Testing Begins With Surprising Morning

A NEW-look V8 Supercar Championship has finally officially hit the race track, with 25 cars completing a milestone three-hour morning session today at Sydney Motorsport Park, in New South Wales.

Featuring the first time that all four Marques involved in the series had hit the track together, this morning’s running was welcomed by a big crowd at the Western-Sydney circuit.

The V8 Supercar Car of the Future proved competitive and all four brands – despite highly limited running for some – showed that this year should be just as close as the traditional Holden-v-Ford rivalry has been for the past several seasons.

Brad Jones Racing duo Jason Bright and Fabian Coulthard topped the times and James Courtney’s Holden Racing Team Commodore made it a Holden trifecta at the top - though Rick Kelly’s Jack Daniel’s Nissan Altima was fourth and just 0.2s behind the fastest time.

Despite their third car – the Wilson Security Racing entry steered by David Wall – arriving at the circuit early this morning and only completing a brief, 12-lap shakedown, the sister Team BOC and Lockwood Racing cars looked strong at the top of the charts.

Bright’s 1m30.6334s lap came on the 14th of his 31 completed and placed him 0.13s quicker than Coulthard in the sister Lockwood entry.

With cars running the Dunlop Hard compound slick tyre, Bright’s time was almost exactly one-second slower than the pole position time set when the series raced at the circuit last August – a time set on the Soft compound rubber.

Behind Courtney in third, Kelly’s quickest lap of 1m30.87s came despite a smoky visit to pit lane after an oil line detached from the brand-new Altima.

In the sister, Norton 360-backed entry, James Moffat ended this morning’s running in 10th place in what was a competitive showing from the factory Nissan team. Kelly and Moffat are the only two Nissan’s running today, with Todd Kelly and Michael Caruso interested spectators today ahead of their separate test scheduled for next week.

Jonathon Webb was fifth for Tekno Autosports, just ahead of Fujitsu Racing rookie Scott McLaughlin.

Craig Lowndes was seventh, Shane van Gisbergen eighth and Alex Premat ninth and just 0.02 ahead of Moffat’s tenth-placed Nissan. Eight Holdens and two Nissans filled the top ten, covered by just 0.76s - the first Ford the factory entry of Will Davison placing 14th – one ahead of Pepsi Max FPR teammate Mark Winterbottom in 15th.

The two stunningly bright Ford entries lapped in almost identical lap times though exactly one second off the outright pace.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the impressive first-out performance of the Erebus Motorsport Mercedes Benz E63 AMG trio. Sporting a stunning new noise to V8 Supercars – a higher-pitched scream compared to the regular bass V8 growl – the three Erebus entries were 19th, 20th and 24th, respectively – Lee Holdsworth leading the way in his #4 IRWIN Racing entry.

Holdsworth’s best lap of 1m31.76s was just 1.1 seconds from Bright’s quickest time of the morning. German rookie Maro Engel was 24th and lapped in 1m33.80s in his first visit to Sydney Motorsport Park.

Tim Blanchard was 25th and last of today’s runners in the hastly-finished Dick Johnson Racing Falcon, that only arrived at the circuit early this morning fresh from being finished just a day ago in the team’s Queensland factory.

Blanchard completed just 7 laps this morning, compared to the maximum (56) set by Craig Lowndes in the Red Bull Racing Holden.

Following the ever-popular fan grid walk at lunch time, the cars will return to the circuit later this afternoon for more running.

Click HERE to view the complete times from this morning's opening session (External Website - Natsoft Race Timing).