The brief history of Friday Supercars openers
For the first time on Australian soil, the opening race of a Supercars season will begin on a Friday, but there is still a brief and recent history of it overseas.
Whilst tonight’s Sydney 500 100km opener under lights will be break new ground at Sydney Motorsport Park, a Friday season kick off has happened before.
The only previous occasions Supercars has started racing on a Friday is in 2010 and 2011 when the season openers were under the bright lights at the flash, new Yas Marina Circuit.
Below are the two Auto Action reports on those unique season openers.
Although there will be a new winner, if history is anything to go, one team will be very hard to stop tonight.
2010
FOR THE third consecutive year, Jamie Whincup took out the V8 Supercar season opener. Just 336 days ago Triple Eight celebrated pole position and a race win with its brand new FG Falcon, while at Abu Dhabi last weekend the team again celebrated pole position and victory in race one. This time however it was with their new VE Commodore and it was 11,035km north east of Adelaide at the Yas Marina F1 track.
“To debut a new car on a new circuit, qualify on pole and get a one-two will be a day both the team and I will remember for a long time,” he said.
“There was a huge question mark over the cars heading into this event, but we’ve come out strong.’ While Whincup had been fastest in both qualifying and the shootout, he was not fastest off the line.
Winterbottom showed great speed in qualifying, but not due care when gridding up. It may well have been Winterbottom’s inability to line the car up inside the grid box that cost him a race win.
Jamie Whincup and Triple Eight enjoyed a perfect Holden debut in 2010. Image: LAT
As part of the 2010 rule changes, car #5 was given a 10-second penalty, served at the first pit stop.
“I struggled to see the lines when I pulled up, but I’m sure I’ll know where they are for the next one,” he said.
“To get back up to third was a good result.
[Race engineer Campbell [Little] gave me the message on the radio that Craig was struggling with fuel, so every time I saw flames out the side of car #888, I hoped that it was a bit more excess overrun and he would run out.”
Given that Whincup won by just 1.95 seconds, the result could certainly have been different. However, differing strategies for the Vodafone cars saw them still come out on top. Whincup went long to the first stop on lap 15, while his teammate was in on lap seven.
Lowndes’ day went well, qualifying fourth and finishing second, however the die was cast when he spun on his shootout lap.
“I made a mistake in the shootout which cost me a good starting position, but thankfully a great start and awesome pit stop strategy helped me get back. I don’t know how much fuel was in the car at the end. It must have been vapours.”
Lowndes was the first to stop both for his first load of fuel and second, leading to some fuel anxieties.
HRT’s challenge for 2010 looked almost over before the race started with Tander sent to the back of the grid for a pitlane indiscretion, while Davison challenged early for a podium, being in third place on lap 11 when he pitted. However, after his second stop the car retired with an engine problem.
Both DJR and SBR had strong cars, resulting in seven Falcons in the top dozen positions. It was DJR’s rookie, Jonathon Webb, who brilliantly took eighth place, ahead of some big names.
Shane van Gisbergen put in a strong performance, similar to his late 09 pace, to climb from eighth to sixth and on the way set the lap record at 1:59.11.
Dumbrell was strong, qualifying 11th but drove up to seventh and outperformed
FPR teammate Steven Richards. Lee Holdsworth put his newly-liveried
Fujitsu Commodore in the top 10 in both qualifying and the race, as he has often done at new tracks.
There were several new combinations this year that did not show their expected speed. This included Fabian Coulthard in the Bundaberg Red Commodore, Jason Bright in the Trading Post BJR car and Russell Ingall in the Triple Eight-built Supercheap Commodore. Luck and management likely played a part in all three not showing their true form.
Track grip contributed to a number of cars nearly stalling, including Jason Bright, who dropped back to 23rd from fifth, and Michael Caruso, from 11th to 24th.
A green race with no retirements due to crash damage is a fair indication that these F1 tracks with large run-off areas nicely suit our cars and championship.
Report by Tony Whitlock
2011
ONE OF several lessons Jamie Whincup learned last year was that a great start to the season actually means bugger-all.
It was with this in mind that he reflected on winning the opening race of the year. Whincup landed the first strike in season 2011, winning Abu Dhabi’s race one by 13.2 seconds, ahead of SBR’s Alex Davison and FPR’s Mark Winterbottom. It was the 12th time in a row Whincup has won a race held overseas.
