YOU KNOW a race team is firing when they are performing off track as well as they are on it.
Shell V-Power Racing – Dick Johnson Racing Team Penske – are on the top of their game in the Virgin Australia Supercars championship at the moment.
They’re first and second in the drivers standings, comfortably top the teams championship, consider a two-race streak of not winning a form slump and have comfortably helped Ford reclaim the series’ manufacturers championship before we even really enter the second half of the season.
Yet events at Queensland Raceway last weekend proved how well they’re firing off-track as well, with the team turning an unfortunate and potentially aggravating set of circumstances and a potential Public relations challenge into a massive victory. Another victory to their tally this year.
If you follow Supercars, you’ll know that the team’s victory in Race 20 of the championship last Sunday ultimately cost them $13,000 in fines – making their trophy an expensive one that day.
Scott McLaughlin was fined $3000 for his post-race burnout – in particular, continuing it for so long it went past the prescribed cut-off point dictated by Supercars – and then the team $10,000 for bringing unsanctioned material onto the podium.
Now you can debate the merits of the various penalties until the cows come home; the burnout fine is considered a Safety matter and there are commercial considerations to consider when it comes to the podium.
Whether you agree with the regulations that dictate the penalty or not is a moot point; they’re in the operations manual and need to be enforced.
However the way the team managed the situation was sensational.
For starters, McLaughlin’s twitter banter asking if he could pay his fine ‘by using the Armor All pole cheques’ he’d won so far this year was excellent.
Then after copping a fine I suspect they knew very well they would get – it’s not the first time it’s happened – the way the team turned that negative into a PR victory was superb.
Putting a copy of the poster in question on sale and donating all the money to charity is a PR masterstroke and in an instant took the media value they had already received by taking the poster in question onto the podium, and doubled it. Or more.
After two days, the team had raised $12,000 for Camp Quality and there’s no doubt that they will make more.
The team look like legends raising money for a good cause, and Ford – a major partner of the team – get a considerable amount of extra media value thanks to all of the coverage it generated long after the post-event chatter had died down on Monday and Tuesday.
It’s a credit to McLaughlin, who is always excellent on social media, team boss Ryan Story and PR manager Ben Nightingale, who conspired to turn a situation that could have punters up in arms into one that has them celebrating and throwing cash towards a charity at the same time.
You can say all you want about budget, resources, having the fastest car or the best drivers; but this is another example of the best people making smart calls and engineering off-track situations as well as they do those on it.
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IF THAT was the last round at Queensland Raceway for the foreseeable future then the circuit will depart from the calendar leaving mixed feelings.
For sure the circuit is uninspiring in its design, has the worst facilities on the calendar for teams and sub-part spectator facilities as well.
Yet it generally produces excellent racing, can be seen from every vantage point on the circuit and on the weekend drew a very healthy crowd indeed.
The situation Supercars finds themselves in is difficult: they must reduce the calendar to reduce the cost of going racing – yet losing rounds like Ipswich, or Winton, as predicted takes the sport away from the real heartland fans of Supercars racing.
I’d wager a large portion of the fans who go and sit on the hill at QR for a weekend are not the same kind of people who would drive an hour South to the Gold Coast in October to stand by a concrete wall and only see the cars for 10 seconds per lap.
There’s room for both kinds of circuit in our sport – but at the moment the sport can’t afford to be at events that do not make it money or add corporate or TV appeal.
It’s a massive juggling act for those in charge and means making tough decisions: For sure, I’d hate to be the one who tells the 15,000 or so who were there on Sunday that they can’t come back next year.
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