Articles by Ray Kershler

Lowndes grew up in the shadow of Brock from his father's garage to the racetrack. Like so many in the sport he was devastated by his hero's death."Peter was more than just a teammate to me. He taught me an enormous amount about racing and about life. It's a terrible loss."Those words, choked out as the news of Brock's death swept Australia last month, encapsulate his feelings as the field of 31 cars arrives at Mt Panorama for the Bathurst 1000.And with the specially crafted silver Peter Brock Trophy to be presented to this year's winner, Lowndes and his Betta Electrical teammate Jamie Whincup have been installed as the bookies' race favourite."Everyone will want to have their name on that trophy," Lowndes said yesterday."My focus is to be the first."We'll always remember him. He'll always be with us. But, for now, the best way to honour him is to try to focus on what we are doing here. To try to win the race."Lowndes hasn't won Bathurst since 1996, his first and only win. But last year he looked to be a runaway winner before he clipped a wall and then, later, was hit by a flying tyre."Last year we made a mistake. But hopefully we don't make mistakes twice," Lowndes said."The car is better than last year, our preparation is better than last year."We believe our car is not going to be slower. It's just a matter of how much faster everyone else is."Lowndes revealed Team Betta meetings prior to the big race will canvas almost every possible scenario prior to the race."Whether we get a good start and lead or whether we get a bad start and drop back in the pack we need to evaluate every possible outcome," he said."But at the same time we have to wait to see what happens."We will have a basic plan. How fast. What pace. How many laps out of the full tanks. We will work from that strategy and try to structure it as much as we can."But at the same time we have to be flexible. As the race goes on we have to head into every area with some sort of understanding of what we are trying to achieve."Lowndes concedes winning the Peter Brock Trophy won't be easy."When I won in 1996 there were probably four to six cars potentially good enough or fast enough to win," he said."This year that number has risen to 12-20."The depth of the field is greater and the race is now a sprint because the cars are fast and reliable and will cope with all the punishment we give them over 161 laps."

The funeral and memorial services now largely over, the four-day festival of motorsport at Mt Panorama offers closing as the V8 Supercar series gets back to business for the first time after Brock's death. Appropriate ceremonies are planned to honour Brock but fundamental to the weekend is the annual running of the Bathurst 1000 which made Brock so famous. As part of the tributes for Brock the winners of the six-hour, 161-lap classic will hold aloft the Peter Brock Trophy for the first time. At the start, the first two grid spots on pit straight will be left vacant as a sign of respect and in those nerve jangling last seconds before the start not a single driver in the race will be able to forget Brock's homily, "Live Your Dreams". Holden's leading driver Mark Skaife is just one who realises the significance of lifting that trophy for the first time. If he does, Skaife will also break Peter Brock's long-standing record as the holder of the most round wins in the championship. Both currently have 37. "This will be a very special weekend in the wake of the passing of Peter Brock," Skaife said. "We need to ensure the emotion of the weekend does not override us and we continue to focus on the job of trying to win the race." Of course, Brock was Holden. But Ford plans to gatecrash his memorial service this weekend. Ford has not won the Bathurst 1000 for the past seven years. And it hurts right up to the top of the corporate tree. The last time Ford tasted the champagne at Mt Panorama was in 1998 when Jason Bright and Steven Richards took the checkered flag. In fact, Ford has only won at Bathurst twice in the past 15 years. A similarly depressing run of outs in the V8 Supercar championship shaped the company's motor sport focus in the late '90s and turned failure to success. As Holden began to amass what would be a streak of five straight championships, Ford decided to poach the sport's star driver Craig Lowndes from the heart of enemy territory — the Holden Racing Team. Another Holden star, Russell Ingall, would follow and this weekend Lowndes, Ingall and Bright, another driver who has switched allegiances, form the backbone of Ford's challenge. Ironically, an unsung hero stopped the rot for Ford in the championship when Marcos Ambrose won back-to- back crowns in 2003 and 2004 and his teammate Ingall made it three straight with victory last year. Bathurst, however, is a different story. In an unprecedented statement this week the senior Ford executive in Australia acknowledged the failure to win Bathurst was felt all the way to the top. "The only thing missing in our trophy cabinet is Bathurst," said Ford president Tom Gorman. "I don't think a day goes by when Bathurst is not brought up in conversation," he said. "It means that much to everyone associated with Ford. "A win for Ford would mean a lot. I know we are also in the middle of a championship hunt but I know all Ford teams will attack to win the race. The championship is a secondary consideration right now. "It would be a career as well as a personal highlight for me to win Bathurst. "We have the talent and team to get us a win at Mt Panorama. However it's the one race where predictions are too hard to make."

