International drivers: your opinion?

[SSbaby]

The endurance races come around and drivers pair up... we usually witness some overseas talent arrive (no I don't mean NZ ) and usually make an indifferent impression.

Sometimes I wonder why teams bother with the likes of Plato, Mueller, Clelland etc... when there's plenty of local talent who would do a commendable job. The Internationals have proven they can crash a V8SC just as well as any young gun.

Personally, I think international drivers are a waste of time, but wouldn't mind gauging your collective opinion on their value to teams. Where would C. Lowndes be today if the international driver he replaced (HRT) was instead asked to do the drive?

[peckstar]

im much more interested in a race overseas when an australian is racing, i imagine the reverse applies also

[Pro Racer]

i agree peckster, so if it attracks some oversea's viewers more then it has to be good for not only the teams but the sport aswell. i am all for the OS guys to come out for the reason above aslong as there can be a reasonable mix of OS guys with some young, it's what we have now and this year without the date clashes with a few of the major touring car series a few more OS guys can come out, it's a good thing as long as it dosn't get to many to bloke the young talent out, attracting OS audiences aswell as looking after the young talent....

[racer69]

Who cares whether teams opt for young drivers or overseas drivers, its the teams choice. I'm a fan of giving the overseas guys a go, the youngsters can have a bash in the Fujitsu race afterall.

Originally Posted by SSbaby

Sometimes I wonder why teams bother with the likes of Plato, Mueller, Clelland etc

Of the three you mention, one did a sterling job to win the 2005 Sandown 500, the other came a close second at Bathurst 2001, why wouldn't they have 'bothered' with them?

[anthony81901]

Plenty of overseas drivers have come out and done well in their own cars as witnessed in the early Group era in 85 & 87 and the Super Touring events in 97 & 98. But put them into a foreign car and they are decidedly mid pack Alain Menu springs to mind, blitzed the field in the Renault in 98, but did nothing special in V8s.

I guess the answer lies in how many have gone onto become mountain regulars, in the past 20 years John Cleland (12 starts), Win Percy (9), Klaus Neidweidz (6), Jeff Allam (5) & Anders Olofsson (5) are the only I can think of, all having made it to the podium at Bathurst. Of course there has always been the issue with date clashes preventing drivers accepting drives, but plenty of big name drivers have come out once or twice not to return.

[bluesport]

Originally Posted by anthony81901

Plenty of overseas drivers have come out and done well in their own cars as witnessed in the early Group era in 85 & 87 and the Super Touring events in 97 & 98. But put them into a foreign car and they are decidedly mid pack Alain Menu springs to mind, blitzed the field in the Renault in 98, but did nothing special in V8s.

I think you have summed it up perfectly. Familiarity with the car is the key to this discussion. If the OS drivers were to race here in V8's fulltime then they would have a real chance of success in the enduros. But as I see it, a team would likely be better off with the regular leading Fujitsu drivers.

[WebberForWDC]

It's unfortunate that Triple Eight locked in an overseas drvier before they realised they could have locked in Bargs, something of an error.

[SSbaby]

Originally Posted by racer69

Of the three you mention, one did a sterling job to win the 2005 Sandown 500, the other came a close second at Bathurst 2001, why wouldn't they have 'bothered' with them?

Fair call but what if Mueller hadn't showed and Shane Van Gisbergen instead did the driving duties. Would you say that the same result would have eluded the 888 team?

Perhaps, Yvan is an exception to the norm but the rule has generally been one of high paid professionals come over and drive something they're clearly not comfortable driving. Hence their lacklustre race speed and ability to return the car in one piece.

[cavvy]

Its not as if the guys we get out here are of the quality of Jackie Ickx or John Fitzpatrick, different class, different car every week ...its like those trying to compare Craig Lowndes with Bob Jane .. Lowndesy only drives one car in a year, compared to guys who drove 10+ competitively in a year, tin tops including sports sedans, series production & improved touring, chuck in a sports car say a 5 litre Elfin or McLaren, an open wheeler ...

The current rules that limit testing make it difficult for overseas tin top pilots to be competitive ... but thats a positive for the V8 fans, who can delude themselves - its not as if V8 drivers have international drives calling ...

Jum, he does it all, remember him punting a Matich F5000 (sponsored by ...)

[Falcadore]

Originally Posted by SSbaby

The endurance races come around and drivers pair up... we usually witness some overseas talent arrive (no I don't mean NZ ) and usually make an indifferent impression.

