The Bathurst 1000 is the kind of race that many American fans say they really want: big, powerful, production-based V-8 sedans running on a road course for 620 miles, as flat-out as they can. Drivers, cars, and random marsupials are all sacrificed on the altar of Victory herself. This year, SPEED will be covering it on October 8th at 7pm EST.
The members of the SPEED team covering the race (Leigh Duffy, Darrell Waltrip, and Mike Joy) claim to be recently made aware of big fans of TTAC and its reader community. Towards that end, they’ve agreed to answer your questions on-air regarding the race in particular and V8 Supercars in general. Ask them below… and click the jump to see what SPEED gave me for pimping this event!
I’m pleased to announce that, in exchange for building awareness of V-8 Supercars in America, SPEED found a brand-new, leftover Pontiac G8 GXP six-speed and gave it to me, free of charge, to drive, I mean, test, for a year!
Just kidding.
They didn’t give me shit. Nor did they comp TTAC in any way. But I do think that this is a fun way to get your name on TV and find something out about the cars that you didn’t already know.
My question for the team will be:
Do you guys think a well-prepped Sprint Cup road-course car and a competent driver could finish the race on the lead lap? If not, how far behind or ahead would it be?
Enter yours below!
How much closer to “production-based” are these cars, compared to what the Sprint Cup cars have morphed into (nothing more to relate to the “drive on Monday” cars than the fake front end stickers they slap on them)?
+1
How much does it weigh? Do they have to use a stock block?
Silhouette racing, that have very little in common with what you can buy at the dealerships.
2987lbs, and yes the blocks are stock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_Supercars
Originally they used a factory shell, that changed to building around a roll cage with a pile of factory panels, now there is some factory structure with a common floor pan.
The drivetrain was representative back in 1993 but has not been for ~10 years, neither make uses a 5.0L ohv V8 or live rear axle any more.
Also the common front suspension is a double wishbone setup based on the Falcon front end after the Holden teams complained about having to use an inferior Mac strut front end.
It’s really more like what NASCAR or the old SCCA Trans Am series could have been if the sanctioning bodies had been a little more willing to deal with the changes in the auto industry since the late 60’s. Race prepared, roll caged and reinforced factory body-in-white shells with race prepared factory style engines and stock bodywork. Good old Ford vs Chevy as it were, but sort of WRC style if that makes any sense. Lots of modern racing technology but much closer to “production based” than NASCAR has been for the last 3 decades. British touring car on steroids for lack of a better term..
Are they imposing the same beer limit for spectators as they have in previous years? ie, 24 cans of beer per day. MAXIMUM.
yes, one slab per man per day. The police have claimed it to be quite effective in keeping things under control.
I love Australian V8 Supercars. Speed runs the races in the dead zone (Jan-Feb-Mar) here in the States.
In fact, this will be my Saturday night this weekend!
…….if the payoff for pimping this deal was an all expense ride in one of those races, we would have forgiven you for temporarily suspending your ethics. It sure looks like fun…….but judging by the cut and thrust, no holds barred nature of the series, the fun could have been very short-lived……..unless you got pole, of course.
To answer the question I don’t think a Sprint Car would last long enough to finish nor would it be able to handle a course like Bathurst with its elevation changes. NASCAR is interesting to watch on road tracks because all the cars are so hobbled by their construction rules that just getting around the track is an achievement.
To get an idea of what the Bathurst track is like here’s a vintage clip; it’s long, hilly, tricky and fast all in one circut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JvEbtChs4E
That said I’d drive the two days there and back to see a Sprint Car race at Laguna Seca…
+1 about Bathhurst.
Have only seen it on TV/YouTube but it is on my list of tracks to try the day I hit the lottery.
(Mas du Clos in France is also up there on the list.)
I had not previously seen footage of Mas du Clos. What a circuit, especially the uphill 1st corner.
It’s a beautiful day here at Bathurst where the temperature is a cool and comfortable 43 degrees and the ‘roos have been cleared from the backstretch. The Fords and Holdens have already been at it this morning, with 12 Fords and 15 Holdens knocked out from the event; and that’s just the fans in the parking lot. We’ve been shelled with beer bottles for most of the morning, and we appreciate the traditional, warm Bathurst welcome.
My question for the Speed TV crew is:
Neither the Continental Sports Car Challenge nor Grand Am nor similar cars running in the ALMS and Rolex series have really captured fans’ attention the way that the original Trans Am series did back in the day. Now that the SCCA has turned over management of the Trans Am brand to a new company headed by team owners, do you think it has a chance of becoming as popular as Trans Am was in the late ’60s and early ’70s?
