Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / NEWS: Latest update on sensational Supercars appeal
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- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to Full Credit to the News brought to you by Authentic Collectibles. My name is Andrew Van Leuren, and as usual, I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, it's a very rare Saturday recording of the news pod this week because it has been hectic, particularly for you. One minute you're rubbing shoulders with the motorsport elite and socialites and influencers at the Adelaide Grand Final launch on Wednesday night. And the next you're at what must have felt like a mini Supercars race meeting at the Bend on ⁓ on Friday. Run us through your week. I have ⁓ loved being at the Bend so much for Friday's test that I am still here as we record on Saturday morning. But yes, ⁓ before that we did have the Adelaide event launch, which ⁓ was a pretty impressive show, as you can imagine. They don't mind investing in that event, the South Australian government, and they just casually wheeled out a deal with Eric Banner to star in the TVC. They must have found a couple of extra dollars behind the couch for that one. He wouldn't come too cheap, I'd reckon. No. And ⁓ and then they had this ⁓ eight million dollar Pagani something or other hypercar that ⁓ is not really my wheelhouse, but they're going to ⁓ showcase a bunch of ⁓ the most expensive ⁓ sort of track focused hypercars on track during the ⁓ during the event. Yeah, they've kind of ⁓ wheeled that out as a support category, I guess. Is that how it is gonna play out? Are those cars gonna be an action across The race weekend, it's not one of those pre event drive sort of things. Yeah, it ⁓ they didn't put a lot of detail around it, but they were they were calling it one of the support card ⁓ acts. So I don't imagine they'll be ⁓ wheel to wheel racing, but this ⁓ GT one race club concept is something the SRO is actually involved in globally, ⁓ and it's more of a sprint format, I believe. Tell us about what ⁓ what was going on at the bend on Friday. We did you know there were six cars in action there, ⁓ for all sorts of reasons. A number of ⁓ rookies using up one of their rookie days ahead of the Enduro at the bend, which makes perfect sense. And ⁓ then there's Toyota putting more miles on its upgraded or its B spec ⁓ V eight engine for the Supra that was through Walk and Shore T W G Racing and Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood, and then the Super Cheap Auto Wildcart car having a run as well with Bailey Hall and well it was meant to be Craig Lands, but it seems like things didn't go all that well for that entry over Friday's running. Yeah, that was really the big story of the day. And this was a wild card test for Bailey Hall because he's doing the Ipswich sprint round before teaming up with Craig for the Enduro Cup. So Craig was only allowed to do ten laps sort of to help Bailey, but he didn't actually do any laps because they had this electrical gremlin that they were searching for pretty much all day. And ⁓ finally with ⁓ just over an hour to go they'd managed to actually change the wiring harness ⁓ in the car and ⁓ got it running properly. So Bailey said he only did about twenty full push laps the whole day without issue. Yeah that's a shame given ⁓ how limited testing is and how important miles are for a young driver. Who obviously Bailey's racing in Super Two, which is fantastic for his preparation for this ⁓ for this opportunity that he's been given through the Super Cheap programme. But yeah, you never like to have an opportunity to bank proper Gen 3 laps like that be as compromised as that. What else was going on on the ground there? What was the feeling within the Walklecha camp over this ⁓ this B spec engine? Yeah, they were pretty happy. They'd done two hundred and fifty K on it during the ride day in Perth on Monday, which ⁓ as you know is pretty harsh conditions for an engine. Lots of drop and goes, lots of ⁓ out of the pit lane and straight back in again. And ⁓ then they did 520 kilometers, ⁓ their team principal Carl Foe said yesterday. And ⁓ they had Craig Haystead here from Supercars also doing doing some work with mapping on that, but essentially it's a new camshaft and a couple of other bits and pieces to try to take load off the valve train. Obviously, we've seen them have several valve train issues so far during the season, so This is the solution that Walkenshaw's had worked on with Swindon Powertrains, their partner in the UK, that ⁓ they've now they had brought it to Haysteads before ⁓ actually running it on track, but now it needs to go for final sign-off, and they hope to have two of these B spec motors on track