Q: HOW did you start racing? A: I grew up with it. Dad prepared cars for the Holden Dealer Team. Years later he was the technical manager for V8 Supercars. I started in karts as a kid and progressed to Formula Ford. It went from there. Q: What are your first memories of Brock? A: Watching him on TV at Bathurst. He did amazing things in the cars dad was preparing. I was probably 10 or 11. All I ever wanted to be was Peter Brock. Q: When did you first meet as racing drivers? A: I first met him when I was in go-karts. Peter took an interest and was really supportive. He just wandered over one day for a chat. He was like that. I was in awe of him but I could also learn from him. We got on pretty well from the start. Q: How did Brock influence your life as a driver. A: When we ended up at HRT together, Peter became my mentor. He taught me so much about motor racing and life. He taught me how to deal with pressure and to treat everyone with friendship and respect. Q: How often did you speak to Brock in the early days? A: All the time. As team-mates we shared information about the track conditions and what the cars were doing. He was always offering tips on how to get that bit more speed. Q: Did Brock's style influence yours? A: Every driving style is unique but Peter's and mine are probably quite similar. I perfected my style with the tips he gave me. Q: What was your first driving triumph and when did you first feel you could be successful? A: My first real triumph was Bathurst '94 when I passed John Bowe for the lead with a dozen laps to go. He got me back and won but it put me on the map. I always knew I could be successful but I was lucky. I was hungry for success and, with the arrogance of youth, expected it. Q: Did you strive to be as good as, or better, than Brock? A: I wanted to emulate Brock's success, I don't know that I set out to be better than him. Peter showed us all what is possible. He was the pioneer and I am indebted to him. Q: What influence did Brock have on your life off the racetrack? A: Peter showed me that you need to get away and do something completely different. Some guys go boating, I've got the farm. Q: You looked devastated at Brock's funeral. A: I still am. Q: How did winning Bathurst with Greg Murphy in 1996 change your world? A: It was the best feeling ever. But I don't think it changed my world. Q: How confident are you that Betta Electrical can give you and Jamie Whincup the car to win Bathurst? A: We have a great race car, great team, clever strategies and fast pitstops. It's up to us to get the job done. Q: What would it mean to be first to win the Peter Brock Trophy. A: It would be the ultimate tribute to Peter, so I'd love to do it.

The 2005 champion has slumped to sixth in the V8 championship, nearly 500 points behind fellow Ford driver Craig Lowndes.A miserable 27th in the previous round - the Sandown 500 - when brake problems plagued the Caltex Falcon virtually eliminated Ingall from the championship chase.However his Stone Brothers Racing team put together a solid test session this week with veteran Glenn Seton and rookie James Courtney all swapping data over 280 laps."It was by far our best test day," Ingall said. "Mind you, considering it was our last allocated day of the year, we had to make it count."Now James is up to speed and his feedback is excellent we can get plenty of information from two race cars which gives us a short cut to getting the right set-up for Bathurst. We ran in total Bathurst configuration and some gains were made."I wish we had these sort of results at the start of the year because I'm sure the championship would look a lot different to what it does now. At least we are more confident we are going to have a fast car to attack the mountain."

