Calder park V8's

[marcus]

well its 3am here in Oz and in all my wisdom have decided to rise from bed early to take a long 4 hour drive down to melbourne and watch the V8's..only decided to go at 5pm saturday ...gonna be a long day but an enjoyable one.

if anyone is goin look for the white VN Commodore with NSW plates hopefully on the hill and the little guy with the black formula Holden shirt on (Thats me by the way)

see yas

[gomick]

just got home from calder park, steven richards won the round...ford won 2 of the 3 races.....heard an interesting bit of news. "hrt sack lowndes for driving panoz ford at adelaide alms event (not supposed to because of his hrt contract), larry perkins to retire at end of year, lowndes to castrol racing with castrol chipping in extra dollars"....should be interesting to see if this is fact..

gomick@revcounter.com

[Buckshot]

I thought it odd as soon as I heard the news about his Le Mans series drive that HRT would be happy him driving a Panoz FORD !

But imgaine the fan backlash if HRT just up and fired him. I don't know if they would have the balls to do it.

As for Larry retiring, I thought they would have announced it early and played it out for a year like they did for Dick Johnson.

I tell you what though if this did happen it would be very very interesting. Keep us informed !

[Crash Test]

I'm not sure if i've posted this piece of juicy fat here before, but here goes:

My spy who lives next door to mr Clowndes has seen a Ford on his property recently...and another one of my spies has heard that he was recently spotted in a Ford dealership...

Now where could he go? There are a fair few Ford teams up here in Queensland, with seats for next year.

Cat racing, i heard will have a second seat next year, but Lowndes isn't the name i heard connected to the drive.

Mitre 10? Paragon? Weel? McLean?

A third DJR or SBR?

Or even Morris?

[Diabando]

What a day!

For a start, I dont think I have seen a crowd that big at Calder before.

Race 1 looked like it was going to be great, with Larry Perkins in second place on the grid. Shame he had no luck with the start, allowing Ingall and Radisich through. Much to my delight, Ingall ended up in front and seemed in control of the race...until his gearbox gave way (to my utter horror) leaving Radisich with an unbeatable lead, and a good result for Ford.

Reverse grid for race 2, which saw Larkham in the box seat... he capitalised on this and had a clean race win (much deserved and about time). HRT never looked like threatening anyone during the whole race, but Bowe and Ingall both drove well to move up the order from the back of the grid.

Race 3 was fairly quiet, other than the Crompton/Johnson accidents...HRT once again never looked as good as they have been in the past, with the best car to watch during the race being Ingall, who carved up the field to finish well up the order...a win to Richards, and, thankfully, Holden - to finish up the day.

In my opinion, the third race should start with the field gridded up as it finished in race 2. I dont like the "points" system for race 3.

And...you have just got to feel bad for Seton - the guy needs some good luck.

All in all - a fantastic day, lots of fun and good company.

Bring on Sandown!!!!

[Crash Test]

But from what we saw on TV, there was little if any overtaking, let alone battles at the front...even being a ford fan i found it to be fairly dull...

People have told me that Calder is hard to overtake on...but my come back is that Calder has two long straights with two tight corners at the ends of them. Ideal for overtaking.

My second point is that Lakeside is utterly impossible to pass on, and look at the corker of a race there in the Lites at the front.

If all of the cars are within 1 second, there should be more passing than on the first lap into the first corner...

[marcus]

well it was my first time to Calder..and I was impressed with a few things but unimpressed with others.

Marshalling at where I was (just out of the switchback over the hill) could have been alot better..they spent most of the day socialising and waving the wrong flags..discracefull really.

but the speed was increddible..having only attended winton before i was very impressed by the speed of all the classes..especially on the run down to turn one.

crowd was well behaved but pricing was way to step..i paid $80 dollars for 2 people and my car to get onto the hill..thats way to much money to pay ..but of course I paid it
very impressed with the GTP cars ..and poor old Ramano has got to ask daddy for a new engine after his bbq'd itself..TV didnt show it that well because of the Kelly ,Bowe crash but it was burning for quite some time and a fair bit of estinguisher went into the engine bay..so big dollars again for Bap to pay out.

drive of the day ..Ingall coming from the back was great to watch ..but I was very impressed with Ellery..all day did an excellent job until race 3 when it all went pair shape for him..but a very good drive.

larko ...what an amazing job the Mitre 10 team have done with a brand new car..thouroughly deserved.

found it easier getting in and out then winton much to my surprise..one of the first 50 cars on the bank made it easy to get in and then leaving with 2 laps to go in the final V8 race also helped ..but I was straight in and out and being a capital city found that amazing ..waited 40 mins to get out of winton.

out of 10 i give the facilities a 7/10
racing for the day 6/10
cost 3/10
behaviour 9/10 the only down point was the stupid guys next to me who decided to start smoking dope during the day with their children in the car..fools..but at least they didnt start clowning around and sat back and watched in enjoyment.

might go next year as well or may even make the trip to sandown.

sure there wasnt much passing but it was a good day and a nice little facility allthough i was disapointed with the huge dirt mounds in the middle of the track but other than that i thought the place was good

[gomick]

calder is great, but winton is still no.1 in victoria...

