I mentioned in my column last week about feeling a little ‘battered and bruised’ by the latest – and by far longest – Lockdown that the Delta strain of this damned COVID-19 (corona) virus has forced on the city where I choose to live, Auckland.
One of the reasons, I’ve since realised, I’ve been feeling so flat is that the bloody Lockdown has robbed me of the chance to be, well, me! Specifically….to travel to and report from and about motorsport events.
Sure, I’m luckier than most ‘motorsport tragics’ in the 09-calling area in that I am still actively involved. In saying that though, most of my usual written output of late has been about long-planned events being postponed or cancelled!
As I said in the second ever column I wrote for Talk Motorsport, I’m a ‘glass half full’ (rather than ‘half empty’) kind of guy, so – I suppose – I shouldn’t be that surprised that the sheer negativity of the situation I find myself in, is having a similarly negative impact on my state of mind.
It’s not that I have had to go completely ‘Cold Turkey’ in terms of events to watch either.
Without a sub to Spark I’ve missed the rise to F1 superstar driver status of Red Bull ace Max Verstappen, not to mention the renaissance of the now Zak Brown-led McLaren team.
Such is the gravitational pull of F1 though I have largely been able to keep up with the various too-ing and fro-ing of the F1 world via team-based (and obviously paid for) updates published on YouTube
The beauty of these is the ‘fly-on-the-wall’ access (and the obvious rapport) the videographers have with their subjects, by far the best example IMHO* – so far this season anyway – being Red Bull’s coverage of the final round of the DTM from Germany’s Norisring circuit.
In it we were treated to utterly professional coverage of what a happened to whom, when and where, with little or none of the excruciating ‘trying to be fair to all parties’ BS which marred the official ‘event report/season wrap’ put out by the DTM itself.
Because Max Verstappen is such a prickly (not to mention, combative) little bastard, Red Bull’s regular F1 updates on YouTube lack the wide-eyed ‘boy in a man’s world’ innocence and sheer fun that Liam Lawson brought to the DTM ones.
But the stakes are obviously a hell of a lot higher in F1; particularly when you are up against a driver of the calibre of Lewis Hamilton and team such as the hitherto all-conquering Mercedes-Benz.
So, I guess we have to cut Max some slack – at least until our own Liam Lawson breezes into F1 and starts beating the bugger!
I also really enjoyed watching the final two rounds of this year’s Formula Drift Series via Facebook Live from the USA, and (finally, here is the ‘real’ subject of this week’s column), the resumption of the Repco Supercars championships series from the self-proclaimed ‘Home of Australian Motorsport,’ Sydney Motorsport Park (nee Eastern Creek) via YouTube, this past weekend.
Like Auckland (and to a lesser extent, the Waikato), Sydney and Melbourne have been the epicentres of Australia’s own Covid-19 Delta outbreaks, meaning a wholesaler re-jigging of the Supercars series calendar since the traditional sweep up to the sub-tropical delights of Darwin and Townsville through the cooler mid-winter months.
By far the biggest change was the moving of the now renamed, Repco Bathurst 1000 date from the second weekend in October until the first weekend in December.
The idea was to give the authorities in both New South Wales and Melbourne, time to get vaccination rates high enough to remove restrictions on interstate travel.
In between – and to effectively replace the usual ‘pre-Bathurst’ rounds of the series at Phillip Island and/or Sandown – someone within the Supercars organisation came up with the bright idea of running four separate, points-scoring, rounds of the 2021 series over consecutive weekends at the same track – the afore-mentioned Sydney Motorsport Park.
To make sure the second, third and fourth rounds don’t descend into Ground Hog Day-like repetitions of last weekend’s first one, each weekend’s round will have a different tyre mix.
The best bit of news to come out of the weekend’s first Sydney Motorsport Park round, was – of course – the fact that ‘old mate’ Shane Van Gisbergen further extended his lead in the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship series points standings.
Speaking strictly personally here the pace of De Pasquale (in the leading Ford) and the Erebus Holdens of Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki surprised me.
