Supercars in the Gold Coast Wear paradise Meet power Witness a festival-like atmosphere In an adrenaline you'll wake at Vote on and off the track With Boost Mobile boosting the party vibes Supercars on the Gold Coast It's the place to be Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 October 25th 27 Or now a ticket tech Supercars unforgettable Motor Spot has always been The ultimate testing ground for vehicle technology And today, that includes hybrids That's why BWT Alpin F1 team Is proud to endorse Castrol HighSpec Castrol's new hybrid performance standard For hybrid confidence, look for the HighSpec logo On packs of Castrol Edge and Castrol Magnetic Castrol HighSpec engine oils Endorsed in motorsport, designed for every day A motorsport podcast network production It's time for another V8 salute podcast Powered by Castrol Get on a Castrol Reggio to oil Jump on their website now Type in Castrol Type in number 2 Type in Reggio You will find it to get the right Castrol product for your vehicle Will Dale is with me He's the right product for this podcast Proper F1, sir Thank you very much That's quite the entry Yeah, I enjoyed that I'll explain that up I'm sure Shane is very hurt Don't worry That's something special for you next time He comes on with a few stats And wanders on up the stairs Hey everyone, we are ready for a Q&A And of course, we're on the pathway To the RepCode Bathus 1000 Plenty to talk about There's always lots of questions And when we did the call out for questions here will This was post-sand out So plenty of sand down Flavoured stuff But there's a few interesting topics as well There's a few left field topics But then again, it wouldn't be a Q&A without left field True I'm not sure if we get anything from right field But a lot from left field Yeah He's right field like normal Ohhh It's left field's weird Dangerously political No, I'm not even thinking political I'm just thinking we always talk about something from left field The poor right field Never gets any love Like they might have some weird questions too And maybe the right field's what's in the broadcast No, who knows? Who knows? Who knows? Let's get into it Brian Bullard Brian's a massive tick-foot fan We see Brian at plenty of races over the journey He was at Sandown And he says that the safety car/yellow flags Was boring And it's killing the sport in his opinion Will it continue? How do we get rid of it? I mean, it was a bit of a pig's take at Sandown Wasn't it? I guess we should distinguish between the safety car And the full course yellow system Because they are linked but separate They are So a full course yellow has been introduced this year In order to stop the practice of drivers Racing back to the safety car line Despite the presence of officials And potential Crash cars All that sort of stuff on the circuit So it's been introduced for the sake of safety And because drivers just can't help themselves And that's the thing that's been lost here The whole reason for doing the full course yellow thing Is to stop these drivers from taking the piss Because they were taking the piss Well the problem is As soon as one goes that little bit further Everyone else has to do the same thing Which is like what Brock Feeney said After Sandown Like he lifted He started The instance where Jack Lebrock was parked up In his Camaro at Albert Park last year He lifted as he went past And then Got ripped into Was it Ryan Wagen short? Yeah Because he felt that it was a It was a bunching them up to help shame In Gisburg So it's six or one half a dozen of the other The full course yellow thing's been brought in Because Well that's the only way that you can stop the piss taking Where by you know at Albert Park last year Jack Lebrock's car is At that fast right hand sweeper It's in harm's way It's easily a safety carable position For one of a better term But how much is too much? You can't get the line on Oh that's too fast That's not fast enough Oh that's okay So if you bring in the full course yellow Then you eradicate that straight away Yeah So I'm totally on board I think Jamie Wincott referred to it as the best thing To come in for safety since the harness device Which It's a strong strong point But I do agree that it's a fantastic thing That we do need But how it was deployed at Sandown I have a problem with Because We know that One of the impacts of this is that It means teams Don't have to double stack anymore Because they can complete They can There's no loss to having your cars come in On separate laps Because they're all cruising around the track At 80 kilometres an hour In the same relative spot to each other So There's no need to have any double stacking But They Camp Race control Camp the full course yellow out For probably longer than they needed to To ensure That the entire field completed their pit stops And I I think that's completely wrong Agree And it took away We want the safety element But we've got to find a way to keep the entertainment element So the Penrite team Were disadvantaged by having one car in the race Because they pulled the call late To go You know what? We'll bring pain in Something different here to leapfrocks and people And make something happen But under the system Everyone just covered them Straight away Without a penalty Just Came in Covered them off Came back out where they were That's safety cars It's a worthwhile point Because That was the one for Brody Castellio Breaking down at the end of the back straight Now Safety Or the full course yellow condition started during lap 142 And that's when At the end of that When Matt Payne came into the pits The full course yellow kept going all the way through To basically the end of lap 145 Before the field was allowed To pack up behind the safety car Brody's car was back in pit lane At the start of lap 144 There was no need for full course yellow To continue for those two extra laps At least not outwardly from anything I've seen Yeah, and then you've also got the other situation That wasn't in play in that last period From my memory and you might be able to correct it That they let the wave buys There weren't any in that last one That in the one that I was talking about with Brody That there was In the very last one where Jack Lebron That was in the fence At the start of the back straight But that's the other element that adds time To it all When you have the full course yellow element The safety car element And the wave buy element Piss the wave buy element off Don't need it Don't want it It's ridiculous It added so much time If we just keep the full course yellow And safety car element You'll strip that extra time off Of trying to sort the field Let cars go Mate, if you're more than a lap down You're out of like sorry You can hurt it back If you have a good enough day Jamie you encoupled Paul Dunbrell did it 2014 at Bathurst to get in the mix To maybe pinch the race But seriously stop rewarding Ordinary performances And if you stuff up in the first stint You spend the rest of the day kicking yourself Trying to catch up Trying to get a lucky break Pretty rare that it comes about Unless you've got a rocket ship race car Yeah In the past I have been on board With a whole lucky dog idea Not anymore if this is what If it's all tied together with all this If it's a choice between that And having more laps Under racing conditions I'll take the laps under racing conditions