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volvoooooooooooo

Todd Kelly leaked everywhere. SC.

Whincup, Kelly and Moffat all pile off, no SC?

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Dahlgran damaged, that'll be an SC.

Volvo takes its first race and round victory! Caruso grabs 3rd at the line for the race and round, great result for Nissan.

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WOO!!

VOLVO.

That was close for third!

Not a bad weekend for the Kiwi's

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Porsches in about 15 minutes' time.

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fuck the porsches, the v8's are all that matters

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So we're down to just 25 entries in V8SC now... really disappointing IMO, it's only about 15 years ago we'd have 40 blokes at Bathurst, now the regular season numbers have dropped from 32, 30, 28, 25...

I fear it's only going to get more difficult to attract sponsorship with the new TV deal as well. Not sure what the percentage of the V8 demographic has foxtel but it will be a tall ask to get people spending over a grand and year just to watch the v8s. The deal is a short term financial boost for the series though so at least the recs will be worth more. Fingers crossed the field doesn't depreciate more and we can attract the likes of penske.

15 years ago you could run at Bathurst and not do any of the other rounds. The top drivers and teams protested this and all the once a year entries were cut. If you go back to the 80's there were only 20 or so cars at most of the ATCC rounds.

I would like more cars on track but that's the way it is.

I wonder if Bathurst becoming a championship race for points put an end to one off entries?

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"Well we've got this ridiculous situation where we're all sitting by the start-finish line waiting for a winner to come past and we don't seem to be getting one!" James Hunt - Monaco 1982

Especially at places like Wanneroo and Symmon's Plains. It wasn't worth the investment for the small teams to travel there.

From what I've seen and heard it was just either that they reduced the number of cars that could actually start the race down to about 40 cars, or put in a 107% rule, which meant that most of the Bathurst-only entries probably just decided that it wasn't worth it, as they'd just fail to qualify or be too slow. Most of those guys were just complete back markers, total privateers in old cars out there for the fuck of it, and some of them were just a bit too slow for the top drivers' liking. Besides, they added in a singular 200km non-championship race for the development series as a support event. This was a few years after it became a championship race.

They did a similar thing with the general championship about the same time to reduce numbers, by only allowing 32 cars to start each race or something. That, and the introduction of the REC system & the development series, basically ended the days of the small privateers in the V8 Supercars.

Bathurst was a championship round in 1999 and 2000 and still had a full field of 55 entries

In 2001 though they changed the entry rules saying that you couldn't enter unless you had run a certain amount of either Shell Championship Series (now V8Supercar Championship) or Konica V8Supercar Series (now Development Series) events, which cut out alot of the privateers.



The difference was the grid at these races would be padded out by local privateers who only entered their local races there (eg... Tim Slako, Ian Love, Allan McCarthy, John Farrell etc... were always regulars for the Wanneroo ATCC round but rarely did any others, not even Bathurst)... you also occasionally got some rare beasts at these events, a Lancia Delta Intergrale was qualified for the 1990 ATCC round at Wanneroo.



There was always a 'cut-off' time at Bathurst to weed out those that couldn't hack the pace right back to the 'old days', for many years you had to qualify within 110% of the fastest time in your class, and within 130% of the fastest outright time.

The main series was restricted to 35 in mid-2002, and went down to 32 in 2003, but the Bathurst 1000 was still open to anyone who did a certain amount of DVS rounds in those years.

It was only in 2004 when they built the new pits that they decreed no-one but the main series REC holders could compete (despite the fact the Bathurst pits were built to hold 72 cars). It was relaxed a few years later with wildcards though, which have had little impact on increasing the grid.

Cochrane's plan right from his entrance in 1997 was to get rid of the privateers, they weren't "promotable" enough for his liking...

Nick Percat's car for this weekend.