After a hearty, umm, breakfast, we made our way to the track to see our first V8 Supercars races!
By this point we’ve established seating in the rental mobile: Trent at the helm, Cherp in the navigator position…
…with Jamie and myself in the rear.
Today we all went our separate ways when we got to shooting. I elected to go to the bottom of the hill where turn two is and the outside of turn one at the top of the hill.
Then I made my way to the turn three, four, five complex where the drivers were hitting the curbing hard. They were putting a lot of air under the tires.
Then I made my way across the bridges to meet up with the guys after the race. Jamie Whincup took the win, with Red Bull Racing teammate Craig Lowndes taking second and Fabian Coulthard rounding out the podium. We then walked back across the bridges, watched Jamie eat a kolach, then settled in on the hill above turn eighteen for race two.
There was a lot of action in race two, unfortunately not a lot where we were… But we did get to see some passing!
And even some three wide action that didn’t work out in turn nineteen.
It was mostly orderly and clean, which is good because having the safety car out every three laps would turn the twenty-seven lap sprints into monstrous endurance races.
The checkered flew, Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes took positions one and two with Fabian Coulthard taking third. Holden shut out the podium yet again, and also took positions four and five with Mark Winterbottom putting his Ford Performance Racing/Pepsi Max Falcon in sixth. Rick Kelly put his Jack Daniels Nissan Altima in eighth. The Mercedes E-Classes didn’t fare that well, with one not finishing while the other two took positions twenty and twenty-six.
With the racing done, Trent posed for a delightfully touristy photo and we left.
But not before we spotted a McLaren MP4-12C leaving one of the dirt lots!
Two more races tomorrow. Will Red Bull Racing continue their dominance? Can Ford crack the podium? Will a Mercedes finish higher than twentieth? Find out tomorrow!
Words and photos by Michael Chandler
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