Yep, absolutely Justin Webb's question He says How about some recognition of Todd Hazelwood's performance at Sandout? Being at the race he drove The absolute wheels off that car Got it back in a position It could have won Before other circumstances With the pit stop and engine issues Ultimately ended the run What does Todd need to do To be on the grid next year? Now, he did a super job But he clearly had A super race car to work with And he was racing it He wasn't just holding it You know, in position Co-Driver spec He was up on the wheel Going for it And that's what I... How many times do you see that in a driver's career? He's probably been doing it But we've never really noticed it as much Because he's not been in a car That's been running in the top five And when you've got a car under you Then he can do that And you have to do that In terms of where you are in the race I mean, I love that fight that he had with Wing Cup He just got a bit unlucky With the contact that fired that tie But then again, on the other part of it, do you go "Did he need to be doing that at that point?" Well, this is the point It's not unlucky when you do it twice And you get away with it once And then the second time It cuts a hole in the tie I mean, I'm very curious as to How the debrief went at Erebus Over how they felt He should have handled that Because you could argue, yes, it was great Seeing him racing Jamie Wing Cup hard But if he hadn't done that And just sat behind Jamie For the rest of that stint That car doesn't end up Back down the tail of the field Doesn't require Brody to rag it To get all Todd and Brody To rag it all the way To get it back up the field Because Todd did a great recovery job In his second stint behind the wheel Of course, all a moot point Because the thing broke down With 15 laps to go anyway But it was great to see Todd showcasing what he can do But I don't think that was the smartest thing To be doing at that point in the race It probably also, though, can help change perception Would you say before Todd Hazel was a driver It could be pushed around? Having... Based on supercar stuff I could see that argument being made But having watched him in Transam this year He's given more than he's received So it's been nice seeing that side of Todd this year And this is probably just an on-flowing of that Yeah, yeah, and I've got He and Brody as absolute big contenders Don't go into Bathurst Absolutely You'd need the speed first If there's a chat to be had to go Hey mate, pick your battles just a little better Next time around Particularly at the next place we're going Sure, but I'd rather not go Shit, he was slow, we have to jean him up for Bathurst I'd rather go wee-nitty than press on Yeah, I don't think that's going to be initiated Todd No, Justin's last part of the question What does he need to do to be on the grid next year? I presume he means full time I can't see there You know, he could win Bathurst this year And I don't see there's a full time slot for him By the look of it Running out of seats There really aren't very many in play And there's a lot of drivers That are at the front of the queue for that Raises are a good point though, Will I think in the fan base And I know in a lot of drivers They deem success being a full time supercars driver I think there's a lot of drivers that will tell you over the journey That once they've experienced the bit that's not being a full time supercars driver It opens their eyes to the possibilities And in some instances You can actually make more money and be happier in your life Than trudging around Trying to grab a 15th on a weekend with a car that's You know, 20th best Whereas you could become under the current co-driver rules There's drivers earning six figures And a free car and probably a fuel car And whatever else is going on They could then build a year around that Don't you? Like potentially win two of the biggest races of the year In the 500 and the 1000 Find a way to put together some other budget To do some other racing to keep you sharp Have a day job, do some other stuff in your world There's your year And I would argue in a lot of instances It's probably better than being in a bunch of those cars full time on the grid That's in line with some of the things Scott Pie was saying After winning the Sandown 500 as a co-driver Of course, he was out of a full time drive For this year when team 18 decided to go a different direction for the 20 car And he said, "Well, after seeing what life's like here It would have to be a pretty good opportunity To get me to leave doing this And the potential of winning the two important races of the year Yeah, and having spoken of plenty of drivers in the past Who have transitioned, sounded like a full time player In football they kind of go cold turkey Because it's like, you're either playing or you're not playing In this you can sort of phase your way through out the other side Ollie Rhys' question, he's next up Would Sandown go to be redeveloped as housing soon? Well, I've heard that before That's been reported since 1974 Is it possible to have a scan and survey of the track done? Then the track reconstructed somewhere else It's obviously expensive, but that would be something of interest to you If Sandown could live on somewhere else or as best just to let it go Well, it could be scanned Well, technically it has been and it does exist somewhere else It exists in a virtual world of all things I racing Yeah, and has been part of the I racing service for a few years now Yeah, so in short no There was some chat way back when about Auron Park being reconstructed somewhere else And if it's not on the ground where it was For all the money in the world, it's not going to happen And that's it, it's the tradition of the place and the history of the place And it's 15 minutes from my house So unless you're going to be one 15 minutes the other way I think it's still still have all the associated problems of being in the middle of suburbia But yeah, it's the place rather than the lay If you took that lay out bit for bit, rise for rise, bump the bump And put it out in the middle of nowhere, people would go, why? Why? Yeah, nice thought Ollie, but can't see it happening and I'm keeping my checkbook firmly closed Mitchell Griffin asks, should supercars bring in a NASCAR over-time style rule To prevent races finishing under safety car? No Yeah, I'm not a fan of this idea either If you think that time certain finishes are moving goalposts Over time finishes move them to whole and other fields Like when's the finish? Well, when we kind of want it to be Let's have another go at it, let's have another go, no, I don't like it Look, there's a lot of things that I like in American sport and in NASCAR There's a bunch of things in NASCAR that are in other sports I like them because they're in other sports, not because they're in NASCAR Yeah, the final series is a whole example of that But no, the finish is the finish Well, the overtime style also works in NASCAR on predominantly Ovals that are, what, a mile and a half Or less or slightly more long rather than three kilometer circuits Five kilometer circuits, six kilometer circuits In terms of the length of how many seconds a lap is Yeah, and how much it takes for you to then pack the field back up Get them sorted and get them to restart of their own volition Yeah, no, I'm not on board No This episode is brought