You’ve got to laugh – or cry. Honestly, I’m not sure which.
A guy – a Kiwi at that – with a proven track record in racing and business creates and successfully sells the concept of what is perhaps is the most exciting new category to be floated across the Tasman since ‘V8 Supercars,’ yet when you scroll through the comments of the new category’s Facebook page, most are negative.
Spare me.
The category is S5000, a fresh take on the classic 5.0 litre stock-block V8 ‘wings-and-slicks’ F5000 single-seater format, the brains – not to mention much of the brawn – behind it, is Chris Lambden.
If that name rings a bell on this side of the Tasman it will either be because the bugger was actually born, raised and started his motorsport journey here (in karts in Christchurch) or, the fact that, more recently he set up and ran fortnightly Australian motorsport news magazine, Australian Motorsport News for 15 heady years.
S5000 is very much Chris’ baby despite the fact that the car the governing body of the sport in Australia, CAMS, has now approved as the basis of an all-new ‘you beaut’ premier single-seater category, bears only a passing resemblance to the Formula Thunder 5000 prototype he originally came up with.
I’d love to say something here like ‘The reason is simple……………..’ but it manifestly is not. And this is where your average everyday ‘keyboard warriors’ show themselves up for the idiots they really are.
The reasons in fact are as many as they are varied.
For a start many of the current nay-sayers, are sadly, living in the past. Proof is in what they liked about the original car and don’t like about the new ‘un.
Everyone, it seems, loved the high Lola T332-style airbox which gave the Formula Thunder prototype a distinctive retro ‘F5000’ look. And pretty much everyone critical of the new car hates the F1-style halo.
The silly thing is, to actually get the car through the many and varied processes in order to get it on tracks to entertain these very people who get all high-and-mighty and out-of-shape about – again – arguably the most important driver safety initiative since the HANS device, the car had to have one.
As Chris himself says in a post of his own of the S5000 Facebook site; ‘Like Niki Lauda and others, I’m personally not a fan, BUT on a professional and pragmatic basis, the reality is that any new, serious, race car launched/built now, with international FIA rating, has to have it. It’s our one concession to modern reality.”
You only have to think back to the incident in the Indycar race at Pocono in 2015 that claimed the life of British driver Justin Wilson’s or that of Henry Surtees at Brand Hatch in 2009 or our very own Stan Redmond at Teretonga in 2013, to understand the reason why (driver head protection) the Halo was developed in the first place.
While I know that we’re going to have to wait until dessert is served…(you know, proof/pudding etc etc) what I’m more interested in as far as the new S5000 car is concerned is the mix of aero and mechanical grip. As some of you might have deduced I’m not a big fan of aero grip. You only have to look at F1, where they had to introduce artificial pit stops so that there could actually be some passing in a race!
The good news here is that though he remains a true-blue F1 fan Chris has done enough racing himself to understand (arguably way better than me) why you need to balance the need for ultimate grip with the desire to provide close, exciting racing in cars that actually move about a bit and can be pushed into understeer or oversteer (at will) by the driver.
It was when he was running a McRae GM1 in our very own SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series, in fact, that Chris first hit on the idea of creating a ‘contemporary’ version of the F5000 car and class.
Like literally thousands of fans ‘of a certain age’ around the world he (and I) was absolutely mesmerised by Graham McRae, Frank Matich, Peter Gethin, Teddy Pilette et al as they literally thundered around our circuits back in the early 1970s in their big, wide, loud (visceral is a good word to describe them, if you don’t know what it means, look it up!) F5000 single-seaters.
Those very same cars, running in the exact same specification as they did 46 (gulp) years ago now entertain a whole new strata of fans thanks to the efforts of the NZ F5000 Association which has been organising a local, now SAS Autoparts MSC-sponsored NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series for the past 15 years,
Though the series has supported major ‘modern’ meetings in the past (the Australian F1 GP being the best example) and will again be the major local support category drawcard at the ITM SuperSprint Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at Pukekohe in November this year as well as at the big HRC/TRS ‘NZ Motor Cup’ meeting at Hampton Downs in January next year, the owner/drivers who are the lifeblood of the category see themselves more as active custodians of evocative pieces of mobile racing history than steely-eyed, slim-hipped young ‘stars-of-tomorrow.’
As such they prefer to do most of their racing at the big historic meetings (like the Skope Classic here and Classic Sandown in Australia), so see little threat from their Melbourne-based expat Kiwi cobber’s take on their category and possibility of a broadly similar but contemporary series.
Speaking of which, you’d think if any of our legion of on-line onanists (better look that one up!!) were serious students of the sport they would take issue with the fact that the new S5000 is Ford, not Chev-powered. Lotus used a Ford engine in the Lotus 70 (represented in the SAS Autoparts MSC Series by owner/driver Dave Arrowsmith from Christchurch) but that combo was very much the exception which proved the Chevrolet rule.
But no, I checked again, and there wasn’t one comment – negative or positive for that matter – about the fact that the new car is Ford-powered.
Me? What do I think?
Put simply I think Chris is on to something. For two probably key reasons.
1/ If you look at the support roster for a typical Virgin Australia Supercars event the one thing missing is a serious single-seater category. Formula Ford provides good racing but it is a driver development – rather than punter entertaining – category. The same goes for CAMS’ much-vaunted Formula 4 class. Even the Carrera Cup, Touring Car Masters and wee Aussie Racing Cars classes are getting a bit same-old/same-old these days, so yeah, a field of big, brusque S5000s with a mix of Pro-Am drivers (much like the old Formula Holden days) sounds just the ticket to me.
2/ While the TRS category gives kids from here and around the world a fantastic introduction to the world of professional single-seater racing it does bugger-all for the likes of – say – Ken Smith protégé Tom Alexander, or for that matter, fellow karter-turned-fairly-handy-car racers Andrew Waite, Damon Leitch and Richard Moore. Not if they want to stay home but still race in a competitive category, anyway. Each has carved out a cool sort of niche doing advanced driver training Monday-to-Friday and Tom and Richard both now race utes (of all things) of a weekend here (Richard) or in Oz (Tom). If Chris can get his S5000 series up and running in Australia then an offshore round in New Zealand would be the next logical step. That in turn could – and I definitely think would – see the likes of Tom’s mate Mr Smith and perhaps a Giltrap/International Motorsport team or even someone like an Inky Tulloch purchase cars, and all of a sudden you have the prospect of a re-born contemporary Tasman Series to compliment the SAS Autoparts MSC Revival one.
Now it’s your turn. What do you think? Do the Aussies – and us – need another single-seater category? Or should, for instance, Toyota NZ re-visit the idea of ‘selling’ the concept of our own TRS to their Australian counterparts. As was bandied about when Barry and Louise Thomlinson ran the show.
Whatever you think why don’t you go and check out the new S5000 category, either on their Facebook page
At least then if you want to make a comment you will at least know what you are actually talking about.
Chris has poured his heart and soul into this project and I’d love to see it succeed. If for no other reason than so I can use a great quote I found the other day from actor Tom Hanks.
“If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”
Comments