Team TRTDORIC POWER RANKINGS: Tasmania
SHANE VAN GISBERGEN smoking the field aside, wasn’t that fun? Back racing outside of New South Wales for the first time since July 2021 and Tassie turned it on for their annual Supercars showdown.
Hard, old-fashioned Touring Car racing was the name of the game on the weekend and Symmons Plains certainly delivered that in spades. We recognise that below, but also pick apart the key elements of the weekend that were decidedly less on the good side.
Read on for TRT’s take on the Hot, Not and What from Symmons Plains with the latest edition of the Doric Power Rankings.
HOT
1. Shane Van Gisbergen
FEELS like we’ve sung this song before, right? Except, Tassie wasn’t a dominant win from the front – Shane and the 97 team had to work properly hard for their triple success at Symmons. His agressive, take-zero-prisoners charge from fifth to first in Race one of the weekend was breathtaking and exposed weaknesses in his rivals racecraft and raw car speed, neither of which was up to snuff. Teammate was generous in Race 2, but then in Race 3 toyed with the DJR duo before accelerating away in the closing laps to sweep Symmons. Shane was faster than everyone at almost every stage of the weekend, he out raced them all and Triple Eight were better than everyone else, too. Hard to see him losing this year, isn’t it?
2. Broc Feeney
PROBABLY ahead of the development curve most people thought the teenager would be on taking over from the GOAT. His one-lap pace is improving, as witnessed by out qualifying his teammate, and his race pace isn’t far off the 97 either now. Was pretty soft in Race 2, bowling a wide to give Shane a VERY wide berth at the hairpin, but you’d expect that. Looks entirely competent for a kid who’s less than 100 races into a car racing career and it feels entirely likely that he will win much sooner than most people predicted pre-season. He’s bloody likeable, too..
HOT: Broc Feeney. I feel like I’m accomplishing great things as a 19 year old having moved to another state for uni. At least I did until Broc came along… @theracetorque #RepcoSC
— Zac Dowdell (@zac_dowdell) March 27, 2022
3. Todd Hazelwood/Matt Stone Racing
IT’S going to be one of those years where a ‘midfield’ team slams home a weekend that has them in sight of the podium every now and then, and in the case of Tasmania it was Matt Stone Racing’s Truck Assist equip. Hazelwood banged out finishes of 10th, 10th and 5th – contending for the podium in race three – while Le Brocq qualified second for the third race for the team’s first front row.. with Todd a row behind.
JLB’s Sunday didn’t go to plan, but he led half a lap, at least, and the team did a mighty job to even get the car back out, if slightly crooked, in time for the final race after the Sunday shunt. Looked like they belonged up there.
4. David Reynolds
ANOTHER team that looked like they belonged at the front in Tassie; Reynolds pushed the Red Bulls hard in the middle race, and then their smart tyre strategy in the finale’ saw him charge up to fourth. Holdsworth didn’t qualify well, but banked some top-10s as well and all of a sudden this team went from looking pretty woeful in Sydney to entirely competent in Tasmania. We suspect it’ll be a bit yo-yo all season, so capitalising on their good days, like Sunday, will be key. They did that on the weekend and got some silverware in the process.
And isn’t is nice to be reminded of how bloody good Dave Reynolds is?
5. Will Davison
PROBABLY should have been second in all three races, though you could argue that he could have won race three as well. Still, was comfortably the lead DJR driver across the weekend and 1996 days after his last win, surely the next is just around the corner if the team can extract some more race pace and fix their frankly pretty average pit stops of the weekend.
6. Elbows Out Racing
THE best way to describe the weekend was that it was proper, old-school Touring Car Racing. The Super Softs clearly give drivers more confidence to attack, the field is bloody stacked at the moment – with nothing from fifth to about 16th – and there’s still opportunity for strategy to play a role in the sprint races. But best of all there was lots of good, old fashioned bump and grind across three very entertaining races. If you walked away from that weekend thinking the Supercars show was rubbish, you should probably consider your life choices.
7. TV of Things: Larko & Marcos
Larko was Larko and genius as ever – his explanation of side drafting was particularly good and informative. We learned.
And as for Marcos Ambrose – the sport is just better when he is involved. His insight was spot on, and he looked at home behind the wheel of the Gen3 Mustang. Hopefully his Bathurst 6 Hour start can lead to more on track appearances…
Special mention to Neil for whacking Todd on the Race 5 grid about his post-Sydney slow down antics – that was comedy – Tander’s Longford feature (shown last year but worthy of a repeat every year they go there) and CL’s one-on-one with Marcos up at his lodge.
8. Gen3
IT might have been a troubled process to get to this point, but every time Supercars rolls the Gen III cars out on track they appear to kick goals. They are pretty spectacular and doing more of that is a sure-fire way to win over the doubters about the series’ two-door switch.
9. Waters First Tassie Podium
IN 2021 Tickford and Cam Waters converted a bevvy of pole positions to.. nothing really, which was a very Tickford thing to do, if we’re honest. This year they converted pole to a podium which shows some improvement, so well done them. Sunday didn’t quite unfold as planned but they seem to be getting closer to the money, more often.
10. Chaz Continuing to be a Good Egg
NOT a great weekend on track, but off-track Chaz continues to be a superstar. So good for our game.
Bonus Hots
- Symmons Plains – the Bullring delivered again. And how good was it to not be racing in New South Wales.. for the first time since JULY 2021!
