Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Bathurst 1000 daily: Thursday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Thursday edition of our daily podcast from the Bathurst One Thousand. My name is Andrew Van Lorn and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew's and Speed Cafe's what is your title these days, Simon? I should probably know this. News editor. News editor, Simon Chapman. It's a three way pod. It's always fun when when Chapo's involved. How was your day, boys? First day of on track action at the Baths one thousand. It's always it's always fun to kick things off here at Van Panorama, isn't it? It was a great day. Beautiful weather. Mm-hmm. Plenty of news and a couple of supercar sessions to talk about. Mm. Yeah, I don't get to come to many of these events, so it was refreshing to see a few familiar faces bump into a couple of the Kiwis and say, How's it going? So yeah, it's it was a great Thursday. Well you got forty three seconds into the pod before mentioning Kiwis. So that's a pretty good effort there, I reckon, Simon. let's have a quick run through The results of the day, we did have two practice sessions for supercars. One was for all drivers. That was the first session that was topped by Kai Allen, Tim Slade, followed by Jaden O'Jadaida, David Russell. Third was David Reynolds, James Courtney. Fourth was Cam Waters and Mark Winterbottom. And fifth was Anton Di Pasquale and Lee Holdsworth. And then in the evening we had a co-driver-only session, which was topped by Lockie Dalton, who, for anyone who has seen the preview video that we did on Wednesday, that is Simon Chapman's pick to win the great race out of canter is what he was saying. Okay, out of canter. I I think you may be stretching the You said it's gonna be an Erebus one two. No, I didn't. I said I I I picked Lockheed and Cooper to win the Great Race because I think Erebus they just they just come on form here and Lockhees Proved me right so far. yeah, just to clarify here, what's happened is Simon's not actually staying with us this weekend. So he wasn't going to be part of the podcast. But as soon as that Erebus car topped that second session, he wanted to do a Thursday victory lap when he's predicted. His plans changed very quickly when that did happen. So Lucky Dalton did top that session ahead of Scott Pye, Tim Slade, James Courtney, and Lee Holdsworth. So a couple of kind of trends there, like team eighteen, quick in both sessions. that Grove Racing twenty six car. Quick in both sessions as well. Somewhere near the front, mentioned in that top five for both of those sessions. So, anything else we kind of learned on track? Always difficult this early in the weekend. Yeah, in on a weekend where you don't actually need to qualify on pole, you just need to be there on Sunday afternoon. But what was your takeaways? Yeah, it's an environment where it feels like it might not be helpful to be fast in practice after what we saw at the bench. So yeah, you've got to take it with a little bit of context in mind, but The feeling for me is that the Camaros are in the game. Yeah. I mean, three out of the top five that you just read out from both sessions were Camaros. one could suggest that this level of downforce and drag that they've got after what happened at the bend, where they got a bunch of down force given to them and then there was a midweekend shift where they flattened the wing off a bit, lowered the drag, looks like they got a pretty good package. Well, I think Also interestingly is the Toyota's. Where were they? You've got to scroll a long way down to find them. Fabian Coulthard was was fourteenth in practice two and he was the best of the Toyota contingent. And then in practice one, I think you've got to go all the way down to seventeenth to find the same car again. So I think we saw in the second session, the co driver session, Jackson Evans had a few issues just stopping the thing. Braking issues were were a big drama today. we we'll we'll probably get into that as well, but Yeah, interesting to see, you know, they they talked big game coming into this weekend. And okay, it is only Thursday. Are they taking it easy or is this is this concerning to start off I mean, that far behind. One point eight seconds behind the leader in that first practice session? Depends what you're trying to get done in the Supercars A trailer, I suppose, in terms of any parity changes, it might be an absolutely ideal start to the weekend. No, we will talk about parity changes in a moment. We don't expect things to change from This point to come back to the Jackson Evans thing, Stefan and I did have a chat with Anthony McDonald, who's the team manager at Walk and Shore T W G and he he was kind of indicating that was more because there were some break issues today. Again, we will get onto that, but he was indicating that was more of an ergonomics kind of thing, right? Like there was there was some sort of pedal positioning issues that Jackson found that they that he wasn't having at the bend. Which, yeah, is bizarre that he wasn't having that issue at the bend. But I think it might tie into the brake discussion, which we can probably have now because drivers up and