colin Giltrap, one of the heroes of NZ motorsport, saw the opportunity to have NZ up on the main stage of world motorsport and funded our successful licence application, securing Fisher & Paykel sponsorship after Team USA were rumoured to have demanded $4m per season to have F&P on their cars.

Sadly, finances is what has defined the A1GP. There has always been talk about whether the series was sustainable due to the high cost of the cars, travel, and not to mention the upwards of $200 punters were expected to pay at some rounds. Now it appears this theory of financial instability destroying the series might just become a reality. If you check the A1GP website it shows one circuit as TBA, despite the fact that race is to be held in March. The next round in Indonesia has been cancelled as the track was not ready for inspection in time, although there is chance that it may be moved to Sepang.

It will be a shame if the series does collapse as without it, Jonny Reid would probably not have had the same Champcar 'chances' he has, and the general NZ population would never have even heard of Chris Van Der Drift or Earl Bamber. Unfortunately, switching from Lola to Ferrari for the cars and a general lack of connection with the fans of the series looks to have turned Al Maktoum's dream into the World Cup of Financial Crisis. It will be interesting to see what happens to the series in future, especially since the series signed a six-year supply deal with Ferrari last year, despite a $212m loss in the first season and a 48% fall in returns over the first three.

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Possibly the most under-reported story in world sport at the moment?

2008 was a bumper year for motorsport. We had a thrilling conclusion to the A1GP until New Zealand went to China [an omen for Fisher & Paykel perhaps?] to kick off the year, then the glorious/farcical [depending which side of the fence you sit on] Lewis Hamilton F1 win... Oh and Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes won their third successive Bathurst 1000, with Jamie also taking out the V8 Supercar gong.

But for months it seemed that something was wrong. Locally, and the first thing I noticed, was Opes Prime dropping its sponsorship deal with Holden Dealer Team [among others].

Now it's the holiday break and we've seen Honda withdraw from F1, with rumours of a South American backer denied, Audi pulling out of American Le Mans [along with Porsche, Kawasaki expected to leave MotoGP and Subaru and Suzuki departing the World Rally Championship. There's some scuttlebutt that Subaru may be picking up Honda's empty grid spots through its link with Prodrive, but with the season start looming it would be a push to get anything done in time.

Now, while teams in motorsport come and go, what makes this significant is that these are factory teams. These are the teams who pour significant amounts of money into research and development, building new cars and sharing the data among others who use them. This isn't like when Citroen 'left' the WRC, but still provided Sebastien Loeb with cars.

The other thing to realise is that these aren't just teams that have popped up ambitiously then fallen over when things haven't gone their way. Honda has been in Formula One for six years. Audi runs rampant at Le Mans and is doing ok against Peugeot in the series. The limited knowledge I have of Subaru in motorsport is all centered around WRC, while Suzuki only recently launched their tilt at the series.

2009 as a year in motorsport will be an interesting one indeed. Particular questions to keep in mind are:
Will Subaru end up in Formula One?
Will Honda stop providing engines to the IndyCar series?
Will Audi continue to compete in the Dakar rallies?
Will it's main rival in F1 gone, what will Toyota's future role be?
Where to now for Chris Atkinson?

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Cah Crash Chooseday

One from the archives, DTM in 1995.
This kind of crash is the reason drivers get so pissed off when they qualify down the order.

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Cah Crash Chooseday

There's some posts coming soon, I promise. Unfortunately my correspondents have taken a while to get back to me.

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2008 Race of Champions

The 2008 Race of Champions has been run, and you can find all the results in a good writeup here.

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You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany

I'm a Ford fan and always have been. But I can always have respect for a good driver, such as Mark Skaife. As such, I have been saddened to watch him fall further and further down the grid over the years [in much the same way as Glenn Seton], which means I can't help but feel this latest story is appalling.

To put it in rugby terms: adidas, the main sponsor, stops giving the NZRU money. At the same time, adidas, who are locked into a contract to provide boots, shirts, etc raise their prices. But you only get a bill at the end of the year. So Steve Tew gives the NZRU to adidas, or else the NZRU will become bankrupt.

That's so messed up beyond words. Not to mention Tom Walkinshaw's dubious past.

