Ford Vs Holden…The battle begins
Jim Beam Racing’s James Courtney was in a cheeky mood at Event Five of the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship at Queensland Raceway as he joked that his next tactic in his quest to beat the TeamVodafone Commodores was “to run into the side of them”.
Pic: The battle for the 2010 championship is wide open after mixed results at Ipswicj
Credit: Justin Deeley
Mainstream media and many punters were already resigned to the thought that TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup had the Championship already wrapped up, even though there was still 3,000-odd points up for grabs in the title chase. And on paper it was hard to disagree with them when you considered that the reigning Champion had already amassed a massive 204-point lead in the Series.
However, Courtney – seemingly Ford’s best hope – wasn’t having any of it.
Could he somehow close the gap and put himself in the chance of stealing the Championship in Dick Johnson Racing’s 30th anniversary season? If he was to take points off J-Dub he needed to make a move now – at DJR’s home track in Queensland. Racing legend Johnson had also celebrated his 65th birthday in the week before the race, so the question was: could Courtney give him the present that the old man of motorsport desired so much? In practice Courtney was second but the Triple Eight Commodores flanked him. The glimmer of hope was that J-Dub was actually in third and was clearly off the pace of the Jim Beam Falcon.
On Saturday morning that glimmer of light turned into a bright ray of sunshine. Shock! J-Dub missed the Top 10 Shootout for the first time in 2010. Courtney managed to claim the outside of the front row in the Shootout itself, and then went on to dominate the race. J-Dub, meanwhile, was in damage control mode, but managed to salvage fourth. Courtney had closed the gap in the Championship, but not by much. The likeable Gold Coaster had again joked with the media that he hoped J-Dub’s ‘bad’ weekend would come soon. He didn’t have to wait long.
On Sunday morning it looked as though the 2010 season had returned to its normal pattern as J-Dub snatched pole. He also led the first half of the race, but at a restart after a safety car period he put his foot on the loud pedal and his Commodore just fluffed and farted. He soon discovered that even the mighty Triple Eight Commodore doesn’t perform well on seven as he retired to the pits with a broken rocker. This was Courtney’s opening and he grabbed it with both hands.
The final drama was a flapping rear bumper on the #18 Falcon. The question was would the officials bring out the dreaded black flag. Luckily they didn’t, even though Courtney himself said he was oblivious to the drama as Toll Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander had courteously knocked off the Ford’s mirror in an earlier scuffle. Courtney took the maximum points for the weekend and closed the gap in the Championship to a manageable 24 points.
In doing so he marked himself as the Blue Oval’s main man as Mark ‘Frosty’ Winterbottom had another ordinary weekend, which ended when he ate concrete in Sunday’s race.“Now we’ll see how Jamie performs under pressure for the rest of the year,” Courtney declared, as it’s now clearly ‘game on’ for the 2010 Championship.
It’s J-Dub versus Courtney and Holden versus Ford! Bring it on!
