Holden Commodore News

... from Clipsal 500 dramas to taking McLaren's amazing Formula One machine for a run up and over Mount Panorama.In Adelaide we had good car speed with the Commodore, the car was strong and I was comfortable. But on Saturday we didn't qualify where we should have and I got bumped out of the ten, that was disappointing. So we had a bit of a battle on our hands but through strategy and everything else it worked out. We moved through the pack and got a great result _ third from eleventh. I was delighted with that, a great result and I couldn't have wished for anything more.Then Sunday was full of ups and downs. We qualified ninth, probably didn't put a lap together as good as we should have, but we were maintaining position in the race. Then we got a flat tyre from debris off turn two, I think it came from Brighty's car.I just didn't see it, I'll need to have a look at the replay and see what it was all about. I felt it on the previous lap but by the time I'd radioed in, and the guys checked as I went past and said 'come in', it was completely flat.And then there was that pit exit. It was exciting to have contact with Murph, get turned around and then look at everyone coming out of pit lane _ quite amazing.Sunday was all about recovery. We recovered from a poor qualifying, then got a flat. Recovered from that, then had problems on the pit exit. Then we just ran out of laps.But the car speed was good all weekend and we managed to get back to 12th, so we still got good points. Jamie did a great job. He was disappointed after Saturday's results. No doubt he was going to try and fix that up the next day, he hates losing.So he was pretty determined on the Sunday to make it work. He had good car speed, was sensible about the wet, looked after the car and away he went. It was an awesome weekend, great audience and Clipsal's always a class act.Jonathon Webb had a great run on the Sunday, as did Dave Reynolds, he qualified well on the Sunday and raced well in the wet. There's some great guys, the normal guys up the front but the next generation of drivers are coming through and proving to be fast.We flew into Bathurst on Monday and weren't sure whether the F1 run was going to go ahead, it was bucketing down with rain, rivers running everywhere across the circuit. It was still raining Tuesday morning but about 8am the clouds started to clear and it dried about 11am in time for Jenson to do his observation lap.It was a great day and the McLaren better than I expected over Skyline and the Dipper, going over the top it was just really nice to drive. It had that much downforce and that much grip, it turned. Through the Dipper it wasn't as bad I thought. It surprised me, being the style a Formula One car is I thought it would struggle around Bathurst.I bottomed out going down Conrod, which is pretty normal, but it was flat down into the Chase, flat coming out of the Chase, really good, just pulling gears. The corners do come up faster but the car's built for it and you get your mind up to speed. And those brakes are sensational, it was the first time I've driven a car with carbon fibre brakes..amazing.Now it's off to the Melbourne GP weekend. We've got some new components in the car we want to give a few more miles so it's a good opportunity to do that in race conditions.It's another big, great audience for V8 Supercars and the McLaren and Vodaphone bosses out for the weekend we'll be taking it all pretty seriously.

... for the 2011 V8 Supercars Championship and let the title slip from his grasp as it did last year.The 2008 and 2009 champion was deeply hurt that despite winning more races than any other driver last year he had to watch James Courtney lift the championship trophy after minor things went wrong for Whincup in certain events, including the deciding final weekend of the year, in Sydney.In the first four races of 2011 Whincup, driving his TeamVodafone Commodore, has two first places, a second and a third. This gives him 567 points to Orrcon Falcon driver Mark Winterbottom's 423.That 144-point gap is almost worth one race win (150 points) and has been established so early in the season.But Whincup is well aware of what happened last year, when he won all four races at the start of the year - and that there are still 23 more races to go in 2011.He said even after his Clipsal 500 win he would not be backing off to play safe for the championship."I am here to win races," he said of his philosophy. "I was in a similar (leading) position last year and got mowed down and spat out the back. We need to keep our heads down this time."Garth Tander (Toll-HRT, Commodore) is third on points with 363. After a win in Adelaide on Saturday over Whincup and a fifth place on Sunday, the 2007 champion is still more than 200 points behind Whincup.TeamVodafone remained at Adelaide's Victoria Park pit garages yesterday preparing Whincup's and Craig Lowndes' Commodore for the three V8 Supercar races at the Melbourne GP this coming  weekend - races which will not count towards their championship.The cars were due to leave on their transporters last night.Meanwhile, Lowndes has headed to Bathurst, outside Sydney, to try his hand today in the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One car on  Australia's most famous race track.Lowndes raced in Formula 3000 open-wheelers in 1997 in UK-Europe but it will be a huge change stepping from his V8 Holden on the Adelaide street circuit to a Grand Prix F1 racer at Mount Panorama.In the exchange, Jenson Button, winner of the past two Australian GPs in Melbourne, will drive a V8 Supercar around the Bathurst track and is greatly looking forward to it.