to you by Microsoft Azure Learn your ideas into reality with an Azure free account Get everything you need to develop apps across cloud and hybrid environments Scale workloads, create cloud-connected mobile experiences, and so much more Discover what you can create with popular services free for 12 months Learn more at azure.com That's azure.com And sign up for a free account to start building in the cloud today Riley Jones, is there a chance? When I hear this, I usually think, no, but I haven't heard the rest of the question Is there a chance IndyCar could race at called a Thunderdome? No. Since I believe Charlotte Speedway is used by Indy, not for a long time unfortunately, Riley And there has been word buzzing about IndyCar's coming back to Australia No, no, no, no, no, no, no It's funny, this is actually Riley a semi-topical question Because the front door of the V8 sleeve office is a stack of old motorsport news issues And at the top of that strategically placed by Shane Rogers Is an issue from, was it 1999 or 2000? Early '99 I think Yeah, where one of the news stories was Bob Jane in talks with Tony George To bring the IRL to Call to Park Tony George visited the Call to Park Thunderdome I think it was the week of the Grand Prix, maybe '99, 2009 It was an incredible sliding doors moment of can you imagine IRL cars at call? Oh my god, I mean by that stage, so early '99 the dome is still in use Because NASCAR, stock cars, whatever you want to call them Ran the last one there at the end of '99 on the dome So it was still an active entity, she was a bit old ride by that point And the IRL remember they were using a lot of NASCAR tracks that IndyCar traditionally Had not been using so Charlotte made a speedway among them, of course And of course the Thunderdome is a smaller version, compressed version of Charlotte So it's kind of based on so Riley, I love IndyCar racing, I love the history of it, I love the Gold Coast races, I love so much about it No chance in Hell IndyCar will race at the Call to Thunderdome It's been a long time since Charlotte was used by IRL cars That was early 2000s, I think from in mind In '99 when spectators were injured by that crash Yeah, there was a couple fatalities in some debris that went over the fence Word buzzing about IndyCar coming back to Australia, I'm not sure where that buzzing is coming from And we talk about this in the office quite a bit, but there was recently Mark Miles Who's kind of, what's Mark Miles, the head of, he runs the IndyCar series in the speedway And whatever for Roger Penske was talking about, there's a lot of heat in America at the moment Around IndyCar and the current stewardship of Roger Penske and his business running it all And one of the things that was thrown up by Mark Miles recently was about an off-season International Tour kind of thing, because this series is over now, it's done, it was done, what a weekend to go So they run from March till September, that's a massive off-season Basically finishing before the NFL starts I'm not sure what dictates the start of their season, but it finishes before the NFL starts Yeah, so they've got the whole thing of shutdown So he sort of floated this as well, maybe that's what we do in the off-season to garner some interest And a lot of people say, "Well, why wouldn't you just make those part of the championship?" But they are clear, they just want to be a North American backyard championship Because the budgets for the teams are drawn from North American sponsorship budgets The TV times are on good times for North American viewers You come to race in Australia, we would say, "Wow, that's fantastic IndyCar down under Again, we carry on the history, wherever you might put it" But the reality is, they get a small slice of television viewers in America It would be even smaller when it's on a 3 o'clock in the morning And that's the whole point of- It doesn't make sense, Commissioner The whole point of IndyCar coming to Australia in the first place to Queensland to Queensland at the start of the 90s was as a way of promoting service paradise as a tourism destination to America And for that, you do need the television audience And one might argue, if you were going to try and do the same thing now There's a very different American series you'd be angling to try and bring here And it's got a roof It does have a roof Yeah, and we kind of have a bit of history with it We do A bit of our own But sorry, Riley, to be so dismissive, but- Yeah, unfortunately not It would be incredible But there have to be so much money spent on just the surface of the Thunderdome To allow IndyCar's to rock To let stock cars even run their little IndyCar's But speaking of the surface paradise race in Indy history, it's a nice little tie into our guest at V8 Sloot Live this year at Bathurst It's our annual, we call them open nights in the past, we're going with V8 Sloot Live this year But it's the same thing, Thursday night of race week, October the 10th at the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre We're in the Ian McIntosh Theatre, which I think's really appropriate Because Ian McIntosh was the mayor of Bathurst at the time that Tony Cochran did the deal To get V8 Supercars to their own Bathurst 1000 kilometer endurance race So kind of a nice synergy that TC is our special guest 12 years on from his last trip to the mountain Tickets are on sale now, come along If you've not been to one of these nights, there are a whole pile of fun We'll put the link to the tickets in the show notes of this episode Otherwise, do some Googling, you'll find it, V8 Sloot Live featuring Tony Cochran We've also got a special guest stopping by Do we now? We do Did you think, oh my god, am I going to have to turn up here? Is there going to be a point that I think I was ever going to be referred to as a special guest for this? So, you can be a very special guest Neil Crompton is going to stop by And we've had some fun with Neil at Sloot Open Night the 12 hour But this is for the 1000, so he's going to stop by No doubt tell some Tony stories on the way through And there's a couple of other supercars legends Who are going to come along and join us to, can't say much more I'm going to keep twisting their arm until it either falls off And they turn it with one arm, or they just turn up Either way, it's one or the other, they'll decide what's going to happen No, knowing who some of these names are, yeah They seem like the kind of people who'd like to keep both arms Yeah, true, very true, very true So, that's V8 Sloot Live, Thursday October 10th at Bathurst, it's out And you'll get together, it's not at the museum this year Normally, we do it at the National Motor Racing Museum But there will be all sorts of goodies from Brad Owen and the team at the museum For sale at the theatre, and we'll also have a really great night A theatre, big, fat, comfy seats in the theatre too So, no confirmation yet where the Tony will do tap He might sing, he might sing, but I'm not sure if a tap dance routine is part of this I'll have it chatting about this, there's still time Still time, and there's still time for tickets too, so If you're heading up to Bathurst, if you're camping, if you're going to be around in town Come and join us, it's a pile of fun It's the first time Coco has been to Bathurst in 12 years, so Returning to a sacred site? Yes, there is no sacred sites I think