- V8 Supercar Championships
V8 Supercars Australia awards five championships Level One and Level Two for Drivers, Manufacturers Championship and Level One Teams Championship and Level Two Privateers Team Championship.Level One
The Level One Australian Touring Car Championship now known as the V8 Supercar Championship Series caters for the 31 fully professional cars run by the 14 two-car and 3 one-car well-sponsored V8 Supercar teams. The series is commercially successful and highly competitive, with races all over Australia, one in New Zealand, and in 2006, the first race in Bahrain. Tracks range from street circuits (such as the
Adelaide circuit) to more permanent road courses (such as thePhillip Island Grand Prix Circuit . The largest single event is theBathurst 1000 .The racing is very close and aggressive between all the V8 Championship Series teams, with usually less than a second separating the top 25 cars. Teams design and construct their own cars and engines (Some teams opt to buy engines from stronger teams, eg SBR, 888, BJR and PCR use SBR developed Ford V8's, while HRT, HSVDT and Perkins Engineering use HMS developed Holden V8's while the rest of the Holden teams use their own developed Holden V8's) leading to minor/major (depending on teams) engineering differences among teams despite the cars being the same make.
Both Ford and
Holden provide significant, though varying, levels of sponsorship to the majority of teams that run their cars. From 1996 to 2002, V8 SupercarsHolden Racing Team , had a decisive competitive edge over most of the opposition. More recently, the sport has seen the return to prominence of Ford throughMarcos Ambrose andStone Brothers Racing , winning in 2003 and 2004, as well as team-mate Russell Ingall who kept the title at SBR, winning a tight series in 2005V8 Supercars is Australia's third largest sport behind AFL Football and
Horse racing .Fact|date=October 2008The first
Australian Touring Car Championship under the V8 Supercar rules was won byGlenn Seton with his team-mate formerFormula 1 world champion Alan Jones taking second in the championship.Team Championship
In 2005, the "Team's Championship" was created by simply adding together the points of the team's drivers.
Stone Brothers Racing won the inaugural Constructors' Championship in 2005 withRussell Ingall (1st in Series) andMarcos Ambrose (3rd) combining for a winning 3778 point haul. In 2006, the Toll HSV Dealer Team won, withRick Kelly winning the championship, andGarth Tander in fourth place.Constructors Championship
Each year (since 2004), supremacy between
Ford andHolden has been decided by the Constructors Championship. Out of thirteen rounds, seven wins from drivers of one manufacturer are required to win. In 2004,Holden won 7-6, but for the last two seasons,Ford have won by the same 7-6 score line.Level Two
The privateers were split from the main series in the year 2000.
Their Level Two series is now officially known as the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series (although commonly known as the V8 Supercar Development Series) and runs identical specification V8 Supercars, apart from differences with engine management systems and older chassis'.
The Development series has been such a success that it itself has also fielded full grids up to 34 cars on many occasions.
Both young up-and-coming drivers hoping to break into a Level One drive, and privateer hobby racers, race in the Level Two category.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.