Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Bathurst 1000 daily: Friday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of our daily podcast from the 2026 Bathus 1000. I almost said Saturday there, Stefan, because it is very confusing with qualifying happening on the Friday here at Bathurst, but it is the Friday edition. Qualifying is done. It was a nice warm sunny day at Bathurst today. How did you how'd you find it out there, mate? It was a beautiful day at the track, a great day, a busy day, a newsy day. Yeah. I didn't feel like I saw a lot of the session, certainly not practice. Yep. But certainly some interesting conversations to be had in the paddock and then this incredible storyline out of qualifying with Zach Bates leading a Chevrolet one, two, three. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we'll get into the sort of details of how qualifying played out and all that sort of stuff soon, but there is no doubting it is one of the real feel good stories of this year. Zach Bates taking provisional poll for the Bathus one thousand, that is a remarkable result. We can talk about the speed of the Camaros all we like, but there's still plenty of Camaros in the field, and Zach Bates isn't necessarily the one you would automatically pick to be on top, even if there was a Camaro advantage. But there he is, the first sub two minute four second lap of the Gen 3 era. Just incredible. And at a time with with a bit of uncertainty around his future and that sort of stuff, like that was, like I said, a real feel good result. Yeah, he did an awesome job in that session. He had the provisional poll and then went out there at the end and went quicker again. Yeah. And he spoke afterwards about just taking more risk and just going, Well, it's it's the time. Fourth set of ties and qualifying. It's such a cool session because they do get a lot of time and a lot of sets to just go at go out there again and again and just push harder and try to do more with what they've got. And yeah, you touched on all the key points there. I think it it is a feel good story. Obviously he debuted here twelve months ago in then Triple Eight run Super Chief Wildcard. and that was just after his mother had passed away. So yeah, he talked about afterwards that it's been a a tough year for the family, but it's also been a bit of a tough year on the racetrack. We saw this flashes of speed from him really early in the year. Yeah. And then it had sort of gone away. Matt Stone Racing not having a great run, even though Jack LeBrock's been fighting for the finals. But it's been really tough for Zach. So he is in this position at the moment where his future is a bit uncertain. I think he we weren't in the press conference, but I believe he said it's not really in his hands. Mm-hmm. And we believe he has a two-year deal with that race team that includes next season, but there's a requirement for him to bring a certain amount of sponsorship that it doesn't appear that he currently has. So yeah, would be a pretty good time for A big weekend for him. Well, that's the thing, because we know that motorsport isn't always just about results for that exact thing you just spoke about, right? Like it's it needs to be commercialised, there's often funding involved and all that sort of stuff. But again, it doesn't matter what way you look at it, this is a good result. Like it doesn't hurt to go out there and showcase what you can do in these big moments. Absolutely. And again, we saw flashes of speed from him last year in the triple eight car. He his first round was that solo wild cart at Queensland Raceway. And then in the months after that there was the talk about Triple Eight expanding to a third car and a lot of people thought it was gonna be Zach because of what he'd done. For commercial reasons it wasn't. And then people were thinking, he's gonna be in one of the Toyotas just 'cause of that beautiful family story, but it none of this works quite that easily. Yeah. So he's ended up at MSR. It's been tough to date, but what an opportunity this weekend with the speed that all those Chevy's seem to have. Yeah, let's run through the rest of the top ten results. as you mentioned, it was a Chevy top three. Anton Di Pasquale was second fastest. Cooper Murray in the Erebus car, he was third fastest. Will Brown was the fastest. Mustang in fourth place. He seemed pretty happy with himself when he got out of the car, to be honest. Brody Kastecki was fifth fastest. David Reynolds was sixth fastest. Jack LeBrock seventh. Jaden O'Jada, eighth. They're All obviously Camaro drivers as well. Matt Payne was ninth fastest and Jimmy Golding the last to book a berth in the shootout with the 10th fastest time. I guess we should probably just talk about the parody elephant in the room now because there was six Camaros in the top ten, four Mustangs, those top those top three being all Camaros, no Toyotas in the top ten at