High Hopes At Bathurst, Balancing Act, Full Credit To The Drivers
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Mornings with Matt White
SEN Supercars Commentator- James Moffat 14/10/24
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We kicked off our coverage at 10 o'clock yesterday. Race started at 11.30 yesterday morning. And then this is all Eastern daylight saving time. And then, of course, the race finished six hours late at 5,058 minutes later. And Paul Dunbrell joined me for the last couple of hours on that one. PD 20 Bathurst starts, including a 2012 victory with Jamie Wingcup. So knows all about the highs and lows. And he was pretty enthralled yesterday with the fuel situation. He agreed it wasn't the most riveting race, you know, when you're sitting down in front of your telly, but some are and some aren't. And yesterday, if you got into the nitty gritty, there were still some storylines. He actually thought that at the end of the day, Brody, Castecchi and Brock Feeney might not even make it, might not even make it with fuel. And that could have opened the door for Will and Will Brown. That isn't James Moffatt, who I'll speak to in just a second. Were they conserving? So it became a bit of a fuel game at the end, which I admit is not electrifying. Right? It doesn't resonate to a lot of people. It's part of the game. And that's the game that was being played out yesterday. A lot of your thoughts around Coach Kay and the parenting tips there coming in 0457736-736. The yes's and the no's, the borings and not-so's from Bathurst yesterday. It doesn't take away from one heck of a drive from Brody, Castecchi, in particular. 1-300-01-1170 is our open line number. Let's start this hour with your call, Jace. Good morning. Oh, morning, morning, Wadi. And, yeah, I tuned in when I could, yesterday, I played a bit of golf, but yeah, it's great stuff for you. Yes, Jimmy, sounding like a real racing car, but excellent, mate. Hey, I'll tell you, I don't know if you heard, but we got a text there was a, well, Jimmy got a text from a bloke called Mark who said, "Jimmy, you can't even sell a car, let alone talk about one." And that Mark was spud. So as in Mark Carroll, so it was a fair, it was a fair old sir. But it was great. It was really great fun. I mean, Jimmy loves he's sporting, knows he's sporting, he's played sport at the highest level. At the end of the day, to sit with a person who understands sport talks about it every day. He's got a big day today as well too, Jimmy. So if you're listening, mate, have a great one, but it was a lot of fun and to be able to bounce information and, you know, sit here and do all that and then call the race. Yeah. Look, it was a lot of fun. So thanks, Jace. I'm glad you appreciated it. What are we chatting about this morning? Just a quick thing on the golf, I watched the LPGA, so it was at Shanghai yesterday. And there was one by the local Ronan Yen, Min Jui Li was in there, she came eight. But I picked up on something that the commentators were talking about. So there was a Chinese golfer named Mooney He, so her surname's about H E. And they were talking about her boyfriend who was in the gallery, and he was just in watching her for the last couple of days. Pretty anonymous bloke. Before he's going to America, it was Alex Elbon. Alex Elbon. Yeah. Yeah. So he's, yeah, you know, the great, well, William McLaren driver and, yeah, he probably loved it, like being anonymous in the crowd there, but, you know, as you know, it's to the United States for the next round of the F1. So I thought you'd like that too. Yes. I didn't know that until you started talking about it. So they've been going out for a while from what I see. So Mooney He is her name, and I think they met. Did they meet at a Grand Prix race? Hmm. Need to get to the bottom of that one. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Okay. Yeah. All right. There you go. There's a bit of a motorsport connection into your love of golf. How did you, how did you play on the weekend? Oh, look, I've got more sunburns than anything. You keep forgetting about the glare, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Will your wugs from that? But it's the glare of the car path and the, and the, yeah, understand, but no, I had them all right. I got 31 points. So that was all right for me. Yeah, good man. Good man. Good man. I played on Friday, mate. I had a bit of a hit with some mates at a golf day on Friday morning and hit them all right. Potted like crap, but hit them all right. But hey, that's no difference there. Thanks, Chase. See you, buddy. Good week. Eels Mars says my parenting tip for coach K is to not to listen to anyone's tips. You and your misses will work it out. That is a great tip. I would add, I would add a further point to that. You and your misses will work it out, but listen to your misses first because they're made, they just, I mean, kids don't come with a handbook, right? But for some, for some reason, our wives managed to already know what's there. Let me get to some of the more of these text messages and we'll try and get James Moffatt on the line. This one about Bathurst, oh, by the way, as, oh, no, easy as it finished off. I thought it might have been you as it, but it says, Maddie, just to shout out to the bloke, it was Matt who kicked, who cooked the chickens in the oven. Got a deep fry, the bad boys in oil. That's un-Australian to cook them in the oven. All righty. Paul says, Maddie, Bathurst wasn't too bad. It's a pity when there wasn't usual wrecks that usually brings everyone closer. Not sure if you got anyone to ask if they agree, but I thought the Mustangs were a lot slower than the Camaro. Usually they show the speed of the cars they're coming down conrod straights, suspiciously they never showed that. No, they did. They did, Paul. You just got to have a little look at it. It's in the, it was in the bottom right-hand side of the graphic. So you say it didn't allow us viewers to compare the cars. Anyway, have a good day, says Paul in Wynnum. And that too speaks to the setup of the cars as well. What are you going in