[marcus]

ohh I nearly forgot the real hero of the day was Ed aitken (i think) in the VT commodore in the gtp cars..he was flying and nearly cleaned up a backmarker right in front of me..he gave it to the lancers and RX7's all day and was sensational

[Buckshot]

In the continuing story of the above Craig Lowndes rumours, Sydney paper The Daily Telegraph printed a very small story on the rumours today. This was a pretty big surprise as motor-sport actually dosen't officially exist if you read the football obsessed Telegraph regularly looking for any stories on motor-sport but I digress.

Anyway, HRT are just about ready to re-sign Lowndes as his contract finishes this year. Apparently it was Ford head honcho Geoff Pilotes spreading the defection rumours over the weekend around the pits.

I get the jist of it that some of you guys don't like Lowndes but seriously HRT would be fools to let him go really. I reckon he will be with them for the rest of his career in V8 Supercar.

Cheers Buck.

[marcus]

I like Lowndes..and he is a nice bloke to ..bumped into him (really I walked straight into him as I was eyeing off his pit garage instead of where I was walking) at winton and he was really a nice bloke...also he wants to spend more time with the fans and had to be dragged away from them by HRT press people to go to an interview.
being a HRT fan I dont want to see him go ..but to me the stars are the drivers and not so much the cars and I will still support him if he goes to Ford..or another Holden team.

he is a legend already and the future will see him become one of the biggest touring car stars this country has ever seen..running a close second to Brocky in my books.

[Danielsun]

About the Larry thing: I seem to remember the same thing happening at roughly this time last year - all the papers were saying that he may retire. Larry said then, and no doubt is still saying, that he doesn't want a fancy 'final year fling'; he'd rather just fade out 'quietly' from the scene.

As for the Lowndes rumours, what does it matter that the Panoz is powered by a Ford engine?! If you'd seen any coverage of the ALMS or even Le Mans, not once would you have heard the commentator state "Panoz Ford" during a race. Totally different form of racing, so really, who cares?

[Crash Test]

Ah, the Tom Walkinshaw from Tom Walkinshaw Racing apparently does.... and it is thought that is where a bit of the problem regarding his future might be....

[Buckshot]

I also bumped into Both Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife outside of the Sydney Motor Show in 1998. They must have been coming back from having a break at a nearby restaraunt or something and they were only to happy to stop, shake my hand and let me get my picture taken with them. I thought it was fantastic.

I think most of the V8 drivers are this way inclined and fairly accessable for the fans though ? Anyone had a bad experience with a V8 Supercar driver ?

[Crash Test]

ALAN JONES!! The biggest prick i have ever seen!!

People are also quick to rag Wayne Gardner, but the one time i met him, he was an absolute champion.

I guess the two that i would have had the most contact with lately would have to be Wayne Wakefield and Cameron McLean, they are absolute champions as well, the other week WW stopped to have a chat, even when i had nothing to chat to him about!

I know i am a devoted ford boy, but after his retirement, I've had a lot of time for Peter Brock, and probably even more time for Bev Brock....2 wonderful people.

[elephino]

Cameron McLean is great. I've spoken to him at both Super Touring and V8 meetings and he's just, well, a champion as crash said.

There are some who won't give you the time of day, but one driver who is good with the fans is Russell Ingall. He let's all sorts of people hang out with him and chat about things that you wouldn't expect a professional driver to talk about, but then it is Russ.

[gomick]

yeah my opinion of alan jones when he was glenn setons team-mate at peter jackson ford and when he was at packleader ford was that he had a bit of the f1 attitude of my **** dont stink, i am an ex f1 world champion so im great,even though driving a v8 in australia's best formula is some 12/13 years after.......i respect what he has achieved throughout his career and i like him on channel 9 with big daz, they should probably have alan jones commentating with martin brundle, murray's got the voice, but his knowledge has been **** for 15 years....

[marcus]

yep Alan Jones for sure ...refused to even say hello to me at the 96 melbourne GP...big dazza said G'day but aln refused to ..the man is arrogant and believes as gomick said above he dont stink..but from my view AJ you are a clown and I dont give a toss what ya have done in racing..as far as Im concerned jack Brabham was our last F1 champ.

P.S..christian managed to say Hi..so maybe he takes after his mother

[Diabando]

Alan Jones would have to be THE biggest PIG I have ever met in my life.

I think that covers it...