V8 Supercars 2008 (2 Viewers)

[ObjectsInSpace]

New season, new thread.

A few driver changes and whole bunch of new liveries on the grid. Holden play mucisal chairs as Tander goes to HRT to partner Skaife while Todd Kelly is now behind the wheel of the #7 Jack Daniels Racing. Russell Ingall defects back to Holden (Shane van Gisbergen replaces him at SBR) for Supercheap Auto, with Paul Dumbrell finding his way to a drive alongside Reckless Rick Kelly at the HSV Dealer Team. There haven't been any major reshufflings over Blue Oval way, though Team BOC have joined Ingall in crossing the floor the the Red Lions. Ford will also be running a new team called the Ford Rising Stars and have signed Michael Patrizi from the Formula 3 Euroseries as a driver, but they won't be ready until round two at the earliest.

A lot of teams have changed their liveriers for 2008, which should make the 2007 field much easier to spot:
- HRT. Had the potential to look good - as good as a Holen can look, that is - until some idiot decided to use day-glo red.
- HSV Dealer Team. Ignoring the fact that they still have the Wee Bastard as their number one driver, this is what a racing car should look like. Shame about the prick driving it. The team is also doing an SBR, running a different livery on each car; this bland effort is Paul Dumbrell's.
- Jack Daniels Racing. Jet black always looks good, but the decision to run two untried rookies last year ranks up there with the stupidest as it turned a once-competitive team into a joke. Looks better this year as they abandoned the two-tone.
- Britek. Also running two liveries. Jason Bright's #25 gets brighter, but Marcus Marshall's #26 looks like a bland NASCAR. In actual fact, it's not too dissimilar to the #26 Irwin NASCAR over in America ...
- The Beam Team. No major changes for the forer DJR outfit, but it still looks fairly good.
- Triple Eight. Thought last year's strip looked good? The 2008 edition doesn't just loo sex, it looks dangerous. If last year's car was Honey Ryder, this year's is Pussy Galore.
- SBR run the usual two-liveries strip, with James Courteny running two liveries on the one car. It's still JELD-WEN, but I have to say I like the Corinthian sidemore than the Stegbar. Russell Ingall's replacement Shane van Gisbergen will run car #9, abandonig Caltex for a new sponsor, which actually makes it look pretty mean.
- Ford Rising Stars. The newest team on the grid have gone for an all-green theme, making it look a little like the FPRs. But where I like Steven Richards' car, this one looks ugly.
- Team BOC. More of the same for the Jones Brothers, but this time they're running under the banner of a different marque.
- WPS Racing. They pick up a few minor sponsors - LG and The Coffee Club - but there's nothing really new here for the WOW car. I haven't seen Bargwanna's car yet.
- Supercheap Auto Racing (you'll have to flip through a few pages). SCAR have apparently joined forces with Team Sirromet and have produced a bright yellow racing mahine with red doors and a white bonnet.
- Rod Nash Racing (again, you'll have to flip through a few pages). With Autobahn's sponsorship going with Paul Dumbrell to the HSV dealer team, RNR found a new sponsor in The Bottle-O. I looks like the Ford Rising Stars entry and is ugly as sin.

I'm yet to see the cars from FPR, Gary Rogers, Bargwanna's entry or those from Team Kiwi, Walden Motorsport, Paul Weel Racing or Paul Cruickshank Racing.

Should be a pretty good season.

 

[Cape]

You've been doing your homework

Love the new triple 8 car (ok, I'm biased, but still!), about time they added some black into the livery I just hope we don't have to wait until the second half of the season to see them start to win. Triple 8 for all 4 this year - Clipsal 500, Phillip Island 500, Bathurst and the championship!

#9's new sponsor should sponsor Rick instead of toll

2 weeks until the start of the season, can't wait

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Face it, Cape, you'd be in love with the Triple Eight cars if they painted them in dog shit.

 

[Stevo.]

Wow... they all look like shit compared to last year, with the exception of Triple Eight and Beam Team. I really liked last year's HRT's red and white lion's livery, and now they've gone and fucked that up too by making it predominently white instead of red. Good going.

 

[Cape]

Nah, I prefer the old triple 8 livery (the blue and yellow) with betta electrical. The car now looks too much like a bloody Macca Well, it did last year anyway...