Sometimes I wonder why teams bother with the likes of Plato, Mueller, Clelland etc... when there's plenty of local talent who would do a commendable job. The Internationals have proven they can crash a V8SC just as well as any young gun.

Personally, I think international drivers are a waste of time, but wouldn't mind gauging your collective opinion on their value to teams. Where would C. Lowndes be today if the international driver he replaced (HRT) was instead asked to do the drive?

Yvan Muller has a V8 Supercar race win to his credit so that was hardly a waste of time. The drive put in by Allan Simonsen (half-Australian sure) and Richard Lyons at Bathurst showed they more than proved their worth.

And if the talent pool from other categories in Australia was so deep why to the majority of two car teams put their gun drivers in the same car and treat the part timers in the #2 car as they contractual obligation effort. If they really were up to the job they could step into the co-drivers seat in each of the main game drivers cars.

More often than not its not the young guns getting the job done but its the fringe players have have been racing around the edges for years, at Bathurst it was guys like Greg Ritter, Cameron McLean, Adam Macrow, Steve Owen, Owen Kelly, Craig Baird and now you can probably add Paul Radisich, Dean Canto and Jason Bargwanna to the list, drivers who have been given, or been very close but have had regualr V8 Supercar experience. They are never going to win the championship but they still have that bank of experience. The 'young guns' just aren't young.

The actual young guns who do make it, generally step straight into full time seats, bypassing the endurance slot path. And that's not a new trend. Mark Skaife and Glenn Seton were employed by big teams without significant experience with mid-size teams. Same with Craig Lowndes, Garth Tander, Steven Johnson and Rick Kelly. Ambrose, Ingall, Bright, Besnard and Will Davison all came home from International series.

The Fujitsu series has thus been not the best success in uncovering real star talent. Dean Canto was already known prior (just) to the first Fujitsu series. The names who have come through Fujitsu Series to regular drives in the current series? Mark Winterbottom (although it must be said in a Stone Brothers car during the peak of the teams V8 powers), Paul Dumbrell, Shane Price and Andrew Jones. Maybe Lee Holdsworth.

I am sorry but I do not find much credence in your statements.

Each driver should be considered on their individual merits.

[SSbaby]

Originally Posted by Falcadore

I am sorry but I do not find much credence in your statements.

Each driver should be considered on their individual merits.

Of all the international racers over the years, there have been relatively few outstanding results.

For starters, what gives these so called international superstars the right to drive the best machinery in the category? What if the young guns were allowed some dispensation to practice in an unfamilar car and do the test miles needed to be on the pace as the regular steerers? Maybe somebody will then take notice of the emerging talent.

cavvy seemed to hit the nail on the head, I think the restrictions placed on testing is really doing the sport a big disservice. There will always be locally bred superstars in this category so why not nurture this talent instead of going the high profile foreigners?

[Falcadore]

Originally Posted by SSbaby

Of all the international racers over the years, there have been relatively few outstanding results.

For starters, what gives these so called international superstars the right to drive the best machinery in the category? What if the young guns were allowed some dispensation to practice in an unfamilar car and do the test miles needed to be on the pace as the regular steerers? Maybe somebody will then take notice of the emerging talent.

cavvy seemed to hit the nail on the head, I think the restrictions placed on testing is really doing the sport a big disservice. There will always be locally bred superstars in this category so why not nurture this talent instead of going the high profile foreigners?

And there have been equally as few, if not fewer, outstanding results by genuine young guns.

Cavvy is certainly correct. But that does not affect any of my above statements, and it hurst the international drivers as much as the, I must say, largely fictional young guns.

The Lowndes example is... slightly bloated. Lowndes drove a brilliant final stint, but Lowndes did not put himself into the position to challenge Johnson/Bowe on a day when the Shell car was a class apart. Brad Jones drove the race of his life to put the #015 car into that position, an experienced part-timer at the time, outdriving all bar two drivers in the entire field. If anything that day Steven Johnson had the more impressive debut recovering the #18 car after his co-driver put the car into the sand, but neither Jones, nor Johnson the younger got the full credit for their deeds that day.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by SSbaby

Of all the international racers over the years, there have been relatively few outstanding results.

For starters, what gives these so called international superstars the right to drive the best machinery in the category?

For starters, the team owners' discretion.

Originally Posted by SSbaby

There will always be locally bred superstars in this category so why not nurture this talent instead of going the high profile foreigners?

