Red Sons Rising

Fitter, faster, focused and more destructive. Watch out Ford, the Holden Racing Team is hell bent on a return to its glory days of domination.

Do you remember when the Holden Racing Team was V8 Supercar racing’s most unstoppable force? When the likes of Mark Skaife, Craig Lowndes and Jason Bright headed the field seemingly without raising a sweat?
Those days are long gone.
But with the new season comes a new HRT.
For so long the face – and heart – of the team, Mark Skaife, has called time on his career. That leaves a huge hole to fill… but it also creates an opportunity to complete the renewal process that began last season.

ENTER THE DRAGON

Nissan’s iconic GT-R returns to Australian racetracks this year in a blaze of piston-pumping, turbocharged glory. But V8 fans have nothing to fear from our category’s latest safety car.

Not since the demise of the Group A era in the early 1990s has the iconic, and some would say divisive, Nissan GT-R been a feature of an Aussie Touring Car meeting.
But Godzilla lives and breathes to fight another day, this time in R35 guise, three generations on from the monster that tore Australia‘s racetracks apart.
Ahead of its official arrival in Australian showrooms this April, Godzilla MkII has won the right to be the “leader of the pack” as the official V8 Supercars safety car.

taking the gamble

Since its formation five years ago, the ‘events’ arm of V8 Supercars Australia has built up an impressive empire. V8X examines where the juggernaut is headed from here

Since V8 Supercar Events was born five years ago, it has managed to transform the touring car landscape almost beyond recognition. It has created or developed six ‘events’ and now oversees two of its biggest new projects – Townsville and the Sydney 400, the latter set to end the season over December 4-6 at the Sydney Olympic Park precinct.
This sub-department of V8 Supercars Australia has swollen in staff since Shane Howard, the department’s general manager, almost single-handedly steered the ship in its early days.
The juggernaut rolls on, with new offices opening in Townsville, Sydney and Melbourne in the last six months, and with staff now numbering close to 20.
Under Howard, V8SCE has kicked some massive goals in the last 12 months. The growth spurt has been stunning, but where to now? And how many more projects can it take on board?

SHOWTIME!

With a raft of new rules, new fuel and team changes aplenty, 2009 is shaping up as the most hotly-anticipated V8 season in years. V8X takes a sneak peek at what’s gone on behind the scenes.

A welter of changes to sporting and technical regulations, backed up by a host of driver and team movements, has lifted anticipation for the 2009 Championship Series to unprecedented levels. Scarcely has the V8 Supercar championship been given such a comprehensive shake-up in between seasons.
Heaven forbid it needed remodelling, given the all-too-often blandness of racing and predictability of strategies that rendered the action to nothing more than a sustained yawn. And that’s precisely what has prompted the far-reaching changes to the way the new season will be structured, from a competition standpoint.

OFFICIAL BUSINESS

He’s scaled the highest echelons of motorsport and is still the only Australian to drive officially for Ferrari. But these days Tim Schenken’s focus is firmly on V8 Supercars

Tim Schenken is an Australian motor racing legend.

He is one of only 13 Australian drivers to reach the pinnacle of motorsport, Formula One. He started 34 grands prix for the likes of Williams, Brabham and Surtees. His best result was third in the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix driving a Brabham-Ford.
If that isn’t enough, he is also the only Australian to ever be a fully-fledged factory Ferrari driver, picked by Enzo Ferrari for the iconic team’s sportscar program in the early 1970s. Why are we telling you this in a magazine devoted entirely to V8 Supercars? Because on top of all he achieved as a driver Schenken has also become one of the best officials this country has ever produced. His current role at CAMS is to act as Race Director for the V8 Supercar Championship Series each year.
And thanks to the thick skin he developed racing against some of the sport’s biggest names at places like Monaco and Daytona, he has no trouble speaking up for what he feels is right. Which brings us to where V8X fits into this story.