Team TRTDORIC POWER RANKINGS: Sydney
ANOTHER WEEEK, another Supercars round at Sydney Motorsport Park!
Except this time it was the start of a brand new season and while the event itself felt like our own version of Groundhog day, the on track content most certainly did not.
As we do after every round (and sometimes before), here’s the definitive list of the good, the bad and the ugly from Sydney Motorsport Park and the opening round of the 2022 Supercars Championship.
Welcome back to the Doric Power Rankings.
HOT
1. Chaz Mostert
Third and first, leading the title and living up to the pre-season hype that has flowed since he and Lee Holdsworth dominated the Bathurst 1000 last December. WAU have had strong starts to the season before – they used to be hard to beat at the Adelaide 500 even when they were uncompetitive elsewhere – but this feels different.
Supercars should feel lucky to have Chaz in the game. He’s engaging, he’s funny, he’s a great ambassador and best of all he’s a superstar racing car driver. A competitive Chaz is good for business and good for the sport. Game on.
2. Shane Van Gisbergen
They reckon you win the championship by your performance on your worst days, and Sunday was looking like a certified NOT for SVG. After qualifying in 21st, he speared off the track at the final turn early, before making a switch to rain tyres, which proved to be premature. Then the pit stop was an absolute mess. Over a lap and half down – three strikes and you’re out, right? Wrong. The champ drove back through the field to finish sixth.
By the way, he also won the opening race by 20sec after an SVG-spec drive, and ace strategy from the Red Bull Ampol crew.
3. Anton de Pasquale
Solid stuff from the #11 this weekend: Second and third, pole for race one by nearly two tenths and a good run in the rain showed some all-round credentials for DJR heading into what we think should be a title contending year for driver and team. Positive start.
4. Just getting the races in
Unless you were there you have no idea how wet it was in Sydney. It was wet on Thursday before things started. It was wet on Friday. It was wet on Saturday morning and again that night, which carried over into Sunday morning when parts of the place were underwater. The efforts from the ARDC, Supercars officials, Motorsport Australia officials and teams, drivers, crews and more to get (and keep) the show on the road was mighty, all weekend long.
Moses moved less water when he parted the red sea than the circuit crews did on Sunday morning to allow us a chance to get the show on the road.
Special mention to the bloke who walked past editor Craill in the flooded Toyota paddock on Sunday morning and said “That’s one for the NOT list!” – Thank you for your entry. We’ve put it here because of how it was salvaged, but you definitely nailed the rankings spirit.
5. Race two qualifying
How good is mixed-weather qualifying? In fact, how good is qualifying, full stop? Super session, the TTSO was great and the field is spicy to make it properly varied.
6. Erebus Motorsport
Promised big things and delivered emphatically across both races and in qualifying. Brodie’s first pole position was a big effort but the fact both he and Brown were legitimate contenders for race wins in both 300km races is an even more impressive effort. Will they have the tools and especially the consistency to be championship contenders against the big boys? It seems unlikely. But will they be contenders for race wins on regular occasions? It certainly looks that way. And that could make for a very exciting season indeed.
7. Supports
When the Super2/3 cars were up and racing, it was an incredible show.
Firstly, there was Jaylyn Robotham. How he exactly won the opening race, nobody knows, but it was classic motorsport…
The second race also featured a whole stack of spirited racing, plus this stack, which in isolation is a NOT, but the carry on that followed from both Ryal Harris and Nash Morris was brilliant theatre.
Touring Car Masters were robbed a race on account of the weather, but when they were racing they were superb – no Safety Cars throughout and very competitive, entertaining motorsport across the weekend.
The Toyota 86s and the Aussie Racing Cars were also brilliant, and unlike some of the other events we have seen so far in 2022, the safety car appearances were sporadic and if they did happen, typically resulted in swift clean ups.
8. Broc Feeney
10th and 11th on paper don’t look like brilliant results for the most hyped rookie since Lowndes was the new baby-faced assassin, but there’s more to Broc Feeney’s debut weekend than that. Made both Top 10 shootouts and was especially impressive on Sunday when the grip levels were all over the shop. Solid points, in the 10 in the championship and while he got his ears boxed a bit on Sunday, keep in mind this kid is less than 50 races into his Touring Car racing career. In total.
