Pats Prattle

 

By Site Owner

Racefan Pat

Febuary 2003 i WOULD LOVE TO BE HERE TALKING ABOUT THE CLOSE RACING WE SAW LAST WEEKEND! bUT ALLAS, tWO AND A BIT WEEKS TO GO!! However Things are certainly moving along with the chopping and changing of the silliest V8 Supercar off-Season EVER. With a new Ford superteam, two new models and another attempt at parity, not to mention the mix and match of driver swapping. This year, with its mix of more endurance and long-distance races, as well as the uncertainty of new models and new young drivers is set to be a real nail biter. Throw in the new streamlined scoring system where no one round is worth more than another, and dropping your worst result, and WOW! AS FOR THE NEW F1 Season, as I have covered in the F1 Pages, there are wholesale rule changes and new regulations to enhance the racing as well. The latest, where the cars now cannot re-fuel after qualifying will make for some tactical nightmares and make things very interesting! Do you qualify with empty tanks and get good grid position to avoid any start line incidents, then pit early, or qualify with fuller tanks, lose start-line position and run a lower pit-stop strategy.... Food for lots of thought! The WRC has started, and I will have a page up with results in the next week, sorry for the delay, but it was a disaster the last time I tryed, with a major system crash, and since then I forgot, sorry. The IRL IndyCars have attracted a really high quality field this year, with a number of CART defectors, including wholsale team and engine manufcturers. With the unbelievably close finishes all last season, those of you lucky enough to see thier races should be in for an amazig spectacle this year. And Poor old CART ChampCar racing. I am very saddened to see the rapid decline in this series, as I have been to see them on the Gold Coast a couple of times, and it is a terrific show. (Lucckily I didn't spend money on last years Farce!) I am really hopefull they can salvage the seires, as they are now truly global with races in Britain, Germany, Australia, Mexico, Canada and the USA. They have the widest range of tracks with Short and long, Banked and Flat Speedways, Road courses, street tracks, and they come to Ausrtalia! However with only one Engine and essentialy only one competitive chassis, they are going to struggle. I hope they get some terriffic racing to attract back the sponsors and manufacturers! It promices to be a HUGE Year, and I am Soo exited. I will try to find some more helpers so we can keep everything current.

 

Posted Jan 03

Well things are really Hotting up as 2003 season Racing gets closer! I have jotted down a few of the things I have seen in the past few weeks.

1. New Team
Birrana racing. Adelaide based team

2. Team Brock to join the TWR Empire!
Rumor has them taking over two level two franchises, with Paul Weel changing from Ford, and possibly Todd Kelly! ( This will open the way for his little brother Rick to get a full time drive beside the Murph at K-Mart.

3. Returning to Qld Raceway!!
Tony Cochrane has given the Management one more year to Shape up!

4. Sandown 500 back as the Betta Electrical 500 as the lead up to the Bathurst 1000.

5. A Mammoth 400km, one driver enduro for the season closer

6. New Points system with all rounds worth 192 points, and closer gaps between first and second, as well as points being distributed all the way back to last position.

... A couple of examples.

QLD Raceway, 1*300 km race, 1 Driver. 1st -192 points, 2nd -186 points, 3rd -180 points, 4th -174 points, down to 32nd - 6 points!

Sandown 1*500km Enduro with 2 drivers and Bathurst 1*1000 km enduro with 2 drivers, exactly the same!
So are Phillip Island (1*300km), Eastern Creek (1*300km), Winton (1*300km), Oran Park (1*300km), And the Final Showdown, a 400 km Enduro at Eastern Creek for 1 driver!!

All rounds with two races are 96 for 1st, 93,90,87....down to 3 points for 32nd per race.

All rounds with Three races are 64,62,60,58....all the way to 2 points for 32nd per race

Hmmm....It will give the smaller and mid-field teams a real pointscore to show some progress, and prevent one driver from running away with a massive lead at the start of the season

And, I nearly forgot, You get to drop your worst round. I LIKE IT.

Lastly I would like to comment on the 400 km race for one driver. I know, and am proud of the fact that the modern V8 Driver is and athlete, but lengths is to long. I believe it is positively unsafe. Having said that I take my hat off to AVESCO in introducing more range of race lengths, pit stop mixes and on the new points, which will prevent one driver pulling so far ahead early in the championship.