for Ipswich at the next round. Cool. Well let's ⁓ let's move on to what is one of the more sensational stories of the season so far, and that is the decision by Supercars to appeal the outcome. Of the Kai Allen investigation over tie pressures from Sunday night of the Perth Super 440. I'll quickly back over the situation. So Kai Allen's car was found to have read under the minimum pressure of 16 PSI while on the grid ahead of Sunday's race in Perth. The matter was sent to the Motorsport Australia Stewards, and after a lengthy hearing on Sunday night, it was decided that there was a breach, but there would be no penalty due to mitigating circumstances. That included a 0.4 PSI tolerance within the tire pressure measuring sensor and the fact that the side of the car that went under the 16 PSI was in the shade. ⁓ the decision from the stewards didn't just infuriate the other teams, but it seems Supercars itself was not all that impressed and has now formally lodged an appeal into not the decision itself, because the decision was a breach, but ⁓ they're appealing the fact there was no penalty given a breach was established. Stephen, we do see these flashpoints of tension between the Supercars technical department and the Motorsport Australia stewards, but this is a remarkable situation. Have you ever seen anything like this before? From what we can work out, it's never happened before that supercars has appealed a Motorsport Australia steward's decision. So it's extraordinary from that point. It really does shine a light on the difference between these levels of officialdom where Supercars essentially goes into these cases as the prosecutor and the MA stewards are the judge and the jury. So there's a real separation of powers there that's probably not always talked about, but that's how the system works. And for supercars, this is not really about Kai Allen, it's about rule integrity. And ⁓ the fact that letting this go really opens up a can of worms with the whole rule book. And I think the frustration around bringing evidence to the stewards is And then not getting the result out of it has sort of built up over time. Even last year, one of the famous cases, Will Brown caught speeding at Pit Lane Exit, where they had a judge of fact that had onboard vision and data from the car. And the case ended up getting thrown out because Mark Dutton was able to create all this enough doubt and confusion around what all the evidence meant that the stewards threw it out. So yeah, I think this is supercars actually standing up and And trying to make a point here. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've seen this minimum tire pressure thing penalized in different ways in the past, but it's always been penalized. And you use the term opening a can of worms and others have thrown that term around as well. And it that it is what it does feel like. I mean, I know this is a sporting rule in terms of where it sits in the rule book, but it is still very technically adjacent. And the way that technical rules have always been judged is that It's zero tolerance, whether it's a millimeter or a mile, you get thrown out of the race. And it can be incredibly harsh because so often being a percentage of a gram underweight or too too wide or too low, it's not a genuine performance advantage, but everyone has kind of always just accepted the harshness of that because zero tolerance is the easiest deterrent from teams taking the piss, basically. And yet here we are opening the door for teams to start playing with tolerances and And to have a precedent to fall back on if they end up on the wrong side of of the rule. So I do understand why Supercars wants to try and have this outcome, if not overturned, at least re investigated. that does actually make sense for me. What what happens from here? How does the process play out, do you think? Well, I think just to come in there about the fact that, yeah, it is a division D sporting rule. So it's not in the division C technical rules, so it doesn't have to be a disqualification. From what we've seen in the past, the stewards have said the recommended penalty is disqualification. But the fact that it didn't have to be and they got no penalty is even more extraordinary to me. Yeah. That they didn't get anything. And we did see in that twenty twenty one case in Darwin with Nick Percat and Brad Jones racing that ⁓ they got a team's penalty only that Nick was able to keep his podium but ⁓ that was a different case because the team self reported on the grid that ⁓ the tire pressures were gonna go under the minimum and they actually changed the tires and didn't race on those tires. So yeah. They still ended up with their teams points from that race getting wiped, but it wasn't a DSQ. And then a couple