Articles by Peter Kogoy

Whincup, 25, extended his championship lead to a commanding 233 points with the last round of the series to be held at Oran Park in two weeks.His nearest challenger is Mark Winterbottom, who will be snapping at his rear bumper in another Ford. Whincup won both sprint races yesterday after finishing second on Saturday to Todd Kelly, in his Jack Daniel's Racing Holden.“If this championship happens it's going to be a great team effort,” Whincup said.“We're going to Oran Park in a fortnight needing about 70 points from a possible 300 to get the job done.“I can't see why I can't do it. It's a track I really like to race, while I also want to round the year off as well as I can.”Whincup's win in Tasmania yesterday was his fourth straight, a feat achieved by only six other drivers.The finale at Oran Park, the last time cars will race at the track southwest of Sydney, comes down to a two-horse race, with Winterbottom the only driver who can catch Whincup. Defending champion Garth Tander dropped out of the title race after he could only manage eighth overall in another disappointing weeked for the Holden Racing team driver.“We were hanging on by our fingernails coming into the round, but the championship's definitely over now,” Tander said.But it wasn't all doom and gloom for Holden fans, with Kelly winning in the wet on the first day and two third placings, the best this season for the Jack Daniel's team.The Oran Park round will also be Mark Skaife's last appearance in the championship series. ,p>

Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup showed nerves of steel in the final laps after a roller-coaster ride in the wet at Mt Panorama yesterday to make it successive Bathurst 1000 titles.The Lowndes-Whincup combination also made it a winning enduro double after success at the Sandown 500 three weeks ago.A mistake from Whincup when he misjudged his line into pit lane on the last driver change nearly cost the Ford Triple 8 Team Vodafone victory.“Craig brought the car home nicely,” Whincup said.“This was an amazing win ... a bit special. To have won Bathurst back-to-back and also win at Sandown, I can't put into words.”Team owner Roland Dane described Lowndes and Whincup's drive as “brilliant”.The win also saw Whincup take over at the top of the leaderboard on 461 points, followed by Lowndes (445) with four rounds remaining before the grand finale at Phillip Island in December.James Courtney (Stone Brothers Racing) was second yesterday and Steve Johnson (Jim Beam) third to make it a Ford trifecta, the first since 1988.Greg Murphy (Tasman Motorsport) was the highest-placed Holden driver, in fourth.Yesterday's race turned in a fraction of a second on lap 150, 11 from the end.Jason Bright (Britek Motorsport), Mark Skaife (HRT) and Russell Ingall (Stone Brothers) were caught out by the change in weather as rain turned the circuit into a skating rink.Bright was leading when he gambled on a late pit stop, to drive the final kilometres on cold slicks as the weather closed in from the southwest.The ploy badly misfired. Across the top of the mountain, at McPhillamy Park, he ended in the sand pit as did Skaife after a close shave with the concrete wall.Ingall also hobbled into the pits on three tyres and no brakes.But the heart-breaking story of the day belonged to Rick Kelly and Garth Tander in the No1 Toll HSV Commodore, after the car was retired on lap 132 of the scheduled 161.Kelly started the day as series leader on 443 points, nine in front of Tander, with Whincup and Lowndes on their rear bumper.“We worked pretty hard and believed we had a package to be up the front, but it just wasn't our day,” Kelly said, knowing he had lost his championship lead.Kelly and Tander ran without luck all day. Mechanical problems plagued the car as early as lap 10.With Kelly and Tander out of the frame in the points, it was left to Skaife and Kelly's brother, Todd, in the No2 HRT Commodore, to take the race to the Falcons of Whincup, Lowndes, and early pacesetters Mark Winterbottom and Steven Richards in a FPR Ford.Richards won the start after Winterbottom had put the car on pole by beating off Holden top guns Skaife and Kelly into the first corner and up Mountain Straight.Kelly had no luck, nearly coming to grief on lap 25 as he diced with Lowndes.He shredded the left rear tyre at the end of Conrod Straight at almost 290km/h.The car went into a violent backward skid across the track as Lowndes dived inside, narrowly avoiding being T-boned.The young driver from Mildura nursed the stricken Commodore into the pits for the mechanics to make some hurried temporary repairs, add new rubber, take on a full tank of fuel and swap seats with co-driver Tander at the start of the second hour of racing.When Tander entered the fray for the first time, the Toll Holden entry had dropped to 26th.In the pre-race warm-up, John Bowe's co-driver Jonathon Webb, at the wheel of the No111 Glenford PCR Falcon, sustained mechanical failure halfway up Mountain Straight and hit a concrete barrier.That left pit-crew chief Hayden Morris and his mechanics less than two hours to replace the damaged front-end panels.Another hard-luck story came from Cameron McConville in the No50 Supercheap Auto Commodore. McConville was to have been 16th on the grid, but never got to the start line after the engine on his car blew up on the warm-up lap.“This is hard to believe,” McConville said. “We had some sort of a misfire, but I just couldn't get time to roll the thing back into the pits before the race start. I think we may have dropped a valve or something.”The McConville incident led to the first of seven occasions when the safety car had to be called out.Andrew Jones in the BOC Ford came to an end on lap 53 after fire broke out under the bonnet.