all. We've had this parody storm just rumbling away as we've come into the weekend. What's your sort of take on the whole thing? Like I mean, we spoke to Jamie Wink up. He's not blaming parody for the fact that there's not a Mustang on top. Does he kind of have to do that given the fact that they fought so hard to get these changes through the blue oval side? Well, he was very careful with all of his words when speaking to us afterwards, and I think it was being true to all of the lines that Triple Eight have used on the way through. In particular, the difference between technical and sporting parity. Yeah. Where you don't react to what you see on the racetrack. You react to what you see in the the testing measures that sort of are meant to govern each individual element of technical parity. So yeah, in this week they did that barometric pressure testing. It showed the Ford was at a small horsepower deficit. They got the change they wanted. They've come to the racetrack and the Camaros are a few K's faster than either the Ford or the Toyota. So I think that tells us it's not horsepower. And I think privately quite a few people, even in the blue camp, knew that going in. Yep. we we had this narrative going on last year where it was all confusing with is it is it engine, is it aero? And they've also changed a bunch of aero stuff on Both cars, then obviously the Toyota's new, but on the Camaro and the Mustang since last year. But this year there's a deficit in the practice and qualifying. And then there's fears that it's going to be even worse in the race. Because that's the really interesting part, right? Like obviously last year we had these same discussions about the fact that the Camaro was too good in a straight line. It was impossible for a Mustang to pass a Camaro. But when you looked at the outright lap times, I mean it was a fifty fifty split of Mustangs and Camaros that made the shootout at Baths last year. And then in the shootout, the top four were Mustangs. And that was obviously that kind of infamous scenario where Brody Castehy, the pole sitter for the Bathus 1000, was sitting there saying, I have absolutely no chance to win this race because of this disparity. Whereas, you know, supposedly it's all been kind of fixed up by this last-minute barometric testing and all this sort of stuff, but we didn't see Camaros look this dominant. at any point of the weekend except in the very first stint of the race, and that was the that was the Triple Eight Camaros as well. I mean the Erebus cars was kind of in the mix and that sort of stuff as well. But it's funny that we have supposedly fixed all these things, but the Camaro advantage actually seems visibly in terms of outright results, way bigger this time around. It's confusing. Yeah, it is, and we could talk around in circles on it. All day. I do feel like there is an element of some of the Ford teams not having a a great day. it was interesting that they changed an engine in the Matt Payne car after practice three. They saw that was down on their teammate and then they changed an engine in the seventeen car after practice four, which I believe was more of a debatable is this worth doing or not, but Brody really wanted it done. Yeah. So they did. but yeah, the There was a lot of who got a toe and who didn't. If you're in a Mustang and you didn't get a toe, you weren't making the shootout. Well, and that goes for the likes of Kai Allen, Brock Feeney, Tommy Randall, Cam Waters, like they're big names driving forwards that won't take part in the shootout tomorrow evening. Yeah, Tickford have really struggled all weekend and I was in that garage after qualifying, and it was a really flat atmosphere in there. I spoke to Maddie Roberts, the team manager, and he just said we just can't. get the cars to grip the racetrack. They sort of feel like they're on top of the road rather than properly gripping it. So there's the the straight line issue that all the Fords have got, but they're so certainly not executing the rest of the racetrack as well as they could in some of those teams. Now we had we had Jamie Wink up sort of trying to play down a disparity given all the stuff we've just talked about in terms of the build up to the race. Pretty different vibe down at The Walk and Shore TWG Garage about this parody stuff and the straight line performance of the Supra. They didn't get any change coming into this weekend in terms of the engine. There was obviously no aero change. That that is the most unchanged car if you think back to pre-Enduros. And I mean, Andre Heimgartner, the best player Supra on the grid for Sunday's race in 15th. Chaz Mostard only 16th. next up was Cam Hill, nineteenth McCauley Jones, twentieth. Ryan Wood didn't qualify because he crashed in practice in the first session this morning, and that car was too damaged to be repaired to the level that the team wanted to in time for qualifying. So he'll start down the back