"And there's going to be contact, big contact and they're spinning. Waters is gone. Is that Davison or Anton?"
- Mark Skaife, commentary Supercars Race 21, The Bend, 20th Aug 2023.
Is that Davison or Anton? Seriously?!
Call me naïve, or run my nose in the dirt and call me stinky, call me an idiot, or perhaps listen to my question and join in my incredulity, but isn't this a problem which is fixable?
Back when I was a wee lad, in those apparently absurd days; with the likes of Peter Brock, Larry Perkins and Dick Johnson in the Australian Touring Car Championship, the racecars helpfully had numbers on the doors.
05 - Peter Brock
11 - Larry Perkins
17 - Dick Johnson
These numbers are emblazoned into the memories of thousands of motor racing fans in this country. Even as Peter Brock's star was fading and he began to believe his own nonsense, as Dick Johnson quite rightly hang the helmet up and passed the number on, and as Larry Perkins eventually gave the game away, the stories of the numbers outlived them; to the point where a hoo-hah was made when the number 11 was being passed on to DJR.
The reason why numbers are put on racecars at all, is so race control and we the viewer, can look at the side of a car and instantly know who is who. This might sound like a novel idea but being able to tell who is who, merely by looking at them, is a pretty nifty idea. How is it that in a supposedly professional series, that Mark Skaife can not tell the difference between Alex Davison and Anton de Pasquale?
Because very clearly as this screencap shows, it is impossible to know who is who from a distance. The two Nulon cars in this photo look the same. The two Truck Assist cars look the same. The two Ampol Red Bull cars look the same. The two Coca-Cola cars look the same. The two Penrite cars look the same. The the Shell V-Power cars, including when we need to know which one is which, unhelpfully, look the same. How does this help anyone?
The solution which should be staring everyone in the face, which even Blind Freddy can see but can not at the moment, is that having two cars look the same, can be very easily solved by putting big numbers on the doors. This might come as a surprise to Supercars' management but things tend to look smaller when they are far away and making the switch from having numbers on the doors that we big, to smaller numbers that are in the window and which can not even be seen by the commentary team with the aid of cameras, means that it is impossible to tell who is who.
We all know why they did it. In chasing down every dollar, the maybe 3 square feet of space that would have been occupied by a number, has now been taken up by the sponsor's logo writ ever larger on the side of the car. Did it help that much? Really? Or, and this is what I charge you with, it looks unprofessional and deeply deeply stupid. "Stupidity" is a technical term, which means that given a set of choices, the stupid person will make the one which is unhelpful, unkind, and not sensible. To remove the numbers from the doors, where they could be seen, to make them this wee little thing which can not been seen by the commentary team, which can not be seen on the telly by we the viewers at home, and especially can not been seen by we the paying public who buy tickets, is stupid. This was a choice; a deliberate choice.
Removing the numbers from the doors has also very very much robbed the drivers of their identity. Peter Brock's 05 was the stuff of legend. Dick Johnson's 17 in the Clarendon font was very much part of the tale of Queensland's favourite son who hit a rock and a who hit a tree and still won Bathurst and became three time champion. Larry Perkins the eternal pragmatist and engineer, took on 11 because it was cheaper to buy a bunch of 1 stickers. In 2023, Shane Van Gisbergen should have 97 looming large on the doors but no-one can find it. Alex Davison who has inherited 17 may as well not bother because the legendary number is absent.
To wit, who are these two drivers?
Do you know? I have no idea. The commentary team had no idea. Likely the people trackside had no idea. The one purpose that the driver numbers has, is completely failing here.
If were I go to a Sprint Car/Speed Car race, or look at NASCAR on television, or even visit a very very big track like Indianapolis or Talledega, not only am I able to tell who is who but I can do so from a very very long way away. The numbers on the side of a NASCAR Cup Car are 40 inches tall; which is all kinds of brilliant. Not only does this let you know who the car is from far away but the number itself due to the font and colour scheme, works in strengthening the driver's identity. Petty Blue #15B0F0 and the number 43 can only be Richard Petty. Dale Earnhardt was famous for having a black car with the number 3. Jimmy Johnson only found success in the number 48. The Wood Brothers have been around since 1949 and almost immediately ran red and white cars with the number 21.
Supercars' management either does not know about this, or care. During the late 00s they succumbed to pressure from the teams who were looking maximise brand exposure but by doing so, they have very much eroded the identity of the drivers; who let's be honest, are actually the biggest marketable assets of the sport.
There actually is an alternative but I very much doubt that Supercars would want to impose this on the teams and that is to hold the cars to one livery per year. On the face of it this sounds silly but 18-foot skiff racing which doesn't have numbers but makes a point of using the sponsors as the team identifier, holds a team to run the same spinnaker set for a season. These themselves have been famous over the years; with Colour 7, Prudential, Xerox, and Ella Bache among the many teams who have gone boat racing over the years. Again the same problem of needing to identify a thing from far away is what is at stake here.
This basic vexhillogial problem has gone back hundreds if not thousands of years, with flags and uniforms being the things which have identified friend or foe on the battlefield. Britain's redcoats, a Roman legionnaire, a Greek Hoplite are all legendary and you can probably form a picture of them in your mind's eye. In World War 2, the United States Air Force learned the hard way that their star on a roundel looked the same as the Japanese hinomaru; which proves that shape is as important as colour. Indeed the very reason why the French Air Force and tge RAF both have roundels, is to mark them as obviously different to the German balkenkreuz, as a roundel looks different to a cross: X and O.
Supercars' management in the face of what should be wisdom acquired through thousands of years at this point has deliberately chosen to spit in the face of common sense and by playing this stupid game of getting rid of the numbers from the doors, they have won the stupid prize of nobody, not even the commentary team being able to tell who any one is.
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