Replacement For V8 Supercar Rules?

[Whiplash]

i dont know if you guys remember the 2 litre series that was run years ago, it was the biggest flop. I watched a round at Oran Park and it was boring. I watched the V8s at Melbourne at the beginning of the year and the racing was great and they sound tough. they are irraplacable. Maybe some sort of sallary cap is required. I know they limit testing at the moment but more is needed. It is fun for us to watch or drive in lesser classes because we have some kind of involvement but to pay money to go and watch your four cylinders run around, im not sure. Maybe bring back the good old days when 3 classes ran in the same endurance races, 4s, 6s & 8s at bathurst for e.g. The BMW drivers spent most of there time looking in the mirrors to see what was about to devour them, that was racing. And yes the Skylines dominated and owned all......

you obviously didn't see the telecast of the bathurst 12hour this year? BMW & Evo running nose to tail for 12 hours heaps of overtaking 7 classes to suit most production cars under $130K

[BezerkR32]

turbocharged cars are a little different, AWD are boring. Watching a 700hp RWD car get twitchy every time the tacho sees 5000rpm is awesome. But watching That Mazda come apart through the chase was good. When your at the track the sound and atmosphere is great, something smaller cars can never achieve. but in saying that i find the aussie cars fantastic to watch, but i think again that it is a power to weight thing.

you obviously didn't see the telecast of the bathurst 12hour this year? BMW & Evo running nose to tail for 12 hours heaps of overtaking 7 classes to suit most production cars under $130K

[djr81]

i dont know if you guys remember the 2 litre series that was run years ago, it was the biggest flop. I watched a round at Oran Park and it was boring. I watched the V8s at Melbourne at the beginning of the year and the racing was great and they sound tough. they are irraplacable. Maybe some sort of sallary cap is required. I know they limit testing at the moment but more is needed. It is fun for us to watch or drive in lesser classes because we have some kind of involvement but to pay money to go and watch your four cylinders run around, im not sure. Maybe bring back the good old days when 3 classes ran in the same endurance races, 4s, 6s & 8s at bathurst for e.g. The BMW drivers spent most of there time looking in the mirrors to see what was about to devour them, that was racing. And yes the Skylines dominated and owned all......

I remember the 2 litre Super Touring championship. Both here & in Britain. It provided some good racing and the technology of the cars was interesting & diverse. There were variously front, rear & four wheel drive cars. Four, five & six cylinder engines. Sedans, hatchbacks & station wagons. The Williams Renaults were a lovely bit of gear.

In Pomgolia there were anything up to 8 or 9 manufacturers involved at any one time: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Ford, Vauxhall, Mazda (Eunos), Nissan, Renault, Alfa Romeo. Plus some others I can't think of. Unfortunately costs got somewhat out of control & with one make dominating the series in turn the manufacturers decided spending large sums to come 10th wasn't worth it anymore.

Australia's Super Tourers were, by and large, the previous years BTCC cars. Audi, Volvo & BMW had good factory involvement & good drivers. (Jones, McConville, Richards, Brock, Morris, Brabham, Baird...) By comparison most of the privateers struggled. Ross Palmer basically gave it away after the PI tragedy & even Gary Rogers efforts were fairly hand to mouth.

As for a salary cap they tried to introduce it for our V8's. It didn't work. Personally I favour Mark Larkhams idea. Holden & Ford tip their money into a pool for marketing & team funds are provided by whatever Cochrant can gouge from tv & the circuits/promoters plus whatever sponsors they can find. This neatly removes the ludicrous situation where you have one or two factory teams & a bundle of privateers running.

Classes? Well no one gave a fk about anything other than the outright class. Given how many safety cars racing currently suffers from I would hate to see slower cars added to the series.

[R33 Impul]

I can't see why they don't run the series under the same rules as the V8 Ute series? Modified actualy road going cars would have to be cheaper than the hybrid V8's they run now and we all know how close & exciting the utes are

[djr81]

I can't see why they don't run the series under the same rules as the V8 Ute series? Modified actualy road going cars would have to be cheaper than the hybrid V8's they run now and we all know how close & exciting the utes are

Because modified road cars are horrendously expensive to run week in/week out. The V8 category started out as being not dissimilar to modified road crs. Take the VP Commodore. It had a 5 litre Holden motor (Not a Chev) a three link rear live axle (like the road car) McPherson strut front end (like the road car), shared the body shell with the road car. Over time the category has moved away from this arrangement - principally to SAVE money. It has also changed the regulations to try & ensure parity. So cost & parity are the two main drivers....

Edited July 17, 2008 by djr81

[Roy]

One good thing about a slower class on the grid is when beign lapped they intorduce some challenges to the pilots of the quicker cars and present passing opportunities to the cars following

[Duncan]

damn straight troy, lapping a car and holding your racing position really mixes them up

classes give different manufacturers something to fight over.

that bathurst race had factory mazda, fiat, commodore cars as well as all the private entries. the diesel category pulled a couple of those cars in.

[dazmo]

Because modified road cars are horrendously expensive to run week in/week out. The V8 category started out as being not dissimilar to modified road crs. Take the VP Commodore. It had a 5 litre Holden motor (Not a Chev) a three link rear live axle (like the road car) McPherson strut front end (like the road car), shared the body shell with the road car. Over time the category has moved away from this arrangement - principally to SAVE money. It has also changed the regulations to try & ensure parity. So cost & parity are the two main drivers....

There is no way you could seriouly think that running a modified road car week in week out could be that expensive in comparison to the current v8 super cars. i think they are around 250-300 000 k to build and to run a team around a million a year. Compare that to the cost of running a v8 brute. and as far as parity the brute series seems to be a pretty even formula that produces very interesting racing.

[Duncan]

and each brute would be 100-150k to buy and prepare, and minimum 100k a year to run too. T04GTR could probably give a better estimate he works for one of the brute teams