search of at the mountain? Do you want a car that's fast over the top, or do you want a car that's faster down up and down those straight lines of mountain straight and then conrod straights? So there's a bit of give and take, as always. James Moffatt is on the line. So fourth in the great race yesterday with his great mate, Cam Waters. Morning off. How are you feeling, mate? Good morning, Maddie. Yeah, look, a bit, a bit, a bit of sweet, I guess, so, you know, heading into the weekend we had really high hopes and as a team we felt like our preparation was probably as good as it could have been in the lead up to the race and yeah, starting second was a pretty, pretty good starting spot for us. But yeah, just as the, the day unfolded yesterday we were just a little bit too slow on the straights. Unfortunately, Maddie. So, yeah, fourth is probably as good as we could have expected and yeah, it was a great job by the team. So, yeah, bit of sweet, you know, didn't get, didn't get the step on that top step to the podium. But there's always next year, I guess. So slow down the straights. You would have just heard the texts that I, that I just got from one of our listeners there and my reaction to that as well. So sometimes at Bathurst, or a lot of times at Bathurst, you can go and search of speed up in particular at the top of the mountain. But that means that you're going to give away speed down the straights. Were you guys set up in a different way, or were you just, did you just have a not, not enough and is the Mustang too far away from the Camaro? Yeah, I think probably why you just touched on there at the end, Maddie, it just sort of seemed maybe a little bit still Camaro versus Mustang in terms of straight line comparison. We certainly focused quite heavily on on trying to make our cars as good as we could. And the bottom of the mountain without necessarily hurting some of the strengths of the car across the top. So it is always that sort of fine balance of making the car not too good across the top of the mountain than sacrificing speed down the bottom. But yeah, certainly we felt like we did a pretty good job of that sort of balancing act if you like, and yeah, we were just a little bit struggling for straight line speed compared to some of those lead Camaro's which is just sort of how things are at in terms of this sort of gen three era of supercars. So anyway, it is what it is disappointing that we couldn't really fight a bit harder than what we would have liked to, but that's racing. Let's just go back a couple of, well, let's go right back to the start. As you mentioned, you guys had good speed, you qualify on the front row of the grid. Everything is going along nicely. Cam got a pretty good start, but it looked to me as though the second grab at the start almost got bogged down a little bit, and that sort of dropped you back a couple of spots. Now you can't really, as long as you're still running off, you can't lose the race in the first 50 metres, but there was also then another lock up from Cam going down towards Turn 1, which is an interesting one. Did he explain what happened there? Yeah, we were just, I guess we'd sort of focused on having the car set up really sort of come to us throughout the day because you know, you want to be clearly quick at the back end of the race, especially when the track, you know, cools off and you're getting later in the day and then the rubber is really going down, so the track changes a lot over the 161 laps, so it's meant at the start of the race the car was a little bit difficult to drive and quite susceptible to, you know, locking those front tyres, and yeah, unfortunately just caught Cam out, you know, fortunately for that, we didn't lose too much time. You know, Cam was able to recover pretty quickly, and I guess just the way the race unfolded, you know, with such a long green flag period of running, it wasn't like 135 or 32, yeah, but that first safety car appeared, so you know, it looked up until that point like there was every chance the whole race was going to go completely green, so yeah, it took us really until probably then to be able to recover some of that track position that was lost early on, but yeah, so in answer to the question, many of the car was a little bit difficult to drive at the start of the race, it sort of came to us throughout the race. One more, technically, how much fuel did you have at the back end? Did you have, obviously, just enough to get there, but was it a conservation game? Certainly, we didn't finish with much fuel, though, put it that way, many, so yeah, we had to do, or Cam had to do a little bit of saving under that safety car period, but we basically pitted right on the window to the end of the race, the window opened in terms of fuel, but it's always a little bit of a guessing game as well because the pace picks up in that sort of final stint of the race, so what you've sort of been using in terms of your fuel consumption up until that point of the race can obviously increase as well in that final stint, so Cam did a really good job, you know, he basically tripped, tripled stinted to the end of the race, managing no-cool suit, we elected not to change brakes as well, so by the end of the race, the brakes were fairly sad, and then also having to do some slight fuel conservation as well, so yeah, he drove fantastically well and thought this was as good as we could have asked for, really? Yeah, so at the end of the day, mate, and not just because, you know, we have a connection, but well done, I think it was a good save in very difficult circumstances to try and catch those top three in particular and give them what you've just explained, from the driver's point of view about the disparity between the Mustang and the Camaro at that place, and the way that the day that it panned out, I've been through it in detail this morning about how it panned out, and once strategy is taken off the table to a certain extent, as you well know, speed takes over, and those three cars in front of you had lots of speed, and Brody had just, I mean, well-class speed, so that's how it