- Team 18 – both cars had much improved weekends.
- Chris Pither – What an outstanding job to get the Cokemobile into the Top half!
- Tasmania’s weather. Seriously, two major events in a row it has turned it on!
- Larko’s finger / DJR’s Exhaust
EXTRA HOT
WHAT
We’ve all been there… actually, we haven’t
Two Hunted Outlaws…
Time Certainty
Though to be fair, we’re glad we got the full race in and the schedule can move enough to get that sorted.
Pardon…?
NOT
1. Slade and Waters
WATERS learned from being out-raced by SVG on Saturday, but perhaps over compensated in this exchange with Tim Slade, who was run out of road on the exit of the 260km/hr kink and as a result sent flying through the infield. The mind boggles as to what could have happened had he emerged in the path of the battling cars behind, because it could have made the Alex Premat-James Courtney Phillip Island shunt look like a fender bender by comparison. There’s a line where hard racing stops and it becomes silly, and it was crossed here. The fact there was (at the time of going to press) no apology offered up by the Monster driver is also NOT worthy.
2. Jack Le Brocq
SIGH. What a massive shame for young Jack, who did such a good job in qualifying only for it all to come unravelled before he could put his grid position to use. The old interlocking wheels at turn seven thing has happened before and will happen again, but in reality it ended his day because though MSR worked miracles to get his car back on track for the final race, it was clearly not quite to the standard needed to drive it at eleven-tenths trying to keep SVG and co behind – the runoff at the hairpin the net result. Frustrating, but the potential is there.
3. Brad Jones Racing
ONE, single top 10 finish for the Albury squad from twelve attempts in Tassie. Outside of Andre Heimgartner’s 8th in Race 1 of the weekend, they managed no better than 15th in any other race across the four car fleet. It’s been a horror start to the year for Bradley’s team and they’ll be looking to get Tasmania behind them very quickly indeed.
4. The Lack of Hype Continues
PERHAPS Tasmanian commentary icon Barry Oliver, who penned a pretty scathing column about the state of the Tassie Supercars event, was right. While the Supercars product itself was high quality and the support racing decently entertaining, it all felt a bit flat for the second straight round.
The supports were low key (Race Tasmania’s line up was far superior, despite all the shunting) and the lack of any Friday running removed any feeling of hype before things kicked off on Saturday.
It’s a big effort to go to Tasmania so perhaps it’s time that event got a refresh, a unique format of their own and a bit of status to go with the excellent short track and that stunning part of the world.
Otherwise, merge the Supercars and Race Tasmania events and give them a three-day blockbuster of wall-to-wall racing.
5. Walkinshaw Andretti United
MIGHTY in Sydney, not so much in Tassie where this team has traditionally been strong. Chaz’s drive to P4 was a rare highlight, while Percat takes home a 10th and an 11th but not an enormous amount to cheer about. As other teams can attest, winning is one thing, doing it consistently is another and WAU is clearly missing that magic element still.
6. SVG and Slade
MESSY. Didn’t Tim Slade have a busy Sunday? Honestly, you could have gone two ways on this and you’d question if Shane needed to be so aggressive in carving up people while on his qualifier. Ultimately it was on – and owned by – Tim for being the car not on a hot lap and he was penalised as such. Messy.
7. Erebus
BRODIE Kostecki picked up where he left off in Sydney with a superb fourth on Saturday and things looked to be going along nicely for the Boost mobiles – but it all turned sour on Sunday and they were nowhere. 19th and 22nd for Brodie only just beaten by Brown’s 12th and 15th and neither seemed to have any real idea why they were so completely anonymous. Such is this year’s midfield.
8. Frosty/Reynolds/Chaz R1 bingle, then Fullwood and Randle on Sunday,
This was just a bit average, wasn’t it?
This was also just a bit average, wasn’t it?
9. The Turn 7 Wall
BECAUSE the pit lane is right behind the runoff, it’s hard to change this, but the weekend represented the second time in two major Symmons Plains events where there’s needed to be a red flag to fix the tyre barrier on the exit of Turn 7. It’s a gnarly corner, and we love it, but that tyre bundle continues to be damaged and races stopped because of it.
10. SVG’s Interviews
SHANE is the best driver in the sport at the moment but by Saturday we think most people were over his.. prickly interviewing technique. We all know he doesn’t like doing media and just wants to drive the cars, but on occasion he gives the presenters – who are just there doing their jobs – absolutely donuts. Give them a little and you’ll find they actually pester you less, SVG! The directness is appreciated (that shouldn’t change) but sometimes you just want to have a chat with the guy who has won the race and have him actually come across like he enjoyed it – like Chaz in Sydney.
Bonus Nots..
- Is the championship already down to five or six cars?
- The Subway car being stuck in purgatory thanks to it’s upgrades and a lack of new spares that talked to the newer bits.
- Skaifey’s ability pick the cut off time to move to the next round in qualifying.
- Canned applause over the podium (though we laughed when they rolled it out for the SuperUte crash).
- The ongoing ‘You’re either with us or you’re against us’ toxic nature of the Supercars comments sections. Except on TRT. You guys and girls are great.
THE POOL ROOM
Good Call
The Actual Pool Room
TWEET
Tweeting Scotty
Everything about this is 1989…
A slightly cheesy line
Wild…
Sponsorship
MEME
