Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / NEWS: GRM back to Bathurst + Supercars fuel debate
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to Full Credit to the News, brought to you by Authentic Collectibles. My name is Andrew Van Lorn, and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomeyus. Stefan, this is some late night podcasting on a Thursday night in Perth, Western Australia. Welcome to my part of the world for starters. ⁓ Yeah, we've had a pretty busy day. We've been at the track, we went to the Coates Fan Fest, ⁓ where there was some drivers involved and some fun stuff going on, and we've just got back to our little Abode here in ⁓ in Quinn's Rocks and it's time to do some podcasting. It is. It's been a big week of Supercars news. One story in particular, probably the feel-good story of the year, I'd say. Yeah, that's a very good way to describe it. Of course, we're talking about the news that Gary Rogers Motorsport will return to Supercars with a Bathus 1000 wildcard. It'll be their first start in the series since making a cameo at the Great Race in 2020. And it's a bit of a full circle moment on the whole 2020 wildcard because of course Nathan Hearn was supposed to drive that car. he was disallowed a super license, I guess is the way to say, or a dispensation on the super license. Denied a dispensation. Yeah, denied a dispensation on the super license, ⁓ which in turn denied him his chance to make his Bathus one thousand debut. And it's quite remarkable, Stefan, that it's taken six years for a guy who's had so much success in Trans Am, which is for all intents and purposes a feeder series to supercars, to Have a second crack at the Bathus 1000. He's so spectacular in those Trans Am cars. A two-time Australian champion has done some Transam stuff overseas, runs his own team here fighting against GRM and James Moffat in the Australian series. ⁓ but yeah, just a really cool story for him to finally get his chance. He's only done a couple of ⁓ test days in the Gen 3 cars with Premier. ⁓ so he's certainly lacking. inexperienced there with the Gen 3 stuff, but we're gonna finally get to see what he can do. But I think, yeah, just everywhere you look with this GRM story, it is just a great story. And it was really well rolled out by GRM and particularly Barry Rogers, who obviously has taken on the leadership of GRM in in recent years. It's not just since Gary passed, but ⁓ this is just a fantastic tribute to Gary to bring the team back to the Bathus 1000 and to be giving this young guy his big shot. That's what GRM was all about. Yeah. It's the legacy of GRM on the sport is that. And to see them back, it's it's so cool. Yeah, so to run through a few more of the details for anyone that ⁓ didn't ⁓ catch up with it during the week. So they will run a Chevrolet Camaro. It's an ⁓ triple eight built car. It was last used as one of the super cheap auto wildcard cars driven by Craig Lowndes. It's been actually purchased by GRM. So they looked at doing a lease deal with Erebus initially. ⁓ we'll get we'll talk a bit more about that in moment. Then when that fell through, they looked at doing a lease deal with Triple Eight, but ultimately decided that buying a car was a smarter financial decision. So triple eight car, it'll be backed by Valvelline. As you mentioned, James Moffat, who's been a fairly big driving force behind this whole thing as well, putting it all together. He will ⁓ so Valvelline will back the car. It'll be a throwback livery to the twenty ⁓ sorry, the two thousand Bathis winner from Gartanda and Jason Barguana. We ran a concept of what that could look like, if it was entirely based on that, on that livery, which was pretty cool. So ⁓ hopefully we've given him a bit of inspo to ⁓ To chase there, complete with the white wheels. It needs white wheels. That car cannot have anything but white wheels on it. But as you say, a real feel-good story and a really feel-good story for Moff as well. Obviously, like difficult end to last year, ⁓ for the Moffat family in general with the loss of of Allen. ⁓ he was kind of kicked to the curb by Tickford, really, in in in in sort of strange circumstances after That stint alongside Cam Waters and then teaming up with Tommy Randall last year for the endurows, it looked l like a very real possibility that his run of sixteen Bathus one thousand starts could end there. ⁓ so, you know, there's a real feel good element to that as well. Yeah, and ⁓ he did mention in the in the chat that I did with James this week that he wasn't a big fan of how Tickford handled his exit last year and And I think that was largely about how late it was ⁓ that he was told. Obviously they went with Ruben Goodall and that's part of a package of Super Two and wild cards. And yep. It's no slight on Ruben. He's