of weeks later in Townsville Jake Stecki of Matt Stone Racing did get DSQ'd for ⁓ this sort of tire pressure breach. So yeah, in this case Grove Racing obviously argued a bunch of mitigating factors and won. But what you say there about tolerances is ⁓ really pertinent because that mention of the.4 PSI was mentioned as like an accuracy variance in the sensor. But the sensor is the ruler. So whatever the ruler says, this is the case that Supercars is arguing, and and the rival teams as well, what the ruler says is. is what you go by. So yeah, they're gonna argue that out. But ⁓ it sounds like there's might even be a bit of disagreement over when they need to have this hearing take place. And I think you know a bit more about this. But in the Supercars ops manual it says these appeal cases must be heard within nine days of the actual judgment being handed down. But it seems Motorsport Australia might have a different view. Yeah, it does seem like ⁓ it's going to be in the week ⁓ leading into the Ipswich Super four forty rather than early this week or next week or what I don't know, what you call it when you're on Saturday when it's Saturday already. But that was when we expected it to happen, but it does seem that it's going to be ⁓ to be pushed back into the following week or the week leading into to Ipswich in terms of when this hearing takes place. What's what's really interesting about this thing is kind of what role Grove Racing plays in it, because They're obviously the potential that that's the p party that has the potential to really lose out here if they do have the result disqualified or have their the team's points championships from that car taken off them or whatever. But it's also kind of not their fight. This is supercars versus motorsport Australia, not supercars versus Grove Racing. So it's gonna be interesting to see. They're obviously going to play a part in it, but it's gonna be interesting to see what that part is because it's not your standard Well, here's a team taking something to the supercar's court of appeal and they're going to fight their fight because what their actual fight in this is is really unknown because we've never seen it happen before. Yeah, Grove Racing already won their fight. Yeah. But we'll wait and see for Supercars and Motorsport Australia to argue it out. Obviously for Groves, there's a hundred points on the line, which is what Kai scored for that fifth place finish. You'd argue in the context of having a final series now that ⁓ it's not hugely important whether Kai Allen's fifth in the championship or sixth, but those hundred teams points ⁓ pretty valuable to them in this ⁓ war they're having with Triple Eight. So yeah there's some consequences there for Groves, but I feel that there's far bigger consequences for this supercars versus Motorsport Australia dynamic. 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They ran in Townsville as well, and Anton Di Pasquale scored a second place finish in race twenty-one. ⁓ like the Shell V Power Racing team releases, it will be available in both the 118 scale die cast with opening parts and the 143 scale sealed body die cast. The new Townsville range is available to pre-order now through your local Authentic Collectibles stockist, or you can explore the full collection and register your interest on the Authentic Collectibles website. Authentic Collectibles Driven by Passion made for collectors. All right, let's move on to some more Supercast news, Stefan, and that is the decision from Triple Eight to move Will Brown into its spare chassis. From ⁓ well from Ipswich onwards, we believe at this point. ⁓ now we saw that long standing qualifying issue for Brown continue in Perth. He didn't qualify in the top ten for any of the three races. He started Sunday's race way back in nineteenth place, while Brock Veeney started from pole. ⁓ both Jamie Wink up and Mark Dutton publicly vowed to ramp up efforts to find out what's going on with the triple eight car before Ipswich. Yet by Tuesday, long before the truck had even arrived back in Brisbane, there was this announcement that Will Brown will jump into the spare car for the next event. Did the speed of that decision catch you by surprise, Stefan? Well, it did, ⁓ going by Jamie's comments that you point out there. I'm not sure how much science was applied while the car was still in the truck going across the Nullabor, but ⁓ I guess the context is that it's not a new issue here. They feel like they've had a straight line speed problem with that car since the start of the season. And from the work they've done, they're convinced it's not engine, they're convinced it's not arrow, and it's some sort of mysterious mechanical drag problem that they've got going on. So they were apparently