 

[Cape]

Jamie Whincup has just launched his new website, including is a forum, where he regularly posts and answers questions.
http://www.jamiewhincup.com.au/

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Oh yeah, first and third!

I'd rather have Lowndesy first and Whincup third, but I'm not complaining ... suck on that, HRT: first blood to Triple Eight!

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Argh, COURTNEY!

WHAT WAS THAT!?!?

 

[Cape]

FPR = the new HRT ... whinge whinge whinge!

I <3 Courtney, but don't take my favourite driver out, especially when it was looking good for a team vodafone 1 - 2. And Courtney maybe third

Keep it on the black stuff Jamie! LOL at HRT

 

[Stevo.]

Fuck yeah! Another Ford win!

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Fuck yeah! Another Ford win!

Whincup, I hope. I want to see that kid win just as much as I want Lowndes to.






Also, shame on the Holden fans. Again. You claim to be Austalian, but you display incredibly un-Australian attitudes. You don't cheer when three drivers are taken out of the race, especially when any of them could have been injured. With four drivers hospitalised - one critically - in three days, everyone's been treading lightly with accidents. But to cheer when other drivers crash out is fucking pathetic, and you always do it.

Murph, please learn when to give up. If another driver passes you, yield. Don't try and fight him until he's a car-length ahead of you. You're your own worst enemy, and then you go and blame Courtney. Sure, he was in a bad position, but you weren't much different. Stop blaming everyone else; you're almost as bad as Rick "I didn't do it" Kelly.

Channel Seven, please stop talking about Eric Pender as if he's the Second Coming of Christ. He really isn't. The whole "Eric Pender says this ..." and "Eric Pender thinks that ..." schtick is really tired. He might have been Rick Kelly's race engineer, but as far as I'm concerned, that's reason enough not to like him.






Plus, I noticed this and the F1 thread have been sticked. Awesomeness (and about time, too).

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Lowndes dirty driver - Winterbottom

Stephen Ottley
February 25, 2008 12:00am

V8 Supercar fan favourite Craig Lowndes has been labelled the dirtiest driver in the sport and accused of causing carnage yesterday in a chaotic Clipsal 500.

He was involved in a huge accident that took out fellow Ford drivers James Courtney and Mark Winterbottom on lap 56 of the 78-lap race in Adelaide.
Lowndes was trying to pass Courtney for second and forced his way alongside at the hairpin.

As the pair raced to the next corner, Lowndes cut across the front of Courtney's car and set both spinning into the concrete wall.

Winterbottom was left with nowhere to go and slammed into Lowndes.

"I've always rated Craig as one of the dirtiest drivers in the field but he has a big cheesy grin that hides it," Winterbottom said.

"He's a smiling assassin, I guess.

"He's the king of tapping people up the backside to push them wide.

"If you ask 29 people in pitlane - Jamie probably won't say it - they will agree he is one of the dirtiest drivers, but he gets away with it.

Lowndes blamed Courtney for the crash.

"I think he should have backed off," he said. "He was struggling with his tyres. I felt I was three quarters of a car length in front of him."

But Courtney was just as angry as Winterbottom after fighting he way through the field following a disappointing Saturday race.

"He (Lowndes) came out and got up beside and then just turned in on me," he said. "I don't know if he thought my car was going to disappear or what."

He said Lowndes had struggled to match the driving of teammate Jamie Whincup who dominated with two wins.

"It's disappointing for a guy of that experience to drive like that but I think he's under a bit of pressure," Courtney said.

Lowndes wasn't the only target for the fury of Winterbottom and Courtney.
New series driving standards observer Tomas Mezera came under heavy fire for allowing such rough tactics.

"You've got guys out there pushing people off the track and our stewards deem that legal," Winterbottom said. "This is the consequence of a new driving prosecutor.

"Yesterday I got pushed out of the lead and you've got to cop it.

"But when you get a heap of damage and you are out of the race, it's hard to take.

Winterbottom said it would be a costly and violent season with plenty of crashes if the standards weren't changed.

"You want the racing closer for better TV - that's way Tomas has been employed - but then to have cars in the wall with this amount of damage. I wouldn't deem that good racing," he said.

"He set a standard yesterday by what he did, taking no action on the move.

"Today is has caused three cars to be damaged with over 50 grand worth of damage.

