31 Cars for main series?!

[Timu]

32 is a nice tidy & divisable number, come on V8SA / Tega, please open up a 32nd entry and get on with the 13 brilliant rounds....

31 cars at Mount Panorama this year wont have a very nice ring to it, let alone if someone bins it before the race!

If there was one my Ford on the grid it would be a perferct 50/50 spilt of 16 Falcons and 16 Commodores. Maybe Gorey should flex his wallet and open up a Team Australia car to save Bessie from the benches?

Just a thought. Tim.

[GTRMagic]

The question TEGA needs to ask itself is whether it can offload one or both of the ex-LMS L1 franchise licence slots. While these franchises are in their care, they do not attract any franchise licence income, but at the same time, they are burning a hole in the TEGA pocket (and therefore the owners of the 31 other cars), as ~$3m wanders off to Mr Larkham....

[jjd]

Bring back group A, nice diverse range of cars, huge grids at the mount. Please think of the children....

[Guest]

they may as well have an odd number of cars, because most things they do are odd!

[racer69]

Is there anyone out there actually wanting to buy the free (as in un-used, not $$$) L1 franchises?


31 cars, 32 cars who cares?? It is still too few if a tracks grid density is able to accomodate more cars.

[storyline]

CAMS overcome the track density in a nice way - they simply lowered it citing 'garage' spaces available!

[pete55]

That's only for V8 Supercars though.

[storyline]

DOn't believe any other category was mentioned though was it?

Funny how thay have such a draconian set or rules that apply to this one category.

[RotorFan]

Originally Posted by storyline

CAMS overcome the track density in a nice way - they simply lowered it citing 'garage' spaces available!

I've often wondered about that. With Bathurst, they have 36 garages but (if I remember correctly) 54 grid spots (the density). When it comes to running a race, how do they share the garages?

[storyline]

Bathust is interesting - in the CAMS NTSC Track Density Summary 2006 document, the number of pit lane spaces is listed as 36/72 - I would presume this refers to 36 permanent pit lane garages. Now, whether these can be doubled up to provide for 72 spaces or whether there is supposedly another 36 spaces behind the present garages isn't made plain in the CAMS document.

As to grid places - most categories at Mt Panorama have 55 available - including V8 Supercars! The only categories that do NOT have a grid/track density of 55 are Sports Sedansm Clubman Sports 1300 ( both 44) and Regularity (60).

So the density of 32 for V8 Supercars is NOT a CAMS introduced limit.

I apologise if I have maligned CAMS in this regard.

[racer69]

With regards to Bathurst, they are 2-car garages, big enough to accomodate two cars each. Theoretically this allows 72 cars all up can fit in pitlane (wasn't it originally meant to be 40 garages?)

[GTRMagic]

I thought I counted 36 garages... but could be wrong

By the time Dunlop take their 2 spaces, and the TEGA scales takes the last slot... the teams only just fit in!

Could you squish more cars in? For sure. Would they? I dont think so...

What I found silly last year was a grouped team like PMM/TKR had one lot of their equipment in one garage, with an entry to the pitlane between their other garage.

You would think the geniuses in charge might have taken notice of this before allocating space in the lane... especially when there are so many multi car teams.

They wouldnt have done that to HRT....

[storyline]

Ahh thanks - that explains the 36/72 on the track licence then.

[plonkey]

Originally Posted by jjd

Bring back group A, nice diverse range of cars, huge grids at the mount. Please think of the children....

I couldn't agree more..

[Robert Ryan]

Bring back group A, nice diverse range of cars, huge grids at the mount

Bloody Boring racing.... Jim Richards in the GTR or Dick Johnson in the Sierra take your pick of a winner and a staggering cost of running the cars $400, 000 dollars in the early 1990's..good grief.

[mtpanorama]

Ok, there are 36 garages( i know i stuck the numbers on all the doors). Each garage will fit 2 cars in it easilly.
Racer69,
I am trying to remember the first drawing I was shown from a mate at the council, this was never shown publicly and IIRC it had allocation for 44 garages. The pits started right from Murrys corner and went the entire length of the straight with the pit lane entry becoming a straight road that followed the shape of Murray's corner. The medical centre and race control was to be located at the very start of the pits above the first garage. Even in the revised plans(which is the current building) there was an allocation for 40 garages. That is why they are numbered they way they are, stating at the end of pit lane. When the second stage was built it was meant to incliude more garages, but they spent too much money on the first stage building a copy of the Eastern Creek control tower

[pete55]

Originally Posted by Robert Ryan

Bloody Boring racing.... Jim Richards in the GTR or Dick Johnson in the Sierra take your pick of a winner and a staggering cost of running the cars $400, 000 dollars in the early 1990's..good grief.

