In Race 3 of the Supercars Championship at Symmons Plains, defending series champion Shane van Gisbergen found himself in the court of public opinion after passing Will Davison with a bump pass on lap 10 and then repeated the maneuver on lap 17 with an almost identical pass on Cameron Waters.
At the time, former champion Marcos Ambrose from up in the commentary booth called this "breaking new ground in the sport" and understandably, both Davison and Waters were less than impressed. At the time, Will Davison used a turn of phrase that would make a sailor blush, and Cam Waters decided to give van Gisbergen a wave as he went past but chose not to use all of his fingers.
Van Gisbergen won the race by an eon over Davison, with Waters finishing another yawning chasm of time behind and despite the complaints and protest, no investigation into either pass was investigated by race stewards and no penalties handed out.
I would like to say that Shane van Gisbergen is not in any way "breaking new ground in the sport". What I think has happened with evidence of complaints here, is that either everyone seems to have forgotten that this is touring car racing, or that this isn't touring car racing any more and that this is unusual because the world changed.
Almost before anyone out on the gird was alive, the prince of the privateers Allan Grice, was famed for leaning on people's door handles as he passed people on the inside of corners. This kind of behaviour was called out by Allan Moffat at the time and there are photographs of Grice's Commodore in the paddock with a mock bullbar made of cardboard tube and with the number 43, which was Moffat's number at the time. It was reasonably common right up until the mid 1990s for a car to have suffered some kind of battle scar and it still to be visible weeks later. This was also at a time when there was a size disparity between various makes; with the Ford Falcon being massive compared to the Mazda RX-7, Nissan Bluebird, and the little cars such as a Holden Gemini or Ford Capri.
Likewise, the British Touring Car Championship is also famed for touring car racing with elbows out. Ash Sutton is currently known for his particularly dastardly pushing of other cars; which the stewards are reasonably fine with.
Part of the close quarter racing is a function of the kind of track that the cars happen to be on. At speeds of more than 200km/h, a sense of self-preservation kicks in but at wee ickle goat tracks like Symmonds Plains or Winton, or in the BTCC at Thruxton and Knockhill, the inbuilt penalty of physics and flying off into the never-never and the fields of West Woop-Woop, just don't exist. van Gisbergen can perfectly afford to lean on people's door handles and give people a rub as he scoots on by at a place like Symmonds Plains but he'd never dare such a thing at Bathurst where the inbuilt penalty for getting it all wrong, is to be out of the most prestigious race in the country.
It could be that this kind of move can only happen at Symmonds Plains or Winton because of the nature of the track but equally, it could be that the reason why this kind of thing is rare these days is because of the increasingly rarified nature of this category.
In lesser categories where you have owner drivers paying their own bills, they are less likely to want to do this kind of thing because they personally bear the brunt of the costs. Move upwards just a little bit though where you have sponsors paying the bills and the desire to race harder kicks in. However, this only happens to a point. You just do not see this kind of bumping in GT Racing such as in Europe or Super GT in Japan. Nobody really wants to upset the aerodynamics of their car and so drivers are less likely to use the audio method to let someone else know that they are there.
Supercars may have finally crossed over the line from touring car to GT sports car. When the Falcon FGX exited the category, so did any pretense that these were cars that you could buy in the showroom. From VE Commodore onwards (which also includes VF and ZB) it became a bespoke piece of kit. When the Car Of The Future arrived with its common platform, the Nissan Altima, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo S60 were also all bespoke pieces of kit. Ford's replacement for the Falcon in the Mustang, is also a bespoke piece of kit. When Gen-3 arrives maybe in 2023, neither the Mustang or the Camaro will share any components whatsoever with their road going counterparts.
I think that a scratch built race car as opposed to a road car that has been modified and improved, in this context counts as a GT sports car rather than a touring car. That means that the on-track etiquette of the drivers has invariably changed. Also, as the shop has been deliberately closed and the drivers are no longer exposed to gentlemen drivers and amateurs, a layer of professionalism and polish has meant that they are less inclined to want to play dirty.
For Shane van Gisbergen to have used some skills which he developed as a proper touring car driver in a lesser category, probably does look odd. I can understand Davison's stream of invective over the radio and Waters' single-fingered salute but that's because they are motor racing drivers and hate to lose. However, to say that this is somehow new or breaking new ground is to forget where this particular category of motor racing came from and it's a little bit worrying for its future because I don't think that Supercars quite understands what it is, or where it wants to be.
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