Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Sandown 500 daily: Friday
Transcript
- Sandown Daily Friday: Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of our daily podcast from the Sandown 500. My name is Andrew Van Loren and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, it was a day that started with some fairly frank opinions on things like the calendar from a few team bosses in the Friday morning press conference and ended with what I can only describe as bizarre scenes of the likes of Barry Ryan, Supercar CEO, Barclay Nettelfold, enjoying hot laps with Brody Kastecki. Around the sand down circuit. That was an interesting day. It was. And yeah, those hot laps, it was probably the biggest media scrum I've seen at a supercars race in a while. Yeah. There was plenty of interest in it. Ironically, Jess Wilson, the leader of the opposition in Victoria, was doing a hot lap with team eighteen, but there was no one over there. It was all about Barclay and Barry. Yeah, well normally the the CEO of the the of supercars slash owner of the category effectively would be over greasing the wheels of a politician that many think is gonna be the the the premier of this state in the not too distant future. But Barclay was having fun next door. Literally right next door. And he was having a lot of fun. He's already got his big Victorian deal done with Philip Island. But maybe it is good that Jess has seen the state of the track all the way around here at Sandown 'cause a few dollars wouldn't go astray here, I'd say. That is a very, very good point. But It was so just to to recap a little bit, so at the motorsport ministry's charity night on the Friday night of the Gold Coast five hundred, Barry Ryan, Wayne Bryant, who is the head honcho at Repco, obviously an important figure in the sport given that that is the naming right sponsor of both the series and the Bathurst 1000, and Barclay Nettelfold all purchased hot laps. With Brody Kastecki. I think they pay twenty five hundred bucks each. It was a clever auction from Crusher who runs the night. that there wasn't just one hot lap up for grabs, evidently. So everyone who would put up their hand for that much money had to cough up. Yeah, so these guys paid this money. Obviously, the money going to charity, so it's a good cause and all that sort of stuff. But it was just fascinating, particularly with Barclay, like he just had So much fun with it. He'd never done a supercar's hot lap before. He'd done some course car rides and and the safety car lap and that sort of stuff. But he was just he was like a little kid. Well, the first surprise was that he kitted up in the full shell V power racing stuff. Not only the race suit, but also the hat. Hat everyone. I think he went full fan. Yeah. and he was just bouncing around. But yeah, I nearly didn't recognize him when he came up to us before before the lap in in all that gear. Yeah. His reaction was priceless as well. he was just so excited and and blown away by the experience, as most people are when they do go for a lap in a in a V8 supercar for the first time. But to see someone of his kind of presence and of, the position that he holds within the sport just in that complete fan mode, it was it was enjoyable. It was fun. Yeah, he's effectively owned the show for five or so years now. So I was kind of surprised that he'd he'd done a little bit of stuff. He'd done like a safety cart lap with Skafi, but Never been in a race car. Yep. And then it was Barry Ryan. And obviously bit of a reunion there after everything that happened back in 2024 or end of 2023 and into 2024 between him and Brody. So it was obviously a bit of a cheeky play from Barry to to bid on this. I was a little surprised. I know you can't learn too much on a on a on a hot lap, but given the fact that, performance personnel going to another like a performance listed person going to another team. Getting in their car and going for a lap is not something we see all that often. so I was a little surprised that that DJR were happy for it to happen, but they were and the theme was all the, you know, it's the reunion. We we made up all the troubles. None of it ever happened. They've been best of friends all along. That's pretty much what the storyline was, right? Yeah, there's some retrospective license going on there with with some of that, but just parking that aside because obviously it is a charity thing. Yeah. They were genuinely having some some real banter and rough housing when they got out of the car and stuff. It was I think you said it off the top, it it was slightly bizarre. It wa it definitely was. And I think last time Barry went for a hot lap was in twenty twenty three or something with Will Brown. So he'd never been for one with Brody. So it was there was a kind of first there as well. But yeah, a very interesting way to to end the day. let's go back to the to the start of the day. Well actually no, let's go through some results from the two practice sessions we had. It was that kind of weird one practice session that split into two kind of thing, like two 25 minute sessions with a 15 minute break in the middle. So there was no on track action until nearly three PM. which yeah, the cadence of those days is a little bit weird, but anyway, it doesn't matter. No on track supercars action, no supercars action on track until reasonably late in the day. the first session was topped by Jaden Ojada ahead of Brody Kastecki, Thomas Randall, Matt Payne, James Golding, Cooper Murray, David Reynolds, Will Brown, Ryan Wood, and Chaz Mostit. And the second session was topped by Matt Payne, Brock Feeney, from Brock Feeney, Cooper Murray, Andre Heimgartner, James Golding, Ryan Wood, Anton Di Pasquale, Ojada, Will Brown, and Brody Kastechi. first session? What happened? What went on there? that was the Jack LeBrock drop gear session. So MSR realised pretty quickly that they'd left the wrong drop gear in Jack LeBrock's car. he returned to the pits after a couple of laps to have that rectified, didn't go back out, but you've breached the rules and he ended up