The V8 supercar season kicked off in emphatic style on the streets of Adelaide recently for the Clipsal 500.
Despite the fact that nothing really can be taken from the first round of the season, it is certainly going to be an exciting year – and an extremely interesting one.
Of all the changes in the off season, no team made as manu significant changes as Erebus Motorsport. A completely new driver line up, changing from the Mercedes to Holdens and moving the teams HQ from Queensland to Melbourne.
The result of that being that only one staff member came across to Melbourne. It is going to be interesting to see how they perform this year, but there must be realistic expectations.
It can not be expected they are instantly going to be ten times better this year as a result of changing to Holden. The reality is they may need to actually take a step back before they can move forward.
This year for them is very much a learning curve with all the changes that have been made. David Reynolds is a talented driver who is coming off the best season of his career.
He loved the FGX Falcon, and it is fair to assume the warning if you will the team gave him at the start of 2015 had a positive effect. But this will be the most significant period of his career, and the most challenging.
Despite the fact that he has moved to a smaller team he is not the frontman, the driver who has to lead the team. The team are dependent on him to produce the results, while being able to ensure he plays that main role in developing the cars by informing the team of what the cars require.
That is a great deal of pressure, something he has never had to deal with until now. At Prodrive he was expected to get results, but it would not be a major issue for example if he came in behind Mark Winterbottom or Chaz Mostert and Will Davison before that. They were the guys that lead the team. But now it is all up to him and it can’t be considered a certainty that he will be able to.
Walkinshaw Racing is another to watch closely. The decision was made last season to scale back their efforts to the two HRT cars for the first time since 98. A decision that on face value seems to be the right one.
For years they have been trying to rebuild the team, to once again become the powerhouse they once were yet despite their efforts they have never gotten there.
Something which seems to be having an effect off track, as Toll were the last major sponsor they had that paid the amount you would expect to have that title. Since then all the others have paid unders.
Then they banked on Monster Energy being their major sponsor, that is why it is their logo on the merchandise and not SharkBite’s. It is also said that their budget is naturally being majorly effected as a consequence.
2015 saw just two wins for the entire season which for one of the bigger teams in the sport simply can not be accepted, especially when they have a driver line up capable of so much more. Their major issue last year was qualifying, they just simply couldn’t get the set up right to be able to put together a quick lap.
That did however provide some entertainment watching Garth Tander work his way up the field. The pressure is mounting, they must start to put it all together and soon, there is a lot riding on it. At a time when when it is unclear whether Holden will commit beyond this current deal they have to make significant progress and soon.
Tim Slade at BJR is going to be one to watch. He has been part of bigger teams, but essentially was always playing second fiddle with no real pressure on him. Now he finds himself at a team where he is expected to get those results, and a team that needs him to.
If he doesn’t get decent results fairly early in the season the pressure will mount, and he will feel as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
DJR Team Penske had strong start to the season. Fabian Coulthard went from not really feeling comfortable to putting his car on pole for Race 3. They had two out of three poles for the weekend, but ultimately they didn’t convert.
None the less it was a positive start to the season for the team, and I am prepared to make a prediction that Scott Pye will win his first race this season, and they will end up with a couple of wins.
Triple 8 started as most expected they would. A lot was expected of Shane Van Gisbergen and some people I have spoken to were surprised by his results. But that should be expected, no matter how good he is, no matter how good the team is it will take time for him to get completely comfortable in the car. It won’t take too long and he will soon be competing for wins.
Watch this space with the team however. Team manager Mark Dutton said post Clipsal they were going to do some harsh assessments in regard to personnel between now and the next championship event and not to be surprised if changes were made.
He said they needed to assess if they had the right people in the right places, or whether certain people need to be reserves.
Prodrive had a reasonable weekend, but that was to be expected. By their own admission Clipsal isn’t one of their weaker events, with Tim Edwards saying they would be conservative over the weekend.
None the less they are a major contender for the championship this season. One of the interesting moves for them and certainly the move that generated the most criticism was to separate Mostert and Winterbottom. An interesting decision, one that there is potentially a couple of reasons for making. Whether it was the right move or not can only be known in time.
After Round 1 a Nissan leads the championship, and there are three Nissan drivers inside the top 10. Of course that means very little at the moment but it was certainly important they had good start to the season.
They are under enormous pressure to become consistent, to run well. Nissan have made no secret they have a high expectation for results and they won’t be patient forever. They must be consistently competitive this season. The issues with engine performance must be a thing of the past, they have had more then enough time to develop their engine.
Micheal Caruso has become the front man of Nissan Motorsport, the driver most likely to have success. For mine signing Dale Wood is a bit of a gamble, for he hasn’t shown all that much.
What he does bring to the table is sponsorship, and for a team that has had to work incredibly hard to obtain sponsors recently that certainly would be appealing.
Rick Kelly had a couple of positive results in 2015, a pole position and a podium finish. His brother Todd however has had a major struggle for some time. He as part owner of the team is known to have an extremely high workload off the track, taking a hands on approach with the development of the cars.
Thus it was suggested he step out of the car and focus on those duties, as drivers need to be fully committed to driving. He decided not to do that, and given the trend of owner/drivers having success is extremely poor. Let’s hope he made the right decision.
The greatest chance it can work is if he delegates many of his off track duties to others. If it is more of the same in 2016 whether he wants to or not he has to hang up the helmet, and if he isn’t really keen on the idea his brother and co owner Rick Kelly will have to tap him on the shoulder and say enough is enough.
All those factors will not be known for some time, it is just a case of seeing how it all unfolds. None the less there is one aspect we can be certain of, it is going to be an extremely exciting season. Bring on Round 2 in Tasmania.
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