Happy Racin!

 

 

Posted 1December 2002

Well F1 is finished for the year, so that gives me a bit of breathing space!! I am also close to installing the USA Pits, and looking forward to it. With the silly season about to hit I will be working on getting the forums running again, as the press releases and tall stories start again!!

Here in Australia, the V8 Supercar final at sandown is on this weekend, and boy I can't wait. I hope Murph can do it again, and slow the HRT steamroller. It will be extremeley hard to wait for next years racing, with the introduction of Project Bluprint and new cars from both Manurfacturers. For My money it will close up the field a lot, and give K-Mart and OzEmail/ Pirtek camps a real chance of taking up the fight.

Finally, my tips for the weekend are:

I Hope ,.....

K-Mart, Go murph and keep the aggression in check

Ambrose, It would be Sort of good to give Ford a go.

I hope for thier sakes DJR Racing can finish, as well as poor old Ozemail!!!

 

Posted November 2002 

Well it has been an interesting few days with the computer and the site crashing!! I Apologize to everyone, and promise to do better in future. This week I will be starting to update more pages as I get a chance

   Firstly there are new articles from the Guru, and Lee. I will also be putting a couple of interesting articles on some of the rules and drivers in the V8 Supercar Section.

   There will also be some new polls, and I hope to get the Members area running properly! It is all on the old computer, but no luck uploading. I am having a protocol nightmare this week! Seems only half of my FrontPage extensions want to co-operate. As I type this I am changing to a newer program, and so far so good!  

I also want to apologize again for the slowness of the updates, but with such a slow connection it is very difficult to get anything up. I am working on a fix, still..

There is now a sitemap posted!!! Only problem is the site is not that shape yet. In the next few days the missing pages will be uploaded and missing links installed!! I know I keep changing things around, but until now have not been able to settle on an overall 'shape' for the site.

    Another new addition is the site search. It is working, but most pages don't yet have meta tags, so is very badly trained and probably not worth using, sorry!

 

 

 

10 October 2002

 

Well here we are with the big one!!

1st week on-line!

Welcome to my Web Presence. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you let us know what you think!

First of all a little about me. I am a thirty sumthing Aussie, from Western Queensland, and have been playing with web pages for a while. I am mad about most motorsport, except bikes! (There is an opening for a contributer!!) I am a long way from any good quality racing, and usually only get to one race a year. This year it was the QLD 500, which has now been consighned to the history books, (more about that coming I assure you). I use the web to get my news, but most sites are sooooo specialized! The main Idea with this site is to have a forum where YOU can have your say about YOUR favorite motorsport. I want to have the major headlines from all the big ones, from F1 and IRL/CART, Nascars, Supercars, DTM, BTCC, and rallying, but not too much of anything. I am doing most of the work myself to start, But I want contributers from all corners of the globe.

 

We will have problems with copyright etc. if you are plagerizing others work, SO PLEASE DON"T. I don't want this site pulled becuse someone was to lazy to write thier own stuff, OK!

 

I intend to get as many and varied commentaries going as soon as possible, and these will be available throughout the site, and will be distributed in the newsletter, which is yet to be finished off.

 

There are a lot of holes 4 now, but be patient, and you will see big changes over next few weeks!! Please let me know your thoughts, wherever u are, and whoever you are.

 

As for this weekend.. I will be glued to the coverage of the Bathurst, Bob-Jane T Marts 1000. Another 161 laps up the mountain. For those who dont know, it IS a MOUNTAIN, very steep, no runoff, and huge blast down the hill again where the cars reach 300+km/hr before slamming on the picks in a sweeper!!

 

Damn, I cant wait, and my best friend is there!!

 

Peter Brock, legend, will be back, trying to win for the 10^th time, on the 40^th anniversary of the race. Ford are also trying to win on the 25th aniversary of  there famous formation finish, and they will be 'Unvieling' the new BA Supercar, with Legend Dick Johnson doing some hot laps before the race! However a good half of the 40+ cars starting have a chance at a top ten result If their cars can last for 5 to 6 hrs at 11 tenths. No mean feat!!

 

BRING IT ON!!!!