Motorsport: V8 fever comes to town

Petrolheads will think they have died and gone to heaven when the V8 Supercars come to Pukekohe next month, reports BOB PEARCE.

New Zealand heroes are hard to find across the Tasman in the wake of the Ansett debacle. Superhorse Sunline and whichever of her equine offsiders wins the Melbourne Cup might have to do.

So it comes as something of a surprise that in that most Ocker of sports, V8 Supercar racing, two of the cult figures are New Zealand born and bred.

Murf (Greg Murphy from Hawkes Bay) and The Rat (Paul Radisich from Auckland and the Waikato) command armies of fans, both for their skill at the wheel and their personalities in an arena that made Peter Brock, Dick Johnson and Larry Perkins Aussie icons.

It helps that Murphy drives a Holden and Radisich a Ford in the 13-round championship, which brings the 30 top contenders to Pukekohe on the weekend of November 11.

Aussie Supercars are about Holden-Ford rivalry. Only those marques compete these days in a fierce competition where fans pass on their loyalties across the generations and the marketeers trumpet the results to boost sales.

As they sign shirts, flags, caps and even bodies for the diehard fans, Murphy and Radisich are symbols of Holden and Ford, with their origins of little concern.

In fact, they have much in common. Both raced successfully in single-seaters in New Zealand, with Radisich winning the NZ Grand Prix in 1988 and Murphy in 1994. Their ambitions were Formula One, but their budgets did not match their talent.

Radisich raced single-seaters successfully in the United States and in British Formula Three alongside future world champion Damon Hill, but he never found an opening in Formula One.

When he switched to touring cars he was a star of the British championship and won the Touring Car World Cup for Ford in 1993 and 1994. He didn't compete fulltime in V8 Supercars until he joined Dick Johnson's team in 1999. "It is the most competitive championship of its kind in the world," he says. "Any of the top dozen cars can win at any time.

"It took me some time to adjust my style to the cars because they're not as nimble as the two-litre British championship cars. But Ford is now very competitive.

"The warm welcome I've received from Australian fans has really come as a surprise to me. I wasn't sure how a Kiwi driver would be received over here, but I've had nothing but support and encouragement from a fan base that seems to be constantly expanding.

"I'm particularly excited about heading for New Zealand for the Pukekohe round, because these days it's not often I get a chance to race in front of my home crowd."

And the Rat? - "I'm a nice guy really ... just ask Patricia," his wife and mother of his young daughter, Amelia.

Murphy at 29 is 10 years younger than Radisich but he has already achieved more in V8s than his compatriot in a career with some incredible highs and devastating lows.

His single-seater days brought him success in New Zealand and Australia but he never had the funds to fulfil his dreams in the US and Europe.

Does he still dream of Champ Cars or Formula One?

"Not really. I made a pact with myself two years ago that if there was no overseas deal done, that would be it."

His achievements in touring cars are impressive. He won the Australian supertourer championship in 1996 and the same year won the classic Bathurst 1000 with Craig Lowndes in a Holden Racing Team V8.

When Lowndes tried his hand overseas, Murphy had the plum championship drive with HRT only to lose it on Lowndes' return. He won Bathurst again in 1999 with another Kiwi, Steven Richards, and came third last year and this year.

But he was devastated in January when he was the last to know about a deal which saw Lowndes defect from Holden to Ford and leave him without a drive for this year. That he sewed up a good Holden deal under Kmart sponsorship says much for his competitiveness both on and off the track.

Radisich is the ultimate PR man, playing the hard-bitten Aussie media with a mixture of charm and devilment. Murphy tends to say what he feels and he earns respect for his plain speaking and dealing.

He is blunt about what happened in January: "We were lied to. I was given assurances which were not true."

There is an element of fantasy in the behaviour of the fans, with their obsessive support of Ford or Holden and the petrolhead heaven at Bathurst, with rival territories marked out on Mt Panorama (with beer), turf wars in the camping ground (with beer), cars demolishing tents (with beer) and fires to keep warm when the beer runs out.