You obviously weren't around then.

[Robert Ryan]

Pete I probably predate you. It was boring.

[pete55]

And in the same breath you say V8 Supercars are exciting? I must admit though the days of the GT.HO's, XU.1's and Chargers etc were more exciting than either Group A or V8 Supercars.

[Robert Ryan]

Pete 55, they were better than Group A, but parity was pretty well and truly lacking. The bulk of the field was well and truly off the pace compared to the leaders. "Class racing" and other primitive ways of filling a grid, to make it look like a lot of cars could be fighting for the lead, was pretty pathetic. At least Speedway had one class racing at one time against each other, not the "field filler" class racing of roadracing.

[BlueMax]

The last year of Group C was interesting, though the P word was a constant problem.
At Bathurst that year '84 there was 6 differrent makes in the top 10. Which created a bit of interest because they all had differrent strengths. Trying to keep them equal over was the big problem. But the variety was great.

[racer69]

Group C '84 style was abit deceiving to the eye. It looked healthy, and was, but it was probably only that healthy because Group A was coming in 1985.

BMW were only still around as they were waiting for Group A. They had basically pulled out after 1982, when they couldn't get the 535i accepted, and only reappeared for the enduro's in 1983 when some (but not enough to be that competitive) performance grants were given.

Moffat said in an interview during Bathurst 1983 that if he couldn't win Bathurst with that Mazda in 1983, he never could, and would look at his options for 1984 and beyond. With only one year of Group C left, what was the point of starting something new. If it had gone on, i suspect Moffat would have gone with another marque.

The XE Falcon was getting on, the XF was to be/already? introduced, and a production Falcon hadn't been built with a V8 since 1982. The XE's competition days were numbered, so any Ford competitor had the choice of the XF six (maybe the Johnson Turbo would have gone further), or do what they did anyway and go with the Mustang (the Masterton's considered one as far back as 1982)

So all that i could see as definate's beyond 1984, if Group C stayed, was Nissan and the HDT.

Originally Posted by Robert Ryan

Pete 55, they were better than Group A, but parity was pretty well and truly lacking. The bulk of the field was well and truly off the pace compared to the leaders. "Class racing" and other primitive ways of filling a grid, to make it look like a lot of cars could be fighting for the lead, was pretty pathetic. At least Speedway had one class racing at one time against each other, not the "field filler" class racing of roadracing.

Robert, the whole point of Group A was class racing!

The cars were production based, and there was parity to an extent (depending on engine size etc), but if Toyota for example couldn't get the Supra going properly, why should the Sierra's suffer because they had built a better car?

[jjd]

Originally Posted by Robert Ryan

Bloody Boring racing.... Jim Richards in the GTR or Dick Johnson in the Sierra take your pick of a winner and a staggering cost of running the cars $400, 000 dollars in the early 1990's..good grief.

Yet Allan Grice won the 90 I recall, totally unexpected when you saw the Skyline passing everyone like they weren't moving, what was the budget for the HR team back then? Dear god you sound like one of those people, it aint local so shut it down ( thats when the 2 car makes arrived )I remember more from the old races then I do from today, it was far more interesting back then.

Budget means diddly squat if you have a car which is not prepared properly, I am not even going to point out the cases.

[Robert Ryan]

Yet Allan Grice won the 90 I recall, totally unexpected when you saw the Skyline passing everyone

More unfortunately the exception to the rule...too bad there was not more of it.

Robert, the whole point of Group A was class racing!

Racer 69 I know and it was on the whole bad news. Held up by loads of cigarette money.

[Raglanparade]

Well there are a few obvious examples.

the 1999 Bathurst winning Gibson Wynns (Murphy/Richards) car hardly had the budget of HRT and DJR that season.

the 1999 Jordan F1 Team had substanially less budget then Ferrari and McLaren that season, but scored wins. in 2005, Renualt had about the 5th Highest budget in F1 and won both the WDC and WCC.

Budget is one thing, but getting everything to fit together nicely is the real challenge.