I heard that from someone, somewhere along the line Anyway, James Archer's next question We often hear stats about the number of races each circuit has held in its time On the Australian Touring Car & V8 Supercars calendar But, what's the circuit with the most number of laps completed? Naturally, you would go, well, Bathurst, 161 laps along the Straits of the Year But it hasn't always been part of a championship So, and I'm going to tell you, I don't know the answer You've got the answer on the other side of the laptop screen I do courtesy of Shane Rogers So, should I have a crack? Have a crack I had a guess at this and was wrong Right Because I did guess Bathurst Circuit with the most laps, it's got to be clearly one that's hosted a lot of rounds I'm thinking if it's a shorter track, there's more laps That's a pretty sound theory So, of the circuits that have hosted more rounds than any other, Sandown is one And I think Simmons Plains is two Contenders? But it's not either of them I don't recall saying that It might be one of them I don't recall saying that I hate you when you do this I'm going to have to make a pick here Sandown You're absolutely correct, it is Sandown I thought there was a trick element to what you were steering wheel and all that You nearly made me change my mind halfway through, but do you know how many laps? I do, so the top five going from 5th to 1st Adelaide Parkland Circuit with 3,696 Yeah, makes sense, doesn't it? Wannaroo Raceway, formerly Barbagallo Raceway, formerly Wannaroo Raceway 3,991 Simmons Plains in 3rd place 4,170 Makes sense, it's been a long time Held the top spot in this list until the early 2000s Worth noting Mount Panorama is 2nd, 4,318 And a couple of hundred ahead is Sandown 4,539 racing laps completed by the winning car across time Yeah, not every lap by every car, we're talking about how many laps of actual races And not scheduled laps either, because we've watched a few in Sandown over the years Yeah, it's going to say actuals rather than potentials Yeah, good one, last question Jack Palmer, with a massive success of events like Townsville and of course Bathurst Why don't we have more events in regional areas? Surely a straight track somewhere like Ballarat would bring huge benefits both for the sport and the town that hosts it And on that note, how long do you think it will be before a local category other than supercars is capable of putting on a street race in Australia? Two-part question, I'll take the second part for what you might say, okay? There'll never be another category other than supercars capable of putting on a street race in Australia of a local category Yeah, local category being the important part because it takes so much money to put on a street circuit and causes such intense disruption depending on where you are and pisses off so many locals depending on where you are There has to be a solid sound financial reason for doing it It's got to be a big ticket, exactly Big ticket series, big ticket investment, big ticket Headcount to be able to put it all together Yes, I don't see another sporting organisation in Australia in motorsport And that's not to say that only supercars is allowed to No, but if someone else can do it Yeah, good luck to them, but short of something that's going to be for an international travelling show whether it's Formula E or IndyCar or something other In terms of a domestic category or series For example, it would be hard to see Australian GT doing it without some form of international element P backing on to it Yeah, yeah, agreed But Jack's points are a good one Regional areas are absolutely where I'd be trying to aim some of these events in the future Because we know that there's massive interest I mean Townsville is a great example We're both from regional areas, they both got mentioned in this course Yeah, exactly right, Ballarat Cop Dimension and Townsville is near enough to Bowen So we'll claim that, that's your home round But cost a lot of money There is always I feel in those regional areas more negative voices than positive in a lot of examples And it's usually a small number, but they're pretty loud and pretty raucous Newcastle, we're looking at you That's where I was thinking Great benefits for regional areas And I know that a lot of the government funding in the past For example, there's been supportive events at Wynton Because they want to get stuff in regional areas Whether it's you're a big music head, concerts, getting stuff in regional areas Particularly those that have been hit by Covid, that whole industry just can go and perform and do its thing So there's obviously massive amounts of upsides for regional areas because they get forgotten It gets so much made about the metros, whether it's events, media There's a lot of people who don't live in capital cities The flip side of that is making sure that wherever you go It does have the infrastructure to handle the Not just the amount of spectators that a street circuit event at supercars level would attract But also accommodating the teams, accommodating all the officials, accommodating support Got to put them somewhere Exactly Not everyone can state my mum and dad So I would already book in for that one before anybody else's cooking Yeah, yeah, correct, correct Traveling Bushman is the, well, I think, Facebook name of this account Do you think the Bathurst 1000 needs a twilight race? I don't think it does Well, I can't know, there's always talk about the AFL grand final Potentially shifting to being a night based thing or a twilight phase thing They just guarantees them column inches Well, people click on that, sorry, correct, so fully understand why that keeps getting asked But I don't think Bathurst needs to be a twilight race, I don't think it adds I personally don't think that adds anything to it If we get enough safety cars, it could be a twilight race, but there'd have to be quite a lot The last thing you want, though, is a major sporting event that started at 1130 or whatever it is, finishing at 8 o'clock Not when it was meant to finish well before, yeah, yeah, sometimes it just happens to get there because of weird things But no for me as well, and Stephen Burns asked a similar question When will the Adelaide 500 become a night race? Now this I don't mind the idea of, especially if you had the Saturday night race as a night race And we're talking eight night race Well, maybe because we did start a dusk in the light, when they did the 2125Ks and it was just there, there, there If you're going to do a night race, you've got to have lights and stuff's got to glow And you remember, like far enough back, was it a GTP? Had a night race cup? Yep, they ran night races there So not And the American Le Mans series, remember the race for a thousand years on the Grand Prix track, ran And finished at 10pm or something, didn't you? Yeah, something like that, yeah, it was on the morning before this news. Yeah, so I think there's more likelihood of that And then the other thing I think of there is relating back to the earlier question If you could mount some form of case to twist Rod Japinski and Mark Miles's arm from the States If you were going to have a race in Australia for Indy cars, it needs to be at a time that is far more palatable For the viewing audience in the United States So how would it need a twilight evening night race for Indy cars on a street track go