down the lane weren't happy with the performance of of the brakes today. and it seems to be due to the latest batches of pads. And so one possible explanation there with the Jackson thing is that because there's more travel, people are feeling a bit of a spongier pedal. Yeah. He actually needed to change the pedal height. for the heel and toe. Yeah. Like that's not definitively what we were told, but it's sort of tied into later conversations we were having about braking performance. Yeah, you had most of the conversations about the brake stuff. Is there any more to add on top of? Like is there you know, at the bend we were scrambling about who's gonna use what pads and are they gonna be able get through this race and there were pads being emergency transported from Europe to Taylor and Bend and all that sort of stuff. This is a slightly different situation, it feels like. It's not quite the panic station. It's nowhere near an emergency. It's just the the cars aren't retarding like the drivers expect them to. So then the teams go into the process of let's bleed the system, let's let's look at all the variables. But it might just be that these these pads aren't as are aren't exactly the same mixture because it's like baking a cake, right? When they make these pads and they don't necessarily come out exactly the same every time. Yeah, and it's not always these long pedal and spongy feels, not always that the brakes aren't actually working. But there is just nothing that kills driver confidence more than not having the confidence in the brake pedal. Even if the car is stopping, not having the feel that they look for when they hit the pedal and when you're firing into the chase, you kind of really do want that. Yeah, and so then they're going through different sets of pads 'cause you've got some pre marks that you can run in practice, but then people are wanting to actually sample their race sets. Yeah. you don't want to use up, but You don't want to get into the race and be surprised by the performance of one set of pads. So this was an extra variable in the Thursday for teams. And it also affects the way they tune the car, depending on how the how the braking is. Yeah. Let's move on to the parity stuff, which we sort of started to to talk about. And as Stefan mentioned, the Camaro is running the exact same configuration with engine and aero as it did at the bend. The Toyota Supra is running the exact same configuration as it did at the bend, but we have seen changes made to the Ford engine package. It's gone from a fifty mil restrictor to a fifty two mil restrictor. There's been some changes to the cam timing as well. All of this based on the outcomes of the barometric testing, which finished up did it finish up on Tuesday night? It did, yes. Yeah, and the report came out Wednesday night. Yeah. The report was shared with the homologation teams on Wednesday night. Yeah. Then there was a little bit of politics this morning and they finally confirmed to all teams about an hour before practice one that this change would be made, but it wasn't actually in any of the Mustangs until practice two, partly because Craig Haystead, the engine man for supercars, wanted to essentially do an exchange of the restrictors at each car. So literally take away the the smaller restrictor so it's not in the hands of the teams anymore. Yep. Yep, that does make sense based on what we've been through this year. So yeah, it wasn't until practice two that these changes were made to the cars. These are changes that will be reversed immediately after the Bathus 1000. So by the time we get to the Gold Coast, they will be back to the original restrictor and cam timing configuration. what are you what are your thoughts on it? I'll start with you, Simon. What are your thoughts on this, on this whole thing? As Stefan said, there's a lot of fast Camaros out there. There is still something, regardless of what the science says that. doesn't sit great with me about having a particularly with hardware changes like a a one off Bathist engine package for the biggest race of the year, the most important race of the year. Yeah, it's it's so tough. And I think the the bigger question around us is still I think around the aerodynamics. You know, w th that seems to be the issue in terms of the the Mustangs and the Camaros being able to to follow each other and and this this engine thing. I don't I don't know whether it's gonna be the silver bullet that That some of these teams are hoping for. you know, you've got one camp that says like on the Chevrolet side saying that they don't need it. And then there are and then within Ford, there's also some within Ford who say that we probably don't need to be chasing this, and then others in Ford who are saying, yeah, we we need this this leg up. And it's yeah, it's really hard to get a a proper read because I think there's still that aerodynamic side of things. We had some discussions yesterday with people in the pit lane around being able to follow and and we had that. Benchmark from last year, those first 60 laps of the Camaro sort of walking away with it. And I feel like maybe we're still potentially going to see that on Sunday. Yeah, I mean, I guess