Positives at the end of the V8 Supercar Championship but the street race in Australia’s biggest city has fallen well short of what its proponents projected
MOTORSPORT REPORT
Fight to the wire made finale a thriller
Two years in a row the Sydney 500 has been a thrilling conclusion to the V8 Supercar Championship.
Craig Lowndes, the sport’s most popular driver, pushed Triple Eight/Team Vodafone/Holden Commodore teammate and ultimate champion Jamie Whincup to the last race this time.
Our preview of the event emphasised what a five-star performer Whincup has been over several seasons, especially in finishing first or second in the championship five years in a row.
Lowndes could hardly have done more at the weekend – he won Saturday’s race and finished second to Mark Winterbottom in Sunday’s, narrowing Whincup’s pre-Sydney lead from 188 points to 35 in the end.
The racing was a terrific spectacle, helped – like last year, when James Courtney pipped Whincup for the title, and the penultimate round at Melbourne’s Sandown two weeks ago – by some wet weather.
Lowndes closing in on what would have been his first title in 12 years, weather that kept Sydneysiders indoors and the early end of the first cricket Test between Australia and New Zealand in Brisbane before the start of the final race would have been factors in Sunday’s TV audience for the V8s being up almost 20 per cent on last year.
This year the average number of viewers in the five major Australian capital cities for the last-race telecast on the Seven Network was 501,000 – up from 421,000 last year. A positive note to end the season on.
Organisers claimed a three-day attendance at the Homebush street circuit of 172,267 – 52,097 on Friday, 61,264 on Saturday and 58,906 on Sunday. There was much skepticism about those numbers, which were in line with the average 175,000 claimed for the previous two Homebush events, but there’s not much room to quibble about the accuracy of the TV figures. They are compiled by OzTAM, the ratings agency that is the official source of TV audience measurement in Australia.
Earlier OzTAM figures showed a five-capitals average of 615,000 for the Sunday race of Adelaide’s second round of this year’s championship on March 20. So while the Sydney event’s Sunday TV number was better this year – and the best it has been since racing began at Homebush – it is still 114,000 short in the five capitals of Adelaide’s early in the season. Put another way, the final Sydney race of a thrilling championship got 81.5 per cent the audience of an Adelaide race more than eight months earlier.
And the Homebush figure, from an event that its proponents proclaimed at the outset would become as big as – or even bigger than - the Bathurst 1000, was 41.2 per cent of the 1.215 million The Great Race averaged in the five capitals less than two months ago.
And while Sunday’s number was the best the Sydney 500 has generated in its three years it was only 9000 more than the last V8 Supercar race at the oft-derided Eastern Creek in Sydney’s outer west in March 2008. Not such a pretty picture, but it was a whole lot uglier on Saturday.
The five-capitals average for last Saturday’s first of the weekend’s two 250km races at Homebush was 309,000 – the lowest in the three years of racing, 92,000 less than the first race there in 2009 and 74,000 less than the last Saturday race at Eastern Creek in March 2008. And the two-day total last weekend, 810,000, was still 65,000 off the comparative number for Eastern Creek four years ago, 875,000.
Four-year TV comparison for Sydney V8 Supercar racing
When Where Saturday Sunday Two-day total
2008 (March) Eastern Creek 383,000 492,000 875,000
2009 (Dec) Homebush 401,000 390,000 791,000
2010 (Dec) Homebush 360,000 421,000 781,000
2011 (Dec) Homebush 309,000 501,000 810,000
V8 Supercar chairman Tony Cochrane said this year’s Sydney 500 had been “a weekend of very positive engagement with the NSW government and we look forward to working with them and Destination NSW to make this an even bigger event in the future”.
That optimism appears at odds with a report in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper that new premier Barry O’Farrell’s conservative government intends to divert money in what it regards as a “slush fund” of the previous Labor government from funding special events to capital works programs and disaster relief. That report said “the V8 Supercars race in Homebush will have to forgo the last-minute $3.275 million in funds it has received since 2009”.