A year ago Dick Johnson, the genial Queenslander and multi-Bathurst winner, was in financial trouble and looking to walk away from motorsport for good. But then Johnson — perhaps best remembered for having a spectator throw a rock at his Falcon that caused him to crash out in 1980 — secured Jim Beam as a naming rights sponsor for his two-car operation, assuring Johnson's son, Steve, and co-driver Will Davison of a drive. A commercial deal with Ford rivals Triple 8 that sees Team Vodafone supply Johnson's team with engines also has helped. Yesterday Johnson, watching nervously from pit lane, cracked a smile as Steve Johnson and Davison pushed the red and white Ford to be the quickest in first official practice for Sunday's 1000km enduro, stopping the clock at 2min08.0740sec. It was a change of luck for the Johnson-Davison pairing after brake problems cost it any chance of fighting for a podium position at Sandown three weeks ago. They managed just 29 laps before parking the car in the pits. “The car felt nice and comfortable today,” Steve Johnson said. “We went into the race at Sandown fairly confident, but our eyes are firmly on the bigger picture this weekend. “It is a totally different car to the one I drove here at Bathurst a year ago.” Another change to Steve is his body shape. He comes into the race 22kg lighter than last year. “I'm still having four meals a day, but I'm simply eating smaller portions,” he said. Co-driver Davison, who completed six laps in the middle stages of yesterday's practice sessions, said the improvement in the No17 red, white and black Falcon has been 12 months in the making. “We've come here full of confidence, it's a pleasure to drive and it bodes well for a good weekend of racing,” Davison said. The Toll HSV Dealer team of series leaders Rick Kelly and Garth Tander was second-fastest, followed by Ford Performance Racing's Steven Richards and Mark Winterbottom. “The car was pretty good all session,” Tander said. Tander's only concern was sand that had blown on to the circuit by a strong breeze across the top of the mountain. “The sand was a worry and it changed every lap, so you didn't know how hard to push coming down the hill,” he said. Rounding out the top five were James Courtney and David Besnard in the Stone Brothers Racing Falcon, then the Holden Racing Team combination of Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly. Veteran driver Russell Ingall is showing no signs of slowing down. He finished eighth.

It was found wrapped in old newsprint and discovered only by chance when Lewis, 59, was cleaning out an old machinery shed at his brother Peter Brock's Nutfield farm, located on the north-eastern fringe of Melbourne, in the weeks following the famed racer's death in a car rally in Western Australia in September last year.Peter Brock won many trophies in an illustrious career that began in 1969. His success was astonishing. As well as three national titles, Brock claimed his first Bathurst win in 1972 and went on to rack up a record nine successes at Mt Panorama. His most prized possessions, the nine Bathurst trophies, had rarely seen the light of day until now.“I thought to myself `what a ripper' when I first stumbled across the contents of the suitcase in a shed down the back of the farm,” Lewis Brock said yesterday. “They'd never been shown in public as a group of trophies before.`To date, only mice had seen all these trophies, so I thought it was about time everyone else did.”Brock spent several months restoring the trophies, dating back to Peter Perfect's first win at Mt Panorama in 1972 and going through to his last in 1987. They went on public display for the first time, resting on the bonnet of Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly's Holden in pit lane just days before the race.“These trophies are symbolic of Bathurst,” Skaife said.“It's quite remarkable to see first-hand the success Peter (Brock) enjoyed up here. I'm quite proud as part of today's Holden factory racing team to be displaying them in public like this for the very first time.”As for the trophies, Lewis Brock has ensured they will have a more permanent home, in the new Peter Brock wing at Bathurst's National Motor Racing Museum.“He is a son of Bathurst and he always came here feeling like he was home, especially on the racetrack,” Brock said.Skaife, who missed the last round of the championship at Sandown after undergoing an emergency appendix operation, sees this weekend's race developing into a battle of four.“The HSV dealer team of Garth Tander and Rick Kelly, clearly ourselves, (Craig) Lowndes and (Jamie) Whincup in the Triple 8 Ford and the Ford Performance Racing car of Mark Winterbottom and Steven Richards are the four stand-out cars,” Skaife said.“Then there are a couple not far behind that — the Jim Beam car with Steve Johnson and Will Davison, and you can never discount Greg Murphy and Jason Richards either.” 