doing what he can do to further his career, but it really left James out in the cold undeservingly, I felt. and yeah, James spoke about how difficult the end of last year was. You mentioned The loss of his old man, obviously the loss of Gary was huge for James too. He was really close to him. ⁓ and the Transam season ended last year with a big shunt for James at turn eight. ⁓ and he was saying that yeah, he really at the end of all that didn't want to go racing anymore. He was ready to put the cue in the rack, not do transam or anything. ⁓ but a chat with ⁓ with an old friend that is not directly in motorsport, reconnecting and ⁓ sort of convinced him to To give it another go. And then as as you say, he really was a driving force behind this wild card program. The genesis of it was really a chat between Stuart Hearn, Nathan's old man, and Barry Rogers at the ⁓ Easter Bathus, the six hour, where Trans Ams were running. And and Stewie asked Barry, what what's my kid gotta do to actually get get a run in this great race? ⁓ and Once this was relayed back to James, James's mind starts working. He didn't have a deal, obviously. And yeah, James did the legwork initially trying to get the Erebus deal up and then shopping around for cars. And the way it's worked out, like for GRM to buy this car, like that'd be a 750 grand investment. And yes, it should have value being Craig's last Triple Eight car and all that sort of stuff. But when you look at that. And then the cost to actually run the thing on the race weekend. Like this is this is not a program you do lightly. Yeah, it was quite interesting in the ⁓ in the team ⁓ boss's press conference ⁓ at Wanneroo Raceway today, Barry Rogers was part of that and he talked about the fact that, you know, on paper it made sense to buy the car. Like you can do all the equations and say, Right, ⁓ buying this car is better than leasing it. But he did sort of how he said, Except for the cash flow. Because you've still got come up with the money to buy the thing in the first place, even if long term it does make sense. It's still a pretty big commitment to make. But obviously it does free them up to perhaps do other wildcard starts in the future. He talked a lot today about the fact that that's not what the focus is at the moment. It's not necessarily about that, but he did concede that that is something they could do, that it brings Super Two in back into the equation for that team, given the fact they'll go to Gen Three hardware in twenty twenty eight. ⁓ So yeah, and and I guess you do have the the freedom when you buy a car like that that the collector market's gonna be pretty good for it as well. So it's not likely to massively depreciate in value and all of that's fine, but you still need, as you say, like a you know w heading towards a million dollars to go and buy a race car like that. So it's pretty impressive thing. They did look at you know, you you mentioned eras before and I think I mentioned it before as well, but that was sort of plan A, wasn't it, to actually lease a car from Erebus, they would have had to build a car. And ⁓ Barry Ryan was in the press conference today as well and he just spoke about the fact that while he would have loved to have helped the Rogers, he's he's talked a lot since Gary's death about how he had quite a recent relationship with Gary. Their their workshops, GRM and Erebus are very, very close together geographically. ⁓ he had quite a recent relationship with Gary but they developed a very strong relationship very quickly. But Barry basically said today, like he effectively said we're not going well enough to be distracting ourselves with building cars and trying to help facilitate things for other teams. Which ⁓ look fair enough. Yeah. And Barry Rogers has been very positive in the way he's spoken about Erebus and Barry Ryan and the fact that, you know, Barry Ryan has been helpful and and tried to help the program, but it did sound like It was a real curveball. It was a yeah. It was a spanner in the works that ⁓ just before Darwin it became clear that Erebus weren't gonna be able to do it for them. And again the whole program could have been turned off. But yeah, Barry Rogers went went in again and and bought the car after the ⁓ triple eight lease offer was ⁓ eye watering, I think, was one of the ⁓ ways it was described to me during the week. So ⁓ yeah. Yep, I mean that would have been heartbreaking for Nathan Hearn had a second opportunity to make a wildcard start at the Bathers one thousand with GRM not come off through something like that, something also completely out of his control, as was the super licence situation. And that's you know, I've spoken about on many podcasts about my absolute disdain for the super licence system. It's I think it's a it's political and has nothing to