JASON Richards is planning to be cancer free and ready for Bathurst, starting with a Ferrari cameo this weekend at the Clipsal 500 meeting.  The BOC Commodore racer has stepped down from his V8 Supercar seat while he battles cancer but could not resist a guest drive in the  Australian GT Championship opener in Adelaide.TODD Kelly joins the 150 club in Adelaide this weekend when he clocks  up a milestone V8 Supercar start at the Clipsal 500. The Jack Daniel's  racer is the 16th driver to hit the 150 mark and will do it at a track  where he was a winner with the Holden Racing Team in 2007.MARK Webber's young protege, New Zealander Mitch Evans, heads to the  GP3 championship in Europe with another title in the bag. The 16-year-old has just become the latest Toyota Racing Series champ after dominating the series in New Zealand.SCOTT Pye has had a promising start to his campaign in the British F3  International Series, setting the fifth-fastest time in a shakedown at  Silverstone with his new team, Double-R Racing. Pye was only three-tenths of a second behind the pace setter and is looking forward to  his race debut at the Monza circuit in Italy in early April.MARCOS Ambrose has become a team owner in the USA with a late-model  stock car program including another transplanted Australian racer,  George Miedecke. Ambrose plans to mentor Miedecke as he tries to  follow him into NASCAR racing after some promising starts last year in  America.DAVID Brabham is facing another busy year, joining Stone Brothers  Racing for the V8 Supercar endurance races while racing a sports car  in the USA's major events and tackling the FIA GT1 series in Europe.  Brabham will race a Nissan GT-R in the GT1 title, driving for the  British Sumo team that includes former F1 drivers Riccardo Zonta and  Enrique Bernoldi.ELEVEN of Australia's brightest young talents will compete in a Fujitsu-backed development program this year, aiming for a test drive  that could take them to the next level. The Cool Driver initiative  sees seven kart racers - Jason LeCocq, Brody Appleby, Renee Gracie, Damon Strongman, Joey Mawson, Royce Nott and Todd Hazelwood - vying for a test in a Formula Ford and four Formula Ford drivers - Cameron  Waters, Nick Foster, Shae Davies and Rhett Noonan - hoping to win a  test in a V8 Supercar.