Trans Am and SCCA’s World Challenge are both jokes, especially the former – 6 or 8 funny cars that turn single-filing around Jersey Barrier courses. But I would argue that Grand Am’s ST and GS classes, while admittedly not as cool as the glory days of Trans Am, provide great racing in a true production-based format. As a result, their TV ratings are respectable. And Continental Tire is the highest series to which a hack SCCA Club Racer like me can aspire, should I ever decide to blow $7500 on a 90-minute stint just so I can tell people I drove in a pro series.
Here’s a question that won’t get asked on air:
Do you think that Speed TV’s coverage of the Bathurst will lead to more coverage of non-NASCAR motorsports on the network, particularly since attendance and tv ratings for NASCAR are both trending down?
BTW, I’ve heard of the Hurst Olds. Bathurst sounds like a George Barris or Ed Roth custom made out of plumbing fixtures.
@Ronnie: Speed TV is in no way remotely as good as Speedvision was.
Where else could you get English language German car shows, WRC, motorcycle racing of all kinds, DTM, Paris-Dakar (when it was still Paris-Dakar) and midwestern fast boat racing all on the same channel? Plus the show that was the home-grown stunt driving, a-la America’s Funniest Videos, but only with cars, bikes and rednecks… Car and Track videos from the early 70’s with Bud Lindeman? Priceless.
Speed TV (peed as I call it in my home) is just lame. I like NASCAR but 17 hours of NASCAR coverage on Sundays is about 16.5 hours too many. I don’t want to see American Trucker. I don’t want to see My Ride Rulz. I don’t want to see a lot of the content. Pinks was interesting, for a while, so was Pass Time, but even those have grown stale. I see that the Car Show is now a 1/2 hour show and John Salley is MIA. Maybe it will fall of the schedule altogether. Maybe it will end up at Comedy Central and get some real muscle behind it.
How do they manage to take something as intrinsically interesting to us as cars, racing and mobilia and f**k it up?
It’s funny that you mentioned American Trucker. I’ve been toying with writing a post about the show and Rob Mariani. The show is unintentionally funny because of Mariani’s truck fanboy routine. He’s so eager and earnest. I don’t want to say that he’s compensating for being less than masculine, because that’s a cheap shot, but he practically squeals like a girl when it comes to big trucks.
I watched the new, shorter version of the Car Show this week. They obviously wanted to tighten up the show and I think they succeeded. The 30 min format might help the show because Speed TV can fit reruns into a bunch of time slots since a lot of their programming is 30 min show.
@Ronnie: American Trucker is a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition, where the host is such a d**khead but the premise of the show really isn’t bad.
Just like EMHE, I can’t watch more than 5 minutes of it without starting to mock the host cruelly, and then have to change the channel.
To me, it’s just creepy.
Didn’t Speedvision also occasionally have specials on flying and private airplane ownership and operation as well? I seem to remember programs where the presenter would climb into the cockpit of a fully restort WWII-era fighter or bomber, go through the pre-flight checks explaining all the gadgets and gizmos (The P-40 Warhawk has Three manual landing-gear hydraulic pumps, Neat!) and then take it up into the air and try and convey it’s flight dynamics to the audience..
..damn, I miss that.
Will DW make it through this entire race without mentioning Kyle Busch?
Can’t you use your influence to help convince NASCAR to race cars like the V8 Supercars? The Supercar series is real racin’. NASCAR left racin’ years ago. You don’t have to go 200 mph to have good racin’. We’re not dumb. We see the empty seats at every race even if TV doesn’t comment about them.
…….CUP car….3450 pounds, old style 4 speed, 5 lug wheels, technology restrictions galore.
V8 Supercar…under 3000 pounds, 6 speed sequential box, fuel injection
the track….fabulous combination of a hillclimb and traditional road race course.
Outcome….even if fuel load and tire spec issues could be evened out, it don’t look good for the Sprint Cup cars, but with their superior power, that long straight would be fun….My guess, 2 laps down after 1000km
Add me to the chorus of folks who have in past comments and will in future comments ask the following:
What on God’s green earth is it going to take to convince NASCAR that the Aussies got it right, while NASCAR messed up in regards to the evolution of the cars? V8SCs are a lot more like the real cars the Australian spectators can go out and buy, much the way NASCAR used to feature cars we could actually buy. No magically coupe-ified Toyota Camries or Ford Fusions. No silly “Car of Tomorrow” standardized template. The Aussies race what they sell: Four-door, rear-wheel drive cars with big ol’ V8 engines. The NASCAR boys race unobtanium. There’s no connection between the NASCAR race machines and the actual cars they represent, anymore, and that saddens me.