being disqualified for it. Yeah, it normally doesn't take them too long to work it out once it's on the track. Yep. Teams have done this before and they'll do it again, but a pretty basic error from those guys. But the talking point in the first session in particular was Chaz Mostett and some complaints around the gear shift. You went down to Walking Shaw's after the second session. What did they sort of what was the vibe down there? Yeah. there didn't seem to be massive concerns about the gear shift. I think Chaz was complaining that the shift cut wasn't as clean as he as he likes it to be. So but there didn't seem to be anything massively mechanical wrong through the the shift linkage back to the transaxle. So it could be an electronic issue. Obviously there's there's electronic components to the shift cut and all that sort of stuff. So I think probably the the concerns were more based around the fact that he was Only nineteenth fastest in the second session. Obviously he was just on the fringe of the top ten in the first, but I think there's the the deeper concerns were actually car speed there as opposed to whatever was going on with the odd shift, because it was an inconsistent problem as well. So it's not something that could be put down to his performance relative to the rest of the field necessarily, because it wasn't something that was affecting him on every run. Yeah, tricky potentially there for Chaz, but I do wonder if the The pressure of the finals might be playing a little bit into that. It's easy to forget that last year, obviously, they got such sensational results in the finals, but some of the some of it was a bit ropey for Chaz, including the the early stages of the Adelaide event where he'd had a shunt and they'd had some mechanical stuff and he was blowing up about that. So yeah, it's finals time. They need to make it count. Yeah, well let's have a bit of a chat about the finals runners and how they did fair today. Obviously good day for Matt Payne topping that second session. Brock Feeney, that's kind of I mean that's our top two in the championship. That's sort of the guys we expect to be at the front. That's following the screen. It was quite interesting though. They had quite contrasting views of their days at the end of it. This is a track where Groves have been okay but not stellar in the last couple of years. So Matt Payne was talking a fair bit about the amount of effort they'd put into this track. in particular and he was quite genuinely encouraged to be fastest, talking about they'd they'd tried some things and they're also using Kai Allen's car, his teammate, to to experiment as well, although we might get to that later. but Brock Feeney, even though he was second fastest, he said we actually had a bit of a struggle today and then we just put the green tire on and it fixed everything. But that's not gonna wash for the race. So they've still got some work to do there. Yeah and I and I kinda wonder we we Had a bit of a chat to the guys at Team 18 at the end the day, but probably didn't delve into it as much as we wanted to. But that was a really weird second session for Anton Di Pasquale as well. And obviously a fair bit of expectation, even though he's coming in to the weekend seeded seventh. There's been a lot of talk about how good Team 18 goes at Sandown, how the chef can be pretty handy thing in a straight line, some big long straights and that sort of stuff. But he was four seconds off the pace until two minutes left in the session. Obviously, that's not a representative time because he wasn't little driving around four seconds off the pace, but He was coming in and out, in and out, in and out. Almost like you would do if you were trying to sandbag, but there's actually no reason to really do that. and then they put a green super soft on at the end and he jumped up to seventh, which kind of looks okay. But I do wonder if there's a similar thing to what you're talking about with Brock Feeney there, as to whether he's actually happy with the car speed or whether it was a case of just putting a tire on and and dragging it around and and sticking it somewhere in the top ten. Yeah, and again it's one of those ones where there's a mix of tire qualities and then also compounds today as well, because Saturday's on the super soft and then Sunday's on the soft. So as always a blurry picture from practice, but a couple of notable question marks around some finals. Yeah, well, even Cam Mortis. I mean, he was only twelfth fastest in the second session today. Tommy Randall was reasonably quick in the first session, but obviously you kind of see the second session being a little more indicative as the tracks getting better and that sort of stuff and this is a track that Tickford does struggle on as well. And we know consistency has traditionally been an issue for that team, which makes Cam a pretty exciting prospect in a final situation like this because you never quite know where he's gonna land. He's certainly good enough to do the job if he's got the car under him, but you'd think there'd be a bit of work going on in that Garros tonight as well. And last year obviously everyone remembers that on the Sunday Cam clashed with Matt Payne and it ended both of their championship charges. But really Cam said all but ended on Saturday when they just had a shocker on the Super Soft tire in that race. So the Supersoft still has been a bit of a weakness for them this year and I can't help but think that they'll be looking at the weather forecast, hoping there's rain on it for tomorrow. Now I'm looking at the results here from the second session and I see a D S Q next to the number twenty six Grove Racing Mustang. What might that be for, Stefan? Well, supercars maybe they're having the celebration tonight 'cause they finally got on a tire pressure infringement. Yep. there wasn't a lot of detail in the Stewart's report, but it did say the right rear dipped under the minimum permitted pressure during that practice too. And so therefore it's a DSQ. These disqualifications don't really mean much in