Finally On Race Day
After a year of waiting FORD have returned to the winners spot on the podium for a round of the Australian V8 Supercar series at the VIP Pet Foods 500 at Queensland Raceway. Their last win was at the same event last year.
Ford's lack of confidence was evident because the headline posters that each manufacturer prepares for distribution after each major event were generic rather than being specific to this race. It consisted of a play on the FORD name to give the phrase First On Race Day. There were no details of what race, or even what year they referred to.
With most of the leading FORD teams using Queensland Raceway as their official test track a good performance was expected, perhaps demanded from Howard Marsden. This is a critical time in the Australian market place with Toyota, Holden and Ford all introducing new models within weeks of each other. This is a particularly critical time for Ford as they try to overcome the legacy of the AU Falcon, its lack of on track success has been matched by the showroom performance. So a victory on the eve of the new Falcons sales launch is good news for Ford.
The strong qualifying performance of the Stone Brothers Racing pair of Ambrose and Besnard came as no surprise, this is their test track and they had both cars on the front row last year. The surprise amongst the Ford’s was the excellent performance of OzEmail’s John Bowe and the poor performance of the race’s defending champions, the Shell Helix team. They started the race in 17th and 22nd positions.
The race stated predictably with Mark Safe leading chased hard by the three Falcons. The action didn’t really start until after the first round of pit stops. A point of interest for Bathurst is that the 00 Motorsport Falcon went about ten laps further on a full tank than the leading Ford of Marcos Ambrose. The former Gibson Motorsport team have always achieved excellent fuel economy and in the longer race this slight advantage might be important.
Then came a big surprise that had the fans either cheering or groaning; the number one HRT car’s engine let go in a cloud of oil smoke. With both their regular drivers sharing this car this meant that it the team’s unbeaten run in 2002 would end in Queensland. A major engine blow up is rare in this series. The engines are based on American NASCAR mechanicals and the engine management system has a built in limiter that is set at 7500 RPM. The NASCAR engines run 9000 RPM over long periods, so the V8 Supercar engines are very reliable. the last HRT major failure was at Phillip Island in 2000.
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