After the street festival that the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide has become, the V8 Supercar Series swapped the concrete canyons for the tight, fast Symmons Plains racetrack in Tasmania for the second championship event of the year.
1. Will Davison and James Courtney won’t be exchanging Easter eggs this year. The most contentious incident of the weekend came in the first race on Saturday. No matter what the HRT pilot might want to contend, the vision of him getting into Davison’s Erebus AMG racer is clear-cut. Courtney was at fault. As is the want of drivers, he’s constructed a slightly different version of the events – involving getting run into by Chaz Mostert – but, as Davison observed in a heated post-race interview, that happened after Courtney had already done his work on Davison.
The way James Courtney behaved after the race was far from the sort of look the series needs. He seemed like a petulant child, and the irony of him telling Davison to have a cry was not lost on many. He kept telling Davison to go take a look at the vision of the incident, and I can’t help but wonder why JC didn’t do that first. He argued and made a fool of himself from a position of inferiority, given the video was conclusive. Not cool, JC.
Social media is always an interesting place after such events, and the general consensus was that Courtney was in the wrong. It’s pretty damning when you see comments from Holden fans saying that their guy is at fault. Why Jason Bargwanna, the driving standards observer for the series, didn’t issue Courtney a penalty is beyond me. We’ve seen less clear-cut incidents flagged for drive-throughs or whatever else in the past. Inconsistent rulings is what disenfranchises fans. Just look at the NRL and what they’re going through at the moment, if you don’t believe me. When races or games aren’t officiated correctly and evenly, fans turn off and the V8 Supercar Series can’t afford that.
2. Craig Lowndes can win the 2015 series. Based, at least on the speed he showed across the weekend, the universal fan favourite – I love the guy, but my manufacturer allegiance is to Ford – is plenty capable of beating Whincup, Courtney, Van Gisbergen and whoever else might find their way to the pointy end of the championship race.
We saw the speed he had all weekend, and were reminded of just how good he is behind the wheel when he scythed back through the field on Sunday afte3r avoidable contact with David Reynolds. How good would it be for the series if CL were to win it? Maybe a Lowndes title run is just what the sport really needs to get over the lethargy that seems to have overtaken during Whincup’s dominant run.
3. Qualifying is more important at Symmons Plains than anywhere. Increasingly, qualifying is becoming key at every racetrack the V8 Supercars visit. Marcos Ambrose noted the key difference between the series he left and the one he returned to was a lack of passing on the track, which means what you do in qualifying can set up an entire weekend. And Ambrose would know, given that it was a disastrous qualifying run at the Australian Grand Prix that
With the tight nature of the racetrack in Tasmania, you’re pretty much consigned to a mid-pack battle if you don’t nail qualifying. Mark Skaife made that observation on FOX on Saturday, and it reinforced what I was thinking. We saw what happened with Craig Lowndes. Two poles and two race wins on Saturday. Clear racetrack is a wonderful thing. In contrast, Jamie Whincup qualified badly for the first race, and was mired in the pack. Sunday, he qualified well, took advantage of Lowndes’ penalty, and won. Chalk and cheese difference.
The fast and narrow layout of Symmons Plains isn’t conducive to passing. It’s probably the most constrictive track the series visits. It doesn’t seem right to basically have your race (or, in some cases, weekend) decided by qualifying, but that’s fast becoming the reality of V8 Supercar racing in 2015. Yes, Craig Lowndes made a mockery of that assertion on Sunday, but that was a supreme drive and, for mine, more the exception than the rule, especially in Tasmania.
4. HRT need wins to really rubber-stamp their return to the top. We’ve heard so much about the revival of the once-dominant Holden Racing Team. Yes, James Courtney is currently trailing Jamie Whincup by a narrow margin, but most people don’t care about consistency in podiums and top-5 finishes, even though that’s not a bad way to win a championship. They want to see wins, and taking the checkers first is the way to really show the world that they are back at the top. Until Garth Tander or Courtney is standing regularly on the top step of the podium, myself (and others) will remain sceptical.
5. Scheduling a race against the World Cup final wasn’t a great move. Memo, V8 Supercar schedule makers: check your global sports calendars, please! First, it was the test day conflicting with the Bathurst 12 Hour – a PR nightmare for the series – and now the second round of the season conflicts with the Cricket World Cup Final.
With an event this weekend, the series is basically asking fans to choose between seeing an annual event (without Tasmania’s own Marcos Ambrose, too) against a giant event that comes around once every four years, hasn’t been seen in Australia for two decades, and is the culmination of our national sport’s biggest tournament. Plus, the chances were always good that Australia would feature in the final. Given we’re a month away from the next round (Perth, 1-3 May) surely the series could’ve scheduled the Tasmania event the weekend after Easter rather than before?
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