MOTORSPORT: Viewers skip close V8 Supercar fight
This year's V8 Supercar Championship is tight and the honours even, but the Tasmanian round didn't turn on TV viewers. Overseas glory for Will Power and Chris Atkinson?
Ford and Holden have each won two races so far in the championship this year.
?
The winning drivers at Symmons Plains near Launceston at the weekend were the same two that won in Adelaide four weeks earlier – Will Davison for Ford and Jamie Whincup for Holden.
?
Yet, Davison’s Ford Performance Racing teammate Mark Winterbottom could so easily have been the victor both days, and Whincup’s Triple Eight teammate Craig Lowndes might have been triumphant on Sunday if not for his collision with Davison.
?
The pace of the Fords, especially the FPR Falcons but also those of Stone Brothers Racing, has been a revelation after Holden whipped the Blue Oval 24 wins to four in last year’s series.
?
Apart from squaring the ledger in championship racing this season, Fords won all four non-championship races at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
?
Yet, as V8 Supercars Australia talks up the attractiveness of its series in negotiations with television networks for a new deal from next year, the audience for Symmons Plains was disappointing.
?
Ratings agency OzTAM’s figures for last Saturday’s race show an average 250,000 TV viewers in the five mainland capital cities – less than half the 510,000 in those cities for the season-opening race in Adelaide four weeks earlier.
?
Yesterday’s race did not feature among the Top 20 programs on Australian TV. While we are yet to see full data, the No. 20 program yesterday drew 420,000.
?
Adelaide’s Sunday race had a five-capital average of 435,000 – and that was down almost 30 per cent on last year (although the Saturday had been up more than 20 per cent).
?In Melbourne the past weekend the Seven Network flicked the live telecast of V8 Supercars to its digital channel 7mate, not because of any
commitments to the opening round of AFL but to show movies.
?
The next round of the championship is New Zealand regional city Hamilton’s last on its streets on April 21-22.
?
Davison goes there leading by 18 points from Whincup, whose Symmons Plains win came despite a spin at the hairpin, with Winterbottom only another six points behind – despite what he called a “majorly disappointing missed opportunity” in Tasmania, especially when his Falcon stalled in the pits on Sunday and cost him nine seconds.
?
Stone Bros’ Kiwi Shane Van Gisbergen, fourth in the standings, will go home a favourite to repeat last year’s Hamilton success.
?Holden Racing Team is struggling to match FPR and Triple Eight.
Saturday was Garth Tander’s best day in Tasmania with a seventh place finish on his 35th birthday, while James Courtney was eighth on Sunday.
?Tander has been docked 25 championship points for a clash with David Reynolds that damaged the Ford driver’s steering – and for which he texted an apology.
?
The penalty dropped Tander to sixth in the standings, behind Stone Bros recruit Lee Holdsworth.
V8 Supercar Championship standings after four races
?1. Will Davison (Ford) 567; 2. Jamie Whincup (Holden) 549; 3. Mark Winterbottom (F) 471; 4. Shane Van Gisbergen (F) 432; 5. Lee Holdsworth (F) 387; 6. Garth Tander (H) 368; 7. Tim Slade (F) 357; 8. Craig Lowndes (H) 317; 9. Fabian Coulthard (H) 315; 10. Todd Kelly (H) 282; 11. Rick Kelly (H) 273; 12. Steve Owen (H) 246; 13. Steve Johnson (F) 246; 14. Michael Caruso (H) 234; 15. David Reynolds (F) 225; 16. Alexandre Premat (H) 225; 17. Michael Patrizi (F) 222; 18. Tony D Alberto (F) 198; 19. Russell Ingall (H) 195; 20. Dean Fiore (F) 195; 21. James Courtney (H) 171; 22. James Moffat (F) 171; 23. Karl Reindler (H) 159; 24. Jason Bright (H) 150; 25. Taz Douglas (H) 147; 26. David Wall (H) 129; 27. Jonathon Webb (F) 120; 28. David Russell (H) 42; 29. Greg Murphy (H) 33.
?
Power attributed his victory at Barber Motorsports Park from ninth at the start to excellent pit stops and “perfect strategy” by Team Penske.