of the grid with Roland Gray after Tony Dalberto crashed earlier today as well. But I mean, it's hard to say if Woody had been in there, maybe there'd be a Toyota somewhere in the mix because none of them look like they're in the mix and it certainly feels from the Walk and Shore camp that there there are some grievances over the straight line performance of that car and and the parody and its parody compared to the the other two cars in the field. Yeah, and it is funny though with the recent parody stuff that's gone on the Toyota's kind of walk between the raindrops because with the COG it was right on the bottom of the tolerance that was applied. So it should have gotten a bit of weight added upstairs if they'd really tried to apply it exactly but they put a tolerance in, no change to the Toyota. The Twitter was the best on the barrow testing, but they had a tolerance in there, so they were not slowing the Toyota up. And it's probably good they didn't because yeah, as you say, they they just couldn't compete today on speed and there's no sandbagging in qualifying at Bath because they can't actually change the spec of the cars now. Yeah, so a traumatic day. Obviously the Woody crash, a very hard hit there at Forest Elbow. It's just the classic one we see where you give the driver a fresh set of tires. They've done a bunch of laps on old tires and just needed to give a little bit my more margin for error. It ripped up, hit the inside wall and fired him so hard into the outside. And this is his first big crash in supercars. Yep. and so it really would have knocked him around mentally. He actually banged his knee. in the shunt. So he had a bit of ice on that, a few neurofin, but he was walking around and and fine afterwards, but pretty down in the dumps about the amount of work that he'd given the team. Yeah, I mean a long way to play out in this weekend, but probably not what Tony Dalberto really wanted either given the fact that he did crash at Bathis last year. He did hit the wall at the bend. Obviously exceptionally difficult circumstances there. It's hard to really pin a heap of blame on the driver, but He's gonna need a really strong run on Sunday, you would think, to sort of rebuild from this. Yeah, and huge, huge damage on that DJ R car that was worse than the Toyota. Well, when we left the track, they were putting the Toyota back together and they were not putting the DJ R car back together yet. There was I think there's a lot longer night ahead of those boys than there was in the Walking Shore garage. And Jason Briggs, one of the fabricators from Triple Eight, was actually working on it when I saw it this evening. So good to see that the The TRC, the chart of war, isn't stopping teams from helping each other out. Yep. Yep, absolutely. Anything else results wise we should talk about. I mean, Nathan Hearn, twenty-first in that GRM car. Obviously, two cars weren't taking part that would, particularly in Woody's case, generally be pretty competitive. But I think that's a fairly decent effort for someone who had never qualified in a main game supercar session before. Yeah, I had a good chat to him actually before qualifying and he was sort of quite frustrated with being down in the twenties and sort of they were going here, there and everywhere on setup and not quite nailing it. But I thought the perspective was that he was actually doing a good job to be in amongst these guys who were doing this week in, week out, and also keeping it off the walls on a weekend where we saw how badly it can bite. Yeah, absolutely. One very interesting story that came out of the day was a data breach. where effectively Walkenshaw the Walkenshaw data station was momentarily showing the data from was it the co driver session? Was it when Lockie Dalton was in the car, in the ninety nine Erebus car? Is that right? Yeah, practice three. which I think that was actually for both drivers. okay, yes. they were both for both drivers today, sorry. But that was the one where Ryan Wood had crashed and there's a limited amount of live camera feeds that supercars has in each session. And it was it switched from the wood car to the ninety nine car and with it came all the all the telemetry. So just to rub it into these port Toyota blokes, they were literally seeing the speed traces on Conrad of how quick these Camaros were. Yeah, yeah, that that was very interesting. And there was a a fairly urgent update to the was it the dash configuration or what was it that was issued straight after that? Yeah. So just taking out an override that the supercar's TV production partner NEP had in there and yeah, all of the the telemetry feeds actually go through the the T V network. So yeah that was something that hadn't heard of before but both teams kind of just brushed it off and like spoke to Barry Ryan about it as well and he wasn't too worried. Yeah. let's maybe finish up with a chat about the team's racing chart