Another question: What do you think the impact would be on NASCAR in terms of attendance, sponsorship, TV coverage, and a bevy of other factors, if the series ran a more road course-heavy schedule and allowed races to continue, rain or shine? The Aussies seem to have good luck with that formula, not to mention the old-school “heat race” qualifying they do when the field is particularly large.
While we’re at it, why can’t we convince Washington to go more Aussie in vehicle regulation? We’ve argueably got more in common with the land down undah than with ‘The Continent’ which those so in favor of regulation seem to admire (Those not in favor of regulation tend to be, ‘No regulation, No compromise, Ever’ types who get shouted-down by everyone else who doesn’t wanna breathe pure carbon.).
I think that a lot of what is wrong with NASCAR can be traced back to the tracks. The cars have to be made to stay below 200mph on absurdly high banked superspeedways. One solution would be to get rid of those tracks, but the owners of NASCAR own those tracks so it ain’t gonna happen.
Would NASCAR viewership rise or fall if the drivers were forced to use dead stock Caprices and Chargers? Would Ford, Toyota or anyone else create a new V8 rear-wheel drive passenger car just to compete in this series?
……..great idea, and I think viewership would rise, but, unless the eligible cars fit into their existing plans, manufacturers see no percentage in building a dedicated NASCAR model. By tradition, NASCAR, and every other production car series, including Australian Supercar, routinely meddle with the rules to keep the playing field level. The result is close, competitive races, but no maker is allowed to dominate for long,
Question for Speed.
Why is it all Fords and Holdens? Lack of interest from other manufacturers, lack of interest from fans, or does nobody else really produce anything that can be adapted to Bathurst rules in the Australian market?
Mandated by the body that runs V8 Supercars in Australia…
http://www.v8supercars.com.au/technical/TechTalk/V8SupercarOperationsManual/tabid/174/Default.aspx
They didnt like the Nissan GTR (and other foriegners) thrashing the local Holden and Ford product (not strictly true – the international classes changed)…
V8’s in Aussie is EXTREMELY tribal – you either Red or Blue – Holden or Ford – there is no fence sitting, there is no other choice!
My favourite year was when Tom Walkinshaw brought 3 XJS’s down to bathurst and nearly finished 1, 2, 3 (they finished 1 and 3)!
Kinda awkward for me then.. from what I know of them I think I fancy Holden’s ‘vette-engined offerings more than the Falcons, and the suspension engineering from the Commodore has gotten rave reviews in the new Camaro and the late G8.
However, stateside… well.. Hard to be a GM fanboi here. >.<
I think the Ford engines are Coyote based. But the underpinnings are pure Ford Oz. Nothing under the bum of a Mustang (because thats the only rwd car Ford NA makes) comes close to a Falcon’s full independant rear end.
But don’t wish for any Ford Oz product crossing the ocean. (1) Oz $ is still to close to the US$, (2) Ford NA will never approve of a LHD version of the Falcon, it would show up the local offerings and (3) Ford NA is killing off the Falcon after 2015 and replacing it with the Taurus. MInd you the Falcon sales have nose dived this last year when you are down to 40% of last years sales, it’s time to close the shop and go home.
You guys know that the V8 Supercars series is coming to the States in 2013, right?
http://www.v8supercars.com.au/everything’s-bigger-in-texas/tabid/70/newsid/11406/default.aspx
Do you think it will get a similar tribal response from the fans (ie. Ford vs GM) as it does in Australia?
They did race NASCARs in support races a few times back in the 90’s, the fastest lap was by Jim Richards with 2:18.10 which is a good 6+ seconds off what the V8Supercars were running then, and he is a great driver in as fast a car as was running over here back then. No doubt a top US car would be a bit quicker, but you also have to consider the lack of brakes as a real disadvantage.
Even with the frequent intervention of Safety Cars, 8 in this years race, I don’t think that would be enough to stay on the lead lap.
How did the telecast go? I only saw the DW ride laps, do you all find that as cringeworthy as I did? Eg the whole “I’m dyin’…”
Jack will you be attending Rennsport union at Monterey this weekend?
Timm