Melb GP Thread.

[Roy]

So since you seem to know the backgrounds of many of the drivers, how can you come up with ...

When will ppl in this country realise that sedan drivers are considered one step above cab drivers in the real world of motorsport.

If you read what i have said im not claiming that F1 drivers are all rich celebrities. I made a simple observation that its drivers are not always the greatest drivers. Most of the time they are, but not always. LOL, look at poor old ex F1 driver Alex Yoong.

I just found your statement about tin top drivers a bit below the belt.

[teejay]

i never said everyone in f1 was there for some hidden agenda, but there is a selection of drivers who are

[Duncan]

Interesting point of view relicr31act.

tell me, if racing is all about open wheelers, why is it that australian formula cars are full of 1 season talents, or kids riding on dad's money?

perhaps there is no commerical opportunity in formula cars and they have no relevance or interest to most sponsors?

F1 being the obvious exception...1 category out of all of them

[relicr31act]

In Australia ( a microscopic arena of motorsport) it is the reverse to most of the rest of the world where for whatever reason open wheelers (read FFord) is treated as a stepping stone to V8 supertaxis. This is an anomaly that I and many others don't quite understand. It was not always the case as once upon a time the likes of Geoghan, Brabham, Gardiner, Matich, Stilwell, Harvey, Perkins, Jones, Schuppan just to name a few were considered great Grand Prix and open wheeler drivers who just happened to drive sedans for something to do when the Tasman series wasn't running. They all learnt in the lesser formulas and just about all had a crack at the Grand Prix scene with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately ppl of the younger generation have been brought up on a diet of sedan racing and bugger all else. To say that most open wheeler drivers in this country are one season wonders is a bit rich. How did Greg Murphy, Garth Tander, Craig Lowndes, Mark Webber, James Courtney, Ryan Briscoe, Marcus Ambrose, Greg Ritter, Rick Kelly, Todd Kelly, Russell Ingall, Steven Richards, Will Davidson, Alex Davidson, Simon Wills, David Besnard and many others get their start? Go karts (open wheeler) then Formula Ford (open wheeler) and in most cases Formula Holden or Formula Three long before most took the commercially sound but easier route of the V8 supertaxi. This is the main reason why it has taken over twenty years for someone (David Brabham's stint with Simtek doesn't really count) like Mark Webber to make it to the forefront of F1. The point is that good open wheeler drivers make great sedan drivers (it is easier) The reverse is never true! I might be mistaken but I can't think of one sedan driver that has gone to openwheelers and done a great job but I can certainly of plenty that have gone the other way. Point proven! I would be interested to know if any of the participants in this thread have actually ever driven anything other than sedans to base their opinions on, other than relying on conjecture and hearsay.

[Duncan]

nope, I've not driven a formula car, since I can't get the sponsor backing to do so, while I can get support for touring car racing.

You are absolutely right about all the names you have listed above, they all started in formula cars, and every single one of them has spent years racing touring cars. As I said, that is simply because there are more commercial opportunities there, and there are very very few people who can pay their own way all the way to F1.

However, I totally disagree about the situation around the world, in every major country touring cars are the most sucessfull categories, and these days they are 90% silohette/sport sedan style.

eg.

Super Taxis in Aus

Nascar in US (much bigger than Cart and Indy put together)

DTM in Germany

BTCC in Britain

and to a lesser extent ETCC in Europe.

Yes Europe and UK have sucessful F3 series, but I would say that 90% of those drivers see it only as a tranition to F1, and their supporters and sponsors are only in it in the hope they will make it to F1. Feel free to name someone who has raced in a single formula series (except F1) for 3 or more years.

[relicr31act]

Granted there are some very commercially strong sedan series in other countries, catering for the lowest common denominator will always attract a strong following. Nascar has to be the most pointless and uninteresting form of racing there is and is commercially the biggest series on earth! Go figure.

[teejay]

no racing is pointless: the point - to see who is quickest in a bunch of cars

its popular because its well advertised, well run, and is close racing.. a $succe$$ful formula.. whoops i put in $ signs rather the s's ... silly old me.

[Roy]

Granted there are some very commercially strong sedan series in other countries, catering for the lowest common denominator will always attract a strong following.  Nascar has to be the most pointless and uninteresting form of racing there is and is commercially the biggest series on earth!  Go figure.

Your a dill:). Because you dont like a class of motorsport, any fan must be some knuckle dragging caveman of lesser intelect / social status...whatever then yourself.:confused:

Many of the drivers you mentioned attempted to pursue careers in open wheelers, and you know what happened to these guys. Your analogy of comparing some of the Aus motoring greats to todays younger drivers is ridiculous. The money, the engineering, the entire industry was different back then. Sure it was big business, but dedication could get you 80% of the way. Today dedication can get you maybe 25% of the way.

Anyway...nothing i say will change your mind, and im sure not subscribing to your thinkng.