This kind of debut weekend in almost any team other than Triple Eight would have been front page news.
9. Comeback kings
Sunday delivered a chance for many drivers to make impressive comebacks from qualifying adversity.
Will Brown qualified 23rd and finished 8th – but could have been top five, easily.
Tim Slade qualified 24th and finished 10th, backing up his race one form.
David Reynolds qualified 15th and finished 9th, making up for a Race 1 shocker.
10. The Race Torque at the Supercars Media Awards
We’re not the kind of people who like to brag about such things, but if we don’t pat oursevles on the back then who else is going to? Well, actually, it turns out the annual Hino Supercars Media awards did! We didn’t pick up any trophies, but placed strongly in five categories. We’re proud of that. And we say thanks to you for reading.
OTHER HOTS
- Sydney Motorsport Park’s lights remain excellent
- The Donut & Coffee van at the paddock entrance made excellent Coffee and great Donut’s. More on this later, under ‘NOT’
- $5.60 for a big bucket of very tasty chips from the rooftop cafe’ was actually good, though perhaps high stadium prices have conditioned us that $5.60 is actually reasonable for chips, these days.
- Mark Larkham
- The Saturday evening crowd was positive. Not huge, but lineball with the night race at SMP4 last year and a good vibe.
- Chris Pither qualifying 13th for race two!
- Kai Allen and Brad Vaughan running with the big dogs in Super2 in their decade-old Super3 cars on Sunday.
- Full credit to the event who managed to work around the lack of vehicle access (on account of the water and mud) for almost everyone at the weekend. The shuttle system to the drag strip carpark worked solidly all weekend, and credit to most who dealt with it without grumbling too much.
WHAT
It was shit…
David Cauchi Dramas
Nothing like a public legal spat to add intrigue to an otherwise flat-feeling opening round of the year. The Cauchi / Grove vs T8 legal spat made for interesting reading and an off-track storyline that added another narrative to the weekend when it needed it. You don’t want to see this kind of stuff, but at the same time it’s kind of good – it shows what is at stake and gives the sport the kind of backroom / clubhouse story that the footy codes get all the time.
Awesome, but still what-worthy
Bowled a wide…
Serious? Or Not?
So this was more of a p**s take rather than a serious sledge – reports are that Adderton & co from Erebus were among the first down to congratulate WAU on their Sunday win.
But the thing with Peter and his social media accounts are.. you just never know what the hell is going to happen.. Suppose we should be fortunate it wasn’t another eye-rolling post about what the new Supercars ownership are doing wrong, so there is that.
NOT
1. The Season Opening Vibe
We wrote about this on Sunday morning, so there’s not much more to go on with here save to say that for all of the reasons (and many of them unavoidable) and despite all the efforts (and there was effort), that was the flattest and most low-key Supercars season opening event the series has had since – who knows? Sandown 1998? Newcastle to open 2023, please.
2. Binning it after the finish
It seems there was more shunting after the finish of the second race than over the entire weekend. Firstly, Todd Hazelwood bowled a strike into Mark Winterbottom, after aquaplaning after the chequers into turn one. Ugly. Then Anton de Pasquale fenced himself coming onto the main straight while attempting to do rad skids. Unnecessary. Lads, please keep the crashing to within the bounds of the race proper. Thank you.
3. Tyler Everingham
What an awful rollercoaster, and especially so if rollercoasters make you nauseous. Missed Friday after a bout of food poisoning thanks to a dodgy kebab, before qualifying second in his first seat time for the weekend. Was running away with the race win before a tyre developed a slow leak, which relegated him to p.nowhere. What a gut punch.
4. JLB’s Bonnet
We absolutely tip our hats to Matt Stone Racing and Jack Le Brocq for having a chop at glory, and trying to steal a result by not pitting for wet tyres late on Sunday. We’d love to see more Hail Marys from that end of the pit lane. JLB ultimately came unstuck, and was subsequently towed back onto the track. Whatever then transpired for the bonnet pins to not be replaced was another adding of insult to injury.
