Ford news following the AGP
March 25th 2008 00:24
Following Holden’s success at the Sprint Gas V8 Manufacturers Challenge at the 2008 Australian Grand Prix, and the somewhat dubious decisions made by a number of the Ford drivers which resulted in numerous DNFs throughout the weekend, Ford Racing boss Ray Price has stood by his decision not to assist Falcon drivers with tactics designed to win races, including the non-points round, and ultimately the championship.
Jim Beam Racing’s Will Davison has prompted the comments form the Ford Racing Manager, after stating that the Red v Blue format has “a lot of potential to work as long as we are briefed properly by our manufacturer”. His main complaint being that the team as a whole received no direction from Ford regarding how to best tackle the new race format.
Ray Price disagrees, commenting that it would have been wrong to try to order teams to drive a particular way, just to win the round for Ford.
“Once you start taking some of the control away from the teams it starts to sanitise what is a wonderful and very competitive category,” Price said. “As a Ford representative I want the best for our brand, but also the best for our teams.”
However, Price has confirmed that a few team wrists were smacked following the poor showing at the AGP. “It was more in relation to damage and the way things unfolded at the start of the weekend,” he said.
“We have a very competitive group at the front and at the moment they don't have a lot of competition there so they are racing each other,” he said. “I think you'd have to agree there are not too many Holdens that have been at the front in the last couple of rounds that they have had to contend with, so they are racing each other.
“With the competitive nature of the Championship series, there have been a couple of incidents” … “but we would like the teams to get on better than they are at the moment.”
“My job is to make sure we have appropriate relations with the Ford group and [will] make sure that that is the case.”
And talking of teams “getting on better”, Stone Brothers Racing management has dismissed recent speculation that there are problems with the relationship between the team and star driver James Courtney.
With a new car for James just around the corner, Ross Stone is looking forward to the next few months, anticipating a surge of good results for the ten year old team, confirming that Courtney is an asset to Queensland based SBR.
He's quick, he's easy to work with and he has quite good feel, good feedback with the setup of the car,” said Ross Stone. “I just think we've got a good strong package and we've got to be a little bit patient and [winning will] come to us.”
Courtney’s contract with SBR is due to expire at the conclusion of the 2008 series and his manager, Alan Gow, is keen to confirm the 27 year old’s V8 Supercar future. Ross Stone will not confirm or deny any ongoing relationship between Courtney and the team in 2009, however he’s positive that the foreseeable future looks bright.
“We've got a new car which we'll run at Perth for James,” said Stone. “We've been building it for a while, we started it before Christmas but it turned into a priority after the Clipsal [race two crash]. We should have won the Saturday race at Clipsal, that would have set our season up, but we know we can do it.
“When you've got rules like Project Blueprint, you're not going to build a new car that's going to come out and be half a second quicker than the old one. But you always make them easier to work on, easier to service, easier to change set-ups and you also make the cars nicer.
“I always say if you do this year what you did last year you're going to get left behind so you have to keep reinventing yourself.”
Ross Stone isn’t the only team boss keen on “reinvention”, following a ho-hum start to 2008, Jason Bright, owner of Britek Motorsport is awaiting the arrival of a number of new car components, including new engines for both cars, with a view to improving the team’s lacklustre start to the season.
We're looking forward to that because we've fallen behind a bit,” Bright said. “I know there's some pretty good gains to come (for the team) to get up in the top 10 with the engines we are getting.”
“We spent too much money crashing last year but we're getting it back under control,” Bright continued, “the team went over budget last year so we're recovering from that before we can do too much else.”
The pace of the cars isn’t an issue, especially considering the limited available budget for the Britek team.
“You can't just go knock on the door of sponsors every time you need more money,” he said. “We are looking for more sponsors but we have to get our results up before we can do that.”
Jim Beam Racing’s Will Davison has prompted the comments form the Ford Racing Manager, after stating that the Red v Blue format has “a lot of potential to work as long as we are briefed properly by our manufacturer”. His main complaint being that the team as a whole received no direction from Ford regarding how to best tackle the new race format.
Ray Price disagrees, commenting that it would have been wrong to try to order teams to drive a particular way, just to win the round for Ford.
“Once you start taking some of the control away from the teams it starts to sanitise what is a wonderful and very competitive category,” Price said. “As a Ford representative I want the best for our brand, but also the best for our teams.”
However, Price has confirmed that a few team wrists were smacked following the poor showing at the AGP. “It was more in relation to damage and the way things unfolded at the start of the weekend,” he said.
“We have a very competitive group at the front and at the moment they don't have a lot of competition there so they are racing each other,” he said. “I think you'd have to agree there are not too many Holdens that have been at the front in the last couple of rounds that they have had to contend with, so they are racing each other.
“With the competitive nature of the Championship series, there have been a couple of incidents” … “but we would like the teams to get on better than they are at the moment.”
“My job is to make sure we have appropriate relations with the Ford group and [will] make sure that that is the case.”
And talking of teams “getting on better”, Stone Brothers Racing management has dismissed recent speculation that there are problems with the relationship between the team and star driver James Courtney.
With a new car for James just around the corner, Ross Stone is looking forward to the next few months, anticipating a surge of good results for the ten year old team, confirming that Courtney is an asset to Queensland based SBR.
He's quick, he's easy to work with and he has quite good feel, good feedback with the setup of the car,” said Ross Stone. “I just think we've got a good strong package and we've got to be a little bit patient and [winning will] come to us.”
Courtney’s contract with SBR is due to expire at the conclusion of the 2008 series and his manager, Alan Gow, is keen to confirm the 27 year old’s V8 Supercar future. Ross Stone will not confirm or deny any ongoing relationship between Courtney and the team in 2009, however he’s positive that the foreseeable future looks bright.
“We've got a new car which we'll run at Perth for James,” said Stone. “We've been building it for a while, we started it before Christmas but it turned into a priority after the Clipsal [race two crash]. We should have won the Saturday race at Clipsal, that would have set our season up, but we know we can do it.
“When you've got rules like Project Blueprint, you're not going to build a new car that's going to come out and be half a second quicker than the old one. But you always make them easier to work on, easier to service, easier to change set-ups and you also make the cars nicer.
“I always say if you do this year what you did last year you're going to get left behind so you have to keep reinventing yourself.”
Ross Stone isn’t the only team boss keen on “reinvention”, following a ho-hum start to 2008, Jason Bright, owner of Britek Motorsport is awaiting the arrival of a number of new car components, including new engines for both cars, with a view to improving the team’s lacklustre start to the season.
We're looking forward to that because we've fallen behind a bit,” Bright said. “I know there's some pretty good gains to come (for the team) to get up in the top 10 with the engines we are getting.”
“We spent too much money crashing last year but we're getting it back under control,” Bright continued, “the team went over budget last year so we're recovering from that before we can do too much else.”
The pace of the cars isn’t an issue, especially considering the limited available budget for the Britek team.
“You can't just go knock on the door of sponsors every time you need more money,” he said. “We are looking for more sponsors but we have to get our results up before we can do that.”
| 49 |
| Vote |
Add Comments
Read More