back to America As you check for time clock websites It depends because remember, the States is a big wide country so it can be probably not much better So 8pm in Adelaide South Australia works out to 6.30am that day in Charlotte, North Carolina Better than 2 or 3am though, it is better than 2 or 3am, a little bit, a little bit But if you were to say have an 8am Indy car race, then it's at 6.30pm On the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Oh, you're going the other way? Yeah. Start off the day at Adelaide with an Indy car race for the American market. Sunday morning? Not the craziest thing I've ever heard. Yeah, maybe not necessarily that early as 8am. Bit later. Yeah, maybe 9am still hits like 7.30pm on the eastern seaboard. The thing is too, when you think about the days of the Gold Coast Indy race, it never, I mean it was run for the time that it was on here And as Indy car waned and cart and champ car got to the point where in America it was on nothing burger, cable TV And all that sort of stuff too, so the penetration over there went away. Now they've got a fox deal, so whatever you do though, it's got to be part of, and when we say fox In America that's free to wear. Yeah. So whatever you do, it's got to be part of their main championship. Yeah. No point doing it as the tack on, add on, you know, end of year hit and giggle race which we had for the last year in 2008. Motorsport has always been the ultimate testing round for vehicle technology and today that includes hybrids. That's why BWT Alpin F1 team is proud to endorse Castrol Heisbeck. Castrol's new hybrid performance standard. For hybrid confidence, look for the Heisbeck logo on packs of Castrol Edge and Castrol Magnetic. Castrol Heisbeck engine oils, endorsed in motorsport, designed for every day. Saran Thatch, long time listener, first time call, I've got a feeling he's called before, but we'll let that slide. He asks, how many Nissan Skyline HR31s did Gibson motorsport build and how many of them still exist today? He saw three of them at the Phillip Island Classic. It was really a this year or last year. I think it was last year. Murph drove one, Steve Richards drove one. I think it was another one floating around. Was there three of them all? So it's funny, Saran says he's a long time listener because I actually went back to our archive and we got this exact question from someone on Episite. It wasn't him. It wasn't him. In episode 56 back in 2020. Cheapest. Yeah. Four HR31s built by Gibson motorsport. So there was, oh, so there's, yeah. So they built two in 88. One of which got inverted at the Bathurst Media Day. Well done, Cito. One in 89 and one in 90, which is the white interior car that Jimmy won the championship in that he owned for a long time that Peter Sturgeon from New Zealand now owns. And he's stolen the gyms custodian ship and Steve's been driving it. So there you go, Saran. You saw three or four. Yes. 75% good. Great. That's a pass in. That's a pass. Oh, that's a pass in it. Test over it. Yes. Jack Callister. Hey, guys. Absolutely love the pod. Always listening at work. I'd like to know what work Jack does though. If he's listening to our pod, what's he getting done? Hopefully it's not transcribing or something like that. Just how big Jack asks, is the Toyota news for the sport? Just general conversation. I couldn't be more excited. It's such a vote of confidence in the sport. It's a great question, Jack. And we've talked about it in the office in the last week or so since this all went down. If you went pound for pound for the biggest, most impactful news stories in the history of the sport of supercars or the category, what's right up there? How big is this? This is massive. And I don't think a lot of people in the fan base quite understand how big this is. This is the number one manufacturer in the world and in the country who spend advertising and marketing dollars on AFL football on NRL through sponsoring the Cowboys. They're already involved in motorsport through rallying and the GR Cup One Make 86 series. This is massive because the money that they'll spend in all the other areas that will lift the whole thing up, marketing money, corporate sponsorship, advertising. Suddenly, their arrival has just given supercars such a big free kick for their new television rights negotiations because if I'm a network out there that's currently getting a little bit of money with Toyota advertising with me, if I suddenly have the rights to supercars racing that Toyota are in boots and all from 26, what do you reckon is going to happen there? They're going to want to advertise where their racing cars are on Channel 7, 9, 10, Fox, whoever it is, exactly right. So this is massive and you're right, it's a vote of confidence because we live in a world of everyone wants everything yesterday, everyone wants change, everyone doesn't like everything, everyone's got their opinion on everything and that's fine, that's the way of the world. But what this is going to do, I don't think people quite understand the level of how big this is just yet. What's the potential of bringing the sport properly back into the mainstream? When you think of, you talked about the way Toyota advertises, Harry Bates is in their television ads, like the ones that run in like pretty prime time time slots to a general audience. Yep. Now imagine what they're going to be doing with their supercars drivers, Chasmost at Ryan Wood plus whoever else. Yeah. I mean that is a huge promotional opportunity to make at least those drivers household names again. And let's not bet we're in the bush here. Forward are in the championship, forward motor company support it. They stick money in. Not what they once did, but they stick money in. The GM element here, GM and GM SV and where they are in the whole scheme of the motor market in Australia, they're right down the bottom with all due respect, not because of the quality or the people, it's just their size of market share. Once upon a time, the GM rep here holding was massive. But now, so it's almost like the Toyota of now is the Holden of back in the day. It's an interesting way of looking at a player that's selling more cars than anybody else. They've got the opportunity here. This is really unique. Toyota could become the home brand for Australia. Think about the Toyota's Bernie since what the 50s? Yeah. That they're in all the things that are relevant to culture of sport in Australia. AFL and NRL. Cricket as well. Cricket. They're the three big pillars of sport in this country. Let's face it, whether you're into zero, one, two or three of those, they are the big three. So, no more Holden, gone. Yeah. So, if there's going to be another brand come in, a Kia or a Hyundai or someone else down the line, Toyota who are ingrained with grassroots sport and with the sports that are so well-known in this country, are actually going to end up being one of the home teams versus whoever might come next. So, I sort of look at it like that because they have such a long history, yes, it's a Japanese car brand, but they have such deep roots now in Australia and particularly they've got that connection in grassroots motorsport and a pathway now that a kid could win the 86 scholarship series, the GR Cup, then might have to do a deviation around Super 2, but by the time they're on the scene, Super 2 might have Gen 3 cars in it, who knows, and end up