Saturday Sleuthing: Clipsal winner to ride again

The Clipsal 500 is fast approaching, so to kick off a new season of Saturday Sleuthing on v8supercars.com.au, our V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan has news on the restoration of an important car in the Adelaide event's history.

Back in 2006 Jamie Whincup was the new boy on the block at Triple Eight Race Engineering alongside a star in Craig Lowndes.

But victory in the Clipsal 500 that year instantly launched Whincup into the big time and he's gone on to become the most successful driver in Championship history with six crowns

That #88 Betta Electrical Falcon he drove to his first V8 Supercar win had a very interesting life and is now being restored back to how it was nine years ago by V8 Supercars Dunlop Series Champions Eggleston Motorsport in Melbourne, who purchased the car late last year.

But first, let's recap the car's history, which dates back to 2004.

A new BA Falcon, it was actually the first Triple Eight car driven by Craig Lowndes in November '04 - when he was still under contract to Ford Performance Racing!

Ahead of joining his new team in full, the test was approved via mutual agreement so Lowndes drove this car at Queensland Raceway before Brazilian Max Wilson gave it its racing debut at Symmons Plains.

He competed in the final round at Eastern Creek before being replaced by Steve Ellery for 2005. The former team owner/driver crashed it severely at the Clipsal 500, forcing it to be benched for a few rounds while it was repaired.

It returned to the track a few rounds later and became the first Triple Eight Bathurst podium finisher when Ellery and Adam Macrow finished third.

New signing Whincup took over this chassis for 2006 and it instantly hit success with a win on the Sunday in Adelaide.

The then-Triple Eight debutante drove it through to the endurance races, where the late Allan Simonsen and Richard Lyons took it over for Sandown and Bathurst.

Whincup stepped into the Bathurst-winning car for Symmons Plains but involvement in a multi-car accident forced the team to revert to this car for him for the rest of the season in Bahrain and Phillip Island - the latter with 'Whincup' down the side of the car as a prelude to Vodafone joining the team as sponsor for 2007.

It was also at the end of this season that this chassis was sent to England to be put on a shaker rig - a practice now banned in the category but popular among a range of teams at the time.

Whincup's Clipsal 2006 winner became a spare car for the newly renamed TeamVodafone in 2007 and was re-liveried in those colours.

It didn't lay idle completely given it was used for a driver evaluation day in Queensland in August 2007 by Supercross star Chad Redd and then-Formula Ford youngsters James Moffat and Tim Blanchard.

The car then became the Team Kiwi Racing Falcon in 2008 driven by Kayne Scott (and Chris Pither in a handful of rounds), though it would hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons at Bathurst when Pither ploughed into Paul Weel's stricken PWR Commodore in practice (which we covered late last year on Saturday Sleuthing).

Repaired, it was driven by Steve Owen on the Gold Coast and Bahraini Fahad Al Musalam in his homeland before Daniel Gaunt ran it at Symmons Plains and Oran Park to round out the car's racing life.

A few years later it was purchased by then-Dunlop Series team owner Wayne Miles for parts and mooted long-term as a potential ride car.

It lay idle for a few years before Ben Eggleston put together a deal with Miles to purchase the car and begin the process of bringing it back to life as Whincup's first V8 Supercar race winner.

"We've already started on it and it's off to the paint shop," said Eggleston this week.

"It's a bare shell, we've been doing the fabrication on the front end of it. The engine is at KRE Engines at the moment and we plan to have the whole project finished at the end of the year.

"The engine is period correct. Kenny McNamara was building the engines that T8 used at Stone Brothers back then when the team used their customer engines. They have the period correct trumpets, sump etc.

"There's a lot of original stuff on the car. There were three container loads of parts that came with it. One container was total gold - the carbon side board with the Triple Eight logo and the Clipsal 2006 victory sticker on it was there as well as the original dash too.

"The dash was actually from the 2006 Bathurst winning chassis. It's still got a crack in it marked from when the wheel fell off the Dumbrell Castrol car at Bathurst in 2005 and hit Lowndes through the windscreen!

"We're very lucky with some of the things we got with the car. Some of it would be hard to find otherwise. Triple Eight are working hard to help us with anything we don't have. That's why they are so good. Whatever you need you get from those guys.

"Gary Bailey, who works with us at DVS race weekends, restored the 2006 Bathurst winner for Roland (Dane) and he's been down to have a look at the car too.

"It should come back together quire well. I reckon the Betta livery was great. It's very striking so we'll definitely put it back to Jamie's 2006 Clipsal-winning car and as close as we can on its technical spec."

Saturday Sleuthing will return next week (February 21) and will feature on the V8 Supercars website again this year on every non-race weekend.

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