practice. No. because they've got no consequence going forward. But obviously back in Perth on on the Sunday race there was the now infamous case where Kai's car did dip under just before the start and the Motorsport Australia stewards elected not to penalise. Supercars even appealed that and lost that case. So they've they've got a win here. Feels like they took the slightly more straightforward path this time around, which recommended penalties table comes in handy sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. Let's just finish up by having a chat about the team boss's presser. This morning we had Barry Ryan in there and Simon Brookhouse from Tickford and Roland Dane from Premier Racing. There was some interesting points made by all on on various topics. One kind of interesting or amusing exchange was Barry being asked, you know, if is is Jared Hughes locked in for next season in a full time capacity and sort of saying, We'll announce that when we want to, but yes he is. And Roland saying, I think you just announced it because he was obviously talking to a microphone at a press conference in a room. in front of a bunch of journalists in a room. So that was quite interesting. Not groundbreaking news. I think we all expected even before the Gold Coast that this was not so much as an audition but an opportunity to give Jared some miles ahead of next year. The fact the team was already talking to Supercars about what these three rounds would mean for his rookie status for next year, I think indicates that this has always been the plan. But still, you know, this was proper confirmation that Plan A is that Jared's in that car next year. Yeah, so some fun little banter with Barry. The fact that he followed it up by saying, I don't know why everyone thinks our business is their business. I guess in a professional sport when you're talking about driver contracts. if no one cared you'd probably have a bigger problem. Yep. But yeah, that was one of the takeouts from the press. So there was obviously some talk about the The team orders and a little bit about what happened on the Gold Coast with the two Chevy teams running out of fuel, which again they reiterated that it was mistakes, not some collusion from Chevrolet, which I think you know, from all the conversations we've had, we're pretty convinced. But the paddock out there is still a bit divided. not everyone is convinced. So well Barry and Roland did say like we're not helping Anton this weekend. Well, and that's the test, right? 'Cause if there's anything that comes up this weekend where it does look like they've made a move to deliberately help team eighteen, it will put a question mark on what happened on the Gold Coast. That is true. There was some interesting reaction around the calendar, obviously that was announced on on Thursday. you wrote a piece about this today based on some quotes from Roland Dane and Barry Ryan. It it's We're really heralding this thing as a win because it is that we have fourteen rounds. But the reality is we've actually basically got a facsimile of this year's calendar with a couple of little changes. And Barry and and Roland were keen to point out that there is still one major problem with this calendar. And it's the fact that we have two race meetings within a week of each other, in the middle of a ten week effective break in the calendar. And those two race meetings are in a different country. And that is a momentum issue in terms of the sport trying to gain traction in a pretty crowded sporting market here in Australia. Yeah, so all of the talks around the team's racing charter and the doomsday scenario of potentially twelve events did make 14 feel like a win. And it does make 14 feel like a win. But these were some pretty pertinent points that it hasn't really changed all that much. Obviously the TRC discussion was about how much teams get paid for events. But the so that that affects how many events there are. But the issue with New Zealand is that two years ago supercars decided to go from air freight to sea freight to save themselves money. So the teams don't save any money out of that. And yeah, the teams certainly don't like the fact that they're not racing in front of their Australian sponsors for that whole period of time. And that does make sense. anything else you want to discuss out of the day? I guess we were just talking a bit about premiere there, just to mention for Cooper Murray, who was third in practice two. Yep. as we said, we take some of these practice results with a little bit of a grain of salt, but I think there's some genuine encouragement there. I mean obviously he made the shootout and was running in the top ten when they had that extra stop on the goal coast and to to pop out here and and be in the top three is is pretty impressive and and Cooper was speaking afterwards about how well he feels like he's fitted into the team and How it actually reminds him of when he was in the Triple Eight and Wildcard program only two years ago, the the team's processes and operations feel like triple eight, which I thought was quite interesting. Obviously Roland took up that team principal role there at Premiere this year. Yeah. And he's already created a triple eight sort of environment. Yep, I think they'd be pretty happy with how the day shaked out in general at premiere there, given the fact that As I mentioned before, Jaden topped that first session, then was eighth quickest in that second session. So a pretty good effort for them all round. All right, let's wrap it up there because we have two more days of action from Sandown to come. Make sure you stay tuned to speakcafe.com. All through tomorrow, we've got qualifying, we've got racing. There's the opportunity for one of these finalists to book their spot in the grand final tomorrow afternoon. There's going to be a bit of wet weather around in the morning, we think. So it should be a pretty entertaining. Day and we'll have it all covered on speakfa.com. And Stefan and I will be back in this podcast feed tomorrow night with the Saturday edition of our daily podcast.