becoming Super Cars Champion and having come all the way through with Toyota. I mean, that is an incredible platform for anyone coming, that's not even coming into the sport now, but anyone who's coming into the sport in the next three, four, five years, and that's probably the other flip side of it. There's been such a because of where the sport's been in the past few years, question marks over what we're going to be racing in the future, the fact that the Camaro is dead with General Motors and what that's going to look like for the GM teams in the next few years. This has answered a pretty big question mark over the sport's future because we know, like from 2026 onwards, we're going to have Toyota's on the grid, they're going to be racing Mustangs and they'll be racing some form of GM product, so that is a massive, massive thing. And it's tiring to read when people are like, "Yeah, but they don't have a V8 Super, yeah, but yeah, but the fact is Toyota are in this to promote GR, they were the things that Sean Handley from Toyota said at the announcement last week, when he was asked why now?" He said, "GR, gazoo racing, it's about building the brand, the days of the car that you watch on the racetrack being the car that you can drive on the road are pretty much gone. This is about brand, you'll be driving a RAV4 or a Hilux or a Corolla or whatever, very few people will have a Supra of the current generation, but it's not about that. You can get a GR version of a lot of the Toyota range here, but it's not going to be the meet and veg regular cars, vehicles out there, what's being raced, it's not about that, make no mistake, it's about the brand, it's about that Toyota product on the racetrack making you be engaged because you drive a Hilux or because you drive or own something else in the range. And the other thing that a lot of people in line haven't really stopped to look at, one of the things that Toyota have talked about, they've got over 200 dealers in Australia or they're abouts. So this is about pathways for mechanics, there's a real lack out there in a lot of dealerships of train technicians who can do all these things to keep everyone's cars on the road. So this is a pathway thing that also helped with that side of things. So there's always so many more facets and elements of these things than many people on social media who clearly are experts because they're on social media and tell us they're experts and have an opinion that they ever stop to ponder or consider. So Jack, it's massive news, I think we've probably, from the fact that we've talked about it for 10 minutes, it's probably the fact that it is big news and because of your question, making us give the probably the biggest answer to the podcast, I am giving Jack, he's not going to get anything for this, but give yourself a pat on the back, a city rural insurance question of the week with thanks to our good friends at City Rural Insurance Brokers. They've been around since 1995, who won Bathurst in '95, Will? It'd be Larry Clifton Perkins and Russell Engel. Do you know Russell's middle name? I do not. No, I must find the official birth year. Well, not many people do know that, but under the game, the middle name. True. City Rural can help you with your insurance for business transport, trades, farming, much, much more. Talk to them now to grab a quote. Jump online at cityrural.au, they are your insurance pit crew. Let's go on to Clayton Hugh Farlow and he's got a bit of a Toyota flavoured question, too, Will. Does the WAU Toyota program face the same potential failures that the Kelly's face would Nissen or will Gen 3's Titan regs help them feed into the sport? It feels like the parity measures that the sport is undertaking nowadays with putting cars in wind tunnels and putting the entire engine and drivetrain setups on an AVL dyno to assess them should hopefully eliminate the pain that the Kelly's had to go through. The Arabis had to go through when they were developing the Mercedes, the pain that Gary Rogers motorsports somehow managed to sidestep with their fantastic Volvo S60. It's about how you play the game, though, too. Yes. But there's a very important element here that we have to cover. All those ones that you just mentioned were a situation of a team doing a deal with a manufacturer or in the case of Arabis, it wasn't with Mercedes Benz, it was with HWA. There it is. Yeah. The German sort of the Mercedes performance motorsport arm. This is different. I think a lot of people misunderstand. This isn't WAU going out there canvassing for a manufacturer and landing Toyota as Kelly's landed Nissen or Gary Rogers at his guys landed Volvo. This is Toyota and Supercars doing a deal, and then Toyota doing a deal with Walkenshire and Dreda United. It might not sound like a big difference, but it's a massive difference in how this is all going to roll out and how it's all going to be done. But I think the point that Clayton raises about the Gen 3 regs, that helps. There's more control parts on this car than there were on the last car. The car of the future car had to flow on over from the project blueprint car in terms of the other manufacturers bringing their existing engines and all that sort of stuff. And then how hard and how far did the Kelly's push the whole Nissen thing? If it was in the hands of AAA or ProDrive, FPA, whatever they call it, the time, or someone else, it would have been a bit different. For better or worse, I'm not quite sure, but it would have been different. But that's an important one here. Supercars and Toyota have a deal. That's where it starts, and then the deal with Walkenshire follows on from that. So I don't think they face the same potential failures because now that, as you said, the testing process is through the roof. The implementation and the spend in the last 12 months on Wing Tunnel in America and IVL testing and all that sort of stuff, that wasn't even close to that was in place when what was the Nissen, the end of 2012 for 2013, we've come a long way in that time. It was a accumulated engine power metric of adding up horsepower at different rev intervals across the range and then yeah, a lot has been learnt over the past 15 years. Yeah. Sorry, Toyota will get to stand on the shoulders of all those learnings. Correct. Yeah. And then the other thing to point out is whoever comes, if anyone comes after Toyota, they'll do the same. Yes. If a Kia or a Hyundai or a BMW or whoever, I'm just throwing names, they will learn from what gets done in this situation too. Yes. Daniel Olson, how can we convince Supercars to get rid of the time-certain races since the races are not on free-to-wear anymore, so there is no need for time-certain races? Oh, I knew you would ask me this one. You will never get rid of it. There has to be a finish for a race. There can't be just ad nauseum go till you're all fall over and there's a finish. It's a good point though, obviously for Sandown, it wasn't on free-to-wear, it was a highlights race, it wasn't live on free-to-wear. Six o'clock was the cut-off time for the track, that's mandated by the circuit, by the racing club, by the council, but that's when- Can't have loud racing engines running in essentially a residential area- 9AM was engine turn on time, you couldn't turn a racing engine on in the paddock before then. And six o'clock was the- it used to be a- was it eight o'clock? Yeah, it was