until we get a bit more running and tent and cars are following each other a bit more, sort of a because it is a different Mustang era package. It is, it is different. But probably one of the interesting things that came out of the barometric pressure testing, Stefan, was that because we always sort of felt like because of the way these engines are well the architecture of the engines, right? We you've got your push rod engine in the in the Chevy and then you've got your quad cam engines in the Ford and the Toyota and it was all about the fact that the quad cam configuration doesn't work as well at this altitude and that's the issue. So the expectation was that whatever was going to happen to the Ford, something similar was gonna have to be done to the Toyota. They finished this testing. Obviously the Toyota wasn't part of the testing at all last year, so they must have done inlet side as part of this testing. They finish it by doing the outlet side on the other two motors. And it turns out that the Toyota was actually the best of the three. Yeah, so I think there was some discussion around the Toyota today that was part of why things were being held up a little bit. That was the surprise for everyone that that was the best of them. And when we say that, they're all negatively affected by this barometric pressure. But yeah, it was negatively affected the least. So there's a question mark there as to why there was no change to the Toyota. there was some suggestion that it was within a tolerance of the of what the GM was producing and they've moved the Ford up to the GM. But yeah, there's there's also variables in terms of the age of the engines that they're testing that we're not fully across, so whether there was a correction factor in there for that or not. But yeah, as Simon pointed out earlier on, the Toyota wasn't very strong today. Yeah. But yeah, we don't know w again why that is. there's been suggestions through the year that in the parody box the Toroto might have a little bit more down force, but it'd be a little bit more draggy. So really good for the finals on some of those street circuits. But a question mark as to how it's going to perform here. Let's move on to another huge talking point in the paddock this weekend already, and we'll continue to be across the weekend, and I'm guessing into future weekends as well, and that is the 2027 calendar and the negotiations regarding the team's racing charter. What we know at the moment is that there are six teams, seven teams that are in favor of the proposal that has been put forward by Supercars in terms of additional payments for. A fourteen round calendar next year, and then there are five teams that are not in favour of it. And effectively we're sitting at a sixty, forty percent split of opinion when we need a seventy-five percent sign off to get this thing done or to get a fourteen round calendar going. You've had a number of chats about this thing, Stefan. What's where where are things at? Well, it's a bit of a standoff at the moment. It is a supercar civil war, like the paddock is hugely divided on this and it's immensely important. I think it's it's important to sort of lay out the fact that the TRC includes all these this calculation that then spits out what race owes to the teams. So these five teams that have rejected this proposal, they're not actually trying to negotiate more money. They are saying you must pay us what is contracted. Yeah. So the The other teams, the ones that are going to accept a lower number, are saying, Hey, we need to do this together for the good of the sport to guarantee fourteen rounds where the other five are saying if it's twelve rounds, so be it. And race claim they can't afford to to pay that. I mean, in terms of the way it's structured with those additional rounds, it's just not viable for them to do it. They'd lose money on those rounds. So yeah, where it goes from here, we'll we'll just have to wait and see. I guess you know, on the the side of seven teams that are in favour of taking the deal are the four of them are the teams that had representatives as part of the kind of small group of team owners that was initially negotiating with race on this. So effectively I guess it's it's their deal that they've come together with race on for this. and then it just obviously hasn't been as well received. to the wider team group as they were hoping for. But it's yeah, it's pretty nasty out there. So there was a negotiation that took place last year just for twenty twenty six. It was sort of a band-aid to get by and then this this big discussion would happen going forward. And rather than race dealing with all of the teams, it was determined that Matt Stone, Brad Jones, Brett Ralph and Ryan Walkenshaw would represent all of those teams. So yeah, that's exactly what's happened. They've worked on this for nine or ten months and they've come to this solution. And then we may as well name the other five Triple Eight, Groves, Erebus, Premier and SCT, which is the rec that underpins the Objective Racing Car. there's some pretty heavy hitter business people in that group and they've asked for more information from race on financials, on on past financials as well as