Just when we thought the biggest news of the 2015 V8 Supercar season would be Shane Van Gisbergen moving to Triple 8/Red Bull Racing next year, Marcos Ambrose and Team Penske have delivered what is, quite frankly, one of the more puzzling and confusing announcements the series has ever seen.
Ambrose, the two-time V8 Supercar Series champion, who returned from nearly a decade in NASCAR racing to front the new alliance between racing royalty Roger Penske and Australia’s blue-collar battler, Dick Johnson, has requested that he be allowed to climb out of the cockpit of the DJR Team Penske Ford indefinitely.
A quick check of motorsports identities on Twitter shows that many – if not all – were completely blindsided by this decision. No one seems to have seen it coming.
Coming at any time, this announcement has the power to surprise – but when Ambrose, who has commanded plenty of column inches and TV cameras during the off-season and beyond, is making this decision after just one championship round on the streets of Adelaide, where DJR Team Penske was far from disgraced, is a real head-scratcher.
Yes, things didn’t go well for the squad at last weekend’s Australian Formula One Grand Prix support races, but we’re still only one proper event into the new season, one in which we knew Ambrose would likely take time to acclimatise to cars that have changed plenty since he left for America.
What confuses the most is that Ambrose – or, rather, the DJR Team Penske press release, complete with quotes from Roger Penske and Ambrose – states that his transition from NASCAR driver to V8 Supercar driver is part of the reason why he’s stepping aside in favour of young gun Scott Pye, who will be in the #17 Ford beginning next weekend at Symmons Plains in Tasmania.
If you believe the press release, Ambrose will drive with the team as a co-driver in Endurance events as he steps aside from lead driver responsibilities. Here’s what Ambrose says:
“Although this is a decision which has been hard to make, it has become clear to me over the first two events of the season that I need more experience in these cars to do what is required of the lead driver and to be competitive for the team and our partners. Scott is a great driver, has already worked with the team and has more experience in these cars, which will give the team the best chance to be successful right now.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the best way to quicken the transition from NASCAR stock car to V8 Supercar to spend absolutely every possible moment you can behind the wheel?
Electing to leave the cockpit is the worst move for a guy trying to reacquaint himself with the nuances of the unique cars. Without seat time, the transition is only going to get harder.
News Limited papers and online outlets reported that there were rumours of Ambrose wanting to return to America, which flies in the face of everything he said late last year about coming home so his daughters could grow up as Australians. Why move his entire life from America to Australia only to return six or eight months later?
What’s much more of a possibility is that Ambrose has realised, over the course of the Clipsal 500 and Australian GP weekends, that he simply doesn’t have the passion to race any more.
We’ve seen it with Casey Stoner and others; guys just lose that competitive edge, which is obviously crucial in a game where there are so many hungry drivers waiting for an opportunity, and realise they don’t want to go through the grind of being a race car driver.
Remember, it’s not just getting to the track on a Thursday to strap in and turn laps.
Professional race car drivers are working pretty much all year, either at race meetings, test sessions or in their team’s shop. It takes a giant toll on them, and you can imagine that Ambrose, who has based his family in his native Tasmania, is probably tiring of the weekly commutes to the DJR Team Penske shop in Queensland. Do that twice a week, plus travel to and from testing and race weekends, and that’s a lot of flying.
Crucially, it’s a lot different to NASCAR, where drivers and teams flew private jets from the race track back to Charlotte, North Carolina, between events.
Charlotte is one big racing hotbed, a community of NASCAR families, and Ambrose would have become accustomed to seeing his family for at least a few days a week where he didn’t have far to go from home to work and the track.
Or perhaps Ambrose is doing the selfless thing for the team – as Penske Racing president Tim Cindric suggested in a Tweet preceding the official announcement – and stepping aside because he knows that Pye, an up-and-coming star, has a better chance of getting a handle on the Ford FGX Falcon, and pushing it towards the front. Once it’s developed, Ambrose could potentially step in and race.
We might never know for sure what led Ambrose to make this surprising choice, one that’s effectively robbed V8 Supercars of one of its biggest names. It comes at a crucial time too, just over a week before the series returns to Ambrose’s Tasmanian home.
It was supposed to be a great homecoming for the two-time series champion, and now we’ll probably spend much of the event analysing Marcos’ decision.
One last thought to close: Roger Penske is no fool. You don’t win 15 Indianapolis 500s by accident.
‘The Captain’ would’ve signed off on this, and if he didn’t agree with Ambrose’s decision, Marcos would likely remain behind the wheel. Penske has a plan, and, knowing him, I suspect there’s more going on behind the scenes, too. Hopefully, we’re all made a little wiser in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime, we’ll miss you, Marcos!
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