Over the last thirty or more years, many of the imports were recruited on the basis of how big a headline their signing would attract for the event promoter or team in question. Hence the ARDC's annual nomination of Paul Newman for Bathurst many years ago...

Garry Rogers' fatures in AMC were good reading, especially the bit about how he got lumbered with an Andretti relative instead of the one he really wanted (Mario), and susequently got his car destroyed when the driver in question got confused about turning right and fenced it up the top somewhere.

The folk who picked international drivers from categories with similar requirements in driver expertise generally found the going better than those who picked a name from a high-profile, but fundamentally differing discipline...examples? Consider the local form of Aaltonen, Ickx, Fitzpatrick, Hahne, Walkinshaw, Percy, Niedzwiz, Ludwig, Soper, Cecotto and Ravaglia, and then contrast it with the fortunes of Rutherford, Guthrie, Pruett, and Andretti, for starters.

Go back to 1977, and Ron Hodgson would've done much better had he thrown the keys to his second A9X to the likes of say Gary Cooke and David Seldon, instead of the mob he ran... but the entry wouldn't have drawn a tenth of the publicity that it got for having an Indy 500 winner, and the then-only woman to drive at the Brickyard aboard...

Or can you say that there wouldn't have been 1000 better available combinations for BMW than Mercedes Stermitz and Annette Reevmussen(? working from memory again)?

Racing is one of the industries where the best possible people may simply not be an option... sometimes you might be able to get the best, but the rest of the time you settle for the best available, even when you know they're not going to be up to the job. Ask the Stone Brothers about the choices they had to make in between hero drivers in the past...

[anthony81901]

Back in the 90's when teams were free to test as much as they liked, there was a greater oppurtunity for the co-drivers to test with the teams. Spare cars were also permitted, so the co-driver could circulate all day in the spare and if he pranged it, wasn't going to have a detrimental effect on the lead up.

Recall John Cleland braved 24 hours of arline food to come out for the Bathurst media day with Brock in 93. Now the best an os driver can hope for is a single day of testing having to share the car with the lead driver.

[Senna05]

I think one of the issues with top international drivers is they become so accustomed to their form of driving in their series.

It's undeniable that an F1 guy drives a completely different style to a WTCC guy who drives a completely different style to an CC/IRL guy, who in turn drives a completely different style to a V8 guy.

Ryan Briscoe - Blistering in the HRT car at times, just like JC before him, but not consistently quick. But, he probably differs in that in 12 months, he drove a V8, an IRL car, a CC, an LMP1 car, and an A1GP car - Quite a bit of difference, but arguably he didn't drive any to 100% extreme and probably because he jumped into so many different cars.

I firmly believe that alot of drivers are quick among a varied series of cars, BUT to become accustomed to one car allows one to know it's strengths, weaknesses, etc, and this is the mark of a current day top flight driver. This is probably why so many part timers these days are a little off the pace or inconsistent.

So, this applies to many international drivers AND local drivers who drive a few series - Sadly, they will never compete straight up with a regular V8 driver concistently are will be more prone to errors if they attempt to extract 100% from the car.

Just an observation and musing from a long time motorsport fan on the trends of the time....

[Woolley]

On the whole, the international drivers get their pictures in the foreign press, which means international coverage for your sponsors, which presumably means money, or satisfaction, or both. With the specialized nature of track and cars and limited testing it may not be the most competitive option, but I guess it depends on who's pulling the shots. Yvan Mullers Sandown run got huge coverage up here which translated to plenty of exposure for the sponsors.

[cptkablamo]

Don't forget too that the enduros are about the only time the team gets to try out people with different backgrounds and ideas. These international racers are professionals who have a pretty good idea about what they are doing and teams that learn from these people may be able to put it to use and improve...just because we do it one way does not mean it can't be improved by someone who does it another way...

Plus should all the extras that compete at Le Mans be French, Spa24 - Belgian, Sebring & Daytona - American etc...no, international flavour does add something good to the mix...

[RotorFan]

I enjoy seeing international drivers compete, it adds extra interest to the race (for those that are aware of international series'). Its a great accolade for the series that it can attract drivers of the caliber of Muller, Priaux etc.

[SSbaby]

Originally Posted by Woolley

On the whole, the international drivers get their pictures in the foreign press, which means international coverage for your sponsors, which presumably means money, or satisfaction, or both. With the specialized nature of track and cars and limited testing it may not be the most competitive option, but I guess it depends on who's pulling the shots. Yvan Mullers Sandown run got huge coverage up here which translated to plenty of exposure for the sponsors.

