2005 Australian V8 Supercar Championship News and Preview

It just on two months before the first round of the 2005 Australian V8 Supercar championship. It's likely to be another good year, with plenty of drivers changing teams (discussed in earlier threads) and a round in China.

I've just been having a look at some V8 Supercar news, and noticed three interesting items.

First, the new Autobarn Racing Commodore of Alex Davison has been revealed: [url]http://www.v8supercar.com.au/news/latestnews/newsdisplay.asp?Ind=M&gid=14658[/url]. This car will be run out of Larry Perkin's workshops. Rod Nash is the owner of the licence and the team boss. Must say the livery looks good.

Second, there has been a somewhat surprising decision by K-Mart to withdraw sponsorship from the Kelly Racing Team (formerly K-Mart Racing): [url]http://www.v8central.com/v8supercar/racenews.asp?newsitem=646[/url]. This means that the Kelly Racing Team is looking for a new signing rights sponsor. Garth Tander and Rick Kelly will still drive for the team and as defending Bathurst champions, they shouldn't have too many problems finding a new sponsor.
There have been rumours that K-Mart will follow Greg Murphy to the PWR Racing team. Both Holden Motor Sport and K-Mart deny this at the moment, but it would make sense since K-Mart has based much of its advertising in Australia around Greg Murphy since 2000. An investment they may wish to continue. Rumours suggest that Super Cheap will be the main sponsor of PWR. However, don't be surprised if K-Mart joins PWR as a sponsor - possibly as a secondary sponsor. Its possible also that Super Cheap will instead take naming rights for the Kelly Racing Team and K-Mart at PWR. After all, both teams are Holden Motor Sport teams, so I guess a "swap" of sponsors is possible.

Third, Shell has announced that it will continue to support Dick Johnson Racing for another three year, but NOT as naming rights sponsor: [url]http://www.v8central.com/v8supercar/racenews.asp?newsitem=647[/url].
So DJR is looking for a new sponsor.

There will be plenty of news on the V8 Supercar scene over the next few weeks leading up to the first race. My suggestion is to keep it all on this thread, rather than making separate threads for each announcement that happens.

Should be an interesting year ahead of us. There is still the FIA appeal looming for Team Dynamik that could have them for the first 2 official rounds starting one lap down from pit lane.

There should be some interesting form changes as well. Paul Morris has now teamed up with Team Kiwi on developing their cars so that should provide both cars with some performance gains. Mark Skaife has also for the last couple of rounds of 04 campaigned his 05 spec car in the hope it ill be on pace for the first official round and be a championship challenger. Craig Lowndes has also once again changed teams and is now at 888 Racing, who announced that for this year they will be using the same engines that have brought Stone Brothers Racing back to back championships recently.

Sponsership changing, Moving around sounds like the 3 teams HRT KRT PWR, All seem to have conections like i said back once before, They are all HRT which is Holden motorsport which is HRT:p All them 3 teams are really 1 just with differnt owners and differnt work locations. If they could they would all run under the one banner but the rules are not alowing them to.

Well as far as the teams would be concerned HRT, PWR and KRT are the 3 biggest Holden teams, the ones most drivers aspire to drive for and the ones most capable of winning championships. Of course theres Perkins out there as well who has a strong engineering and development side of the sport, but i guess the former TWR trio simply look like a stronger package

Yeah perkins i would think has maybe the fastest Commodore down the straight, My brother said when he went how they sounded so much differnt from all other holden.
I said he might have the old holden still who knows with him:p

He was one of the ones that got in early with the Aurora from the start of 2003 and paid the price with below average reliability, although this year their cars have been on pace through every round pretty much and theres even rumours that PWR will use their engines next year rather than the Holden Motorsport Aurora engines

Confirmed (thanks to this weeks Auto Action) that PWR has done a deal to use Perkins engines this year. So much for their Holden Motor Sport links....

I suppose if Perkins cant sort out the racing licenses, at least the engineering side of his team will continue on

Could just be a way for holden to gobble up perkins if he has anymore trouble, They will step in and take over:D

Holden doesnt really have any control over whats happening though, its all CAMS, TEGA and AVESCO. Perkins will probably still be on the grid next year, but he's gunna be pretty busy during the next 4 weeks. TEGA still wanna reduce the field so if Team Dynamik lose their FIA appeal, it'll probably be them