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Music brings the People together

For today's post, I was going to touch on bands.
For my first idea, I wanted to talk about bands that had sporting success. It didn't seem like it would be that unlikely. If Jeff Wilson can play cricket [Average ODI of 20.60, eat that Mr Mark-10.50-Richardson] and rugby, then get named as North Harbour co-coach, why can't Kevin Tamati play league and be a drummer for Dragon? Looks like he's got the wrist movements down.
Anyway, I digress. I couldn't find anything suitable in my first three Google's. So then I thought 'What about sportspeople who have gone on to make music?!'
Shaq's rap, anyone? Or I could have followed the 'sports-teams-doing-their-damn-thang' route. But I wanted cool. Not lame. So my hunt gradually epic fail'ed.
So instead, I decided I'd just do my ownlist of 'Sportsmen of today who should be in bands'.
Peyton Manning - R.E.M. Just ignore the fact that they're from Seattle [and that Peyton has a penchant for country], something about Manning just says '90's grunge'.
Richard Kahui - Backstreet Boys. C'mon, you can fully see him taking over from the weird one with glasses.
Shane Smeltz - 'N Sync. Not quite as good looking as the Backstreet Boys, or with the same amount of fans, or ability to consistently perform. Kind of like the Phoenix vs All Blacks argument really.
Daniel Vettori - Jose Gonzalez. Learned. Gentle. Wordsmith.
Greg Murphy - Fred Durst. Hypocritical douche, not respected by his peers, but still has a devoted legion of fans who will buy his stuff - mainly due to the inaccurate media coverage he only receives three times a year.

Yours please...

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Where is the Motorsport <3?

I'm appealing to you, the five readers of my blog, to help me find NZ-based motorsport blogs. Whether written by professionals, amateurs or just enthusiasts, I would like to find a decent quality, regularly updated [every 3 weeks at least] blog.



Thanks.

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A Lesson in Car Control

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Cah Chrash Chooseday

This week's crash:

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Some people get all the luck.

Read it through all the way. For those who can't , basically a guy had a car, he died, someone went to sell it on eBay for $500, only to find out it was one of six extremely rare Pontiac's. And it ends up selling for $250,000.

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This is the Stig

The Stig.
There is many a debate about who he/she/it is.
Ex-F1 drivers, current F1 drivers, Darren Turner, Ben Collins etc etc...

Well, last night I got an interesting phone call.
A friend of mine has this year taken up a senior role with a European-based carmaker. During filming for the new season, he was invited on set. With his companies test driver. Who was then filmed as The Stig.

Apparently, the deal is this. The car makers got very nervous at some stage about letting someone who was unfamiliar with their car [understandable] take it for hot laps. It started off with one maker, the one my friend is at, before the others began demanding their drivers be allowed to drive their cars - or their cars simply would not appear on the show any more.

Makes sense to me. Your thoughts?

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The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round

I was going to ignore the F1 Brazilian GP which was held yesterday, but I can't.
Last year's F1 was by far the best I've seen, but this year's series was just its crappier hangover.

A year that started off with BMW adding more dangly bits than anybody else [Note: three links there] but not as a result of Honda's lack of a decent crack at it.

The season then quietened down for the first few rounds, with the first really good bitchfight at Bahrain, where Hamilton was a douche to Fisichella. On Lap 1 oif this year's race Hamilton got a poor start, which eventually damaged his wing. On lap 2, he ran into Alonso. Both camps then attributed the crash to each other, with McLaren-Mercedes claiming Alonso brake-checked his former teammate, while the Renault camp believed Hamilton's lack of downforce caused the crash. Fanboys on the internet were much aggrieved.

Next up, cult favourite Super Aguri began its descent into oblivion.

A few boring rounds followed, before heading to Canada, where BMW and Robert Kubica got the win in a race where the F1 cars [apparently] pulled up the tarmac. Hamilton won at Silverstone, giving Bernie Ecclestone's hard-on some justification, yet he still moved the British GP to Donnington, which will have an altered layout.

Sept 08: The Hamilton camp gets penalised 25 seconds for passing Raikonnen after 'cutting a corner'.

Alonso came from seemingly nowhere to win the Singaporean GP. Then backed it up the next round in Japan. Then ran his mouth.

The season was dominated by commentary, as all good motorsport should. Unfortunately, this series' commentary never fails to reach new levels of awful. I've included an excerpt for your pleasure [just imagine it is being screamed in your ear by a Briton who sounds as though he failed as a greyhound announcer].
HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON ALONSO HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON, massa pits, HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON, RAIKONNEN, COULTHARD, HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON, massa pits again, HAMILTON HAMILTON WEBBER'S OUT HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON HAMILTON.

The two coolest things about this season were:


and when I discovered this

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