do with with driver safety or with protecting teams, like it's just it it's a it it was always absolute nonsense. It still exists as far as we can tell. No one really talks about it anymore. But ⁓ it's certainly been diluted to a point that it isn't it isn't being used as a way to funnel people into directions that they want them to go as much as it used to be. But it it's it was quite interesting, ⁓ some of the comments like you spoke to Nathan Hearn, he talked about how You know, maybe things are maybe it's better it's worked out this way that he didn't get that start in twenty twenty. ⁓ I don't know if I fully agree with that, only because like a wild card start is generally the most low pressure way for a driver to make their Baths one thousand debut, particularly with a team that's not competing regularly in the championship. But I I can't see this as a low pressure environment for Nathan Hearn because he hasn't been swamped with supercar's chances. in in his time in Trans Am, ⁓ despite the success that he's had. It feels like this is a pretty important weekend for that guy if he really is and he's made no secret about his supercar's ambitions. I mean, yeah, I I think that this is there's gonna be a fair bit of pressure on his shoulders going into this event because he does have this cult following from, you know, fans of motorsport in Australia. ⁓ but He doesn't seem to have a cult following in the supercars paddock. So this is his opportunity to change some minds. It is. I guess f from his perspective, he feels ready for it now. Yeah. Where he looks back at he was eighteen when all this stuff was happening in twenty twenty and there was such a huge focus on it. If they had got the dispensation up last minute and put him in. The pressure for him not to make any sort of mistake, because again, Motorsport Australia and supercars were saying it was on safety grounds that they weren't gonna let him run and all of that side of it. If anything had gone wrong back then, it could have been a career ender kind of thing right there. So he's he's got all this experience now. Yes, not in supercars, but in racing and he's ready to step up. It's gonna be fascinating to see how he goes. It really is. And you know, like it's i if If it goes well, it could open all sorts of doors for him. And if he is the talent that so many people really think that he is, and he can he's clearly a talent driver, sorry, I shouldn't say if he is the talent, but if he can translate that talent to supercars, then the sky's the limit. But I just yeah, I I I really I feel like this is the opportunity because for whatever reason, and I don't fully understand why, but the opportunities elsewhere. Like it's it's crazy to think that. someone that highly rated by so many people just has not even not even as an Enduro co driver had that opportunity. Yeah. Well, we'll get to see him in the Bathus one thousand. It does have the caveat that let's not expect too much because it is a wild card run by a team that's not in the main game. ⁓ we'll see they haven't yet confirmed whether they are going to be part of the GM alliance. You would think that'd be a no brainer, but ⁓ they're yet to get the the tick from GM on that. But you would think that would be a pretty handy thing, ⁓ to be able to look at the data and and also what those drivers are doing. ⁓ they will get the information that comes with the car from Triple Eight. So it should be a pretty handy thing straight out of the box. But ⁓ And we'll see what their testing program is as well. And you know, exactly how they try and and and piece that together and whether they try and look at what ad if there's additional testing opportunities or whatever to help get Yeah, well Barry Rogers to me this week that they only are allocated one day. Yeah. But Tim Edwards said to us today that ⁓ that can be reviewed based on circumstance and this is the sort of circumstance where they would potentially get more. And clearly it's not just about the drivers doing laps in the car, the whole team needs to go through the processes that that you need to for for in Duros. And they're not gonna do the Ipswitch ⁓ Test. Yeah, test that straight afterwards, which all the other teams will do, they won't be ready for that. Yeah. All right, let's move on to some of the other news that was kicking about at the track today. Where do we start on that, Stephan? Maybe maybe fuel consumption was obviously a big talking point coming out of ⁓ Townsville. and there was some fuel economy testing done between Townsville and coming to Perth. This weekend. ⁓ the Chevrolet is the car that everyone talks about being most affected by the change in the fuel blend for this year. ⁓ obviously between that and the the the fuel church, ⁓ where teams are kind of incentivized to short fuel