and negotiations. Obviously been a massive topic all week. We spoke about it on the Daily Pod yesterday. Nothing has really moved on in terms of where everyone's position is on it. We know that there are seven teams in support of the deal that has been proposed by Supercars and there are five teams that are are not in support. But what we did see today is both of those two camps issue statements clarifying their positions on it. We probably don't need to go into great detail about every part of it, but effectively the seven teams that are in favour of it and we should run through those. So we have Brad Jones racing. I did this game last night. So you you Dick Johnson racing, Tickford racing. Help me out here. Walking shores. Walk and shores. We need some Blanchards. Come on one more. Six. Come on one more. Give it to me. I lost it. Lost where you're up to. team 18. There we go. We got there. We got there. So they're the seven that are in support. They issued a statement this morning. It was effectively built around the idea that the sport needs to grow The sport needs to be about the fans and any risk at going back to twelve rounds needs to be nipped in the bud by signing this deal and getting on with going racing. And then we had the other five teams, which are Triple Eight, SCT, Premier, Erebus, and Grove Racing. that was good. That's I guess the five seven. they issued their own statement later th well this evening effectively, which said that we're not against fourteen rounds. We just feel that we should get paid more than what we're being offered to do it. Or that the the existing team's racing charter should be on it and we should be paid what we're owed according to that to do the fourteen rounds. We're not trying to stop growth. We just want to be paid for it effectively. Hm. Yeah, so a lot of a lot of emotion in the paddock. It's really divided at the moment. This had really been bubbling away since the bend where the this deal that had been sort of worked on between race and and the four man group representing the teams had been presented and we sort of lifted the lid off this whole situation yesterday morning in our story about these five teams breaking away. And they've obviously reacted today by setting out their own stalls publicly. We got the statement from the seven teams under embargo this morning to go out at eleven. thirty, I believe, eleven forty five. And another website actually mistakenly broke that embargo. Yeah. And that seeing that on the internet triggered the other five teams to actually hold a meeting to discuss what they were going to do. So that was that about eleven o'clock. But we didn't actually see their statement until till six PM Yeah. So obviously people can read read those statements on our website, but certainly you can see both sides of this argument, I think. Definitely But also the fact that you can see both sides of the argument and the fact that there is you know, both sides seem to really back their own feelings in terms of how this should play out. I just I'm lacking confidence we're gonna see a any movement on a calendar in the absolute short term. and as we discussed yesterday, we kinda need one. And the sport as a whole kinda needs one in this part of the country so that everyone can move on with their plans for next year. Yeah, there's a bit of rumblings that Supercars actually risks losing a couple of deals that are on the table event-wise if they have to keep delaying confirmations because they don't know whether they can actually commit to some of these events. And then, as we touched on yesterday, yeah, the whole industry hurts when they're trying to plan things but can't really because supercars is the the big dog that's holding everything up. So it will be interesting to see where it goes. Those five teams are really digging in, feeling that. They have the teams have all the cards because of how this TRC is written. Yep. And that yeah, race's revenues are supposedly the sports revenues are better than ever. So they're not too keen to give up too much of what they're actually owed just so race can grow its business. Yeah. Anything else you want to discuss before we shut this thing down? I'm sure I'll think of something as soon as we do press stop, but we can always go again tomorrow. It is 9 37 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight S savings Time. So I think it is time for us to call it quits. Make sure you do stay tuned to speedcafe.com across what promises to be a pretty exciting Saturday at Mount Panorama. We will find out who is the official pole sitter for the 2026 Bathus 1000 tomorrow evening. And we'll have everything across the whole day, supercar support categories, reports, reaction, news, the whole lot. Speedcafe.com is where you'll find it. And we will be back in this podcast feed. For a very special post shootout, Stefan Bartholomew's birthday edition of the Daily Pod on Saturday evening.