Feature: The solo path

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In 2020, MSR raised eyebrows with their unique ‘SuperLite’ concept, which gave two of the Dunlop Super2 Series’ brightest young talents a shot at Supercars’ main game through a shared-car program in the one entry.

In 2021, MSR has shown faith in those rookies, signing the two drivers for full-time roles and in the process forming the youngest teammate pairing on this season’s grid.

Goddard and Kostecki have come a long way from racing each other in karting on the Gold Coast, now fronting the bright, young MSR operation that has quietly made promising ground throughout the first half of 2021.

That the two 21-year-olds were able to make a seamless transition into full-time roles in the main game this season shows that the program has been a success, an idea shared by one of the main supporters behind the program, UNIT Clothing’s Toby Lynch.

“It’s a credit to both drivers that, despite being the youngest in the field, they were able to approach the challenges thrown at them with determination and maturity and deliver a series of solid race results,” he says.

“As a result, they find themselves graduates of the program and in their own cars for 2021, which is the ultimate outcome. This is now a chance for them to continue to build on their solid results and further refine their race craft against the series’ best.”

Team owner Matt Stone’s young team has also been boosted by some key engineering recruits, which have seen the young pairing grab some promising qualifying and race results, as MSR celebrates the 10th anniversary of its foundation.

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Flashback: Twenty years since ‘The Golden Child’

Craig Kelly was a full-back in the AFL when the biggest and scariest forwards in history played. It took a unique person to survive and thrive. He was a niggling and snarky player and had a way with words; as quick with his tongue as he was with his fist.

He was also a mate of Skaife’s and would eventually become the CEO of the Holden Racing Team. Soon after his official role commenced at the factory Holden team, he was blown away by Skaife’s protective tendencies over HRT chassis #045.

The car had a dream run; it barely got a scratch and it dominated the sport. It is the only car in history to win Bathurst twice (also achieved by the Holden Dealer Team’s VH Commodore SS from 1982 and 1983) and the championship in two years. It was the way Skaife protected and loved that car led Kelly to call it “˜The Golden Child’, which is exactly what it was to Skaife.

The car debuted at the Queensland 500 in 2001 ““ the wet race won by Paul Radisich in a sandtrap ““ and was Skaife’s primary car for the rest of that season and the next before being turned into a Project Blueprint car and winning the Adelaide 500 for a second time. It won 20 times as a VX Commodore and then a VY, including 11 of the first 14 races in 2002.

When the car eventually retired it was perhaps, and still remains, the most successful car in Australian touring-car history.

“It is certainly a car I fell in love with” says Skaife, with remarkable affection.

“It’s always difficult when you love something but you’ve got to treat it harshly. It’s a little bit like a cruel-to-be-kind scenario with a child. It’s a love affair that comes from success; it was just extraordinary in that period of a golden era for the Holden Racing Team.

“I did not want at any point for it to be converted into a “˜Blueprint car’, but as it turned out it was really the only way that we were going to get all our cars ready and done in the period of time that we had. It was an interesting period for us, and the key to “˜The Golden Child’ terminology was Craig.

“It didn’t have that name prior to Craig starting as the CEO at the Holden Racing Team, and when he knew how passionate I was about the car and how much I protected it from going to stupid places on displays or to having anything done with it that might affect the specification or its longevity that’s when he coined the phrase. Don’t touch “˜The Golden Child’, he’d say all the time.”

Skaife, like the entire Holden Racing Team crew, knew it had unlocked something special even at the car’s first test session.

“Every time you roll a new car out you try to make it better than the last one, but we rolled it out for its first run at Phillip Island and I went faster than I’ve ever gone on a first day of testing. It had the fundamentals of a great race car straightaway” reflects Skaife.

“The torsional rigidity of the chassis, for instance, the attention to detail of the build and the weight distribution”¦ We changed some ergonomic things with it too. We were already sitting a long way back, but we tried to lay or reduce the angle of the steering column and make it slightly more open-wheeler in how it was functioning, and not by a little bit either.

“We tried to reduce the angularity of the steering column down to the steering rack and we did. We altered it for that car, which was something that I wanted to do pretty much from the time that I arrived at HRT.

“We weren’t totally successful because we actually brought it back a little bit from what we originally designed, but Dennis Watson and George Smith at Dencar were working closely with Richard Hollway on making the ergonomics slightly better and reducing some of those angles of steering joints, apex joints in steering columns which was not easy.

“There’s a lot of constraints around touring cars and the way that you have to configure the seat position and all the steering inputs, etcetera, to make it work. It wasn’t like we were starting from zero base; our cars were pretty good before we built chassis #045. We just continued to evolve it to make it better. It was probably the ultimate expression of a pre-Blueprint era car.”

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From the archives: Reverse-grid races

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The early 2000s saw a boom in popularity for what was then known as V8 Supercars. In a bid to help grow the sport and appeal to a wider audience, a number of new formats were implemented, including reverse-grid races. 