Perhaps, aided and abetted by top V8 Supercar officials who regularly malign viewing facilities at the track, Eastern Creek has earnt a reputation which, for all intents and purposes, cost it a round of the championship in 2006.Eastern Creek officials, however, point to collated V8 Supercar attendance figures to argue that criticism of the crowd figures, especially when compared with Oran Park, is unjustified. Here, bearing in mind the old line of "lies, damned lies and statistics" is a breakdown of three-day crowd figures at Eastern Creek, Oran Park and others, over the past decade.In 1997, when the modern era of V8 Supercar racing started, Eastern Creek drew a crowd of 18,000, while Oran Park drew 42,000.By 2000 that was 22,650 to 40,500. So the argument was cut and dried. Then in 2001 the trend changed and Eastern Creek beat Oran Park 32,600 to 28,000. The Creek won again by a similar margin in 2002 before Oran Park regained the ascendancy in 2003 and 2004, again by a margin of about 2000 fans.In 2005, Oran Park attracted 39,013 fans and Eastern Creek pulled 30,900.When V8 Supercars promoted a second event at Eastern Creek in 2003 they drew 200 fewer fans than Oran Park and 1500 more fans than the earlier Eastern Creek round.The next year when the V8s again promoted their own race they blew the opposition away with a figure of 52,918 to 30,000 and 28,000 respectively. But that figure is partially skewed by a wet Sunday at Eastern Creek.Since the start of this century these figures are as good as or better than the three Victorian circuits of Winton, Sandown and Phillip Island. V8 officials maintain Eastern Creek needs to do more to promote its events but the venue has been invited back to the fold for the 2007 season. At which stage fans of both Sydney venues will be able to vote with their feet.

Of the six rounds of the championship so far, five have been reverse grid races. On reflection, not much real excitement occurred but no harm was done either, although a few disgruntled team owners might disagree. The championship started in March and is, as near as dammit, halfway through a season which will end in December. So who's winning and who's losing? Well, from a field of 31 drivers who started, the field has been whittled down to five who have realistic chances of winning the title. On the evidence so far, no one from and including Steven Richards, who is running sixth, can now win. That leaves Garth Tander, Craig Lowndes, Rick Kelly, Russell Ingall and Mark Winterbottom, in that order. Richards is more than 250 points behind the leader and it is hard to conceive that each and every one of the five drivers ahead of him will have the disastrous weekend necessary to bring them back to the field. Richards has been consistent without being brilliant in a Holden which hasn't been as bullet-proof as others Perkins has produced. But at least he is streets ahead of three other Holden stars who, for some weeks, have been talking about Sandown and Bathurst as if they were the motor racing equivalent of Lourdes. Skaife's disaster in Adelaide where he didn't score a point was always going to come back to haunt him. Darwin finished him off. But well before Skaife relinquished his grip, Todd Kelly and Greg Murphy bit the dust. Kelly has been unlucky that his Holden has suffered from more mechanical problems than Mark Webber's Williams ... and that's saying something. Murphy has never been on the pace and his best result — 10th in Darwin — is indicative of his 2006 season, which sees him lying 17th, one place ahead of Kelly. Both of them are so far off the pace that even a Top 10 finish seems out of the question. The disappointment for Ford fans has been Jason Bright: prominent in the last three rounds but his first three did the damage. Bright has always had the speed and now has a car capable of winning rounds as well as races but the improvement did not come soon enough. Nevertheless, Bright and his more fortunate teammate, Winterbottom, who is fifth, will be an added bonus for Ford fans as the season unwinds. Lowndes, as expected, is a genuine title contender from second position, but what do we make of Ingall? The defending champion is fourth without being prominent, under pressure to add some flair to a campaign which reeks of nothing but consistency. The drivers to beat are Tander and Rick Kelly, first and third respectively. They both found speed after Bathurst last year and have successfully continued this year to the extent they look to have the fight with Lowndes to themselves. The two Holden drivers versus the Ford superstar should make for an interesting second half of the season, especially as there are that handful of Ford drivers who look likely to influence results before the grand finale at Phillip Island.