I'm not certain that it's the teams or the sponsors that push for the overseas promotion (which is always good) but the whole world knows we have the best tin-top category in the world on our shores. And Bathurst is such a special circuit that would test the best drivers in the world... why wouldn't any professional driver be lured to Bathurst?

However, I don't believe it's a great advertisement for our sport when you have someone like Scott Pruett come over, lap 3s slower than Alan Jones' pace and describe the V8SC as very 'rolly' in reference to the 'unnerving amount of body roll' and slow steering input, an obvious remark about his preference for more precise cars like single-seaters. It's this sort of thing I can quite happily turn away from.

[D.R.T.]

Originally Posted by SSbaby

but the whole world knows we have the best tin-top category in the world on our shores.

Originally Posted by SSbaby

However, I don't believe it's a great advertisement for our sport when you have someone like Scott Pruett come over, lap 3s slower than Alan Jones' pace

What about the successful cases though. The Menu's, the Mullers. Even Plato's 10th finish in 2000 was very respectable.

Your posts seem way to caught up with the negative.

[anthony81901]

On the flip side surprisingly few drivers from the category have managed to pick up co-drives outside Australasia, considering how well thought of the category is outside Oz.

Bright drove an Aston Martin for Prodrive when he was at FPR, and Longhurst & Skaife a BMW & Nissan respectively at the World Cup Challenge at Monza in 93, but I think that is about it.

The 80's were more fruitful with Brock & Perkins racing at Le Mans, Grice in a Nissan in the BTCC, Grice & Johnson in Nascar and the HDT & Roadways ETCC campaigns.

[EfiOz]

Originally Posted by Falcadore

The drive put in by Allan Simonsen (half-Australian sure)

Which half? He spends so much time on an airliner I'm not sure he knows what he is anymore.

[Senna05]

anthony81901, that is because of the professionalism i was speaking of earlier.

Most categories nowadays require 100% commitment to that category only. How many WTCC Drivers would give up the Hockenheim round to drive GT or Sportscars for example? And whats the chances that the rear wheel drive GT1 Cars would be a completely different kettle of fish to drive and possibly harder to drive consistently?

Unfortunately for us the exposure is harder to get, and not only do we have clashes, but 12hr+ plane excursions either way.

On the whole, if you look at the Brabhams (David, Garry and Geoff), the majority of their success has come out of Sportscars, and this is due to them spending a whole lot fo time in them. When you look at how David went in an FPR car, he was quick, but not consistent - again confirming my arguement!

If I remember correctly, the Bright drive was a "gift" from Prodrive, a one off test where they threw him out on worn tyres, and within 5 laps he was on the pace of Serrazin (sp?) and the team were more than likely not expecting it. How can you not give a guy with that natural talent a go?

He'd have done more races if not for clashes. Winton/Le Mans Qualifying come to mind. And it's a damn shame, as his first race he was nervous about lapping cars in the dark, and had come to terms with that at the end of his stint. He may have raised a few eyebrows.

Skaifey had a run at Le Mans in a Lister in 1997, the memory escapes me as to how he went though.

[SSbaby]

Originally Posted by D.R.T.

What about the successful cases though. The Menu's, the Mullers. Even Plato's 10th finish in 2000 was very respectable.

Your posts seem way to caught up with the negative.

I don't mean to sound so negative but if you think Plato's 10th placing was very respectable for a very high paid professional (he did drive the quickest car in the field) what does it say for the lesser drivers who've earned better placings over the years?

The WTCC round of 1987 at Bathurst was a great event. The Euro drivers arrived with their fancy machinery and made no apologies for their performances. They were blindingly quick.

I don't think it's the same thing when internationals come over for a short stint to drive V8SCs... but if the teams are looking to exploit the drivers for all their commercial worth, I can understand that.

[D.R.T.]

Originally Posted by SSbaby

I don't mean to sound so negative but if you think Plato's 10th placing was very respectable for a very high paid professional (he did drive the quickest car in the field) what does it say for the lesser drivers who've earned better placings over the years?

Which lesser drivers have achieved more when they have been paired another inexperienced driver ?

Muller proved internationals worth when he had a good co driver and a good car at Sandown in 05.

Same as Simonsen/ Lyons pairing in the last two events. And remember the initial reason 888 has for hiring those two drivers, part time australian v8 drivers were asking for ridiculous amounts of money.