Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Perth Super440 daily: Saturday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of the daily podcast from the Perth Super four forty. My name is Andrew Van Loren and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, that was a pretty fun day of racing at a Wanneroo Raceway, I reckon. What do you think? It was. There was plenty of action and ⁓ it actually started this morning with a cracking trans am race between Jared Hughes and Todd Hazelwood. Yep. ⁓ just thought I'd throw that in because I felt like that set the tone for a ⁓ a good day. Yeah, a little bit of just add water there. It was a bit greasy for the ⁓ there was a bit of overnight rain. It was a bit greasy for that race. And ⁓ yeah, very good drive from Jared Hughes. That's probably one of the more impressive drives that I've sort of seen him do. So good job there. Let's move on to the two supercars races for the day. I don't think we need to go over to I mean, qualifying was entertaining today. There is something about those short circuits. ⁓ I really hope they never try and split the field to give ⁓ more space and stuff, 'cause it's actually just a whole bunch of fun seeing everyone trip over each other. Yeah, and there was nothing super dangerous today. It's not like we saw any ridiculous closing speeds. It was just some awkward tripping over one another. Yep. The Ryan Wood ⁓ incident with Job Stewart obviously was the biggest one. Yeah, a little bit of a fire under Job, I think, 'cause he had a pretty good finish to the day, to be honest. But let's go back to race one, a complete Matt Payne. Masterclass basically. He started from pole. The only thing he didn't get right was the start. He kind of foreshadowed that a little bit in his post qualifying comments on the TV where he said starts are a bit of an issue for me and I've been trying to sort of work on that. And he did get beaten to the start by Cam Waters, but once the race settled into a rhythm, he just had so much car pace on that soft tie. Like that was absolutely ridiculous just how fast he was. Yeah, I guess the Matt Payne masterclass really started in qualifying. Yeah. Nailing Both of those poles, they obviously had so much car speed that they could ⁓ sit out the end of Q one ⁓ in the s super soft session as well. So again, just n nailing it confidence, executing, ⁓ and he did the job then in the car on the track. ⁓ one of the other things from race one was squeezing Woody on the street. Yes. Yep, that was interesting. So he did get a bad sportsmanship flag for that. I don't know. I don't know if you mark him down for it though. I don't know if you want to try to get through without those or collecting as many as possible is the goal. Because Kai Allen got two. Yep. Yep. ⁓ yeah, well we got two, but for different offences. So ⁓ we actually sort of clarified this as the day went on. You your second bad sportsmanship flag is usually a penalty, but it has to be for the same offence. So you can actually collect a set of offences if you want to. And so Kai got one for Squeezing Thomas Randall on the straight, but then a different one for track limits. Yeah. Yeah. So back to the Matt Payne thing. Look, I don't know if you mark him down too much. I mean they sat in the cooldown room together after the race, had a bit of a joke about it. They're obviously actually great mates off the track as well. ⁓ it's obviously it it is kind of sketchy running someone to the white line there or over the white line. And we've seen we saw a fair bit of it today, to be honest. So ⁓ I think it's the right thing for race control to pull the guys up. And give them these bad sportsmanship flags and say, No, that's actually not on because we saw the big crash, was it Jack LeBrock and Scott Pye? Correct. Yeah. So the thing is if you do make the wrong sort of contact there, you fire someone into the pit wall. And it A tends to move the pit wall and lead to a very lengthy delay in the schedule. ⁓ and B, you're obviously putting people at risk 'cause the pit lane is full of people. So ⁓ but yeah, hard to mark Matt Payne down too much based on that race as a whole. Just incredibly dominant. I mean, a second place for Ryan Wood, his first ever second place, he pointed out after the race. He's either been a winner or in third every time he's been on the podium. ⁓ that was quite an impressive turnaround from Friday, 'cause they really looked out of sorts during practice on Friday. So, ⁓ to turn things around, obviously that you know, we'll get on to race two in a bit, not the Best end of the day for that squad, but for them to turn Ryan Wood's car into a podium car on the soft tire, that was pretty impressive. It was, and he'd obviously come from the second row as well, so it had good quality speed. Chaz Mostett qualified a little bit further back, but ⁓ they ran a two-tire ⁓ pit strategy on that car and actually vaulted him into third. It looked like they were going to get a double podium out of it because of Other things that were playing out, Brody holding up Kai Allen for all that time, ⁓ made it look like Chaz was gonna be able to hang on. But ⁓ then yeah, the safety car sort of hurt that. