Saturday Sleuthing: Courtney's 2010 Title Winner
With the V8 Supercars Championship finished for 2013, our popular Saturday Sleuthing series of stories will continue through to Christmas before taking some time off over summer.
Once again, Jamie Whincup is the Champion of the category, though today our V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan is looking into the history of the last car to stop Whincup from claiming the crown – the 2010 Championship-winning Jim Beam Falcon FG driven by James Courtney.
You may recall that it was advertised for sale earlier in the year and we’re pleased to tell you it’s been purchased by a private collector to add to his collection.
The team at Dick Johnson Racing has been working on the restoration of this car throughout the season and the final touches are being put on chassis 888A-018 for its new owner as Christmas approaches.
It was one of a batch of FG Falcon chassis produced by Triple Eight Race Engineering for the 2009 season and was purchased by Dick Johnson Racing for that season.
The DJR cars were slightly different to those run by Triple Eight and Paul Cruickshank Racing as they ran their own team’s engines rather than the KRE power plants that were fitted to the others.
Chassis 018 appropriately became James Courtney’s #18 Jim Beam Racing machine and debuted at that year’s Clipsal 500, though was crashed by the former Japanese F3 champion and benched from the Albert Park non-championship event while it was repaired.
Courtney claimed the first of a total of seven race wins for this car at Townsville in 2009 and won the final race of the season at Sydney Olympic Park after Warren Luff and Jonathan Webb drove it in the Phillip Island and Bathurst endurance races.
Courtney retained the car for 2010 and went on to claim his maiden Championship on the back of five race wins (including a streak of four in a row at the soft tyre-exclusive events at Queensland Raceway and Winton).
Scott Sinclair (who would later move with Courtney to the Holden Racing Team) engineered the #18 car in its championship-winning season with Blake Smith (now Shane van Gisbergen’s engineer at Tekno Team VIP Petfoods) working as data engineer.
Luff co-drove for Courtney in the endurance races – they finished fifth at Bathurst and were on target to win on the Gold Coast until a pit lane penalty for a restart infringement ended their chances.
Of course, this was also the car involved in the now-infamous multi-car wreck in the wet Saturday race at the season-finale Sydney event.
The DJR crew patched it together and got Courtney back out onto the circuit to be classified as a finisher in 15th and claim 60 crucial Championship points as his rivals Jamie Whincup and Mark Winterbottom were not classified as finishers.
He did enough in the Sunday race (by finishing 14th) to claim DJR’s record seventh Championship victory.
The car became James Moffat’s when he joined the team in 2011 and underwent a few livery changes that season, including the ‘Bonded’ gold look for Bathurst where he was joined by Matt Halliday.
American factory BMW pilot Joey Hand co-drove with the ‘Moff’ at the Gold Coast 600 and the duo finished fourth.
The car became the Norton #18 chassis in 2012, again driven by Moffat, and had its last race start at Queensland Raceway before the team debuted a new chassis for Moffat (the last FG racecar built by Triple Eight) at Sydney Motorsport Park.
DJR has undertaken many hours of work in restoring the car to as close as reasonably possible to the specification that it raced in back in 2010.
It has had an engine fitted that was actually run in the car the previous season, while the team has also produced setup sheets, engineering reports and a range of other priceless documentation for the new owner.
It is one of seven racing FG Falcon chassis built by Triple Eight Race Engineering; five have been racing in the Dunlop Series this year while the other is a bare shell that has lay idle since 2011.
“It has fantastic history and was part of what I reckon was one of the most gripping championship finales we’ve ever seen in this country,” says team boss Dick Johnson.
“The drama that surrounded that last event in Sydney was the sort of stuff you couldn’t even script.
“That car will always retain a special place within the walls of DJR for its achievements and the work put into it by everyone in our workshop.”
All up the car claimed seven V8 Supercars Championship race wins, one pole position (Courtney at Winton 2010) and 14 V8SC podium finishes (all claimed by Courtney).
It also made three Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 starts: 2009 (Luff/Webb – DNF), 2010 (Courtney/Luff – 5th), 2011 (Moffat/Halliday – 25th).
The goings-on in the motoring market and its affect on racing may also make this car even more valuable as possibly the last Falcon Championship winner of its kind in V8 Supercars.
Next week will be the final Saturday Sleuthing story of 2013 – make sure you get online next weekend to sample some more from the Sleuth’s files!
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