Scott McLaughlin believes Supercars should scrap the ban on full-time drivers sharing a car in the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000.
Competitors once had complete freedom with respect to driver pairings, to the point that some steerers even moved teams for the enduros.
The Holden Racing Team and HSV Dealer Team famously, or perhaps infamously, swapped Garth Tander and Todd Kelly in order to spread the risk to the championship chances of regular team-mates Tander and Rick Kelly in 2006.
Other cases included Paul Weel driving with Marcos Ambrose at Stone Brothers Racing in 2002, with his team’s AU Falcon piloted by Mark Porter and Geoff Full, while Paul Morris and Paul Radisich shared a VZ Commodore in 2005 as part of the Paul Morris Motorsport/Team Kiwi Racing alliance.
Come 2010, changing entries at all was prohibited, and full-timers had to share their car with an official co-driver for the two biggest races of the year.
McLaughlin, who won the 2019 Bathurst 1000 with Alexandre Premat as co-driver, weighed in on the subject during the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 weekend.
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“I’ve always thought Supercars should get rid of the rule where main drivers can’t compete together,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“Leave it up to the teams to take that risk if they don’t want to split them for the championship.
“Allows more chances for young drivers to shine and teams to take a punt, and/or make some cash IMO.”
He elaborated in a follow-up post: “Need to continue breeding young talent.
“Very hard to trust someone with little main series experience with a championship contender which I completely understand!
“More opportunities for international drivers to join a world class field also if teams wanted to go that way!?”
What followed on Sunday afternoon at Sandown could reasonably be regarded as vindication of that position.
Broc Feeney took a victory which was the sixth in the Sandown 500 for his co-driver, Jamie Whincup, a seven-time Supercars champion.
In fact, the least experienced co-drivers in the top five were David Russell, who may have never competed full-time in the Supercars Championship but has 13 Bathurst 1000 starts to his name, and Richie Stanaway, who has two full seasons under his belt and will partake in a third next season with Grove Racing.
To McLaughlin’s point also, there were only three current Dunlop Super2 Series regulars in the 27-car field, namely 37-year-old Jack Perkins (who also has multiple full Championship campaigns under his belt) along with Zak Best and Aaron Love.
The figure will grow to four for Bathurst when Dick Johnson Racing fields Kai Allen (and Simona De Silvestro) in a wildcard entry, while Matt Stone Racing’s Jaylyn Robotham contested the Newcastle Super2 round this year, and Tickford Racing’s Tyler Everingham was a Super2 full-timer last year.
However, the co-driver rule also has its benefits, with supporters reasoning that there are more cars in contention for victory than otherwise would be the case because the big guns are not stacked into a handful of entries.
Furthermore, the modern-day proliferation of naming rights sponsors for individual cars rather than the whole team could present a challenge for many competitors.
SBR, though, resorted to a blended livery in 2003 in order to pair Pirtek-backed Ambrose with Caltex-sponsored Russell Ingall.
Ironically, it decided to split them in subsequent years, a move which de-risked its championship prospects but also avoided a compromise on set-up preferences.
Still, it achieved a one-two in the 2004 Sandown 500 when Ambrose/Greg Ritter prevailed over Ingall/Cameron McLean, as well as the likes of double-A Holden pairings Greg Murphy/Rick Kelly and Mark Skaife/Todd Kelly.
That goes to show that both the new and old rules generate news about driver pairings, with the annual debate about whether to combine full-timers now replaced by intrigue about co-driver signings.
The present-day regulations promote a greater number of Bathurst 1000 winners, although whether that is desirable or not is subjective.
As McLaughlin alluded to, though, the old rule (or lack thereof) did allow the likes of Triple Eight Race Engineering to hand one of its cars to two internationals, those being Richard Lyons/Allan Simonsen in 2006 and 2007, Fabrizio Giovanardi/Marc Hynes in 2008, and Simonsen/James Thompson in 2009.
In 2013 it did, however, add a wildcard entry for Andy Priaulx/Mattias Ekstrom, and has fielded a third, Supercheap Auto-backed car since 2021, but for a veteran/youth combo.
The current rules also did not dissuade Grove Racing from signing a foreigner this year, with French factory Porsche driver Kevin Estre making his Supercars debut as co-driver to championship rookie Matt Payne, who took the chequered flag in sixth position.
The 2023 Bathurst 1000 takes place on October 5-8.
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