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get on to the safety car or the reason for the safety car in a moment, but ⁓ just to finish off the podium, Anton Di Pasquale, we think it's the first time we've had all three different makes on the podium, right? No, it actually happened at Simmons Plains when Reynolds was on the podium. Gotcha. All right. Well, it was the second time that happened then. So ⁓ yeah, that obviously made it ⁓ Ford on top, Toyota second, and a Chevy in third. ⁓ that was a good drive from Anton. Like a few things fell his way. Like you say, the ⁓ the safety car was very important. He obviously picked up a couple of spots with the incident that ⁓ created the safety car as well, which he quite ⁓ humorously pointed out in the cooldown room when they showed the replay. And he said, ⁓ look, there I go, driving past these cars. ⁓ but Yeah, that was still he he did say after the race that they kind of there was a bit of mismanagement with tie sets in qualifying on the soft tire and they did feel they were out of position a little bit. So he wasn't overly surprised to end up on the podium, even if it did take a few things falling their way. So another box ticked, another ⁓ track to get a podium at for those guys. Yep. ⁓ obviously a a positive. He did lose a bit of time with a back and forth with Thomas Randall. He got him and then lost the spot again and it cost him five laps or so. Yeah. ⁓ but whether he could have got any higher, not sure. Let's move on to what the big talking point from that race was, and that was the incident between Kai Allen and Brody Kastecki. So to very quickly explain what happened for anyone that didn't see it. They were scrapping over fourth place. At the time, ⁓ Brody Kastecki had pitted slightly earlier than Kai. DJ Clearly did a very good job in the pit stop. He came out, he didn't actually undercut Kai, he came out right behind him, but with tires that were up to pressure, ⁓ quickly executed a move to get ahead of Kai on the road. Obviously, once Kai got everything up to pressure, he was the faster car. Brody did what Brody does and made his car incredibly wide. We learned that a couple of years ago in that ⁓ pretty epic battle with Shane Van Gisberg, that he's very capable of doing that. ⁓ they eventually reached a point where obviously Kai was pretty frustrated that he couldn't find a way through. With is it 13 laps to go? I think it was. ⁓ 11 laps to go, somewhere around there. ⁓ Brody runs a little bit wide at the last corner. Kai does get some overlap, gets up inside him. Brody turns across him as they go into the corner, gets spun into the to the sand. Brody's race effectively over. He did get recovered and back in the race, but he was two laps down. Kylen continues but obviously loses a bit of ground as well. I mean Craig Bear didn't see any reason to intervene in this. ⁓ I feel like his take on it was that Brody punished himself for probably turning down too aggressively on Kai. Kai was very quick to say, I don't think I've done anything wrong and was actually quite proud of himself for for putting the car in that position and holding his ground. ⁓ and I agree with all of that, to be perfectly honest. What was your take on it? Well, it's a shame we don't have Brody Kustecki's take on it, 'cause he did decline to speak to T V or to media such as us afterwards. ⁓ whether we'll hear his views on it on another platform later on maybe. Who knows? Yeah, I'm definitely glad there was no penalty. It definitely shouldn't have been a penalty because ⁓ it was a good move from Kai. He was in there, he was under control and Brody's turned down. ⁓ I thought the comments that were made directly afterwards by George Cummins, engineer for Brody, who said, well we should just be faster. That's that's the issue there that he was vulnerable. Because he wasn't fast enough. And Brenton Grove saying maybe that one's a lesson for n for the future, I think was his words, or next time. Yeah. ⁓ sort of speaks to the fact that Kai is as part of his progression, he's now being more aggressive. And ⁓ if you see Kai Allen in the mirrors, you know he's gonna gonna have a crack. ⁓ and he did talk this evening about the fact that he got roughed up a bit last year and this was part of his game that he had to step up. Yeah, well look, I think even Kai Allen's comments on the broadcast after the after the race were pretty strong. Like he actually said that he thought it was pretty dumb from Brody to fight that hard. ⁓ given the point situation, the sprint cup. I mean, it it has effectively kind of put Brody out of the running the sprint cup, right? Having what is I mean, he was classified as a finisher but last. Like it's ⁓ it's it's Yeah, it's a mathematical equation only at this point. Yeah. So yeah, that was ⁓ that was it was but it was good. It's a sort of racing we do want to see. And as you said, like you'd hate for that to be penalised and for that sort of racing to be, you know, not incentivised. That's what we want to see. That's what we hear from. Even the way Kyot fought on the Outlap, Brody did eventually get him, but he made it really hard. Yeah. ⁓ which was good. And then on the flip side, yeah, the fact that Brody was defending so hard, that's what we want to see as well. I mean, it probably wasn't the smartest thing for his overall race. But boy, it was great seeing that we hate seeing the driver put the blinkers on and just let someone go. And that sort of battle also just shows what a great track it is for for racing. It is. I mean it's a it's if you think about the run from turn six to turn seven to turn one, it's