projections. And they certainly feel that they can get a better deal done than what has been agreed by that four man group. The whole thing is just we talk about parody not being a good look for the sport, but this whole kind of this whole thing it just feels like it's holding the sport back so much. Like even the discussion, Simon, about twelve rounds, it's just It is concerning. A hundred percent, because the the problem that supercars has really got is that it's just it's not in the public view often enough. Yeah, we talk about that so often that supercars just doesn't race frequently. You know, even our full credit to the noise members often mention you know, and that and they they are the salt of the earth raw supercars fans and they're just like, Man, how long can I wait between events? And you know, th I think there is definitely a willingness from Barclay and from you know, supercars generally speaking, to to have more events and to maybe I don't know whether they're gonna condense the calendar because there are obviously a few things that they've got to consider, you know, whether that's the Bathus Twelve hour, whether that's the the literal weather windows that you've gotta gotta deal with. But twelve rounds. I don't know how long you can keep doing it and expect to to make progress, especially against, you know, the the titans like N R L and and AFL especially. Yeah. I I think one point worth clarifying is that I don't think any of the teams think twelve rounds is a good idea. There's just five of them that are willing to cop that if it means honouring the current TRC and not taking this revised deal that will mean it fundamentally means more money, but not as much more money as they kind of want to do the additional rounds. So there's still basic agreement everywhere there should be more racing, but Again, it's just a troubling sign that there's five teams that are happy to say, Well, if that's what it is, then as you said, so be it. Yeah, and and Race is a investment group that was brought together by Barclay and Nettelfold back in twenty twenty one that bought out Archer Capital and also the teams, which still owned thirty five percent at the time. And there's sort of like whispers in the background that this This five team group, there's some sort of Machiavellian plot going on of trying to actually push race into a financial stress effectively and then organise some sort of coup. like there's there's some wild stories out there. Obviously that's being denied by by everyone involved. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know if that'd be a smart sort of strategy if you wanted to be the captain of the ship to deliberately run it into the rocks and then try to take the wheel and back it out. Yeah. Very true. It's it's interesting. Like I say, I don't think there's necessarily gonna be a super quick resolution to this. This is something and this is normally about the time we start thinking about getting a calendar. This is the other thing that it it hurts the whole sport because the supercar's calendar affects all levels of motorsport in Australia with people trying to plan when their events are. And yeah, Bathurst is the sort of time where they do try to get the calendar out. They didn't manage to do it this early, last year. But we spoke to Barclay in April. And he said, this year we'll try to get it out in June. And he was really quite confident about it. I did speak to him yesterday in the paddock at Bathurst and he was confident of getting fourteen events. But you know, I'm not sure if he's entirely in control of how that rolls out. Absolutely. Let's finish up with a bit of silly season chat. It's not the liveliest of silly seasons right now. We know that there's always the potential for some pretty big curve balls on the silly season front, but One thing that again this weekend of the paddock already been a big topic of conversation is the future of David Reynolds. Simon, you've spoken to Dave about this. well sorry, you're at a media call where Dave spoke about this. and then Adrian Burgess was in the team boss's presser earlier today. Paint us a sort of picture of where things are at with David Reynolds and his future as a full-time supercast driver. Yeah, well, yesterday David said I don't know, and then Adrian Burgess earlier today said no Davy knows full well what's going on. So yeah some mixed messages between the two parties as as far as what they're they're saying to us. yeah, there was obviously a meeting between David Reynolds, team eighteen, David's manager, yeah there was some sort of suggestions that Davy needs to maybe be a little bit more more focused, more committed. Whatever that means, you know, I for a guy of of his experience, you sort of know what you're getting. Yeah. You know, I don't I don't think much is going to change between this year and next, in terms of probably the output, but team eighteen are obviously pushing him to to be better and and be closer to Anton, 'cause Anton is in the final series and Davy is a long way out. So it's it is an interesting one. If I was going to make a I guess a a gut call on whether he stays next year, like maybe eighty twenty. in favour of that happening