Aside from the opening laps, the race was fairly uneventful. With no Safety Car interruptions, nobody could catch Whincup, who crushingly cruised to the win ahead of the battles behind him.
Helped by the soft tyre, Whincup was one of 14 cars to go below the lap record.
Whincup wiped more than a second off the record set by Shane van Gisbergen the year before.
By finishing a solid second, Alex Davison helped to show the Stone Brothers Racing of old. Unlike his only other podium finish – second at Darwin in
2009 – Davison’s impressive finish wasn’t because of soft tyre strategic wizardry.
He was there for his speed.
Once again Jamie Whincup dominated the Abu Dhabi opener before James Courtney fended off Jason Bright in a classic in the finale. Image: LAT
Qualifying in third, he leapt from the second row of the grid into the lead with a ripper start. Whincup gobbled him up shortly after, but Davison’s speed was nonetheless impressive.
“The old car got shoved into a fence at Indy last year and that has helped the cause, getting a new chassis at the end of last year,” he said after the race. “As soon as I got that new car, although it took a few race meetings to get the feel of it and understand what it needs, there was in instant improvement. We showed a big improvement in our performance at Sydney, although we didn’t end up getting a result in either of the races.
“I’ve been quite confident in the off-season, coming into this year, based on how we finished off last year and how we went at the test.”
Winterbottom was upbeat and relaxed after the race, despite losing the opportunity to finish second. During Winterbottom’s second stop, the FPR crew member on the air-jack made a mistake and re-raised the car, allowing Davison to pass Winterbottom in the pits.
“We’ve had a few people change in the team and a guy on the spike for the first time,” said Winterbottom. “Things happen I guess, he got three out of four right and unfortunately it was the one under pressure.
“We need to make sure we don’t do it again but we’ll just cop this one on the chin. It’s better to have it happen now rather than at the end of the year.” While his TeamVodafone teammate was cruising to the win, Craig Lowndes finished a disappointing seventh.
Lowndes qualified on pole by 0.2sec – his first pole in nearly two years. But he bogged his car down at the start “overloading the clutch” – falling back to fifth in the opening laps. Lowndes then struggled with tyre preservation, battling with massive oversteer as the tyres died.
Whincup confirmed that he and Lowndes were on totally different set-ups: “We’re still learning with this soft tyre and trying to make gains, so both cars running the same thing is a slight waste.
Lowndesy tried something different; he was a bit more experimental than me and unfortunately it didn’t pay off for him.” The Toll Holden Racing Team had a difficult first race of the season. Both cars qualified terribly – Tander 14th and Courtney 20th.
Tander said the team just “didn’t get everything right”. Courtney, meanwhile, changed his set-up during qualifying – not ideal in a 20-minute session.
In his usual rag-one-out way, Tander battled back to finish a respectable sixth.
Not the race-winning stuff HRT was probably expecting, but better than last year’s Abu Dhabi result of 26th.
Courtney battled too – but not the same way his teammate did. Starting 20th, he ran into trouble in the opening laps, clashing with Jason Bargwanna on lap five.
The #1 Commodore suffered heavy front damage and Courtney drove it into the garage with a broken front-left steering arm. By lap 20 he was back on track, but four laps down.
Mark Winterbottom gets some air. Image: LAT
After the race, the stewards docked Courtney 50 points for the incident, putting his championship score at minus 23 points.
Other race casualties included Paul Dumbrell, who parked the car in the garage on lap 30. He had run as high as fourth during the race. He did better than Jason Bright, however, who retired on lap four after his car popped a seal out of its steering rack.
And Russell Ingall had his teammate to thank for his race dramas: he and Steve Owen clashed on the first lap and Ingall had to pit to repair the damage.
In the post-race press conference, the inevitable question was put to Whincup:
Is he determined more than ever to win back that #1?
“We can’t talk championship at the moment,” he replied.
“As I said last year, it’s about trying to win as many races as we can. One from one is a great start; 2010 of course is the one that got away. Let’s not dwell on that, let’s move forward.
“Having a good start is not the be-all and end-all, as I proved last year. We’ll keep our head down.”
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