LOL...one final point. You ask how many of us have actually driven open wheelers. I wont BS on a forum so ill say NO, i havent. Ive sat in a FF, been around them, helped engineer and build an open wheeler. But im betting if you have driven open wheelers , then your not a young bloke like many of us, and your from a vintage or two above me when the whole racing thing while never cheap, was cheaper and more accessible

[Beer Baron]

Super Taxis in Aus

Nascar in US (much bigger than Cart and Indy put together)

DTM in Germany

BTCC in Britain  

and to a lesser extent ETCC in Europe.

and one of my favourites JGTC in Japan.

I have to say as a motorsport fan.

I love F1 as the pinicle of motorsport. In every way it's the top shelf.

At the same time, I have nothing against V8 supercars as they are a good sedan car series. In fact I can't think of one category of motorsport I don't enjoy to some degree. yes many categories could be improved and I think the new F1 rules changes are terrible, but that's life.

[relicr31act]

If you look at my original post I was just trying to make the point that Allan Moffatt giving Mark Webber advice on Grand Prix racing is like a pennant golfer giving advice to Tiger Woods!! The fact remains that F1 is the best and most demanding area of motorsport. It is the most demanding in driving skill required, perseverance, media skills, political skills etc. To succeed in F1 a driver must be the complete package not just good behind the wheel. And to say that I am pushing a particular barrow in regards to Nascar/V8 supertaxis I think you are missing the point. I don't dislike them as much as you may think. I just think that it needs to be pointed out that most of these guys just aren't as good as open wheeler drivers, period. If someone has never had any experience other than driving moderately fast road cars (which are all slow in reality in comparison to racing cars of any persuasion) it may be difficult to comprehend that a V8 supertaxi is a heavy, undertired, technologically backward excuse for a racing car! As for the racing if you like processional, contrived, one dimensional freight trains then maybe that is your thing. I don't think lesser of ppl who do I just know that somethings are better. Some ppl are happy with cask wine, some ppl aren't that is all. I just think it is sad that in this country young kart racers don't dream of winning Monaco anymore they want to win the Clipsal 500/Bathurst. No wonder we are having trouble getting more than guy every twenty years into F1.

[teejay]

20 years ago , moffats team did not have a 200m dollar budget, nor the quality of tyres/brakes/chasis available to him that ppl like webber do have today....

driving one of those old cars must have been a real challange... some might say it was alot harder then driving today.. requiring more skill... just maybe allan moffat has some sort of clue?

[Roy]

Anyway, F1 wont be aroud in 2 years if it continues on its current path, so more drivers for the tin top classes:)

[teejay]

just because they have become expensive slot cars doesnt mean they are heading for self extinction Roy....

the best ever single seater racing was the CART series in the mid 90's... close, hard racing with alot of passing.. it was exciting, interesting, i remember being 13/14/15 and staying up till 2-3am on school nights to watch ppl like Andretti, Tracy, Zanardi fight it out. Shame it took the life of a few young talents... f1 in the same era was almost as good, and just like CART, has slowly gotten worse in the last 5 - 6 years...

[Roy]

F1 as we know it could very well be gone in 2 years. So far Ferrari are the only ones committing to staying in F1. There is a real threat that the manufacturers and all the existing F1 teams will start doing there own thing.

[relicr31act]

']20 years ago , moffats team did not have a 200m dollar budget, nor the quality of tyres/brakes/chasis available to him that ppl like webber do have today....

driving one of those old cars must have been a real challange... some might say it was alot harder then driving today.. requiring more skill... just maybe allan moffat has some sort of clue?

Well I will disagree with that statement. 20 years ago or maybe a little longer early 80's anyway, Moffat was sponsored by Peter Stuvysant(spelling?) and he ran Mazda RX7's and had the biggest budget in the paddock. Don't misunderstand me, I have a lot of time for A. Moffatt, he was probably the most professional driver around in Australia at the time. In fact I remember seeing him at a press conference and throughout the interview he had a lit cigarette burning away but doesn't smoke! But go and have a drive in a Rotax go kart and then jump in your road car and tell me which one is harder to drive! The quality of the equipment is irrelevant. In F1 twenty years ago they had 1200hp in qualifying trim

and were notoriously difficult to drive. And who became the master of these beasts, a certain A.Senna. But no doubt there would have been sedan drivers around that would have been just as good as him, yeah right.

[teejay]

you cant use one driver to create an argument that all drivers in f1 are better then all other drives

same as today, shumacher makes all drivers look average, not just tin top drivers.

[Roy]

My thinking, you take an open wheeler driver. In his 1st season he comes 2nd in a series like British FF, beating his team mate who comes 4th. Cant afford the second season, or moves onto a F3 series in Europe where he comes 3rd, perhaps better.

This is the story of so many Aussie, many actually winning the series, but cant pick up the funding to bankroll an F3 series with a good team, so looks to GT racing or touring cars. Meanwhile flashback 2 years, his team mate who he beat in Brit FF has money from his uncle/family who are leaders in their respective industries and the sum of $5-20 million for a years racing is seen as achievable.

If you can go through one of the current F1 drivers, and name a driver that got their purely on paid drives, i will be absolutley amazed. You can guarantee they had to have some serious coinage even to get their bumbs into a junior category car. Button is the closest i can think of.

