News - 2015 Australian V8 Supercars test days

It is safe to say that results of first official test days of Australian V8 Championship are quite unexpected and very interesting since this implies that 2015 V8 Supercars season is going to be even more dynamic. During 7th and 8th of February at the Sydney’s Motorsport Park, 25 cars participated in four official Super Test sessions and Super Test Shootout. On two of four Super Test sessions (#1 and #2) the fastest driver was Rick Kelly for Nissan Motorsport which is very surprising because Nissan cars were on a back of a grid whole last season. Defending 2014 champion Jamie Whincup was ninth but that does not mean he was slow since the time difference between him and Rick Kelly was only few hundreds of a second. On Super Test session #3 Nissan was again the fastest but with Rick’s brother Todd behind the wheel and the Whincup was far behind on 18th place with more than 5 seconds difference. The Super Test session #4 brought another surprise when Ford FG X Falcon driver Mark Winterbottom was fastest with a new and revised race car. Jamie Whincup finished even further on 23rd place but with two and a half second difference.

The most interesting part of Sydney test days were Super Test Shootout which is a competition where driver receives 2.500$ for fastest lap time. This means that all of 25 cars are driven on the maximum and viewers get to see some very fast laps, spectacular drifts and few crashes. This year, Bathurst winner Chaz Mostert was fastest in his FG X Falcon with a winning time of 1:30.6583. Holden driver and last year champion was 12th with a 1:31.6259. However, official test does not guarantee the same results on Clipsal 500 Adelaide which is a first race of the season but, shows who has been making most progress during the winter and what to expect in 2015.