Emotional Weekend: The one-off black bonnet on the HRT Commodores in 2006 was in memory of Peter Brock, who had been killed a month before the race.
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6:00 AM Sat 28 January, 2012
Source: BigPond Sport
Seb Todd emailed us asking about the car Mark Skaife was driving when he was crashed out on the first lap at Bathurst in 2006.
The car is question – HRT chassis 054 – was the very last VZ Commodore produced by the team before the arrival of the new VE Commodore for 2007.
It was debuted by Todd Kelly at Queensland Raceway in 2006 and he also drove it at Oran Park before it became the #2 HRT Commodore for the Sandown and Bathurst races.
As you may remember, HRT and the Toll HSV Dealer Team engaged in some driver swaps for the enduros to safe guard Rick Kelly and Garth Tander’s championship chances, so Tander moved into red for the first time and drove this car with Skaife.
The duo simply dominated the Sandown 500, Tander grabbing pole and the duo leading a race-high 87 laps before suspension dramas halted their charge.
At Bathurst it was Skaife’s turn to qualify the car and he put it on pole, but as history shows, car #2 had a fatal clutch problem off the line and – to rub insult into injury – was rammed behind by an unsighted rookie Jack Perkins and punched into the concrete wall.
It was repaired eventually but was not raced for the remainder of the season before being sold to Kayne Scott, who used it in the 2007 Fujitsu Series run by Team Dynamik in Adelaide under the Mark Petch Motorsport banner.
The Kiwi finished third in the title behind Tony D’Alberto and Michael Caruso before the car was sold for 2008 to Geoff Emery and he drove it in ’08 and then again in 2009.
He moved the car’s preparation to Greg Murphy Racing for the 2010 Fujitsu Series before stepping up to a VE model halfway through the year, although Tony Bates also drove this car on occasion.
It was sold to Western Australian Matt Hansen and he raced it in 2011 in the Kumho Tyres V8 Touring Car Series for older, deregistered V8 Supercars, finishing seventh in the five-round series.
The V8 Touring Car Series will again be racing in 2012 with its first round at Eastern Creek the weekend after the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.
‘Saturday Sleuthing’ has become a regular feature of the BigPond Sport V8 Supercars site each Saturday on non-race weekends and will be going strong during the off-season.
So what car would you like us to find?
Email ask@v8supercars.com.au with your queries and we’ll add them to our list to crack into next year!
And drop us a line if you think you’ve done some Sleuthing of your own!
