Saturday Sleuthing: Ingall's Cars
Townsville is one ‘happening’ place this weekend with the fifth running of the Sucrogen Townsville 400, but this year the event has a special slice of Championship history as Russell Ingall breaks John Bowe’s record of event starts in the Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercars Championship.
The 2005 V8 Supercar Champion, Ingall, will compete in his 226th ATCC/V8SC event start in his 18th season full-time in the Championship.
Much has been written in the lead-up to ‘The Enforcer’s’ record-breaking weekend, but our V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan has put his own spin on things with an interesting question.
Just how many cars will Ingall have actually raced in his 226 event starts since his 1996 debut at Eastern Creek?
Remember, we are not counting non-Championship events such as Albert Park and the Gold Coast Indy (it became a points-paying event in 2002) or the annual endurance races prior to them also becoming part of the Championship in 1999.
Grab a piece of paper and jot down what you think.
Done it?
Sorted?
OK, so let’s step back through Ingall’s career and figure it out – and see if you were right!
After winning Bathurst with Larry Perkins in 1995, Ingall joined the former F1 racer in a two-car Castrol team for the 1996 ATCC in a second Commodore.
The car Ingall drove in 1996 was in fact the Bathurst-winning car from the previous season (PE 027) and it was this car Ingall used to take his maiden race and round win that season at Calder.
He used it again early in the 1997 season before Perkins debuted a new car at Sandown and Ingall inherited the former #11 chassis (PE 029), which he drove for the rest of the Championship in which he finished third in the pointscore.
He kept that car into 1998 and used it for eight of the 10 rounds before being forced by officialdom to drive the team’s brand new VT Commodore (PE 031) in the final two rounds at Hidden Valley (where he won) and Oran Park (where he couldn’t match Craig Lowndes and finished runner-up in the title).
PE 031 received a splash of silver paint for 1999 and was retained as the ‘SLX’ Commodore by Ingall before he and Perkins teamed in PE 032 to win the Queensland 500 and then they debuted a new car – PE 035 – at the FAI 1000 at Bathurst.
Another new car was debuted by Ingall at the start of 2000 (PE 036, one of the first to feature the diagonal brace bar behind the windscreen that would become known as the ‘Larry Bar’) and was driven by the Enforcer throughout the single-driver rounds of the championship.
It was the same car that received a one-off deep blue/aqua ‘Magnatec’ Castrol livery for the Canberra race that season.
Perkins Engineering debuted a new car (PE 037) at the Queensland 500 and Perkins and Ingall ran this car at Bathurst before it was updated from VT to VX specification and became Ingall’s car for 2001.
He debuted a new car at the Calder round (PE 039) and ran that through to the end of the season (including having it re-numbered to #11 for the enduros, the same year Perkins crashed into the pit lane entry wall at Bathurst when in a strong position).
It reverted back to being #8 for 2002 for Ingall in what turned out to be his final season with Perkins Engineering and he drove it for the entire season. However, for the endurance races the car was re-stickered as #16 and he and Steven Richards finished second at both the Queensland 500 and Bathurst 1000.
A move to Stone Brothers Racing in 2003 meant a change to Ford and thus a new car in the form of a brand new #9 Caltex Havoline BA Falcon (SBR BA01).
Ingall drove this car throughout 2003 (including the much-publicised incident with Mark Skaife at Eastern Creek that year), though teamed with Marcos Ambrose in Ambrose’s regular car (SBR BA02) for Sandown and Bathurst in a split Pirtek/Caltex livery.
Ingall drove SBR BA01 again in 2004 and finished second in the Championship aboard it before debuting a new car (SBR BA03) in 2005, which he used all year to claim his first V8 Supercars Championship crown.
He drove the same chassis throughout his last two years with SBR in 2006 and 2007 before moving back into Commodores with Paul Morris Motorsports in 2008.
He drove a brand new car dubbed ‘JANSON’ throughout 2008 under the Supercheap Auto banner, finishing on the podium at Queensland Raceway and Bahrain, before debuting another new car (KULWICKI) at the start of 2009.
Ingall drove that car for the entire ’09 season (including podium results at Symmons Plains and Queensland Raceway) before PMM moved to Triple Eight-designed chassis for the 2010 season.
Ingall thus moved into a Triple Eight-designed – though PMM-assembled – Commodore (888A-024, also known by PMM as ‘Mick’ in honour of Mick Doohan) for the entire 2010 season, swapping in 2011 to the ex-Greg Murphy Castrol EDGE car (888A-026) chassis.
It was in this car he made his 200th ATCC/V8SC event start in that year’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000.
A move to Walkinshaw Racing in 2012 meant another change of cars, so Ingall moved into a chassis (WR 013) formerly raced in HRT and later Bundaberg livery.
He drove that for the entire season before moving into a new ‘Car of the Future’ VF Commodore (WR 016, in fact the original WR-built COTF car constructed last year) for 2013 and that’s the car he will race as the #66 Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore in Townsville this weekend.
So that’s eight cars at Perkins Engineering, three at Stone Brothers Racing, four at Paul Morris Motorsports and two, so far, at Walkinshaw Racing.
So the final answer to the question is – 17 cars!
Take out your piece of paper and see if you were right – if you were, well done!
If not, back to the Sleuthing books for more study!
Have a car you’d like the V8 Sleuth to chase down? Then drop him a line and see if you can set the Sleuth a new mission.
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