Team TRTDoric Power Rankings: SpeedSeries Sandown
ONE of the more incredible weekends in the history of the Shannons Nationals / Motorsport Australia Championships / SpeedSeries – that was Sandown.
There’s a lot to unpick, so quite naturally we’ve delivered it the Power Rankings treatment, with thanks to our mates at Doric.
HOT
1, 2, 3 and 4: The finishes!
We can’t remember a weekend that delivered the array of incredible racing finishes that this one did. Here are some examples:
GT World Challenge Australia Race 2 finish
TCM Race 2 finish
TCR Race 2 finish
Porsche Sprint Challenge finish: Drivers on slicks catching those on wets at the rate of three seconds per lap, plus young-guns Tom Sargent and Ryan Wood carving each other up? Classic!
5. Nathan Herne
Baffles us beyond belief that this kid, who has proven himself in TransAm and S5000, does not have at the very least a Supercars enduro drive, let alone a proper ride..
6. Car control
7. Promotion
Who knew if you promoted a race meeting that people actually turn up! Well done to Motorsport Australia and ARG for putting in the effort and dollars to get people through the gate, even in the terrible weather and if half of them were Michael Clemente’s family.
8. Cameron vs Hansen..
.. and the latter’s luck in not having the world’s largest accident.
9. Personalities
From David Reynolds’ “I saw the grim reaper” comments, to Josh Buchan being a commentary superstar-in-waiting, to Jordan Cox’s comments and radio repartee’ with Greg Crick, to Garth Tander’s character references to the officials when it was too wet to race or Adam Bressington’s elation in winning – there were so many examples of raw, unfiltered, funny, dramatic, open and honest moments of drivers’ expressing themselves at the weekend. Whether it’s the platform, the event or whatever, the Shannons / SpeedSeries program has been great at opening our eyes to the characters in the sport – both the ones we already know, and the ones we need to know better.
10. The officials
Unreal effort in utterly shocking conditions.
Selfishly…
— Andy Kelk (@andykelk) September 18, 2022
Hot: all the officials who endured pretty average conditions on Saturday and came back again to do it all again on Sunday.
WHAT
Coffee is life
Quite a logjam
A brave new nature sanctuary
NOT
1. Melbourne Weather, duh..
2. Needed a big screen
With a decent quantity of paying punters – all of them in a captive area – taking the TV feed over the PA just doesn’t work: there needs to be just one big screen in front of the grandstand. The show is of the quality now where to provide a really good customer experience, it just needs to tidy up a few things around the edges and this is one of those.
3. Using the start/finish line that isn’t in front of the grandstand
It’s used for the Supercars, and it’s awesome! Hot damn, how good would those finishes be if they were in front of the packed grandstand?
4. HSV crash
This car was listed for sale last week…
5. Morcom and Bargwanna crashes
Biggish shunts early in the weekend for two TCR Australia contenders.
6. Porsche race 1 start
In difficult conditions several cars collided at the start, which forced a lengthy Safety Car and limited racing laps for the Porsche’s on Saturday, let alone the damage.
7. Communication
There were updates following the end of the GT race about the delay and when things were planned to resume, but at the end of the day, there needed to be much more communication to the paying spectators at the venue.
Saturday was chaotic, sure, but at the end of the day there was no communication to the paying spectators (with some in the media centre not knowing, either) as to the fact the day had been called – the first they knew of it when the officials started coming back in from their posts following the TCR race.
8. TCM practice crash
An awkward crash between Jim Pollicina and Adam Bressington occurred on Friday as the pair weaved to generate tyre temp ahead of the session. Both cars copped damage for an incident that didn’t need to occur.
9. Park ‘n View closed
The experience at the Sandown Supercars round (see our rankings from that event here) ensured that the organisers closed all the park and view areas for the weekend which while being completely understandable, denied punters one of Sandown’s traditional experiences.
TWEET
Legends
The Prince
Huge fan club
Reminds us of that classic Crowded House song, Four Seasons at the Same Time
Hectic weather
…probably not
Not relevant, just interesting content…
WHITEBOARD’S BITS
MEME