different on different days, so it was 9AM for Sunday, which is why the teams that did overnight engine changes, plant charts and walking shores weren't able to actually run up those engines until 9AM, so they kind of didn't know 100% what that. And that's part of the reason the plant chart team changed the engine in the three car, because yeah, couldn't evaluate it overnight and yes, yeah, tell them how to go. So you're not going to get of time certain finishes. The reality is that it's not a- I think so many fans think that the time certainly gets suddenly inserted into the race part way through. It's daring the regulations the whole way. Yes. So how do we show the fans that this race is going to be X laps or finish at this time? You kind of got to show that at the very start of the race to understand, it's like you go into a shop and you pick up an apple and you go, "Oh, well, you're telling me it's a dollar." Yeah. Okay, you get to the counter. Yeah, but if you took 12 seconds to walk to the counter, it's now $1.12. Yeah. Whatever you want, what I'm trying to say. So I understand, Daniel, it's a bit of a whole case of what you're getting presented and then what you're getting, you feel under, you feel under change, you feel short change is what I'm trying to say, where you've told me it's 161 lap race, yet I only get 154 or whatever it might be. So how can we convince them to get rid of time certain? I don't think that's the question here. No. I think the scenario is just building more time into getting the race in time, factoring in safety cars, full-course yellows, weirdness, it's a factor in event planning. They're trying to get it, and in the case of that one, it's not to get it into the news because we're not running to the news because it's on Fox Sports, but in other cases where that does happen, just got to start stuff a bit earlier. Yes. If we're going to, and we could go and look it up, if you asked a fan tomorrow, what percentage of supercars races in the last 10 years have run to time certain finishes? It's not that big. No. It's surprisingly small. It's surprisingly small, but there's so much noise around it, and there's so much anger when there is and frustration that I think it's got to be dealt with, or it's got to be looked at, and I don't think though it's a question of convincing them to get rid of them. I think it's a question of ensuring that convincing supercars with their scheduling to just move stuff earlier, and if you pull up a bit short, what's better? But on rounds where you're not trying to push into a free-to-wear news, which is massively important, like massive, if you're Channel 7, you want Bathurst to basically finish and then go to the news to keep the viewership rolling into the evening. That's the way of the world if you don't like it, it's been going off for years. It's not new, but we've just got to convince them, maybe it's a bit of data, maybe it's a bit of further information looking back through our history books to go, "Hey, look, started at once." If you'd started that, what time did you need to start the Sand End 500 at to get it in by the time certain finished the other weekend? Well, the other thing is it's kind of a sliding scale because you could have nominated that time prior to last weekend's race, and then realizing that, "Oh, yeah, all these safety car peers are now a couple of laps longer because of these new procedures," which is essentially what happened last weekend because they did start last this year's Sand End 500. I think it was what, another 10, 15 minutes earlier than last year? The last year was delayed because of the super-toot. Which they then added. And they did. At the time at the end. Yeah. Daniel, we will go, here's a mission for Shane, we will go and dig. It's a busy time with Bathurst going on stuff, but let's go and dig in our data. The last 10 years, 15 years, either all, somewhere around there, of how many races, what percentage of races were time certain, and what percentage of potential racing laps were lost? I'd be interested to see, but my gut feel from the little look that we've done in the past is that we don't lose as much as you might think we do. What's funny, this is the angst over time certain races is a relatively recent thing because it's only relatively recently that we've been able to watch all the races live as they're happening. Yeah. It's a good point. That's actually a really good point. So, yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Phil Martin, top 10 shootout should be held only for the Bathurst 1000, and when will supercars get over qualifying every day? Only once on Saturday, if you had a bad race, work your way back the next day progressive grids, please. It's more of a comment, a statement than a question, but Phil, comment on the comment. I do agree we qualify too much. I do like the idea that you only have shootouts at special events, have one at Adelaide, he just said one at Bathurst. He just said Bathurst. Well, I agree with the idea that there should be less shootouts. So, ideally, marquee events. Correct. Yeah. So, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Bathurst, the 500 at the bend, which is where it's going to be. Yeah. Maybe not even the bend. If I'm honest... You want the qualifying races back? I want the qualifying races back. Saturday at Sandown was real flat, if I'm honest. Yeah, true. Well, I didn't like that the shootout was so late in the day. Like it virtually finished at, what, quarter to six? Yeah. We had to make fans sit around all day at the track to find out who's on par. It's too late to get on the news. It's too late to do really anything with it, and everyone's had to be there all day with the view that you wanted them to come back nine o'clock the next morning. And that's it. If you're going to have... If you're going to drag it out for a day, at least put additional jeopardy by having 20 laps of... Two sets of 20 laps of racing. Yeah, that's true. That's true. No, that's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My thing against qualifying races was always just that it was always implemented badly from the point of view of... Was it around or part of the championship? Is it a race win? Is it not? Is it part of... Oh my God, Jesus. The amount of times that's caused headaches over the years. But having had that sand down where if the shootout was earlier and a bit more compressed into the day, I would have been all right with it, but it was so stretched out, it was actually painful. It was actually quite painful. But I agree with you. Bathurst, yes. Marquis events, yes. One per Marquis event, regular qualifying Sunday, if you don't recall a fight. Totally great. I'd be on board with a progressive grid around or two. It'd be interesting, wouldn't it? Just to mix it up. It'd be very interesting, especially if there's a title contender that doesn't nail qualifying or has an issue. I get the impression that, so what are some of the things that fans have hated this year? Too much practice, not enough racing, particularly on a Saturday. I get the feeling that that's going to be fixed. My little sources are telling me that for all the people who are out there banging, they're not listening, they're not listening, they're listening. I think you're going to hear and feel next year, you're going to get what you want. But I hate that everyone's got a bazillion pole positions