MOTORSPORT: V8 Supercar ‘Whole Story’ that’s not

Even with almost 350 pages, a beautifully presented new history of Australia’s major motor racing series is selective about what’s told and what’s left unsaid, but one omission is glaring

There’s more than rose-colored glasses see
A new book that is a history of the 14 or 15 years of the V8 Supercar era is in Australian bookshops now.

The book had a long gestation but is a timely arrival in the mid-season break from racing and with Father’s Day approaching. It’s beautifully presented, with hundreds of excellent pictures by specialist V8 Supercar photographer Dirk Klynsmith and thousands of words by journalist Gordon Lomas, who has lived and worked through the V8 Supercar years. Stephen Sargeant, who previously worked on Peter Brock: How Good Is This!, co-ordinated it.

Particularly interesting are sections on the failed challenge several years ago by former Liberal politician John Hewson and administrator Kelvin O’Reilly to oust executive chairman Tony Cochrane, the dealings that created the Sydney 500 street race at the Homebush Olympic site, and speculation that the unity on the Car of the Future is not all as officially portrayed.

There’s plenty on the glory days of Mark Skaife, Craig Lowndes, Marcos Ambrose and Jamie Whincup.

V8 Supercars – The Whole Story is 341 pages and must have been a massive project. It is not an official publication of V8 Supercars Australia, rather Penguin Books, but not surprisingly it paints a positive, indeed glowing, picture of Australia’s major motor racing category. The tone is set from Chapter 1, titled And God Created V8 Supercars opposite a full-page photo of Cochrane.

The recommended retail price is $49.95, but in Big W stores it is only $29.93. At either price it is worth having, reading and putting on your bookshelf.

But to have sub-titled it “The Whole Story” is, in the kindest light, cheeky, and in reality a gross exaggeration. The sale of 60 per cent of V8 Supercars Australia in May this year, in a deal that valued the company at about $300 million, was proof that it has been a very successful business for those in it – the teams and Cochrane and some cohorts.

But has it, V8SA, been good for the sport – Australian touring car racing? There have been plusses, undoubtedly. More races around the country – and overseas, although that has not been to everyone’s liking. V8SA has been incredibly adept at extracting money from state governments towards staging its races.

But, as this author has often mentioned here, surely the measure of a sport’s health and success is the size of its TV audience – and trends in its audience. It is television that gives most people the chance to view sport rather than attend events or games.

This history of V8 Supercars makes no mention of what’s happened in terms of the Australian TV audience in the past 14 or 15 years. There is mention of V8 Supercars working, through IMG Media, based in London, to increase its international audience, with the admission that “the potential audience reach is huge, but the actual number of people overseas making an effort to tune into a V8 telecast has not been disclosed”.

Legendary Formula One commentator Murray Walker, a regular at Adelaide’s Clipsal 500, is quoted saying that “on the other side of the world, in Europe in general and in Great Britain, there is a very large and enthusiastic audience for V8 Supercars”.

And V8SA chief executive Martin Whitaker says: “I know there is a huge [international] following for the series, particularly in terms of the TV audience.”

Well there is no evidence to substantiate what Englishmen Walker and Whitaker say. Certainly not in the figures for MotorsTV, the telecaster of V8 Supercar racing in their homeland.

But, despite the increasing expansion of the V8 Supercar Championship, it is Australia that remains the sport’s heartland, and it is here that the TV picture has not been pretty for some years, although there have been some slightly encouraging signs at times this season.

In V8SA’s announcement in May of the 60 per cent sale to Archer Capital it stated that “the most-watched race, the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000, attracted an average audience of 1.05 million metro viewers” – that is for last year’s Great Race in the five major capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth).

Yet in 2002 the average audience for Bathurst in those same cities was 1.49 million people, according to The Australian newspaper (media section, Thursday, October 12, 2006).

So in eight years the audience for Australia’s major domestic motor race has shrunk almost one third – from almost 1.5 million to a bit over 1 million. Indeed, the decline has been starker. The same item in The Australian reported that the audience was 1.4 million in 2006, which was an exceptional year with the race just weeks after the death of Peter Brock and the emotional victory by his protégé Lowndes.

Based on last year’s Bathurst TV number – which elsewhere was listed at a tad under 1.04 million rather than V8SA’s 1.05 million – the Great Race is now half of the National Rugby League grand final, barely 40 per cent of this year’s State of Origin decider, and pales even further in comparison with the Australian Football League grand final. The TV trend is quite contrary to what we have so often heard Cochrane say during telecasts, that V8 Supercars is “all growth, growth, growth”.

In the wake of the Archer Capital deal Cochrane was lauded for what he had done in his lead role in V8 Supercars. We can deduce that he has done quite nicely financially from it all, as have the team owners – and certainly they have all worked their butts off for years.

Yet we now wonder whether Cochrane has reaped more from V8 Supercars than either Andrew Demetriou has from the AFL and David Gallop from the NRL while the TV numbers for V8 Supercar racing’s hallmark event have declined so markedly, in contrast to the success of those two football codes on television.

It is not surprising that a book that was always going to be an overwhelmingly favorable account of the V8 Supercar era does not include all the harsh realities of the sport’s audience drop, but surely it cannot rightly claim to be “The Whole Story” without at least some mention of the predicament.

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