In just over two weeks he will become a grand prix driver for a day when he hot laps a McLaren Formula One car at Mount Panorama, Bathurst. Final approvals are through, the cars are set, the date is booked for Tuesday, March 22, and Lowndes said yesterday he is fit and focussed for the F1 challenge."I'm going to live the dream. If I feel good I'll give it a bit of a go," Lowndes said yesterday. "The amazing thing will be driving it over the top of the mountain. It will be so fast."Lowndes will be strapping into a McLaren in a 'changing places' promotion orchestrated by Vodafone, which sponsors both his Commodore team in the V8 Supercar championship and the McLaren team. As part of the deal, former world champion Jenson Button - who drove a Vodafone Commodore at Albert Park last year in a swap with Jamie Whincup - will strap into Lowndes' car."It's actually happening. It's all finalised and going ahead," Lowndes confirmed yesterday. "I cannot imagine the budget for this. It's bigger than Ben Hur. They have to close the track, find all the marshalls, get the two teams organised, everything else."Lowndes is now famous in Australia as a five-time Bathurst 1000 winner and three-time V8 Supercar champion, but there was a time when he was headed to Formula One. He was backed by the late Tom Walkinshaw for a season of open-wheel racing in Europe, driving a Formula 3000 car as team mate to Juan Pablo Montoya, who subsequently raced F1 with Williams and McLaren."That was 1997. It didn't work out," Lowndes said. He knows he is getting a second chance and, even if it's only for a day, he is happy. "The ultimate goal is not to crash it. I didn't make it to racing in Formula One so this is the next-best thing."Lowndes says he is hoping for around 10 laps at Bathurst and plans to push hardest through the two easy 90-degree turns onto and off pit straight. "They are the easy ones to get a feel. If I can get about four laps to find my way, then I'll have a bit of a go.  Across the top I'm expecting it to be pretty exciting."Jenson Button helped drive Craig Lowndes' grand prix dream with his request for Bathurst laps in a V8 Supercar. Button traded places with Jamie Whincup a year ago in the lead-up to the Australian Grand Prix, lapping his Holden Commodore at Albert Park. But he said he really wanted a crack at Mount Panorama. "It was on his wish list. He wanted it to happen," TeamVodafone boss, Roland Dane, said yesterday."We're happy to provide him with one of our Commodores. For us it's about the F1 car at Bathurst but for Jenson it's about ticking one off from his bucket list. Dane said the car will be running on soft-compound tyres to give Button better feel, but there is no plan to attack the lap record. "There won't be any timing. But there is going to be a brilliant viral video at the end of the day," he said.

The zero-emission plug-in car will be developed in Melbourne by a new consortium called EV Engineering Limited and is partly funded by a $3.5 million grant from the Federal government's Green Car Innovation Fund. It intends to build a concept prototype and then construct a total of seven fully-electric Commodores to prove that the car has a viable production future. The project does not directly involve GM Holden, although it is providing engineering back-up and access to its Lang Lang proving ground. EV Engineering is a consortium that combines many of Australia's leading automotive suppliers, Air International, Bosch, Continental and Futuris and is headed by Rob McEniry, the former head of Mitsubishi Motors Australia. "This collaboration is evidence that the local manufacturing and automotive industries have recognised the important role these vehicles will play in their future,”says McEniry. "This initiative will strengthen the local capabilities and give Australia the opportunity to lead the world in the development of large, powerful, zero-emissions vehicles, and ensure we remain globally competitive in this sustainable, high growth market.” EV Engineering has set a 15-month schedule for the project and also intends that the batteries in the electric Commodore will only be charged using renewable energy using standard electric vehicle plug-in and battery switching infrastructure. Holden has no plans of its own for a battery-powered Commodore, although it built a hybrid ECOmmodore in 2000 and intends to eventually have a hybrid version of the car. Its first hybrid will be the range-extended Volt, which recently went on sale in the USA as a Chevrolet and will also be sold in the UK and Europe as the Ampera. "We're supporting it, but we're not a member of the consortium. We're giving in-kind engineering support,” says Holden spokesperson, Emily Perry. "Broadly, it's an exciting idea and it's good for us to be able to support it. But it's not a vehicle we'll be putting into production. Still, the findings will be interesting to us.” The project will be run from Futuris premises in Melbourne, ironically close to Holden's headquarters at Fishermans Bend.