De Pasquale and teammate Will Davison were by far the best of the Ford runners, with neither Monster Energy Racing’s Cam Waters, nor Kiwi Andre Heimgartner in the Ned Whiskey Racing Mustang able, or so it seemed, to ‘crack the code’ necessary to get the most out of the tyre lottery, which, at the weekend saw each driver allocated only five sets of the more desirable ‘sticky’ Dunlops.
De Pasquale was actually DQed from the second race of the weekend on Sunday morning (a race subsequently won by Shane Van Gisbergen) after his team fitted a wheel and tyre from teammate Will Davison’s allocation by mistake.
An easy mistake to make, you could argue. Though Supercars was obviously aware of the potential advantage, stripping the hapless De Pasquale of the points he earned for finishing the race fifth; plus fining the Shell V-Power Racing squad $20K.
A quick flick through the results earned across all three races revealed a number of anomalies – which fortunately this time, we will only have to wait until this Saturday, to see if they have been addressed.
For a start. Where was David Reynolds in the Penrite Racing Ford Mustang? Also, what about the much-vaunted James Courtney and his Boost Mobile ‘Muzzie.’ And what about Cam Waters?
The distinctive ‘matt-black ‘n neon green’ Monster Energy-backed/Tickford-run Mustang was the quickest of the non-Shell V-Power ‘Fords’ early on Saturday yet Waters slipped back from P7 to P13 in the evening race on Saturday, then qualified 14th and finished 13th again in the second race of the weekend on Sunday morning.
The hard-driving young gun was back near the pointy end of the field – having worked his way forward from P13 at the start to P6 at the flag – in the third and final race of the weekend late on Sunday afternoon, but was left rueing an opportunity lost…
Me?
I was just glade my favourite form of antipodean motorsport was back from its self-imposed COVID-19 hiatus, and that Bathurst is ‘just around the corner… I can’t be there, but just knowing that a round is going to be on again this weekend is a boost.
In saying that the frustration that is at the heart of my ‘discontent/despair remains…and will no doubt until I – as a double-vaxed adult who wears a mask every time I leave the house, and who religiously uses the Government’s NZ COVID Tracer app on my phone on the rare occasions I do actually leave my home office these days – am offered an opportunity to re-enter normal society.
Sure, the chance to return all those old library books and browse the shelves for some new ones (which I will be able to do from next Wednesday according to the PM) is a bonus. But just that. It’s the entrée, to the main course, the walk to the mailbox rather than to Milford Sound, a quick dip off Kohimarama Beach compared to swimming to Rangitoto – and back! Nothing more!
No. What I realise I am missing most is the need to travel beyond my suburb, to spread my wings, get out of Dodge, etc etc. To hit the road.
I’ve already missed one planned roadie to and from Taupo; to watch the Choice Drift Series event at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park this weekend just passed.
I had already prepared myself for the disappointment of having to sit out the annual Spring Drift Matsuri gathering at Taupo this coming weekend.
Not to mention Mad Mike’s annual Summer Bash at Hampton Downs on Saturday December 04.
In saying that, however, a man – literally can only take so much of this mind numbing, spirit-crushing, conformity. And the PM and her Cabinet are either living in coo-coo land or seriously out of touch with those of us marooned here in greater Auckland if they think that we as a group will sit around benignly and accept the odd further concession until ‘sometime in mid-December’
Hell no. And you don’t have to take it from me either.
No less of an authority than University of Auckland emeritus professor of medicine Des Gorman told Rado NZ listeners yesterday that; “If you leave Auckland where it is I think you’re going to have an outbreak of civil disobedience.
“Aucklanders are barely able to hang in there at the moment, they’re trying their best. They’re not going out; they’re not mixing and mingling. (Yet) they’re looking at sections of society who clearly are – the numbers are going up – and they’re asking themselves, ‘why am I sacrificing my lifestyle, my time with my family, what’s being achieved here?’,” he said.
At which point I rest my case. Until next week at any rate!
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