Craig Lowndes drove a near faultless race to take top spot on the podium, at the Hidden Valley raceway in Darwin yesterday.The 33-year-old Ford star, whose birthday was on the weekend, finished second in race one, before going back-to-back yesterday to hold off championship leader Rick Kelly, with the barnstorming Mark Skaife third.“It feels nice to finally win a round,” said Lowndes, after putting his birthday celebrations on hold.“Winning up here for the second year in a row, and especially for a new sponsor in Vodafone, is doubly special.“If I had it my way, I'd pick up the track up and have it trucked around the circuit.”The win took Lowndes to 213 points and sixth in the series standings, still 123 points in arrears of leader Rick Kelly in the Toll Holden.Holden drivers Garth Tander, Todd Kelly and Skaife also fill out three of the next top four placings.While Lowndes finished the weekend on a high, the ageless Skaife, who took the major points at Eastern Creek a fortnight ago, again took the honours in the opening race on Saturday. In a dramatic race, Will Davison, in the second of the Jim Beam Falcons, fell foul of the stewards.Davison was excluded from the results of race one and was fined $5000 (suspended) for his part in a dingle that took four cars out of the reckoning.But Lowndes, who started race three on pole, proved unstoppable yesterday, at one point opening up a 4.5-second gap, leaving a swag of Holden drivers to race for the minor placings.“The team mechanics deserve much of the credit for the improvement in the car,” Lowndes said. “I got them to make some minor adjustments to the suspension and on the rear of the car."“With 600 horsepower under the bonnet, I thought I may as well make use of it."“It certainly made the car a little bit more driveable.”Lowndes says the series is by no means over, with eight rounds still to race.“We've got a testing day organised at Willowbank to tweak the car, before we race there again in July,” he said.Kelly's podium finish in Darwin sees him open up a 39-point buffer on his Toll HSV dealer team-mate Tander, heading into the next round of the series, the Queensland 300 at Ipswich on July 22.The defending series champion has finished on the podium every round this year. 

Craig Lowndes drove a near faultless race to take top spot on the podium, at the Hidden Valley raceway in Darwin yesterday. The 33 year old Ford star finished second in race one, before going back-to-back yesterday to hold off championship leader Rick Kelly, with the barnstorming Mark Skaife third. “It feels nice to finally win a round,” said Lowndes, after putting his birthday celebrations on hold. “Winning up here for the second year in a row, and especially for a new sponsor in Vodafone, is doubly special. “If I had it my way, I'd pick up the track up and have it trucked around the circuit.” The win took Lowndes to 213 points and sixth in the series standings, still 123 points in arrears of leader Rick Kelly in the Toll Holden. Holden drivers Garth Tander, Todd Kelly and Skaife also fill out three of the next top four placings. While Lowndes finished the weekend on a high, the ageless Skaife, who took the major points at Eastern Creek a fortnight ago, again took the honours in the opening race on Saturday. In a dramatic race, Will Davison, in second of the Jim Beam Falcons, fell foul of the stewards. Davison was excluded from the results of race one and was fined $5000 (suspended) for his part in a dingle that took four cars out of the reckoning. But Lowndes, who started race three on pole, proved unstoppable yesterday, at one point opening up a 4.5-second gap, leaving a swag of Holden drivers to race for the minor placings. “The team mechanics deserve much of the credit for the improvement in the car,” Lowndes said. “I got them to make some minor adjustments to the suspension and on the rear of the car." “With 600 horsepower under the bonnet, I thought I may as well make use of it." “It certainly made the car a little bit more driveable.” Lowndes says the series is by no means over, with eight rounds still to race. “We've got a testing day organised at Willowbank to tweak the car, before we race there again in July,” he said. Kelly's podium finish in Darwin sees him open up a 39-point buffer on his Toll HSV dealer team-mate Tander, heading into the next round of the series, the Queensland 300 at Ipswich on July 22. The defending series champion has finished on the podium every round this year. * V8 Supercar series chairman Tony Cochrane will remain in the position until the end of the year. It was reported that Cochrane would lose his job, after lashing out at former V8 TV partner Network Ten over broadcast arrangements for next year's Melbourne Grand Prix. “Tony continues to have the very strong support of V8 Supercar teams, in his role as chairman,” V8 Supercars chief executive Wayne Cattach said. “There is no agenda item listed for the next board meeting in relation to the position.” Meanwhile, Touring Car Entrants Group re-appointed general manager Kelvin O'Reilly for a further three years to oversee the business of the teams competing in the series. Tega chairman John Hewson announced O'Reilly's reappointment at Hidden Valley yesterday.