because the fuel ⁓ flow slows down ⁓ as the fuel leaves the churn and they change tires and basically send it. ⁓ it was something that obviously Cam Waters was really outspoken about. After the Sunday race in Townsville, and it has prompted fresh questions around whether a fuel drop needs to come back into supercars to stop teams trying to short fuel and then creating this sort of economy racing. ⁓ yeah, we spoke to a number of people today about that. It came up in the team bosses press conference as well. And I guess there is a mix of opinions out there, but it doesn't necessarily feel like there's a huge groundswell trying to pull the fuel drop back into play, right? Certainly doesn't seem like it's something that Supercars is going to pull the trigger on doing, even though it'd really be the easy option for them because the reason it came in in the first place back in 2013-14 was you had the Nissan and the Mercedes that ⁓ weren't on par economy wise with the Ford and the Holden. But ⁓ yeah, it is the the Ford seems to be the best and The Chevy's the worst and the Toyota is somewhere in the middle, but supposedly they're tipping a bit more fuel into that to ensure it lives. Yeah. ⁓ they have done that that testing with with the GM. ⁓ they did some mapping changes before Townsville and we believe they've done a little bit more ⁓ for Perth. And obviously they can just lean it out, but it still has to have the throttle response and all of that stuff. It's not quite as simple as just focusing on the economy. So supposedly The economy issue is is on the part throttle that it uses a bit more. ⁓ which around here there's a fair There's a lot. Yeah, fair bit of that. But yeah, that's why it was put to us. That's why it was a sort of a see felt like a bigger issue in Townsville and I was ha I was having the same thought around here. This is a real part throttle kind of circuit with some quite long corners, you know. It's quite funny, like we know we we've talked about ⁓ you know, Cam Water's comments out of Townsville. He's obviously driving a driving a Ford Mustang. the car that has the advantage in this entire scenario. And then we had Barry Ryan in the press conference basically say well he said, like, even though you know, he that he's running a he's running Camaros that are disadvantaged by this, he was adamant that he doesn't want the fuel drop back because he called it fake racing. He said we don't we just don't want that. Which I enjoyed hearing because I just feel like there's too many things are regulated and if you can't let the teams decide how much fuel they're gonna put in the car, then you're really starting to run the run the races for them basically. So yes, supercars needs to get the economy parity right, but as long as they can do that, then they shouldn't be mandating how much fuel goes in the car. Yeah, exactly. And ultimately like it's up to the teams how much they want to use. It is in their hands. So no one's telling you you have to short fuel and then fuel safe. It's just a tool that some teams choose to use to get track position or whatever. So interesting. what else? Well the Maybe BJR co drivers. Actually you you you actually you made a great joke in the press conference today where you said to Brad Jones, I can't believe GRM, a team not in the championship, has named its enduro lineup before you guys have. I like that. I thought that was pretty clever. Well Brad has a great sense of humor, but I'm not sure if it was really the day for it. He ⁓ he didn't seem to sort of want to be at that press conference, but he Did tell us that there's not going to be any surprises in his injuries lineup. So what that tells us is you've got Bryce Ford, who ⁓ obviously was full time with him last year, has long been expected to be co-driving with Andre Heimgartner, Brad Vaughan in their Super Two lineup, we expect to be with Cam Hill and Jordan Boys again with Macaulay Jones. That that's been a pretty constant thing over the last few years. So BJR is the only team that hasn't announced co-drivers. But we're expecting those three pairings to be confirmed shortly. Yep, that would definitely make sense. ⁓ all right. Well, Thursday night is soon to become Friday morning, so maybe we should call it quits on this podcast here, unless there's anything else you want to add, Stefan. Well, I guess we won't be doing Thursday night track podcasts if Tony Quinn has his way and we're doing single day events. That was something interesting during the week that that Tony came out with those comments. What did you think about that? Yeah, I always think that it's something that I'm surprised to hear that from Tony, to be honest. It's it's something we do hear a lot from drivers, particularly drivers that have gone and done a cameos in NASCAR, which is a very condensed