Sydney may have only been given one chance to see V8 Supercar action this year,
but with the help of perfect late winter weather, harbor city fans
certainly made the most of it, turning out in record numbers to Oran Park
Raceway to be served up a fantastically organised event and sensational
racing over two full-on days.
Deciding
to cram both Round 7 of the main game Big Pond V8 Supercar Championship
and Round 4 of the second tier Fujitsu V8 Supercar series into one race
meeting initially seemed like a bad decision, but once the action got
underway it turned into V8 heaven.
The
Oran Park clash was the last sprint round before the all Important Enduro
season kicks off with the Sandown 500 in Melbourne followed by the motor
race that has a nation of petrol heads glued to their lounge chairs from
sun rise to sun down, the
Bathurst
1000km classic. The
Oran
Park
round also marked end of reverse grid racing, and it was a little ironic
that these races, in both categories, produced the most exciting action of
the weekend.
For
many and varied reasons
Oran
Park often proves to be a turning point in the Championship. What was
looking like a wide open competition only a few months ago was starting to
take on a familiar pattern as teams headed to the Western Sydney track,
and by the time teams had loaded their cars back into the transporters on
Sunday evening, Ford Hero Craig Lowndes was showing every intention of
grabbing the 2006 title with both hands and running away with it. As one
Journo put it “Lowndes was Sublime at
Oran
Park
”.
2006
didn’t get off to a shabby start for the T8 team but it was Lowndes’
team mate Jamie Whincup who grabbed honours and a lot of headlines by
making his maiden win one of the most prestigious on the calendar, the
Adelaide Clipsal 500.
By
round 4 it was still anyone’s title with four different winners. But by
round 5 Lowndes had become the only driver to win two rounds of the 06
championship then suddenly after
Oran
Park
it was three, and the kid appears to be in a class of his own.
Looking
back over the past 12 months things have been on the up and up for Triple
8 Racing. Six round wins in the past 12 months and the only Ford team to
win a round this year shows a team hard to beat to the title.
It’s
not so much Lowndes’ ability to win races (he only won one of three at
Oran Park), it’s his uncanny ability to be able to stay out of trouble,
have all the cards fall his way and be close to the front at the checkered
flag, consistently. If fact, most would agree that the Triple 8 Falcon is
not the fastest V8 Supercar, that appears to be the domain of The Holden
Racing Team, but speed alone is not enough – you need a certain amount
of luck and luck appears to have turned her back on the red team in recent
years. There was a time when Skaife and the HRT boys couldn’t lose a
race even if they tried. But these days if Mark Skaife is leading a race
you could almost bet your house on something really bizarre going wrong,
and Oran
Park
was no exception. A rare gearbox failure sidelined Skaife while leading
race 1 convincingly.
So
now it’s time to start thinking about the mountain, the legendary 1000km
race and something Ford really need to do – Win the Bloody Thing! Ford
has not won Bathurst
this decade and if they don’t do it this year Ford Bosses will be having
nightmares about one headline “Holden – a decade of
Bathurst victories”
Many
years ago, Ford Legend Dick Johnson said he would swap all of his 5
Touring Car crowns for another Bathurst win. These days there is a lot more prestige involved in winning the
touring car championship but it’s still no Bathurst, Bring on the mountain.
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Girls
!! Girls !! Girls !!
What better way to spend a lazy afternoon than down at the races!??
For Ford fans, the reward of seeing one of their own standing on the tall podium is an obvious pleasure!
But then there's others, drawn by the power and allure of the big V8's no doubt, but also for the allure of the greatest decoration and embellishment that the track has to offer - the Grid Girls!!
Faithfully representing their sponsor, in all the passion and glory as do their race counterparts in their cars, albeit just a little less slippery when wet around the dangerous curves, the Grid Girls endure the heat, wind and sometimes rain and cold, to bear it all with a smile, a flash of their pearly whites and deep blue, brown and green eyes!
For all they endure, and all they give, here's to the Grid Girls!! -a
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Excerpt from Edition 11 - Due September '06 !!
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