But V8 Supercars are a serious business. The teams spend millions each year and Holden and Ford have poured millions into the sport.

Holden, which is the Australian arm of the American giant General Motors, leads car sales in the country with 21 per cent to Toyota's 18 per cent and Ford's 15 per cent. In V8 sales Holden is even more dominant.

Holden's sales and marketing chief, Ross McKenzie, emphasises the importance of motorsport in his company's success, giving the Commodore a younger, more contemporary image.

"While most of our V8 fans can't afford new cars, they have kept the Holden used market ticking over strongly." And those who develop a fan's loyalty to the brand as youngsters can be customers for life.

Ford in recent years has matched Holden's involvement in the sport as a marketing tool - something that has been matched in New Zealand, too.

The teams themselves are franchise holders in the governing body of the sport, Avesco, which works with promoters such as the International Management Group to stage the championship races. IMG is the promoter of both Bathurst and Pukekohe.

The pair have marketed the series successfully, acquiring television cover from Channel 10, and seeing off the challenge of the Supertourer championship for mainly European marques.

Bathurst, the premier race for the class, has not always been a purely Holden-Ford battleground and its evolution since 1963 mirrors the attitudes of the petrolhead proletariat.

The first four winners on the Mt Panorama circuit over the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney were Ford Cortinas before a Morris Mini Cooper S driven by rally ace Rauno Aaltonen in 1966 took the honours.

For the next 18 years it was all Ford and Holden, Monaros, Falcons and Toranas with such stars as Brock, Allan Moffat, Kiwi Jim Richards and Perkins.

In 1985 Scots motor magnate Tom Walkinshaw brought his Jaguars and Armin Hahne drove one to victory. Two years later the Europeans arrived in force with a flock of Ford Sierras and BMWs, only for Brock to win his ninth Bathurst for Holden after a Sierra was disqualified.

In 1991 and 1992 the Japanese had their turn with Godzilla, the mighty Nissan GT-R, piloted by Jim Richards and Mark Skaife. The 1992 victory was controversial and the miffed Holden and Ford fans booed the winners. Richards memorably described them as "a pack of assholes".

By the late 90s Avesco squeezed out all but V8 Fords and Holdens and in 1997 and 1998 there were two Bathurst races, one for V8s and one for Supertourers. Now the Supertourers, which never quite made it with the grassroots fans, have faded out as the V8s go from strength to strength.

Despite their intense rivalry, the racing Holdens and Fords share many things. The Holden uses the body shell from a VX Commodore sedan; the Ford is based on a Falcon XR8. In the interests of equalisation of performance both cars use a common aerodynamic undertray at the front.

The rules restrict the cars to a production-based 5-litre V8 motor, which cannot be pushed above 7500 revs a minute. Fords are fitted with an American-made Windsor race block while Holdens use a special Chevrolet unit. The individual tweaks on camshafts, pistons and fuel injection produce over 600 horsepower.

The basic six-speed gearbox is common to both marques and the differential ratios are regulated. Suspensions are different but again tightly controlled.

The teams use huge multi-pistoned brake callipers to stop the big beasts, which have a 1350kg weight limit. They run on a controlled Bridgestone tyre, which costs the Johnson team around $200,000 for its two cars each season.

As sporting investments go, this is the big league. The Holden Racing Team, which is the most successful in the sport, is owned by Walkinshaw, who also owns the Arrows Formula One team and is a major stakeholder in English rugby.

The teams travel around Australia in enormous pantechnicons up to 25m long, which transport the cars and gear to such outposts as Darwin and Perth.

Pukekohe is the first overseas venture for the full V8 championship and with Skaife within reach of his second title in a row, the competition will be fierce.

And Murphy, who won three races at the track in a limited V8 venture five years ago, has no doubt about the success of the New Zealand round.

"It will be awesome," he said. "It had to happen because there are a lot of starving fans out there, who have seen us on TV and are ready to embrace V8 Supercars in the flesh."