doing a couple of coast down tests with the three cars in the pit lane in Perth to try to get their heads around this. And they're convinced that there is something there. They just don't know what it is because they've changed the few things really that it could be. And This is a last resort. This is the change you make when you've tried everything else, but you don't just want to go into the next round having done nothing. Yeah, I mean, when you put it like that, it makes me feel like it comes with some pressure for Will Brown, right? Because if he's still outside the top ten in qualifying in this other car, then the potential reasons for this slump continue to narrow. And the driver becomes a bigger and bigger focal point in all of this. So I mean Obviously there's confidence there this is going to solve the issue and I'm not saying for a moment that it's not, but yeah, it's gonna come qualifying time in Ipswich and Will Brown's really gonna want to turn it on. Yeah, well I'm not sure how confident they are that it will solve it because they don't actually know what it is. They're just changing something that they haven't changed before. So Yeah, true. Yeah, that there is clearly pressure on in that garage, no doubt. And, you know, Will was saying this week on Lucky Dogs that he was losing a tenth and a half on the straits in Perth. which is a big thing ⁓ on a track without huge straights really other than the back one. ⁓ but we also know that yes, that makes a big difference, but his struggles are bigger than this problem as well. Like he's essentially struggled to qualify since they introduced the new soft tire at the start of last year. Yeah. And then they've obviously Triple Eight have had their own sort of balance issues with the Mustang package as well. So all of that combined can't be doing anything good for Will's confidence. or the confidence for everybody else on that side of the garage either. Yeah. But motorsport can be a mental game and sometimes it just takes something like a chassis switch to ⁓ to sort of kick someone back into gear. So it'll be ⁓ fascinating to see how he does go in qualifying when we get to Ipswich in just a couple of weeks. Righto Stefan, let's have a chat about Marcus Ambrose and his decision to leave his role at the ASA. That was something that came to light this week. ⁓ the supercars and NASCAR legend join the governing body. As competition and commercial director last year, but is now elected to leave that post. That decision comes amid a fair bit of turbulence for the ASA, which has been through an ownership change, which has been disputed and could still become a legal issue, and a change in the promoter model and broadcast of what was known as the High Tech Oil Super Series and is now called the ASA Race Series. ⁓ I had a chat to Marcus about this, Stefan, and he he's very clear that it's not a a simple case of the disputed ownership. driving his decision to leave, but at the same time I wouldn't imagine it's been completely easygoing, you know, in that organization, given the external noise that has surrounded this whole double ASA and the high tech thing over the last month or so. So either way, you know, I I it's hard to see this as anything but a loss for the ASA given Marcus's experience and passion and and kind of how driven he was to try and to try and make a difference at that level of motorsport in Australia. Yeah, he's been a huge asset. ⁓ for them. Also just on the credibility front, I think having ⁓ Marcus Ambrose out there talking about your series is huge, not to mention the the knowledge and the passion and everything else behind that. So it also looked like a great thing for him to really sink his teeth into after his his health battle that ⁓ he was quite public about. And ⁓ I don't ⁓ blame him if he in any way feels that he doesn't need this this headache in his life. Yep, absolutely. D ⁓ the double ASA has also put out a revised calendar for the rest of the ASA race series season. The planned trip to Winton is off. Quite unsurprising, given it's the Banella Auto Club that is disputing the double ASA sale. So next weekend's fight in the night in Ipswich will instead be followed by Calder Park on November thirteen to fifteen and then Sandown on December four to sixth to round out the season. All right, that would do us for this week's full credit to the news. A reasonably quiet weekend on the racetracks of Australia ahead. And of course, F1 is still on its summer shutdown, so not much going on in the ⁓ in the local and F1 arena. But there is IndyCar and NASCAR in the States, there's MotoGP in the UK, and we'll have all of it covered on speakfa.com. So stay tuned there, and we'll be back in this podcast feed on Tuesday morning with full credit to the noise.