It's pre-dawn at Mount Panorama. Under the glow of pitlane fluros, Holden’s newest racer looks more like a booze company promo car than a track star. All that’s missing are lycra lovelies handing out samples and pouting for photos. With less than an hour to go until the 6:30am start of the Bathurst 12-Hour for production cars, the Holden Motorsport crew goes through a last-minute check list while the car’s three V8 Supercar drivers stand around, in incongruously oversized racesuits, awaiting the call to action. Given the venue, this would be a largely unexceptional sight, were it not for the race car itself. It’s a bloody station wagon!
Not yet available from dealers, Holden pulled off a political coup in being granted dispensation to race the new Sportwagon in Class D, for Production Vehicles under $50,000 (think XR8, XR6 Turbo, SS Commodore). It’s a feat that has caused more than a ripple of angst among the notoriously touchy production-car ranks, among whom any perception of unfair advantage quickly escalates into an international incident. Some tried to have the Commodore banned before it even got to Bathurst, so there is plenty of intrigue surrounding the black whiskey wagon.
Holden motorsport manager Simon McNamara appears unfazed. “The car’s been shown at the Sydney Motor Show, so it’s not like it’s a massive secret. We’re going to build them, so it’s a good opportunity to run a different car.”
Holden’s entry is basically a blatant publicity stunt – to show the sporting (rather than the picnicking) bona fides of the new VE wagon – and while the team knows the car can’t win outright on speed alone, it does have the potential for a class win and a top 10 finish.
Tellingly, the Sportwagon is the only major factory entry in the race, which has failed to attract official interest from the remaining Big Three manufacturers – notably traditional rival, Ford. Toyota was to enter its new supercharged TRD Aurion, but pulled out after an engine imploded in one of its road cars. The race has also failed to attract spectators en masse. Put bluntly, the 12-Hour is a pro-am race that will be witnessed by a disappointingly small enthusiast crowd.
Nonetheless, Holden hasn’t left anything to chance in the steering department. Its driving line-up looks the most professional and balanced courtesy of the fast and experienced Cameron McConville, enduro regular Nathan Pretty, and quick new kid Shane Price. There are other V8 Supercar drivers on the grid as well, including Paul Morris, Craig Baird and Steve Owen in a rapid BMW 335i, and the indefatigable John Bowe in a Falcon XR8.
As it turns out, Holden had to scramble to even make the start, with the car finished only a week before the race, leading to an all-too-brief shakedown. The tests turn up a variety of niggles, like a notchy gear shift and some electrical gremlins, but the drivers profess pleasant surprise at the handling, and the amount of rear grip.
A lot of attention is paid to the brakes. The Sportwagon must weigh in at its street heft of 1790kg and with only standard diameter brake rotors allowed, stopping it for 12 hours will be a major ask. To allay those worries, Holden cheekily buys up all the local stock of crack Project Mu race pads, much to the chagrin of Bowe and others. But while the drivers pronounce they are happy with the pads in testing, there is unspoken concern about the undersized brakes’ ability to cope with hundreds of heavyweight stops from 250km/h.
After the first practice session on the Friday, the Sportwagon is class leader and ninth quickest overall with a lap of 2:38.67sec, five seconds off the leader’s pace. It’s headed by a fleet of Mitsubishi Evos, two BMW 335is, a BMW 130i, and a WRX STi. The novelty wagon is going like a train.
That afternoon the car goes only a few tenths quicker and slips to 11th quickest, usurped by another Evo and an HSV GTS, but no-one is panicking; there’s plenty more to come from the Jack Daniels delivery service.
In the final practice session on Saturday morning, McConville knocks two seconds off Friday’s times (2:36.60sec), but the car remains 11th behind a phalanx of turbo AWDs and the 335is. Again the car hasn’t missed a beat and its fuel consumption is much better than the thirsty turbo cars, which could be decisive over 12 hours.
“It’s like a lazy V8 Supercar to drive,” McConville says. “It’s more comfortable, like a road car, but it has similar handling characteristics; everything just happens a lot slower. It’s quite easy to drive across the top of the mountain; it kinda rolls onto the right rear tyre like a Supercar but then it hooks up quite nicely on exit.
“We’re on the limiter in fifth on Conrod at just over 250km/h, so it’s honkin’ along pretty good, too. It doesn’t feel 30 seconds a lap slower than a Supercar, it’s a lot of fun.”
