The past seven days marked 25 years since V8 Supercar competition was held for the last time on not one but two historic Australian racing circuits.
On July 15, 2001, Melbourne’s Calder Park hosted a round of the Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars (then known as the Shell Championship Series) for the 25th and final time.
Just seven days earlier, Lakeside Raceway north of Brisbane also witnessed its last race meeting for Supercar machinery in the form of a stand-alone round for the Konica V8 Supercar Series (now Super2).
At the time, it was not known that either of the two race meetings were the final acts of high-level competition for two venues etched deeply in the history of Australian touring car racing.
In 2001, both Calder and Lakeside (which last hosted a ‘main game’ round in 1998 but ran two meetings for the Konica Series in 2000 and 2001) were still among the top five circuits to have held the most ATCC rounds.
Messy legal disputes in subsequent years between the late Bob Jane and both the Australian Vee Eight Supercar Company (AVESCO) and the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), combined with significant decline of the venue’s condition, have seen Calder remain absent from the Supercars calendar to this day.
Remarkably for Lakeside, the Konica Series round was the last race meeting at any level before the circuit closed less than one month later due to the venue falling into receivership and the local Pine Rivers Shire Council – which would later fully acquire the land the circuit sits on – exerting a non-motorsport stance amid environmental and community concerns.
Thanks to reinvestment driven by a renewed approach (Calder) and subsequent changes of ownership (Lakeside), both tracks have since risen from long periods of disuse with regular club and state level motorsport breathing new life into the two historic venues, while modern Supercars have run laps at both Calder and Lakeside on passenger ride and sponsor event days.
On the 25th anniversary of these two significant events, we’re opening the AN1 Images archive for a photographic lookback on both tracks’ last memories of V8 Supercar action.
Images: AN1 Images/Graeme Neander/Dirk Klynsmith
Calder Park’s last V8 Supercar event
Shell Championship Series – Sunday, July 15, 2001
Calder Park’s round of the 2001 ‘Shell Series’ was the last of a breed, and not only for the fact it was its V8 Supercar swansong.
Recent Australian Grand Prix support races at Albert Park aside, it was the last championship round to exclusively feature the staple format of three flat-out sprint races that defined the category since 1996.
Only the Wanneroo and Calder rounds in 2001 featured races of approximately 20 minutes with no compulsory pitstops, at a time when the category moved predominantly to races of at least 40 minutes in duration with a compulsory pitstop.
A 35-car field assembled to compete for 32 grid spots, with a wet Friday pre-qualifying session seeing John Faulkner, Tyler Mecklem and Phonsy Mullan miss the cut.
This was the round memorably won by Paul Morris in his Big Kev Racing Commodore, with the late Kevin McQuay – better known as colourful cleaning products entrepreneur, Big Kev – celebrating the victory with his sponsored driver that day.
After Steve Johnson claimed the opening race aboard his Shell Helix Falcon, Morris won the day’s second and third heats – the latter with a masterful display of controlled defence as he held off a five-car train to the flag.
With Morris’ success came another ‘last’ as the professionalism of the sport evolved – the last instance of an owner-driver winning a race in the championship, and with a genuine stand-alone, single-car operation.
The two race wins and round win recorded by Morris that day were his first in an ATCC/Supercars career which began in 1992.
Amazingly, ‘The Dude’ went on to wait more than 13 years – and until his last ever Supercars race start – to win again, in the 2014 Bathurst 1000 with Chaz Mostert.
Lakeside Raceway’s last V8 Supercar event
Konica V8 Supercar Series – Sunday, July 8, 2001
A strong crowd greeted a 22-car Konica Series field at Lakeside for the fifth and penultimate round of the 2001 season.
The Konica field was a spectacular sight threading around the fast, narrow and undulating 2.41km layout, while the runoff-limited circuit’s unforgiving reputation rang true as several cars sustained heavy damage after leaving the track.
The most serious instance occurred during Race 1 when contact between Ric Shaw and Alan Heath along Pit Straight resulted in both cars coming off at the fearsome Turn 1 kink and firing hard into the right-side concrete wall. Fortunately, both drivers walked away.
Team Dynamik’s Simon Wills, the eventual 2001 Konica Series champion driving the ex-Wynn’s Commodore chassis with which Greg Murphy and Steve Richards won the 1999 Bathurst 1000, took out a red-flagged opening race after front row starters, Gibson Motorsport team-mates David ‘Truckie’ Parsons and Paul Dumbrell, handed over early race leads due to a stop-and-go penalty for a jump start (Parsons) and an off-track excursion (Dumbrell).
A ninth-place finish for Dumbrell in Race 1 became a front row start for Race 2 by virtue of a top 10 grid reversal, which set the scene for the future Bathurst 1000 winner to win the remaining two races of the day and the round overall from local hero Wayne Wakefield and Wills.
