THE NEW'!i BEHIND THE NEW!i
Australia $5.95 NZ $7.50 incl GST
No. 286
June 23 - July 6 2004
ANSWERS 111£ £Bl1ICS
How HRT plans to . turn it-all around
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ERFORMANCE . · • ·.
WHOLESALE
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FOR OVER 20 YEARS DEL WEST HAS SET THE WORtDWIDE STANDARD - . ;. -~-· 7r"' ·., FOR ADVANCED TITANIUM VALVES
&VALVE TRAIN TECHNOLOGY WITH hi DESIGN &MANUFACTURING. ~ffl
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news
Issue 286
23 June - & Julv 2004
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Cost concerns V8 drivers speak on TEGA's program
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Truly staying Renault keeps Jarno so Webber goes to ...
12 PR0TEAMS A new name and · a future for Nations Cup etc 15 Dallara Beater Lola wins in F3 and Dyk goes testing 25 Motor Mouth Peter Boylan commits to PROTEAMS 26 Box Seat Kangaroos in Indiana? Joe says 'Cri key! ' 82 Talk Converter At last, a pro-NASCAR coverage letter
Bright Light in the West Jason Bright smacks them down hard with a strong win at Barbagallo. And Marcos and Richo swap the points lead again
46 Back in the US of A Rubens wins on Saturday. But that was only Saturday 54 Meanwhile in Canada Michael wins again, Williams and Toyota get booted 58 More 24s for Audi Tom Kristensen adds another chapter to his brilliant CV 60 C-Cups and Formula Fiore Porsches and FFords turn it on in Perth Pretty Damn Cold! Nathan rules at chilly Winton
Pholos: Cover: AF1 Images, sutton•images.com Contents: sutton-images.com, redzoneimages.com , Chris Carter
65 Rallying
66 Speedway
70
National Scene
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Marketplace
a
Teams hit testing trail
VB SUPERCAR testing kicks into high gear this week, with a number of teams planning to bum up their allocation of test days. , The Castro] Perkins team was due to have a two-day test at Winton yesterday and today with endurance drivers Jim Richards and Alex Davison having their first seat time in the team's VYs. In Queensland, the action started a little earlier with an all-out Ford assault prior to the first round of the 2004 series to take place on a 'test' circuit. Stone Brothers Racing tested on Monday, with Greg Ritter and Cameron McLean joining Marcos Ambrose and Russell Ingall, the team issuing press pies with both codrivers in both Pirtek and Caltex outfits. Oh come on, guys... Later this week, Dick Johnson
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Racing, WPS, Orrcon Racing and Triple 8 are all due to take to The Paperclip before the Queensland 300, with some of the teams also looking at running their endurance drivers. The odd team out of the testing equation is Ford Performance Racing. The beleaguered team was due to have two days at Winton, its first testing miles of the season, but the engine disasters of Barbagallo have forced the team to postpone the test for four weeks due to a lack of serviceable engines. Alain Menu, who was due to test a VS Supercar with the team for the first time, did not make the trip to Australia and will now join Craig Lowndes and Glenn Seton at Winton on July 12-13, providing that the team's current engine maladies can be overcome.
It's New
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And yo:1r head goes here: Revolution's Dale Rodgers, right, shows the HANS unit to, left to right, Steve Richards, Mark Skaife and Craig Baird.
HANS everywhere
HOLDEN has issued its VS Supercar pilots with new HANS devices. All of the Lion's full-time drivers will wear the units and matching 2004-spec helmets in future rounds of the VS Supercar Championship Series. The device is a collar and yoke system that is worn by the driver on the upper body and held in place by the race car's harness system. Connected to the helmet by two flexible tethers, the device allows normal head movement, but limits extended movements and neck loads. HANS devices are not mandatory in VS Supercar racing but are in a number of other categories, including Formula One . "The HANS Device is the biggest advance in head and neck protection ever for race drivers and we applaud Holden Motorsport and Revolution Racegear for making this move to improve driver safety," said Mark Skaife. 4
Holden has undertaken the program in conjunction with national racewear manufacturer Revolution Racegear.
A new weapon for
TASMAN Motorsport was due to test its first purpose-built Commodore VY yesterday (Tuesday).
The car, which has been built over the last six months at the team's Sydney base, was driven for the first time by Jason . Richards in a corporate drive day on Monday prior to a proper shakedown yesterday. Team manager Jon Matthews said that, while it was not possible to draw any logical conclusions from such a short outing, the team was delighted with their new toy. " We had a ride day on Monday at Oran Park and not a thing went wrong," said a
satisfied Matthews. " Considering it was not a serious hit-out, the performance of the car was great "The team did an excellent job. They finished the thing at 0230 on Monday morning and the · whole team is looking forwa rd to getting their teeth into it." Team technical chief Wally Storey said that the Holden Motor Sport-engined car was straightforward, but not easy, to build. "There were no real problems," said Storey, "apart from the fact that there is a lot of work in building a car if you are already racing one. There are a lot of things that are different in
the car and you cannot afford to be too adventurous with a brand new car. Most of the other teams have taken a while to get to grips w ith the new VYs but the indications are that it is a good car." While Richards was coming to grips w ith the new car, Jamie Whincup and Fabian Coulthard w ere also due to have some seat time in the car. Coulthard, currently third in the Carrera Cup series, has tested a Va Supercar before, with the Castro! Perkins team in 2002 w hile form er GRM pilot Whincup has not raced anything since the final round of the 2003 vases at Eastern Creek.