a flowing corner into a very long straight, into a stop corner, into another straight where you can so effectively through that stop corner you can take different lines to get a different run down another straight. into another stop corner. It's actually it's a bit like QR. Like it's actually it might not look spectacular on paper, but it's actually a great recipe for racing. And even just thinking back to to qualifying like Mark Lycom did a brilliant Hino Hub with ⁓ with Matt Payne comparing Matt's lap in the the second qualifying to Brock Feeney's and just seeing where they're they're making their speed differently and the the different driving styles ⁓ yielding different performance in different parts of the corner effectively. Yeah. ⁓ Triple H seemed all at sea through qualifying for ⁓ for that first race and during the race itself. Maybe we can tie that into bundle that into sort of talking moving on to race two. But there was a bit of good news for all the Ford teams out of that first race, and that was that Ford wrapped up its first supercast manufacturer title since twenty twenty. So as of that first race, it is now mathematically impossible for either of the other manufacturers to run them down. Now the manufacturer title it's not a points thing. It's a number of wins ⁓ per season. So I hadn't done the maths and sort of thought about that, but I mean that's I guess that really shows the dominance of Ford as a complete entity in terms of obviously, you know, the triple eight might not be fully on top of the Mustang package in terms of performance, but a lot of teams are. It is it is a competitive package and they really have a a devastating armada of teams and drivers at their disposal at the moment. Yeah, I'm not sure if many people had done the math. ⁓ this is the sort of thing that does ⁓ tend to surprise us ⁓ from time to time, year to year. But one person that had was Cameron Kirby from Ford Racing. Yep. And he arranged to get these posters posters printed and ⁓ sent over with Grove Racing. And ⁓ I think my highlight of the day was seeing ⁓ in that parc Fermi post race area that ⁓ Stephen Grove standing there with this massive Ford wins poster, showing it to Matt Payne, the driver that General Motors has been throwing money at to try to leave Grove Racing to get out of his contract. And just with the biggest grin on his face saying, Have a look at this. Yep, that was that was very good. It looked like he was t like Matt Payne was taking an eye test. The way it was sort of being held up, it was like he was being asked to read each line with ⁓ one of his eyes closed, ⁓ in case in case he needs glasses. But his driving today indicates that whatever his eyesight is doing is working pretty well. ⁓ I guess just the other thing on that manufacturer's title is that yes, absolutely no surprise that Ford have won it this year after ⁓ capturing Triple Eight and bringing them over from the GM side. But the fact that the wind tally at the moment is ⁓ Six to Grove Racing, six to DJR, now five to Triple Eight because of the second race. ⁓ and two to Tickford. That's probably the surprise that it hasn't been triple eight delivering all the results. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. Now let's move on to that second race. It really did look throughout that first stint like Matt Payne had that thing shot to pieces. Like he he made a Better start than he did in the first one. ⁓ it did seem initially like Brock actually got the better jump, but the secondary stage of the start process just he just seemed to get a lot of wheel spin, didn't go anywhere. Matt Payne in the lead looked like he was gonna run away with the race, gets it in the first stint. Not only does he have a sizable margin, but he has Kai Allen putting pressure on Brock Feeney. and then they go through the stops and we get into the second stint and you know, ⁓ Matt ran a little longer. than Brock and ⁓ Kai did. Kai sort of was the first of that league group to pit. It felt like they were just trying to pull triple eight into following suit to avoid any massive undercut risk, which they did. They clearly did a very good job in the lane to to ensure that there was no undercut and Brock got out back out in front of Kai. And then he makes all these inroads on Matt Payne, who seems to be struggling in the traffic. And then ultimately there's this flash point where Aaron Cameron's coming into the pits. ⁓ And he kinda just balks Matt Payne enough for Brock to get up the inside of him into go on the front straight heading to turn one. And that's the move that decided the race. It was it was a surprise when this happened. It looked like Matt had the race shot to bits, as you say. And he did have four seconds on on Brock before those stops. So when when Brock pitted. ⁓ and it again a two lap undercut, not much. Matt actually came out and he had still more than two seconds on him. Yep. And it really was that he had Zach Bates, Jackson Walls, and Aaron Cameron. So he cleared the first two guys. And then obviously we all saw what happened with Camo, but he just lost so much time ⁓ getting Zach and and Jackson that Brock was right there. Yeah. And even Matt, I'm not sure, realised that Brock was there based on some of his radio frustration straight afterwards. But then again, the other surprise was in the second stint, the car performance appeared to to flip. Obviously, Matt had the issue