because there doesn't seem to be someone like really threatening from the sidelines or, you know, there haven't been a lot of names sort of linked to to that seat to sort of suggest that he's on the way out yet. But, you know, it's it's Bathis, there's still a lot of time between now and the end of the season and and we've seen team eighteen leave decisions pretty late in the past. So we'll and that must be the frustrating part for Dave, even though it certainly was last year as well in terms of like just wanting some clarity around his future. And if Matt Payne is going to that team for twenty twenty eight, as every a lot of people still think is going to happen, like that surely makes Dave the clear favourite to retain that seat because it's almost a hospital pass to a young driver to put them in the seat for a year. You know, like a rookie driver and then s effectively say, well you better start beating Anton Di Pasquale. Or you're gonna be out after one year. Surely the only reason they do that is if they don't actually have a deal with Matt Payne. Yeah. And that is a loose end flapping in the breeze that they feel like they could be left out of that whole deal when they may not have a deal. Exactly. There may be some sort of agreement in some way, but the way the contracts normally work, it's it's actually hard to believe that he would have act formally signed something this far out, right? Yeah, so that is probably the the key to to this in some ways, but it is interesting that the team would be telling Dave that he needs to be more focused and more committed. We see this with drivers, they all sort of have different approaches and different styles that sort of work for them, but when the results aren't coming, and that needs to be mentioned here too, that he is getting dusted by Anton Di Pasquale more often than he should, the the questions come from the team, the pressure comes from the team. And yeah, that's sort of the position that Dave's in right now. Last year, team eighteen had an option on him that they needed to take up before a certain date and we saw the Bathurst Week announcement of him being extended for twenty twenty six. But this is just an out of contract situation. So when Adrian's saying Dave knows where he stands, well he knows what he's been told clearly, but it it feels from the outside like he's been strung along here. surely need to just make a call on it. And co-driver wages don't ma don't match full time driver wages. But eventually the risk does become that a really tasty co-drive comes along. This is when those deals are signed. These guys go, you know what? I've we're sick of waiting for what Team 18 wants to do and they jump at it. Yeah, well who makes the first move, I guess. Like and I guess this comes back to the motivations for for Davy. You know, these guys Get enjoyment out racing, does he want to do twelve, thirteen, fourteen rounds a year or is he just happy to to be a co drawer? I think he does. But I think he wants to I think his preference is to continue. Clearly he does, otherwise this discussion would have been finished already. Yeah. So I think that's the part we do know. Yeah. Yeah, but it's a as as you said before, Simon, and it was a point that that Stefan made on the preview video yesterday, like we've got what have we got left now? Four rounds of this year. Dave is a there's a very good chance he's gonna have a great weekend here at Bathurst. He's gonna go pretty well on the Gold Coast. This is part of the frustration that Team 18 has. Yes, because he he has he he has this great run home and then it all seems like a great idea, and then you get to Sydney, a track he hates. And then but this is the whole thing. None of this should come as any sort of surprise to Team 18. Like, what are they? So what are they waiting for? What they gonna learn in the next four rounds that they haven't learned in the last two years or three years or whatever it is? And not just that, the last Nearly twenty years of this guy's career, you know, like Dave is an exceptionally fast race car driver, but consistency has always been an issue for him. So the fact that his form can be patchy, it's just how he's always been, you know. But the good days was were kind of worth the the less good days, I suppose. But I just don't see what you learn between now and Adelaide that makes makes that decision for you. If you can't extrapolate everything that team knows now, like what are you doing? It seems to be the view that he needs to be put under a bit of pressure in order to perform. I'm not quite sure if that's how Dave works, but that's the situation we're in, rightly or wrongly. Cool. Anything else, boys? I think that's about it for Thursday. I think it's time for us to tuck into some dinner, hopefully fairly soon. So we'll go and do that. Thank you very much for listening. We will be back at Mount Panorama tomorrow. So stay tuned to speedcafe.com during the day for all of the session reports, news. We got qualifying tomorrow, don't we? We're we're right into it. It's happening happening already. So we'll have all that stuff covered and we'll be back in this podcast feed tomorrow night with the Friday edition of the Daily Podcast.