and a bazillion qualifying stats. I'd like the whole thing of just qualify once and then just race your way through. But maybe there's some rounds that, for example, we talk about Perth, Tazzy, short tracks, the whole dropping cars off, people getting in each other's way. Let's just make those rounds the ones where we just get rid of qualifying three times or twice. Yeah. Just qualify once and then progress your way through. Elimination session and be done with it. Yeah. Yeah. Just if you're going to do three races, just start where you finish. I do find it interesting that as times evolved, those elimination sessions of where they've done them to reduce the amount of cars on track at any given time, they're now all out there at the start of... Yeah, correct. It doesn't change anything. Anyway. It doesn't change anything. I also like the idea of having less shootouts so that it becomes more of a, not more of a skill, but you're practicing that skill less frequently, so it becomes that little bit more challenging. Even though every driver is quite good at doing one flying lap now because that's essentially what you're doing in qualifying anyway. But... It's a badge of honor. Yeah. Badge of honor. Yeah. You know. I don't think so. Matt Haywood, he's got a chassis question to round us out. So he's talking about the last HRT Commodore VZ, which was chassis 54. So that's the Mark Skafed, Garft Hand, and Bathurst, those six fastest cars to not win a race. Clutchless car. Yeah. We should have won both enduros and one neither. Yeah. Therapy's just wrapping up. I'm just fidgeting off that invoice. He said after... I've been in the main series in the Fujitsu series. It was bought by Matt Hanson. Correct. To run in the Kumo series, but it had to be converted back to a VY to run in that series. Is it the only chassis to be changed to a model that's older than what it debuted as? Well, I can think of one extremely good example of one that was retrofitted. And that would be the Larry Perkins Russell Ingle Commodore that raced at Bathurst in 1996. It started its life brand new as a VR at the start of that year. And after the parody adjustment that trimmed was 125 mil off the under tray of the VRs, for Sandown, Larry said, "Hmm, time to dust off all those VP panels, I reckon?" And that beautiful VP under tray. It's full. No trimming going on in there. There was actually a period there with the Kumo series where the VZ wasn't eligible, so you had to be V-wide, and the BF Falcon wasn't eligible, so you had to be V-8. And there was a bunch of cars that had to get put backwards. But one of them on the Falcon side of the fence is the Jason Bright Fujitsu Falcon that currently we are working with my 105.com. It's currently being auctioned. It finishes on October the 3rd. Since Jason Bright's 2008 Fujitsu Bright Tech Falcon, the Car that Bright Tech built, they bought the old ... remember they had the two FPR cars that they then did all sorts of work on? They re-shassy numbered them, they stripped them, they rebuilt them, they did all sorts of stuff. But this car is a Car that Jason debuted at Perth in '08. It was new as a BF, never raced as a BA. But when it went to the Kumo series with Justin Geary, it had to become a BA. So with the longer-lipped front spoiler, and some of those other little body mods to the arrow package between them. So that's another example of ... at the same time in the same series, a car that had to go backwards, despite it never actually racing like that back in the day. It's a funny concept, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have seen some things be retrofitted from a restoration perspective, but to keep on racing, moving into another series to wind it back to something that it never was in the previous series is one of those unique things. So good question, Matt. Appreciate it, mate. Well, bold. Well, bold. And if you're a HRT fan, and you want to know more about that particular car, it's in our HRT's Car History book. The second edition has just so many photos, so many histories. It's in our website now, superstore.v8sluth.com.au. Next week, Repco Bathus 1000, our preview episode next Wednesday, we'll run the fine tooth comb through all the teams. Give me some of the stats that you'll hear from other places because they'll probably listen to us and then use them, but you'll hear them here first. Drivers, combos, weird stuff, possibilities, who knows, we'll make a few tips, we'll have a little bit of fun. And then in the week of Bathus, it's Bathus daily, our pod every day up at the track from Wednesday to Sunday on what's happening at the mountain right throughout the course of race week, which is going to be really good. And we are going to be there in time for the track to town, the pit stop challenge. All that stuff's going to be a pile of fun. It's going to be fun seeing the pit stop challenge in town. That's a great idea. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I really like it. But the big question, will the change of venue affect BJR's chances? Will they have the same pit lane mojo without a pit lane? Well, for a start, it's funny you say that because if you listen to the BJR, the Brad Jones racing run down the latest episode of that podcast on the motorsport news feed, Bradley's not all that stoked at the format change for this year, not the location, but the fact that it's now based on, they've changed the way they assess it. So some of the fuel races were included in the determination for who made the finals. Is he saying that there's been a rule implemented to deliberately stop him from getting in or I think he went as far as he could without saying that. I have to go and have a listen. It's worth your time. It's worth your time. We had a lot to say about a lot of different things. I like it. That's what the point of podcasting is. And I want to just mention, before we shoot off the end of this episode, we are getting a lot of people asking about the motorsport news podcast and understand we saw it's been a big part of our world for the last couple of years. Obviously, as many of you know, we had a staff change recently, Alstefano's departed us. And there's so much going on at this time of year with all the things we're involved with. Something had to give. So it's in hiatus for the moment, the motor sport news podcast, but the stream is still pumping with the BJR rundown. The boys from Rally Sport with a special stage pod will get the MN pod back at some point, but just right now it's taking a bit of a well-earned breather after a couple of years. So stick with us. It's our intent to bring it back at some point in the future, but just to cover off exactly what's going on there. Right, we're done. Thank you so much, Will. Good days. Good cues. We had it all today. We had called a fun-to-home indie cars, retro-fitted race cars, night races, HR-31s. You can never write the script, but let's go and roll in for these. The important thing is we didn't have to wait around for someone who was off the pace to go get back on the lead lap. True. And you know what? No one's sent us a legal letter either. On that note, I'm out. I'm gone. Maybe we'll get a legal letter. I'll tell you about it next week. Anyway, we're going for now. B8s with podcast power by Castrolback. This week with our Redco Bathus 1000 preview. Chet you then. 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