Sydney’s Thrills & Spills
The Sydney Telstra 500 provided a thrilling finish to the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship with James Courtney emerging as victor. Sydney Olympic Park served as a stunning backdrop to the event where there were crashes, tears of joy and plenty of smiling faces.
Jamie Whincup was not one of those, who finished runner-up to Courtney, and neither were those who copped a whiff of the Eau de Engine perfume his TeamVodafone gave away at the event. This stuff was even the same colour as engine oil and smelt like it too but the tongue-in-cheek ad campaign was hilarious. It was all, of course, created as ambush marketing because rival telco Teltra was the naming-rights sponsor of the event and so long as you weren’t within smelling distance of anyone wearing it, it was funny.
The situation which saw the Mother backed driver Jonathon Webb clinch his first V8 Supercar race win on Saturday was also a bit of a joke when all of the Championship contenders failed to put wet tyres on to their cars. They all ended up in a fair bit of smashy-smash at the front of the field when the rain poured down on the street circuit while Webb got through on wet tyres, kept Jason Bright at bay and took the win. Even the hardened journalists in the media centre burst into applause when the young Webb flew past the chequered flag.
Pic: The heavens opened up and Webb sealed his first victory
Credit: Justin Deeley
We almost saw another new race winner on Sunday in Shane van Gisbergen but his car ran out of fuel on the last lap and he was forced to cruise home with Lee Holdsworth winning the 250-kay race, his first since 2007. There was plenty going on off track and a hefty crowd turned out to enjoy it all despite the wet weather. Unlike their Townsville gig when they rocked up two hours late, Guns N Roses were on time and played to thousands of punters who stuck around at ANZ Stadium on Saturday evening. And a move by V8 Supercars to get pro skateboarder Tony Hawke out to the event was a stroke of genius, with plenty of young ‘uns buying tickets to the event just to watch the master in action. As heard from one enthusiastic skateboarder during a train ride to the Sydney Olympic Park precinct: “It’s not every f**king day you get to meet Tony Hawke”. We think that sums it up nicely.
With Courtney taking out the championship honours in the final race of the year and all the crash and bash, you would be hard pressed to find a more interesting end to a season.