"It's going to be interesting to see how he sees it because if he sees that as OK, its going to be a hell of a long season.

Asked if Mezera was the wrong man for the job, Winterbottom said: "It's not looking good at the moment".

Courtney agreed that V8 Supercars was set for a hard season of push and shove.

"Yeah, definitely," he said.

"You could see Craig was spearing guys halfway through the corner because you are allowed to hit guys in the side but not the back.

"That's the new rule now.

Unsurprisingly, Lowndes had a different take on Mezera's driving standards.
"I think people don't understand the rules," he said.

"Tomas has made it clear what he is going to accept and what he isn't going to accept.

"I think its just the nature of the track If you go off, you go into the wall.

Linky

Someone's obviously bitter about being put out of the race. While Lowndes might have made a few dirty passes, I don't think he was at fault in the accident. Nor was James Courtney; neither driver had anywhere to go. But on another forum I'm on, a whole heap of Holden fans have pounced on this to justify the altercation between Lowndes and Kelly back in '06.

I don't think they liked it much when I said that if they felt the need to bring the issue up again more than a year after it had passed, they clearly never thought much of Kelly's 'innocence' to begin with, and that on some level they were admitting he was in the wrong and that Lowndes was the true champion.

 

[Cape]

Ah geez ... Winterbottom is still bitter from loosing race 1! A little push and shoving is fine, its what makes v8 supercars, but it will be very different when they go to Eastern Creek next, as there's run off and not a concrete wall. And Courtney shouldn't be talking about dangerous driving either, how many penalties did he cope throughout the weekend for driving infringements?

I see Rick Kelly is being his usual self and twadling around in 6th place to still be in the top 3.

Highlight of the round wasn't see Whincup absolutely dominate, or seeing HRT have a terrible weekend (guess Tander will be pissed for jumping ship, or not having the drop your worst round); or Murphy saying the "F" word on the broadcast and Matthew White not even noticing, but seeing Dumbrell punt his own team mate Rick Kelly off

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

The only reason HRT signed Tander on is so they could have the number one on their cars again.

A shame it'll finally end up on Jamie Whincup or Craig Lowndes a tthe end of the season (touch wood).

 

[StuntManonFire]

How was it not Lowndes' fault?

He has been racing way too long to be making mistakes like that. Courtney obviously had the racing line and should of been given room.

They keep this crap up and we won't see a 2008 Ford champion.

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

It was a racing incidet. Courtney may have held the racing line, but Lowndes was morethan about three-quartes past. Racing etiquette dictates that both of them should have yielded to the other, but given the place where they collided, it was likely neither was aware of he other's exact location. I daresay Lowndes was in Courtney's blind spot, but Courtney was in no position to get out of the way as he was boxed in by both Lowndes and Winterbottom rightbehind him. Lowndes could not give way as it would mean either losing more than one position or finding the wall all by his ownself as he would be so far off the racing line that he'd b in the landscape. It doesn't help that Adelaide is - and always has been - a concrete canyon. The slightest of mistakes would probably result in a quick trip into the wall that you would feel before you see it. If the race had been at the Creek or Oran Park or wherever, the drivers probably would have spun off with some battle damage, but it's likely they would have made it back onto the track. They wouldn't have won or finished in a decent position barring a miracle, but they would have finished. The accident was therefore a result of driver error, environmental conditions and sheer bad luck.

 

[F2001]

should've yielded.

Few incidents that weekend with courtney that had the "ill plant my right foot on this corner because it's what you do on a hotlap" attitude... sorry... faith.

If Lowndes gave him a hint of space I bet Courtney would've smashed him in the next corner, you can't fit two there usually esp one offline on the inside.

Kind of like Trulli, bloody fast driver, but can't really race.

 

[StuntManonFire]

Courtney had the racing line, Lowndes should of given him room.

3 Fords DNF'd as a result.

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

If Courtney had been further alongside Lowndes, then yes, Lowndes should have given way. But Lowndes was more than three-quarters ahead of Courtney, and while Courtney may have held the racing line, Lowndes held position. It's a bit of a grey area, but Lowndes was in the right simply because there was nowhere for him to move. It's all well and good to say he should have, but he physically could not move without leaving the track altogether.

 

[F2001]

Too easy Garth