Virgin Australia LASTCAR Championship: February 2016

Tuesday 9 February 2016

A Rant about the 2016 Australian V8 Super car and LASTCAR series

With the 2016 Australian V8 Supercars and 2016 Australian V8 LASTCAR championship less than a month away, I have decided to do a blog post on the rule changes for 2016.

Firstly I would like to take the new rules for 2016, applying to both the V8 Supercars and the V8 LASTCAR series. V8 LASTCAR first.

As you may know, I've decided to change the counter for how many rounds a driver has started to how many races a driver has started, This is two-fold. First, it's much easier to keep track of how many races a driver has started and secondly for race start milestones drivers reach. Next is one I didn't announce in the original article but I will talk about here.

So I have been looking for a way to make the team's and manufacturer's championship more balanced. I have decided that the formula for determinging the Team's championship will go back to the number of last-place finishes a team's drivers have divided by the number of entries the team has. This means that Red Bull Racing Australia, for example, will have the number of combined last place finishes Jamie Whincup, Craig Lowndes and Shane Van Gisbergen get divided by three. With Pepsi Max Crew it will be four, including Super Black Racing. I will do something similar with the manufacturer's championship, with all of the last-place finishes for a Manufacturer collated, then divided by the number of drivers who finished last while driving for that particular manufacturer. For example, if seven Holden drivers finished last 11 times during a season, then the average last-place finishes will be 11/7.

Now onto the rule changes for the 2016 Australian V8 Supercar championship.

The testing rules have been altered,with one testing day being added prior to the Clipsal 500, with, in addition to but with no compulsory two-day season launch this year, teams have one effective extra independent testing day. This is good, although the teams must test with the Dunlop Series counterpart, which I also don't mind. This also means that smaller teams can get a bit better, but it will be interesting to see how the testing days will be used.

Something else I like is the SuperSprint Saturdays, which will revert to just one 120km race, instead of 2 60km races, with one fifteen minute qualifying session instead of two ten minute qualifying sessions like they had last year. This is a great change, as the ten minute sessions were too short for good qualifying sessions, and this should make qualifying more interesting.

However, not everything I agree with. The only races this year that will run pure hard tyre races will be Pukekhoe, Bathurst and Philip Island. One race will be run on Saturday at the Adelaide street circuit on all soft tires. That is stupid, the heat of the track, combined with the fact that the track is quite abrasive, will destroy the soft tires. It will be chaos, mark my words. It gets worse for Adelaide though, as there are big kerbs, and it wasthe kerbing that destroyed the right-rear tire on Lowndes' car at Pukekhoe thatgave him his only last-place finish of 2015, and the fate of the Soft tire could go the way of the Soft tire on Lowndes' car at Pukekhoe.

Next up is the tire allocation, which has been increased for 2016 from 324 tires to 400. This is very good news, as there were a lot of uneventful races due to tire allocation issues during several rounds of the championship. I hope the racing will be better in 2016 than it was in 2015.

Sadly the Australian Formula One Australian Grand Prix support races still don't pay points in 2016. Here I issue an ultimatum to the V8 Supercar elite guys. Make Albert Park a Points-Paying round, or leave. Far too much equipment is being torn up, and at this stage there is no reason to race there. The only way there could be purpose to this round of the championship would be to make the Albert Park round pay points.

So, expect the first articles of 2016 to come up in the first weekend of March.

How Juniorgeneric defines a Last-Place finisher

Australian V8 LASTCAR'S Official Definition of a "Last-Place Finisher" (LPF)

For the purposes of the Australian V8 LASTCAR championship rankings and statistics, a "Last-Place Finisher" (LPF) is a driver(s) who, after qualifying for a V8 Supercars Championship Points-Paying race, the result must be confirmed from official sources, or unofficial sources failing that. Only one driver (or two in a endurance race) can be classified as the LPF for that race.

Meeting those requirements, the LPF can be any driver classified as such for any reason, including, but not limited to.
1) A "did not start" although it should be noted that there is a difference between my definition of "did not start" and Brock Beard's definition of "Did not Start".
For example, in Bathurst 2015 Chazz Mostert and Cameron Waters' #6 Pepsi Max Ford had a huge accident during practice that injured Mostert and all but wrote off the car. Car #6 was withdrawn, and therefore I don't count Mostert and Waters as finishing last. Under Brock Beard's definition, however, Mostert and Waters would have finished last instead of David Wall and Chris Pither.
2) An entrant who encounters an event once the race has started which prevents the driver(s) from finishing ahead of any other qualified entrants, including both DNFs and drivers who finish under power but laps down*

*Only when all the cars in the race are running ahead of the LPF

3) A decision to “start and park” the driver’s entry (Extremely rare in V8 Supercars)
(4) a disqualification handed down by V8 Supercars and/or track officials that subsequently classifies the driver(s) in the final position behind the unofficial LPF.

Australian V8 LASTCAR shall not consider the LPF as anything else, including but not limited too
1) Any DNQ's
2) Any driver's who's car withdrew before the race start.
3)The lowest-ranked driver who finishes the race under power (unless all cars finished under power, actually quite common in V8 Supercars)
4) A driver(s) who finished last initially, however post-race disqualifications usurped the spot.
5) A driver(s) who may be catagorised as finishing last for exhibition events (I may bring these back at some point in the near future, I need more accurate numbers for the events before I start them up again)
6) Anything in non-V8 Supercar Main game (again, insufficent historical data)
7) A driver who was running last when the checkered flag fell, however because they greeted the checkered flag but a drive who was in front of them at the end of the race, however was not running at the end of the race. In that instance the driver who doesn't finish the race will fall behind the driver whom is still running at the end of the race.

In the rare event where official results or a preponderance of unofficial results are later updated with more accurate information about who was the LPF for that event, Australian V8 LASTCAR rankings and statistics shall be updated to reflect that change.