F1 Fanatic

There was chaos at the start of the first V8 Supercar race at the Gold Coast 600. The event features international co-drivers, with every team electing to have their international driver start. A large number of these drivers don’t have much experience with standing starts.

The First Start:

The race was red flagged, with four cars retiring. Most thought that the restart would be a clean getaway with drivers being extra cautious. This wasnt the case…

The Second Start:

Again the race was red flagged, with another two cars retiring.

There were calls from team bosses for the 3rd start to be behind the safety car, however this didnt happen. The start was clean, with everyone being extra cautious.

Because of the lengthy red falg periods, the race was cut short with Jamie Whincup and Sebastian Bourdais winning.

Its already been confirmed that the Caruso/Ricky Taylor car and the D’Alberto/Tonio Liuzzi car won’t be able to be repaired for tomorrows race, with the Holdsworth/Simon Pagenaud car also in doubt.

Tomorrows race could be interesting!

I went to the first event without Indy cars a few years ago.
I remember quite a few crashes happening that weekend.

That was with regular V8 Supercar drivers on a familiar track.

It’s the track. It’s extremely narrow, and bottlenecks occur frequently.
It’s unfair to blame the international drivers for causing the incident, especially the ones who are used to rolling starts, and only jumped in a V8 earlier in the week.

It seems to me that this was orchestrated. Why did the starting grid have the internationals in the car, when any sensible team would’ve ran the regular guy in the first stint. They didn’t have a choice.

I don’t blame the international drivers, none of them could really have avoided it (except Montagny who either didn’t see or ignored the yellow flags). I was just questioning the wisdom of the format which puts all of them on a track like that at the beginning of the weekend. Particularly, as you said, most have become used to rolling starts. That’s why I’d be running the international event at a track with run-off, maybe Albert Park instead, so that it also doesn’t butcher a point scoring round.

As for where I found the race, I’m in Australia so it was on the tele.

Checking this morning it looks like 33, 3 and 11 are out, and Reindler’s car is out of Abu Dhabi next week as well. At least Caruso’s car hasn’t been named as out, so Garry Rogers might at least get one racing lap done this weekend.

There are several problems with the Gold Coast event:

Firstly, it’s a gimmick. The international drivers don’t really contribute anything to the racing – it’s all for show. Jamie Whincup says he reckons the safety car at the end of the race was totally unnecessary, but he was expecting it because he thinks the race is more about entertainment than actual racing.

Secondly, it’s a championship event. All of the regular drivers score points for the race, so the best strategy is to put the international drivers in he cars for the first stint and have them drive conservatively (assuming they survive the start) before handing the cars back to the regular drivers for the race to the finish, which naturally strings the field out in the early stages and causes boring races.

With any luck, Campbell Newman will pull the event’s funding and we can have a race at a proper circuit, like Sydney Motorsport Park.

I disagree PM, i was at the race personally and its a great event, it offers an opportunity to get close to the cars like nowhere else in the series, at some places you could almost touch them. And you say that the international drivers idea is a gimmick, you could think that. But anything that gives the V8 supercars exposure in other countries, and raises awareness about the series amongst drivers in other series, can only be a good thing. And in the end we had close finishes to both races, this was telivised around the world and can only have been a good thing for the series for others to see the good racing on offer. And you might say that the international drivers can ruin the drivers championship hopes, but it is the same for everyone they all have the same challenge, they all have to deal with it and do their best in the situation. So i think the event should stay, and you were to attend the event and experince the cars and the action up close i think you would agree. (P.s watching the cars fly over those massive kerbs was especially spectacular and one of the coolest things ive seen a race car do…)