The controversial format came into place at the first round on the streets of Canberra in 2000, ironically at arguably the least suitable circuit. With round rather than race results the focal point of a weekend, the change added a big variable to the event. 

The narrow confines of the street circuit made passing nearly impossible, with the field reversed for the second of three races. The predicted carnage didn’t eventuate, though it did produce a surprise winner in the Holden Young Lions driver Todd Kelly. 

Partial reverse-grid races followed in the second half of 2000. With Mark Skaife and the Holden Racing Team at the start of their dominant run, such formats would help try and spice up the action. 

Reverse grids were limited to the Canberra 400 in 2001 and 2002, in a bid to differentiate the event and increase the amount of overtaking. 

A qualifying session set the grid for the first race with the results from that race reversed to form the grid for the second race. The grid for the third race was set by the combined points total of the previous two races. 

Steven Richards and Russell Ingall were triumphant in the reverse-grid races in 2001 and 2002 respectively, with the damage bill from those races a frustration for teams. 

The demise of the Canberra 400 in 2002 saw reverse grids benched for the time being, only to resurface four years later. They were reintroduced in 2006, a season in which the points system was tweaked to reward consistency. 

The format was used for the first time that season at the second round at Pukekohe, with a multi-car pile-up setting the tone for the troubles it would cause. 

The format did achieve the desired result of mixing up the field and giving midfield teams the opportunity to challenge for race wins, with breakthrough victories for Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Dean Canto and Tasman Motorsport’s Jason Richards at Barbagallo and Winton respectively. 

Other times, though, either the cream rose to the top or leading contenders who had troubled runs in the opening races prevailed, such as the HSV Dealer Team’s Garth Tander, Ford Performance Racing’s Jason Bright and Skaife across the Pukekohe, Hidden Valley, Queensland Raceway and Oran Park rounds.

Oran Park hosted the final reverse-grid race with the format dumped for the final four sprint rounds of the season. Drivers, teams and even fans were increasingly against the format, arguing it had done more harm than good. 

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Feature: From Bathurst to Indy, racing links

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The Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars and the Bathurst 1000 are very different racing disciplines to the IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis 500, yet there’s been a number of drivers who have crossed over between the tin-top and open-wheeler categories over the decades.

In what now seems like the bygone era of drivers racing in a variety of disciplines and categories across continents, three-time Australian Formula 1 world champion Jack Brabham introduced the first rear-engined car in the Indianapolis 500 in 1961.Brabham and fellow Australian Formula 1 driver Vern Schuppan made a number of starts in the Indianapolis 500 and Bathurst 1000 with mixed success across the 1960s and into the 1980s.

Schuppan was awarded the Indy ‘Rookie of the Year’ in 1976, the same year he teamed with Allan Moffat in the Bathurst 1000. He finished in third place at Indianapolis in 1981, followed by his final Bathurst start alongside John Harvey later in the year.

Australian touring-car regular and Bathurst 1000 winner Kevin Bartlett made three starts in the 1970 IndyCars championship, though failed to qualify for that year’s Indianapolis 500. In the other direction, three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Johnny Rutherford and Janet Guthrie, the first woman to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, combined to drive a Ron Hodgson Motors Holden Torana at Bathurst in 1977.

Second-generation racer Geoff Brabham had already made three starts in the Bathurst 1000 (including alongside father Jack Brabham in 1977) by the time he became a regular in IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500, finishing in the top 10 in the championship standings three times in addition to 10 starts at Indianapolis with a best result of fourth in 1983. Brabham returned to Australia to win the Super Touring Bathurst 1000 in 1997 in addition to several starts in V8 Supercars.

IndyCars headed to Australia to race on the streets of Surfers Paradise for the first time in 1991, with the Gold Coast hosting an IndyCars Series category at the peak of its popularity. This opened the door for more Australians to become involved in IndyCars, with the North American category also exposed to Australian touring cars as the latter became one of the main support acts on the Gold Coast.

Fast forward to 2021 and three-time Supercars champion McLaughlin is now in IndyCars with leading outfit Team Penske.

McLaughlin is the most successful and high-profile Supercars regular to move into IndyCars; a pioneer in the same way that fellow championship winner Marcos Ambrose was with his move to North America into the NASCAR system in 2006.

“Marcos, he gave us some belief when he went to NASCAR and, for sure, he gave me as a young kid some inspiration to do it,” said McLaughlin.

“I just hope that it’s the same for myself with some young kids and knowing that you can make it happen if you work hard enough.

“Even if you are a Supercar racer right now and have thought about going somewhere, don’t be jealous that I’m here; be excited because if I go well I’m opening the doors for a lot of Supercar drivers in the future.

“I really take on that role of being a Supercar ambassador as much as I can.

“I’m the current champion and I really want to be a great role model for that, the sport, myself, my country and my family.”

With the might of Team Penske behind him and still only 28 years of age, McLaughlin is well positioned to make his mark in IndyCar and potentially pave the way for more Supercars drivers to follow in his footsteps.

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