?It was the second straight success for Chevrolet in its return to Indy racing as an engine supplier after Power’s Brazilian teammate Helio Castroneves won at St Petersburg in Florida the previous week.
?
Castroneves was third in Alabama, behind New Zealander Scott Dixon in a Honda-powered Ganassi team car.
?The other Australian in the race, Ryan Briscoe, also driving for Penske, had problems with his rear tyres and finished 14th.
?
Series newcomer Rubens Barrichello was eighth for KV Racing, Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais ninth for Roger Penske’s son Jay’s Dragon team, and reigning series champion Dario Franchitti 10th for Ganassi.
?
Castroneves leads the series by two points from Dixon while Power is another seven points back in third, with the next round the Long Beach street race in California.
?
Meanwhile, Chris Atkinson made a glorious start to his Asia-Pacific Rally Championship with his new team, India’s MRF, driving a Skoda Fabia to victory in New Zealand’s Rally of Whangerei 28.1 seconds ahead of Swede PG Anderson, who replaced him in the Proton team.
?
Atkinson said the win with Belgian co-driver Stephane Prevost had been “an awesome effort by the MRF Skoda team considering this is a new venture for all of us driving and running the Super 2000 Fabia”.
MRF’s veteran Indian driver Gaurav Gill finished third, ahead of defending series champion Alister McRae in his Proton Satria S2000, with 65-year-old Kiwi Brian Green fifth.
?
The second round is in New Caledonia at the end of this month, with the third round in Queensland in May.
?
Hirvonen’s Citroen DS3’s clutch was deemed illegal, handing a maiden WRC victory to Swede Mads Ostberg ahead of Russian Evgeny Novikov and Solberg, all in Fords.
?
Officials also found fault with Hirvonen’s turbocharger.
?
Citroen has appealed the ousting over the clutch which, if successful, would give Hirvonen the championship lead over eight-time champion teammate Loeb.
?
New Zealander Hayden Paddon, the reigning production car world champion, won the Super 2000 WRC round in Portugal in a Skoda Fabia.
?Meanwhile, 24-year-old West Australian Tom Wilde became the first local driver in 20 years – since Rob Herridge – to win his state’s Forrest Rally, the second round of the Australian Rally Championship.
?
Wilde’s success in the four-wheel-drive category driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X was his second of the season, after taking the win at the Rally Calder stadium event in Melbourne last month.
?
Eli Evans repeated his Calder success in the two-wheel-drive division, driving a Honda Jazz with Glen Weston.
?
The pair won both heats of that category by more than two minutes.
?
The final two stages of the WA event were cancelled when the fire and medical crews were sent to a fire out of control in a barn among the forests.
?
Gordon led 328 laps and Johnson 112 in a race that went beyond its scheduled 500 laps and was surprisingly won by Ryan Newman in another Chevrolet, giving Stewart-Haas Racing its third victory of the year after two by reigning series champion Tony Stewart.
?
AJ Allmendinger notched a NASCAR career-best second with his new team Penske.
?
Australia’s Marcos Ambrose was 15th in his Ford but is only 23rd in the points – four places behind new Richard Petty Motorsports teammate Aric Almirola.
?
Ford driver Greg Biffle still leads the series from Chevrolet driver Dale Earnhardt Junior, with Stewart third, Matt Kenseth fourth in a Ford and Kevin Harvick fifth in another Chevrolet.
?
Meanwhile, Jason Plato gave MG a victory on its return to the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch.
?
The MG6 had not been properly tested until a week before.
?
Reigning BTCC champion Matt Neal also gave the new Honda Civic its first win at the Brands meeting.
?
Swiss driver Alain Menu broke his French teammate Yvan Muller’s stranglehold in the World Touring Car Championship with his win in another Chevrolet Cruze at a reverse grid race at Valencia in Spain.
?
Muller, who went sideways through a gravel trap while chasing yet another Chevrolet driver, Rob Huff, wound up eighth but still leads the WTCC with 88 points to Menu’s 61, while Tom Coronel in a BMW is third on 59.
?
In Italy former F1 driver Vitantonio Liuzzi, driving a Mercedes, won a reverse grid race in a round of the V8 Superstars series at Monza.
Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site…
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
If the price does not contain the notation that it is "Drive Away", the price may not include additional costs, such as stamp duty and other government charges.