And if you go looking at Courtney for example, he was living and racing in Europe as a kid, Briscoe with factory support...and even they are having to take a step sideways in order to stay in a race seat. Weber was stuggling despite numerous testing opportunities to get a gig. And if it wasnt for Stoddart id be willign to bet would never have got an F1 drive.

Fitness would be the biggest reason why a tin top driver couldnt drive a top class formula car. Id say skill, many of the GT drivers, Rally drivers and Touring car drivers would have the same level of skill and ability to drive the car.

Add then there are people like me. I respect a teams ability to engineer a pure racing car from the ground up, ie formula car.

But i hold the people that take shopping trollies and re-engineer them to the point where they end up with a car capable of speeds and cornering/braking forces never imagined by the original manufacturer:)

Meh now im just dribbling. If Formula 1 drivers are so much better, have a look at Max Wilson and Alex Yoong. They couldnt even match the speeds of their cask wine drinking team mates.

And to paint V8 Supercars as being...

heavy, undertired, technologically backward excuse for a racing car! As for the racing if you like processional, contrived, one dimensional freight trains then maybe that is your thing.

That is yet another stupid statement. Lets go and bring back tobacco sponsorship in this country, somehow convince more/bigger sponsors that crazy expinditure on technology will improve the spectacle, even though it will cull grid down to 12 cars:(. Have the same if not worse racing and increase the category as a whole, and end up with GT cars like the Supras and 350Z, 550GT, Maseratis that race in Japan and at Le Mans.

[relicr31act]

When I say F1 drivers I am assuming ppl know that I mean the ones of substance. This does NOT include A. Yoong, A.De Cesaris, Nakajima and any number of other that were there because of reasons other than their driving ability. In V8 supertaxis there has been there share of duds, Thexton rings a bell, Brede another. Any category has its share of pretenders that is unavoidable, it is the nature of the beast. In tennis all you need is decent pair of runners and a decent racket and plenty of TALENT to succeed. Unfortunately in motor sport the tennis racket costs buckets of money and if you have that then talent is of secondary importance.

I stand by my comment that V8supershoppingtrolleys are dinosaurs. Live axle, pushrod, 1350kgs! 660hp through a ten inch tyre? what else would you call them? Admittedly the formula has been a success but at some point it will be like one day cricket, stale and predictable. What are they so afraid of that they only want two kids in the sand pit or do Ford and Holden own the rights to building dinosaurs? The racing is OK as it goes but why not have other brand? Group A for a time was the best sedan racing in the world but was doomed by the FIA (now there is a bunch of knuckledraggers that couldn't run a raffle) deciding that the rules wouldn't be f###ed over by one manufacturer or another. Then nissan comes along builds Godzilla and group a is dead in the water. In Oz unfortunately the powers that be thought that the right formula was V8 to sooth all the flanno wearing drunks in Reid park and nothing else. don't bother about all the ppl that thought the sweetest sounding sedan ever built were the Walkinshaw XJS jags!! or 635csi BMW! What we have now is cookie cutter cars with the same six racing for the lead week in week out. It needs fresh blood now or mark my words in five years it will be gone. They need to change the ridiculous name (what is so super about them after all) and allow in other brands using lead trophies for parity and spice it up a bit. Then you really would have a world class sedan series which could be exported without ppl having to be told that a Commodore is GM and a Falcon is a Ford!

[Roy]

I dont disagree re the V8s

But look at the alternatives and show me a viable one. Mitsubishi just pulled out of rallying, so doubt they are serious about building a V8 Supercar team.

Who else is there, Toyota? How many cars would they sell in this country if they had a winning touring car team? They would sell about as many extra Avalons as Nissan did GTRs. The basis of the car isnt even the same as the road car, ie, front engined, V8, RWD. The touring cars are so removed from the road car, but the basics are there.

And i still say there is no way Toyota Australia are going to commit the millions to go V8 supercar racing, when as you point out, the class doesnt suit any of their raod cars, it wont lift their profile locally...it would be a waste of their money.

I agree some of the greatest racing was the Grp As, but those days are behind us, and at the end of the era im so glad we didnt go 2L BTCC. What other class of motorsport can a country of 20million people sustain that involves local car manufacturers?

In all seriousness if you have the answer, then Cochraine earns way too much money and id love to see soemone bump him off his mantle:)

[Duncan]

Actually to continue my 2c, Cochrane typifies everything that is wrong with Australian Motorsport.

A ridiculous percentage of the Australian racing budget goes to 1 category, Super taxis, and they give *nothing* back to the sport as a whole. They run a feeder category to push up the value of their franchises, they charge big bucks to categories to race for them. They charge fans big bucks to take their family to the track. They charge big big bucks for TV rights.

And they give nothing back to Oz motorsport as a whole....the death of the PROCAR circuit shows that.

Not to mention my pet hate, they keep focussing on street races on temporary circuits, making sure that there are less reasons to make a permanent circuit that other formulas can use.

/rant