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Watching some of the Island action from Queensland last weekend, courtesy of the 7+ free-to-air coverage, it’s clear that there was some great racing and many positives to take from the first worthy SpeedSeries event of the year.
The Phillip Island race meeting represented the first opportunity this season for spectators to see a full race card of SpeedSeries headline categories, as GT World Challenge Australia, the new GT4 Australia Series and Porsche Sprint Challenge rolled out to join the vibrant Trans Am Series and the increasingly anaemic-looking TCR Series.
It’s clear that the fans were drawn to PI (and it was obvious that there were plenty there) by the prospect of interesting cars, high-profile drivers and good racing. It was also clear that much of the crowd had dispersed by the time the final race of the day on Sunday, TCR Race 3, hit the grid…
The highlight, for me, of the weekend was the superb GT3 race action on Sunday. Tim Miles holding off Brad Schumacher for lap after lap was outstanding and made brilliant television. It only underlined again the excellent philosophy of PRO-AM racing and the great SRO product. Now, if the Bathurst 12 Hour was run to the same rules as GTWC Australia and the Asian Series are (no PRO class), then I reckon we’d flush out a grid full of Tim Miles hopefuls. The PROs would still battle it out in the last four hours of the race, but the AMs would play a big part and potentially achieve their dreams, as Tim did on Sunday.
Spectators and viewers alike got to see two of the current top three Supercars drivers on-track in GT cars at a time when Supercars is denying their fanbase a decent calendar as well as failing to visit heartland circuits such as PI. Create a vacuum and it will get filled.
Trans Am then underlined that with two more Supercars full-time drivers going up against the regulars such as Moffat, Thornburrow, and Morris. Some outstanding racing ensued.
For GT4 to roll out onto the grid with 18 cars was wonderful to see. This category is going to grow and grow. Rylan Gray was superb in the brand-new Ford Mustang, but now we need to see Supras, Alpines and Audis in the mix as well please.
And the Porsche Sprint Challenge gave us the biggest grid of the weekend. They must have got something right.
Against this, I hope the various post-event debriefs include full and honest examination of the following areas which deserve attention:
- The commentators for the GT World Challenge race need to give their audience a far clearer understanding of the pit stop rules. They’re actually not that hard to follow, so tell the punters what’s going on please. Have the “pit window open” and then “closed” clearly on screen for all to see, display the actual lane time for each car on completion of its stop (it’s on the timing), and then show the times for the three cars carrying 15-, 10- and five-second success penalties from previous results. The lack of information seriously tarnished an otherwise excellent product.
- The owners of Phillip Island and Motorsport Australia need to get together and ensure that tyre barriers don’t fly apart on impact. Don’t brush the Saturday incident in the GT race under the carpet; take steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, not only there but around the rest of the circuit and other venues as well. The circuit inspection team needs to be all over this. Tyres bolted together properly and then covered with conveyor belting would almost certainly have prevented much, if not all, of the disruption. The impact of the AMG into the barrier wasn’t huge (the chassis wasn’t damaged, I gather), but the mess that ensued impacted unnecessarily on the schedule for everyone.
- Once again, the TCR category was embroiled in controversy at a time when it doesn’t need to be. A jump start was called for Brad Harris in Race 2 when it looked, from the television footage, to have been legal. At worst, in the clear absence of full proof of an infringement during the race itself (which there obviously cannot have been), it should have been adjudicated post-race with the benefit of in-car footage to examine. The media called that there had been a protest by Wall Racing, the entrant, after the race. But that’s impossible as there is no mechanism for a protest of a decision made by a judge of fact. I assume what happened was that, under the rule that allows a judge of fact to admit to a mistake, the relevant person was shown evidence of his error. It’s incumbent upon Motorsport Australia to tell one and all what happened precisely so that we all have faith in the system going forward and that everyone understands that the system does actually allow for the admission of error.
But, the final word has to go to giving the FIA (and the local organisers for not giving derogations) a blast for their ongoing highly discriminatory ageist approach towards driver seedings. In case everyone’s not across this, the FIA driver ranking system (which SRO uses for categorisation in both the local GTWC Series and the GT4 one) automatically gives every driver under 30 years of age (with more than one year’s racing experience) a Silver ranking even if their results and experience would give them Bronze ranking were they 30+. It’s actually illegal in many jurisdictions to discriminate purely on age once the relevant definition of adulthood is reached. Doesn’t stop the FIA though.
And so, you have young Zoe Woods defined as a Silver in the GT Series. And Renee Gracie in the same situation in GT3. Both girls did outstanding jobs at the weekend and at some point down the road they may both be genuine Silver drivers. But to lump them into the same category as Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser, for instance, at the moment is crazy. SRO have the power to deal with this at a local level, and should do so.
Hopefully Motorsport Australia and others learn from the weekend and the, full-spec, SpeedSeries thrives in 2024. It deserves to.