The plan is for McConville to qualify, Pretty to start and Price to finish, but that goes out the window when it rains. Instead, Pretty is elected to qualify as he’s had the most track time. He doesn’t need to amp himself up for the one-lap screamer, as he’s already had a pulse-quickening moment in his V8 Supercar look-a-like ride car. Caught out on slicks in the rain, Pretty lost the car dawdling onto Conrod Straight and clobbered the concrete on both sides of the track. It’s a moment his three uninjured but wild-eyed passengers are unlikely to ever forget.
Unruffled and back in the Sportwagon, Pretty posts a 2:35.43sec qualifier to lead the class by 2.5 seconds, and cement 12th on the grid. David Wall puts an Evo IX GSR on pole, some five seconds quicker. “It could have been a 2:34, but there was a lot of traffic,” Pretty offers.
RACE DAY
The crew arrives at the track at the ridiculous hour of 4:30am; the drivers lob soon after. Your correspondent rolls in at slightly more sensible 5:45. There are no traffic jams a la the Great Race, but there’s also an eerie lack of atmosphere, due to the almost non-existant crowd. But, hey, it’s Bathurst, and we’re back where our story started, in the cool half-light of Mt Panorama.
McConville, a coffee lover, has found a passable Java to fire up his brain cells. The super-fit 73kg ace wanders around tugging at the extra folds of his ill-fitting racesuit; an outfit would just about fit your XXL correspondent. The car looks great and sounds better when he idles out of the pits to grid up with 33 others.
And then the race is underway, just like that. No hoopla, no Jimmy Barnes screaming the national anthem, no jets whooshing overhead, not even any shivering, grid girls. It’s a terrible anti-climax and you can almost hear a collective yawn from the hundred or so diehard fans spread out along the pit straight.
There’s no time for boredom inside the Sportwagon, however, as McConville makes a perfect start, passing one car off the line. He later confides that he might have demoted more but “they were fighting for sheep stations” even before the first corner. Wisely, he brakes early and settles in for a 30-plus-lap stint.
The 270kW Sportwagon carries 100 litres of fuel (with around 10 litres of that in the reserve tank) and the team has calculated it will burn about 2.5 litres per lap. It should do the 12 hours with just eight fuel stops. The team knows the Sportwagon’s range should be a decisive advantage, and there are knowing smiles when the first Evo pits for fuel after only 20-odd laps.
Everything is going well, although on lap 23 McConville radios that he has a “long” brake pedal. Nevertheless, the car is still retarding okay. Then, on lap 25, just before the fearsome McPhillamy Park sweeper, he feels the right front tyre go soft. A moment later the tyre deflates and, as McConville limps to the pits, there’s conjecture about whether debris or too much negative camber caused the blowout.
“Down the dip into Reid Park it felt like it had a flat spot. I thought ‘That’s weird’ so I backed off,” McConville tells the team. “When I went into McPhillamy it went down and the pedal went to the floor; there was no warning. I’m hoping it’s just a puncture.”
Mechanics check for damage in the wheelarch, but find none. The car is refuelled, Pretty straps in for his first stint, then roars into combat in 17th position. He’s not there long.
On lap 32, on his second flyer, the brake pedal goes to the floor approaching turn two at 204km/h. The Sportwagon clouts a Lotus Exige that is trying to stay out of the way, then barrels head-on into the tyre wall. The heaviest car has hit the lightest, and it’s not pretty. Ironically, the Lotus is soon back in the race after minor repairs.
Telemetry later shows that in the five seconds between the point of brake faliure and hitting the wall, Pretty managed to wipe off 100km/h – but he still stops dead with a force of negative 4.3G. The car is out. Back in the pits, he debriefs the team. “It was like there was a fluid leak, there was [pedal] feel but there was no [braking] force, no retardation. It was a big hit,” he shrugs.
The post-mortem reveals that extreme heat build-up has caused the connector pipe on the right-front caliper to fail. The team is livid. Holden had applied to race umpire CAMS to run bigger HSV stoppers due to the car’s weight, but were knocked back. Cooling ducts would have helped, but they’re also verbotten.
So it was the Bathurst 1.5-Hour instead of the Bathurst 12-Hour for the Sportwagon, but in that 90 minutes Holden still made its point: the new Sportwagon can haul more than the family to the park. It can also haul arse.