5. Scott Pye
Car looked the part and ran strongly throughout many moments of the weekend – just not when it all needed to function correctly. A non-finish after early contact shagged the power steering in race one was not the start to the season they were after, before the clash with Nick Percat derailed an otherwise strong performance from the Seiko car in race two.
6. Super2: The bits that weren’t HOT
Super2/3 went very cliché’ Super2/3 on the weekend: The on-track moments that were good were breathtakingly good stuff.. but then they went a bit Monty Python at times and the wheels fell off.
7. Andre Heimgartner & BJR
Made a very solid start to his first weekend with Brad Jones Racing, qualifying four in the Saturday top ten shootout before leading a stack of laps in the opener. He was set for a sixth-place finish when he ran out of fuel, with the additional late service relegating him to 14th.
Fifth on Sunday was a stout comeback, the early signs are promising, but the race one miscalculation is regrettable and if you get run out of fuel in this day and age, you’re in the dog house with us.
8. Tickford at SMP
We asked in our season preview podcast the question: ‘Which Tickford would we get this year’. The answer on the weekend was: The same one as last year.
Another massive let down from this team that could and should be title contenders but continue to frustrate. Woeful on Saturday with their best car qualifying 15th and Waters being buried back in 22nd which for a supposed championship contender is just not good enough.
10th (Courtney) and 11th (Waters) in race one was a decent recovery but you won’t win a title from there.
Sunday was better with Waters heroics in the rain giving him fourth place but outside of that the other three were 14th, 17th and 24th and just not a factor.
Remember, this was a team that was second at Bathurst.
They’ll be happy they won’t see Sydney Motorsport Park again (hopefully) until mid 2023…
9. Grove Racing Saturday
Shocking first day at the office for the now de-Kellyfied Grove Racing and their Penrite machines. Reynolds qualified well, but both cars finished outside of the 20 in Race 2. Solid recovery on Sunday, but far from a headlining start for this squad in their new era.
10. SMP Done and dusted. The Weather. Tyre talk.
- While everyone is grateful that we’ve had SMP to lean on during these pandemic times, you won’t find many people in the paddock sad that there’s a chance we won’t go back there (for Supercars, anyway) until some point (hopefully late) in the 2023 season.
Everyone’s patience was tested by the place across the weekend. The flooding was hard to predict, as was the amount of water that fell, but there’s clearly some remedial drainage work that needs to be done because it’s not the first time water has influenced a race meeting in that way, there. - Furthermore, the fact the only food option in the paddock every morning, until 30 minutes before the punter gates opened, was the single Donut and Coffee caravan by pit exit was an example of bad planning. Sure, there might not be any spectators there and sure, the Supercars teams cater themselves: but there are 100s of people working in support land that would’ve purchased a Bacon and Egg roll on Saturday morning had there been one available before midday – not to mention two hangry members of the TRT staff.
It’s done it’s job, SMP, but we’re glad we won’t go back there for some time.
- The weather on the weekend deserves a special reference. It was one thing to be raining, but the humidity and wet feet that came with it was even worse.
- The Tyre chat. Alternative tyres make for good racing but there’s no way to get around it – they dominate the conversation. Supercars’ have to fill the broadcast with info about what tyres people are running, how they are wearing and so on because it’s key to the racing – but at the same time, all the talk about tyres gets – if you pardon the pun – wearing after a while. Have to find a happy medium between a tyre system that works for the product and encourages less chat about it.
Bonus Not
Double stacking. There’s a special place in hell reserved for double stacking in the pit lane, but for the time being the TRT Doric Power Rankings will have to do.
Hot. WAU believe the hype? Super 2 racing. Normal race meeting with no masks or COVID stuff.
— Tom (@TomArciuli) March 6, 2022
Not. Nick P on debut. Rain and tyre chat. Way 2 much of it. DJR Strategy, too much double stacking. R. Harris crashing again.
What. No more SMP!! real season starts now! New tracks LFG
Also: Shane Warne
TWEET
That’s just the worst…
It’s good to have a plan
Parramatta Road on Friday arvo…
Well played by the happy Mostert fans
Where’s Doric Guy?
MEME
Chaz Hair
Dub
Who?