of dirty air and heating the front tire behind ⁓ Brock's car. But Brock's car seemed much better in the second stint than it was in the first. Yeah, well I think that we kind of I think the point was made on our internal comms between the editorial team, like, ⁓ this will make it interesting. But, you know, it was kind of easy to think that maybe given the special the pace advantage we'd seen in the first race in particular, but then even the first stint of that second race that that Matt would still be able to find a way back into the race. And that just absolutely wasn't the case. It was ⁓ Brock kind of controlled the race ⁓ from there. So like I don't know, it's if you look at the sum of the day, where's triple eight at? Because the first race was not great. And the second race was really good, like Will Brown in fifth as well. Like and they're back in the winner's circle and suddenly all seems normal in the world. I think the unknown from the day is where Brock Feeney would have started race one had he not made a mistake at 107 on his best lap. Yeah. Because he did miss the ten, but it wasn't due to the car not being good enough, and he was very open about the fact that that he was the reason that they'd missed the He seemed devastated after that, ⁓ after that first portion of the first qualifying session for Yeah, and then so in the first half of that first race the two Triple Eight guys, they were swapping between each other but they weren't really moving forward. Yeah. ⁓ but then once the race really got going, ⁓ Brock was making good ground. So he had a decent car on on that tire as well. So yeah. Yeah, I think we'll learn a bit more tomorrow. We did speak to Jamie Winkup this evening who gave a I thought a interesting explanation that you know Triple Eight have all these different plates spinning with Obviously they run the engine shop now that services all the four teams. They run their manufacturing division which does things outside of motorsport and they run the race team and there's there's all this going on and they just in the last couple of weeks put a bit more focus back on performance. And here we are. Remember it's a bigger race team than it was before as well. There's another cars to worry about. So ⁓ it sounded very easy when he put it like that. Yeah. They can just turn it on when they want to. Yeah. It is it is I mean if you think about where they're at right now compared to where they were this time a year ago, you know, they don't they have the homologation duties of course for the Camaro, although by this time last year that I think a lot of that had been taken off them. But let's just talk about in general terms before they were the Ford homologation team. Like, not to belittle how much work goes into running any homologation project, but obviously, you know, like the the Camaro burst out of the bloc ⁓ performance wise in the Gen three era. it would have been probably about as low a lift. Once they went through the process of obviously th like the the huge part in the general design of Gen three, you know, they kinda probably had a reasonably low lift in terms of the homologation. They were going really quick. They had their two cars. ⁓ they had K R E looking after the engine program. Like It was all pretty well sorted and all pretty calm and would have probably seemed pretty easy compared to, as you pointed out, all the things they're trying to do right now. So I guess it is understandable that, you know, the performance will take a dip when you do really divest the team to that extent. Or the organization, I should say, not the team. Yeah, I think it does appear that they've been stretched a bit thin. ⁓ so there's been the workload component. Yeah and then also the fact that this Mustang seems to be a little bit more complex ⁓ to understand than than the Camaro was and we've sort of even seen that some of their real traditional strengths always been so good under brakes and just areas like that which had transitioned from model to model, brand to brand in the past hasn't come with them this time. But hey, they're back on top today. Well you think back to Darwin, you got Brock Veney complaining about straight line speed and braking performance. Not things we've heard Triple Eight drivers talking about in the Gen three year at all. You know, they were kind of always the strengths. So I guess that kind of tells the story to some extent. Which has then also then put the focus on the drivers and Brock Fini in particular. Yeah. Had come into a very well oiled Triple Eight machine. And as much as a lot of drivers will tell you that it's all up to the the engineers to make the cars good, the driver does play a pretty big role in that. They've got a direct what's going on and they're the ones giving the feedback to to let the engineers improve it. Very true. Well it'll be fascinating to see how Triple A goes tomorrow because again we've got two kind of different reads today, but obviously very positive at the end of the day. So that will be one of the key storylines heading into Sunday at the Perth Super 440. Of course that's the 200 kilometer race with refueling. We'll have qualifying and a top 10 shootout. Before that, make sure you do stay tuned to Speed Cafe across the day for everything that happens at Wanneroo. We'll have all of it covered and we'll come back tomorrow night and record a Sunday edition of the Daily Podcast.