- PHIL BRANAGAN
motorspon news
NEWS
Mcconkey gets McConked
new VY to get Skaife's season back on track by PHIL BRANAGAN
A NEW car could hold the key to getting Mark Skaife's VB Supercar Championship campaign back on track. Skaife, currently sitting in 12th position in the VSSCS points, will have a new Commodore VY available to him following the next round of the series at Queensland Raceway on July 2-4. In an interview with MNews (see pages 32-35) the Holden Racing Team owner I dri'-(er reveals that the problems that the team has experienced this season with its current Commodores are less to do with the performance of the cars' Holden Motor Sport engines than the manner in which the engines are behaving on the track. "The biggest issue that we have going with the new engine is the dyno performance had not correlated to the racetrack performance," says Skaife. "What has happened this year is that its 'installed' performance has not been as good as we would like." This season, Skaife and team-mate Todd Kelly have said on numerous occasions that the red VYs have suffered a lack of straightline speed compared to the other leading Commodores in the championship. The problem has been highlighted by the fact that the other contending Holdens in the series have used
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n1acs
23 June 2004
CAMERON Mcconville has been st rip~ed of the 72 points he earned at Pukekohe afte, the crankshaft in his eng ine was fo und to have been below t:he permitted weight. The crankshaft, which was used durin@ he opening practice session at iclden Valley as well as in NZ, was fo und to weigh 16.090kg, just below th•e lega'I weight of 16.5kg. The team admliite.d to unintentionally breaching the rules by using an engine from 2Gl03, w hen the minimum crankshaft we igh s did not apply, Ford Performance Racing is dLre t© w heel out a new Falcon BA for Glercn Seton at the next round ol the sarie s at Queensland Raceway.
Ill Ho lden Motorsport manager Craig Fletcher has departed the posi ·on pre-Barhlagallo. A f rep lacem ent for the former Octagon i / lv1o torsp ort man has yet to be na med s:,A by the General. Another resignation is t hat of VB Supercar racing's different engines, with Barbagallo T echnical Director, Paul Taylor. Taylor winner Jason Bright and Kmart's has eyes on moving ove rseas and Rick Kelly and Greg Murphy packing expaniilirng his klilowledge in racing an 18-degree Chevrolet in their VYs aw ayfro m our shores. while Steven Richards has HMS
power in his Castro! car. . Skaife points to the major changes that a team must make to a Commodore to accommodate an HMS engine. "You put it in the car in a different position so that it is lower and further back in the car," he says. "The downstream affect is that all the things are different; the bellhousings, exhausts, airboxes, cross members, engine mounts, tailshafts, the drive shaft angles are different, you name it. "If you think that there is a bit of an installation drama and you want to change something, there is a big flow-on effect. A little change becomes a large change. That has kept us busy. , While Skaife's Race 1 win in Perth and Kelly's round win at Hidden Valley are two of the team's few highlights of the season, he says that his team continues to burn the midnight oil - and with higher morale - than it ever has. "We are working harder, probably, than we have ever worked," he says "I have been saying for the first part of this year that the a tmosphere in the team is the best that we have had it. The aura in and around the joint is really good. The vibe is really good." Skaife also details his thoughts on TEGA's cost containment proposals, how he is coping with his extreme workload and whether he thinks that the team can get back to its 2002-level of dominance.
Among the gaggle of sponsors and VIPs lucky enough to be strapped into a1/8 Supercar for a ride at Ba-baga lo was Australian cricketer JustinLanger. You'd think that anybody who earns their living by sta ring d own the world's best fast bovvlefs w ould find being a li)assenger to Steve Joh nson to be a breeze, but apparemtly Langer begs to differ. Team sources report that a wobblylegged Langer emerged saying that he'd rathe r go nose-to-nose with Sho aib Akhtar any day. Also among the Saturday's onlookers was Adam Gilchns , who attended the race as a guest , Castrol Perkins Racing.
.dlarification to a story from last issl!le:: The Holden VB Utes that are ibe1mg prepped for the Australian Safa ri are actually being pieced toge tmer at Kelly Racing imMildura, rather tha n at the Kmart Racing VB Supercar s hop owned t;iy John Kelly. ff h ere are any Konica Minolta VB S upercar teams making their pla ns 0r 2005, you might want to cons ider n ew hardware. With Commmd ore VYs and Falcon BAs eligilble fo r the series next season (at the rnoment despite the protests of som e tea m s), Toll Racing's Anthony Tratt r8Ji!li1nds us that the team's 2003 BA is awaiting a new home. The ll'ace-.ready Falcon comes with a large i~ve,ntory of spares and your first point of contact for an '05 KMViBSS assault might want to be anth.ony_t ratt@tollracing.com
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