General Motors says its iconic V8 is part of the core DNA of the company and critical to Chevrolet. It's also still in use - with 21st century tweaking and a Gen IV badge - in the Holden Commodore. "We're working on the next generation of small block," says Jamie Hresko, GM's vice-president of global power train engineering. He admits GM is changing its engine focus but still sees a place for V8s. "Is the V8 still alive? Yeah," Hresko says. "You will see, clearly, a lot less V8s. You will still have performance vehicles and these kinds of things, so I don't think V8s are going to totally dry up. (But) the volumes will continue to shift to four cylinders, the smartest place for engines, and technology." He forecasts a technology boost in V8s, without going into specifics. "I think you will see engines getting smaller, even in the eight- cylinder set. I think what you will see ... is continued mapping towards smaller engines in general. You have downsizing with boost, you have turbocharging." Development of the small block is likely to go in different directions to improve fuel economy and emissions. "We have, in each new architecture and engine family we come up with we'll have different displacements. So we'll move away. You'll see different displacement engines. "(But) we haven't announced the displacement of the next generation. Hresko says GM is flat-out on new technologies in both engines and transmissions, spending money as the company emerges from bankruptcy in the USA. "We have a lot of work to do. We are investing on the people side," he says. "We plan on winning. We realise the shortcomings today and we're pushing to address those issues." In Australia, he sees a continued place for the V8 but also talks up the four-cylinder work on other cars. "In your market for example . . . you will get a 1.4-litre turbo on your Cruze and it will perform much better than the 1.8-litre vehicle you see today. The 1.4 turbo at a very low cost will give you more performance than the 1.8. In the US it's going over very well."

CRAIG Lowndes started the 2011 V8 Supercar season with an emphatic lap record at the Eastern Creek test day at the weekend. The five-time Bathurst winner and three-time series champion set a lap of 1m30.1877s on fresh, soft tyres, beating Mark Skaife's 1999 pole position lap by half a second. Commodores took the top seven positions, while current champion James Courtney was 16th in his HRT Holden. The series begins next weekend in Abu Dhabi.THE Daytona 24-Hour came down to a one-lap sprint to the flag after a late restart at the weekend. Defending Grand-Am Series champion Scott Pruett held off his teammate, Kiwi Scott Dixon, by 2.42 seconds in the one-lap dash to take out the title at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. It was team owner Chip Ganassi's fourth win.GT vehicles will join with production cars for the first time in the Bathurst 12-Hour this weekend. There are entries from Audi, BMW, Corvette, Ferrari, Ford, Holden, Lotus, Mitsubishi, Mosler, Nissan, Porsche and Subaru. However, outright honours are expected to be fought out between Porsche teams and the 11-time Le Mans winners, Audi Sport Team Joest, with Craig Lowndes as the lead driver in an R8.FORMER F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen and World Rally Champion Petter Solberg have been confirmed to contest Rally Australia at Coffs Coast, New South Wales, in September. They will drive works-built Citroen DS3 WRC rally cars. Raikkonen's ICE1 Racing team will contest 10 of the 13 WRC rounds this year, while Solberg finished third last year and will compete in the full season.TASMANIAN Jason White has moved to the top of the Australian Targa Championship points table with a dominant performance at the second round of the series, Targa Wrest Point, out of Hobart. The reigning Wrest Point champion drove his Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera to a 29-second lead from South Australian Steve Glenney in a Mazda RX8 SP and Queenslander Tony Quinn third in his Nissan GT-R. The final round is the Targa Tasmania from April 5 to 10.EASTERN Creek International Raceway in Sydney will get a $9 million circuit upgrade. Work will include increasing the circuit's capacity and track configurations to four layouts with two circuits able to operate independently. The upgrade follows the recent closure of Oran Park.CHAD Reed has claimed his first podium with his own team, TwoTwo Motorsports, at in the fourth round of the AMA Supercross, an FIM World Championship, at the weekend in Oakland, California. The Australian finished second n the slick surface behind James Stewart and remains in fifth position in the titles while Stewart moves to the top. The next event is in LA this weekend.FLOOD damage has forced the third and fourth rounds of the Australian Off Road Championship to be moved from Queensland to Victoria. The March round at Goomburra will now be held on May 28-29 at Hedley in Victoria. Motorcycling Queensland has cancelled the Queensland 2 Day Enduro to the floods, but the national CIK Stars of Karting Series will go ahead as scheduled on February 26/27 in Ipswich. The International Karting Committee decision has come after consultation with the local council. The five-round series is conducted in four states up to September.TWO-time World Superbike champion Troy Corser has admitted he doesn't have many years left at the top level. The 39-year-old BMW rider from Wollongong missed the first test day in Portugal to test on his own at Eastern Creek and start his physical training earlier than usual. "I know I haven't got too many seasons left at the highest level, so I am really motivated to make the most of the next few years," he said. The season starts at Philip island on February 27.