It quoted O’Farrell’s treasurer Mike Baird saying a fund known as the Treasurer’s Advance had been abused by the former government with money splashed on “whatever caught the attention of a minister”.
Always plenty of flak in the air about the Sydney 500, but unquestionably there has been plenty of exciting action on those Homebush streets. The right driver won the championship, the runner-up made him work for it until the last day, together they made the biggest contribution to Holden winning its 23rd Australian touring car championship, but Ford won the final race.
Winterbottom’s victory was his and Ford Performance Racing’s second of the year, and Ford’s fourth in this championship’s 28. It secured third place in the points for Winterbottom. He was the most prolific points scorer over the final five rounds – from Bathurst onwards – and that, plus the speed of Will Davison and Paul Dumbrell’s FPR Falcons at the end of the season gives Blue Oval fans cause for hope in 2012.
Shane van Gisbergen, another Ford driver who won two races for the season, wound up fourth in this year’s championship after two more podiums in Sydney. That dropped Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander to fifth, despite his second place to Lowndes in Saturday’s race.
James Courtney, champion last year with Dick Johnson’s Ford team before becoming Tander’s HRT teammate this year, ended the season 10th. That is the lowest a defending champion has finished in the series – the previous worst was Russell Ingall’s eighth in 2006.
Ironically, Whincup’s winning points score this year is the lowest of his three title years. In 2009 he scored 3349 points and in 2008 his tally was 3332. This year he finished with 3168 points – 178 more than when beaten by Courtney last year.
V8 Supercar Championship final standings after 28 races - 1. Jamie Whincup (Holden) 3168 points, 2. Craig Lowndes (Holden) 3133, 3. Mark Winterbottom (Ford) 2710, 4. Shane van Gisbergen (Ford) 2672, 5. Garth Tander (Holden) 2574, 6. Rick Kelly (Holden) 2358, 7. Will Davison (Ford) 2345, 8. Lee Holdsworth (Holden) 1920, 9. Tim Slade (Ford) 1904, 10. James Courtney (Holden) 1869, 11. Alex Davison (Ford) 1850, 12. Fabian Coulthard (Holden) 1839.
Changing faces of IndyCar racing
Newman-Haas, once the powerhouse of Indy racing, has quit the American open-wheeler series.
After Spaniard Oriel Servia’s fourth place in this year’s championship – behind Dario Franchitti (Ganassi team), Will Power (Penske) and Scott Dixon (Ganassi) – and fielding rookie of the year, Canadian James Hinchcliffe, team owner Carl Haas said “the economic climate no longer enables Newman-Haas Racing to participate in open-wheel racing at this time”.
IndyCar’s controversial chief steward and director of racing Brian Barnhart has lost those roles, but appears set to remain “president of operations” for the series he has spent 15 years in. Barnhart was repeatedly under fire over his decisions, especially restarting a race this year on the oval at Loudon, New Hampshire, while the track was too slippery – creating chaos and prompting an outburst from Power.
Meanwhile, Aussie Ryan Briscoe has had his first drive of IndyCar’s new Dallara car powered by the engine that is bringing Chevrolet back to the sport. Teammate Power had already had a test of the car.
Last chance for Texas Grand Prix
Promoters of the proposed new United States Formula One Grand Prix in Texas, are on their last chance to make it happen next year.
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone extended the deadline for signature of the contract and payment of monies until the eve of this week’s World Motor Sport Council meeting. The previous deadline on the race, scheduled for next November 18 at the Circuit of the Americas still under construction at Austin, where V8 Supercars are meant to race in 2013, had been the Brazilian GP a week ago.
Ecclestone said he would “rather see the [F1] race happen than not”.
“It would be a loss to everyone [if it did not happen],” Ecclestone said.
“They need to get some money and a pen as soon as possible.
“If it isn’t all signed before the World Motor Sport Council meeting it can’t happen.”
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