There has been calls for main drivers to start the Repco Bathurst 1000 in exceptional circumstances following the carnage of last weekend.
Sunday’s Great Race featured two Safety Car interventions in the opening five laps after separate incidents up Mountain Straight on Lap 1 and at The Chase on Lap 5.
In fact, there were six Safety Car periods in the first 57 laps, four of which can arguably be blamed on co-drivers and two directly on primary drivers.
The most high profile incident was that on Lap 5, when Zane Goddard ran off the road and collected two strong contenders.
Those were namely, Car #8 of Andre Heimgartner and Dale Wood from Brad Jones Racing, and Grove Racing’s Car #26 of David Reynolds and Matt Campbell.
Non-primary drivers made up more than half of the field to start the race in challenging conditions.
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In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Heimgartner slammed what he thought was people driving like “absolute losers”.
His team owner, Brad Jones, has suggested to Speedcafe.com that in some circumstances main drivers should be made to start the race.
“I don’t set the rules but maybe we should look at and talk about when the conditions are tricky, and really wet… should we consider having main drivers start in those situations?” he said.
“I don’t think we should do that every year because having co-drivers start is part of the strategy. But [Sunday] showed that some inexperience can cause problems.
“I think this is an unusual year — I don’t see it as a big deal,” he added.
“But under some circumstances, like [last] weekend, where any time you got anywhere off the road, there was a drama.
“I mean, clearly with so many co-drivers starting the race, it was a problem.”
In a Facebook post, two-time Bathurst 1000 winner (1989 and 1994) John Bowe made the same point.
“It’s not my place to make judgement on things that happened but there was quite a lot of lunacy that went on very early in the race, which ruined other’s races,” he wrote.
“The effort that goes into this race from the teams can’t really be adequately described.
“I honestly think that co-drivers should not be allowed to start the race…”
One argument that could be made is the lack of preparation for co-drivers being a factor, given Bathurst is currently the sole endurance race on the Supercars calendar.
That might change for next year, with Supercars expressing a degree of confidence the Sandown 500 could return in 2023.
Whether it will be a pre-cursor to the Mount Panorama enduro or come after it is not known.
However, there is no doubt the return of a Bathurst curtain raiser would benefit co-drivers.
Notably, another idea that has been put to Speedcafe.com is that of mandating the driver that qualifies the car starts the car.
Currently, teams are allowed flexibility in choosing which of the two drivers are in the car for the start and have to submit the nomination by a certain time.
It would likely add another element to the strategy of the Great Race.
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