schedule, and kind of come back and go, Hang on, why do I have to get to Darwin, for example, on a Tuesday and not leave till the next Sunday night or Monday when ⁓ these guys just fly in on the day and practice and qualify and then go racing that night and then and then disappear. ⁓ and it's one of those things that again, when you if you just look at it on the surface, you go, ⁓ yeah, that that does seem crazy. But obviously we're a sport that's funded on two things, effectively. One is broadcast money and one is state government funding for major events. And those state governments tend to want multi day events and they want access to drivers to you know, t in the build in the lead up to the event, to build the event up. They want the signing session at down on the four ⁓ you know, ⁓ in Darwin there and Coates or wherever. Yeah, that that's right. ⁓ so they want those kinds of things. So it's I think that it's not a model that's gonna work for supercars unless there's some sort of significant funding shift, which is highly unlikely to happen. Yeah, the whole thing is structured around essentially three days ⁓ the other element of that is actually the support categories, which ⁓ also create revenue for supercars. Yeah. So supercars just cutting it back to single day would be just slicing an enormous amount of their revenue off. I do think though, if you were starting from scratch and you're thinking what's the best for the fan and to fit the marketplace, I don't know if you would start the series up right now and start with three day events. Yeah. But it's so caked in that I don't really see them walking it back. Yeah, that's the thing. Like I say, you can make a bunch of arguments about how it's a great idea to cut it back. Like, you know, we're gonna go to the track tomorrow for what is it, fifty minutes of practice. And we've gotten used to Friday races. Yeah. They've ⁓ given us those for the last couple of events, so it will seem a little lame tomorrow. Yeah. ⁓ just to have practice. Yep. ⁓ but yeah, but th yeah, like I say, I don't know how you enact such a massive change to the entire funding model of the sport. And go back to these short events. And it's maybe Tony's just a little upset that he hasn't been able to get you know, 'cause one of the issues that's that's really casting doubt over the future of QR's plays on the calendar as soon as next year is the fact that the Queensland government doesn't seem to wanna stump up money for it. It's kinda going, Well we do towns or and we do the Gold Coast, and we're pretty happy with that and that's ultimately what has left. Ipswich at risk of falling off the calendar in favour of Phillip Island, where the Victorian government is going, Well, we've got a bit of leftover cash now that Motor GP's gone. We've got this Australian Grand Prix Corporation that we're kind of that that is a government department already. What can we get ⁓ to do? Well, maybe they can put together a supercars round and that will come in government funding. And suddenly that's what looks like is gonna happen for next year. And Quinney's other one being Topo. Yeah. where ⁓ the crowd has been less and less each year but they kind of ⁓ the numbers I they got their two days numbers didn't look as bad this year because we knew Sunday was almost certainly going to be cancelled and more people piled in on Saturday and it looked better from that perspective. So I'm sure a bit of that colored his view as well. But it was interesting too that he said like we've been doing three day events for fifty years and maybe it's time for a change. But it has only been in the last fifteen or something years that supercars did really i it used to be a Sunday product. Yeah. And they worked hard to to put racing content on a Saturday to try to get more people there. Obviously then increase the T V revenues. And it's something we've seen essentially F one and Motor G P then copy, if you like, with doing sprint races on a Saturday to try to yeah try to expand the actual interest in the weekend. So yeah it It is a relatively relatively modern thing that supercars has has raced through Saturday as well. Once upon a time the whole championship was done on a day. That was the entire season was on a day. So anyway, all right. I think we should definitely leave it there now. ⁓ make sure you stay tuned to Speed Cafe across the whole Perth Super four forty weekend. We'll have everything covered and we will be doing our daily podcast starting from either today or tomorrow, depending on what time you're listening to this. Actually it will definitely be it'll be Friday by the time you listen to this. So starting from tonight we'll have our daily podcast as well. We'll endeavor to get to them a little bit earlier than this one. ⁓ yeah, so we'll ⁓ speak to you then.