V8 Supercars Australia - the road ahead

[Zeakiwi]

V8 Supercars Australia released an outline for the planning of their future today.

http://www.v8supercars.com.au/content/hero_news/june_2009/the_future_of_v8_supercars/

[wedge]

Homogolated suspension/assembly sounds better than spec assembly proposed by BTCC to cut costs.

[Rollo]

How odd... a question I posed some four months ago gets answered:

What is the future of Touring Cars in Australia from 2012?
Since the carmakers basically dictate the class of racing that goes on, are they likely to adopt WTCC regs or something similar in principle to the CoT from NASCAR? Cause there certainly won't be any big sedans to build cars from.

http://www.v8supercars.com.au/content/hero_news/june_2009/the_future_of_v8_supercars/
This committee has as wide a brief as possible and will talk to as many manufacturers as possible. Our only stipulations going forward is that it has some type of V8 engine as a power plant and that the new COF has a top end price of $250,000 cost to our teams.
It is envisaged that the first year of racing with the COF will be season 2012; however an introduction perhaps by some way of phasing it in, could be in place by 2011. The final decision on timing will come in the first quarter of next year.

"If you dumb the whole thing down too far, then you take away a big part of the DNA."
- Roland Dane (888 Team Principal), Auto Action June 24, 2009

"You would pick one of the two engines, de-brand it and head from there"
- Ludo Lacroix (888 Technical Director), MN, May 2009

"We already have a fabricated floor, the only real differences are the firewalls, and the cut down shells. The average punter wouldn't miss out on much if the two brands ran identical skins and shells"
- Simon McNamara (Head of Holden's Motorsport Division), Auto Action Sep 10, 2008

I think what's likely at this point is that the COF will probably end up something akin to the cars in the DTM. A tubular spaceframe ala NASCAR, just seems to chunky, so the alternative is to build a common floortray and run the shells over that. Perhaps built in fibreglass perhaps not, I don't think that it would matter much.

[Rollo]

The next generation of V8 Supercars could end up being Cruze and Focus models rather than Commodores and Falcons.

When BigPond Sport put forward the idea of V8 Supercars becoming smaller, Holden Motorsport Manager Simon McNamara did not totally oppose it.
“With the market as it currently is, the Commodore is the number one-selling car in Australia,” he said.
“We’d be keen on using our flagship bread and butter vehicle (for racing), but if in three or four years time the market starts going that way and Cruze or whatever it is at the time turns out to be the high volume product then yeah, that makes sense.”

Consider this:

What I'm wondering is that because Holden has had $149 thrown at it by the Australian Government to build a "four cylinder car" and Ford already announcing that they'll be building the Focus from 2011...
what is the future of Touring Cars in Australia from 2012?

Whilst I could never foresee GM going completely bonkers, I did know that flagging sales of the Commodore and Falcon would eventually place the V8Supercars in an untenable position.

From this point however, it's pure speculation. We've heard rumblings of either a common car ala NASCARs CoT which is looking unlikely, or something similar to the DTM, or even a derivation on the S2000 regs with a bent-8 jammed in the front.

From this point I can guess nowt else, because I'm sure that the committee still hasn't reported yet. To that end, there probably isn't a design requirement let alone a specification yet, so the trail goes cold for the moment.