"I'm just taking the old Henry down the servo to get some juice before I go bush bashing."  It wouldn't mean much to foreigners, but this motoring slang is as Australian as Holden cars. Motoring slang is an endearing, sometimes derogatory, always colourful way of referring to man and machinery.  Most of the slang we

All the signs are positive after a strong run through 2010 on everything from new models and new technology to the price of cars and petrol and even motorsport.Last year produced a million-plus result in showrooms, only the third on record and a huge turnover in a country with a population of just over 22 million people. And the sales total for 2011 is likely to be even bigger.The fuel for the sales growth will come, as usual, from the importance of cars in Australia and the incredible number of new models that his showrooms each year. No-one can underestimate the sense of freedom that Australians tap with their cars, or the genuine needs of people who rely on cars for everything from day-to-day commuting to long-distance nomadic work.Car companies are currently doing all they can to clear their backlog of 2010 stock in readiness for the first arrivals of 2011, which means great buying for at least another month. Cars are like horses, because they all get a year older on the same day, and anything in a showroom now with a 2010 build date is out-of-date.But there is nothing out-of-date about the lineup for the first major motoring event of the year, the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It opens next week with the unveiling of everything from a Hyundai Veloster and the next Honda Civic to a new Porsche supercar.There will be lots of news from Detroit, perhaps including Holden's plans to revive Commodore exports to the USA and the potential future of the Ford Falcon. Chrysler will show its new 300C, which will take more than a year to reach Australia, and Chinese brands are promising another new wave of technology and small cars.Chinese cars will be one of the big stories in Australia in 2011, with Chery, Geely and Great Wall all planning to start passenger car sales down under. Great Wall is already doing well with its value-priced utes and SUVs but it's Chery that is looking for the big breakthrough with baby cars that undercut the Korean price leaders.On the motorsport front, the Dakar Rally is already blazing through South America - with Bruce Garland doing his best for Australia in an Isuzu D-Max - the V8 Supercar championship will be another boomer, and Mark Webber will be looking to improve on his 2011 season in another year with Red Bull Racing.Melbourne will be motoring central again this year, not just because it is home to the three local carmakers - Holden, which has the local Cruze this year; Ford, which is about to go with the updated Territory; and Toyota, which has an all-new Camry for 2011 - but also thanks to everything from the Australian Grand Prix to the latest running of the Australian International Motor Show.The organisers of the show have confirmed this year's dates as July 1-10, with the promise of a truly world-class event. Moving the date is planning to bring more people indoors to look at the shiny new metal and, more importantly, open up a new position on the global motoring calendar to allow the Australian show to become a major Asian motoring event each year.

It marks a return to the main game for Owen, second at Bathurst this year with Jamie Whincup and already a two-time Fujitsu champ.  "It's a great Christmas present - a great sponsor, great team and a great car," said Owen, himself the owner of a blue heeler."I've proved (this season) that with a good car I can drive straight to the front. All the ingredients are here and I don't think we'll be far behind those Vodafone cars at all."The new, all-Queensland venture, sees VIP Petfoods return to V8 Supercars and Paul Morris Motorsport continue their technical alliance with Brisbane's Triple Eight Race Engineering. Morris will run two cars in 2011 with Russell Ingall in the Supercheap Commodore and now the 36-year old Owen replacing Kiwi Greg Murphy.Along with undoubted speed Owen, who ran endurance races this season with the Vodafone-backed Triple Eight, will bring initiatives and ideas learnt from that outfit.  A confident team owner Morris reckons Owen will be fighting it out for podiums, warning some of the series 'seat warmers' better move over: "This thing (Commodore) will be up the front."As for VIP Petfoods owner Tony Quinn, a part-time racer, motors racing is about promoting his business.  "I'm a pet food maker that's found motorsport does wonder for the brand," said Quinn. "It's up to Steve now."