panned out. Now, we've been having a discussion, and it's different for you and probably difficult for you, but you're a lover of the sport as much as you're a driver in the sport, but we've been having the discussion this morning where a lot of people are saying this was boring yesterday, moth, that bathers didn't become boring, why is it so boring, and look, I picked my way through it to say that there were incredible storylines through there, and in some parts it was boring. Yes, it was, and you're not going to get a race where you've got crashes, and safety cars, and hail, and rain, and all that kind of stuff all the time, so just from a spectator's point of view, and a professional's point of view, is there something else that you could do at a bathers when a day like that yesterday panned out to make it not boring? Yeah, look, it's a good question, Matty, and if I actually said on the television broadcast yesterday that if you had have asked me after Thursday, a Friday, and the incidents we saw across those two days, some of the most experienced drivers in the category, and David Reynolds, and Will Davidson having massive accidents in qualifying, and you know, there were several incidents throughout the practices leading up to qualifying, so you know, you're going to go to lap 132 before you've got a safety car, or I would have said you're out of your mind, you know, just the way that the lead up to the race was, but yeah, it's a difficult one because clearly the last two races, you know, sort of even, you know, if we talk about 2023, you know, that race wasn't overly exciting either, so yeah, there's sort of maybe, I don't know how much we can relate that back to the new gen 3 cars, but you know, certainly from a driving point of view, you know, you like get right on the edge, every lap, you know, so for the drivers that were involved in the race, yesterday, full credit to them, you know, if I put my sort of spectator or fan hat on, you know, like, to be able to execute really basically a whole race without, you know, major mistakes that led to safety cars was quite impressive in one sense, but obviously from the fan point of view, and a spectacle you want, you know, those sort of, you know, safety cars often breed safety cars, and you maybe want a bit more action throughout the race, but when you get those long periods of green flag running, you really see the difference in the car speed and the field spread is obviously quite big, so yeah, it's a tough one, you know, I don't necessarily have the answers immediately, but you know, hopefully we're in a position next year where the race is really action-packed and exciting, but yeah, more importantly, I'm somewhere near the front of the field. Which is where you were yesterday at the end, so listen, just a final word to on Brody Kistekki in particular, Todd Hazlewood did a rock-solid job yesterday, but you and I've discussed at length throughout our coverage is this year Brody's story, and it's quite a fascinating story, I mean, there was every chance this year Moth, but he wasn't going to drive at all, and somehow it had seemed that he's been bluing with, that he won a championship with and that he's leaving, he wins the Peter Brock trophy with, and it's all roses, but it was a pretty extraordinary performance from the team to get that car to the position that it was in with the pace that it had, and then a driver who I was here for every single lap, called every single lap made, and I can't remember a mistake. The only thing that really bothered him was the air hose coming out the top of the helmet for a bit, and he brushed that away and off he went, and he did some long stints too. Yeah, remarkable performance, and like you detailed, Matt, he liked to think at the start of the year that the situation that Brody and that team were in, and you know, he's not competing in the first couple of rounds of the championship, essentially not having the ability to defend his title, and then when he did come back, you know, it wasn't smooth sailing for him, but certainly, you know, their car was, you know, very impressive. Clearly, the class of the field yesterday, and Brody and Todd executed from a driving point of view, and it was just the class of the field, so yeah, I envy their position. There's no doubt about that as a competitor, that's the sort of scenario that you dream of or wish that you could be in to have such a dominant car like that. But at the end of the day, you still got to go out and do the job as a driver, not make any mistakes, and the team has to, you know, perform well, execute the strategy, make sure the car is reliable, all those things. So, you know, they did a great job of all that and clearly deserving winners. Yeah. Well said, mate. Thanks for your time this morning. What are you doing? What does Monday look like for you in the day? Monday looks like me. I'm actually in downtown Young at the moment on my way home back to Melbourne, so yeah, driving back with the family, so just stopping and young for some morning tea and a quick chat to you. So, yeah, that's what Monday looks like for me. Excellent. All right. We'll speak again soon, looking forward to the back end of the season. Well done on the weekend, mate. Thanks for your time. Well, thank you, mate. Always a pleasure to choose, mate. James Moffatt, their fourth yesterday with Cameron Waters out of the Bathurst 1000. And some interesting takes, right? Some interesting takes. There was the answer to one of those questions on the text line. I've still got more to get through. Some people want to know about certain things in the coverage, which hopefully I can explain for you. But there is a clear disparity there between, in James's opinion, between still, between the Mustangs and the Camaro. So three Camaros led the way, and then we had Moffatt Waters in fourth, and then Chas and Lee Chas, Moston Lee, holds worth in fifth. So we had two, three, four, four, four, and six Camaros in the top ten at the end of the day. Like I say, a race time of 5,058 minutes and three seconds. The quickest ever Bathurst 1000 that's been held.