Saturday Sleuthing: Skaife’s Supercheap Commodore

Next weekend Mark Skaife will be a busy man as part of the TV broadcast team covering the Watpac Townsville 400 in North Queensland, an event that debuted on the calendar in 2009 just one year after the Hall of Famer retired from full-time Supercars racing.

While Skaife has never actually raced a Supercar on the Reid Park hybrid street/road course, he has actually driven a Supercar at speed around the challenging 2.86-kilometre layout, samping Russell Ingall’s Supercheap Auto Commodore for a TV story at the 2010 event.

These days Skaife and Ingall work side-by-side on the desk for FOX Sports but back then things were still cooling off from their infamous coming-together in the 2003 season finale at Eastern Creek.

However the site of their surnames on the window of the car - even if it was only for a TV hot lap rather than an actual race - still made many people take a ‘double take’!

Steve Owen, 2011

So just what was this Supercheap Auto Commodore that was sampled by the five-time champion?

A Triple Eight-designed chassis that was physically assembled by Paul Morris Motorsports, today’s featured car ‘Mick’ was nicknamed by PMM after five-time World 500cc Motorcycle Champion Mick Doohan in the usual tradition of the team naming its race machines.

It was driven for the entire 2010 season by Russell Ingall as the #39 Supercheap Auto Commodore with Morris himself co-driving at Phillip Island and Bathurst and Jack Perkins at the Gold Coast 600.

PMM retained the car in the 2011 season, though it became the VIP Petfoods entry of Steve Owen. Many will remember it was involved that year in the fiery accident at Barbagallo Raceway in Perth with Karl Reindler off the start line, however it was repaired in time for the next event and didn’t miss the next round at Winton.

Hamilton, 2012

Again Morris returned to the cockpit of this car to act as co-driver for the endurance races while American Boris Said shared with Owen at the Gold Coast event.

PMM morphed its operation into the Dick Johnson Racing workshop in 2012 so this car - 888A-024 - was sold to Tekno Autosports and became Michael Patrizi’s #91 entry.

It ran with a number of liveries and sponsors throughout the year, Kiwi Jonny Reid (Sandown and Bathurst) and Lucas di Grassi (Gold Coast) sharing its controls with Patrizi in the endurance races.

The arrival of Car of the Future for 2013 meant this car, along with a massive amount of other existing Falcons and Commodores, moved into the Dunlop Series from 2013 onwards with Eggleston Motorsport.

Bathurst, 2016

The Melbourne-based team ran this car for the last four years, Kiwis Daniel Gaunt and then Ant Pedersen driving it in 2013 before Pedersen returned as its steerer in both the 2014 and 2015 series.

Last year it appeared in the Phillip Island round with Taz Douglas at the helm and it next competed at Bathurst where Douglas had Grant Denyer join as his co-driver for the 250-kilometre Saturday enduro.

Douglas gave the car its final Dunlop Series appearance in the final round at Sydney Olympic Park before Steven Page acquired it to race in this year’s V8 Touring Car Series.

He made his series debut in the car - now running a black livery - in the opening round at the WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint earlier this year, meaning there’s plenty of racing left in this car yet!

Phillip Island, 2017

All up this car competed in 43 Supercars Championship rounds and 81 individual races in the top category however it never was able to make its way to finish on the podium with its best finish of fourth coming in Ingall’s hands in 2010 at Queensland Raceway and also Symmons Plains.

Saturday Sleuthing takes a break next weekend for the Watpac Townsville 400 but will be back on Saturday July 15 with another special story on a car from Aussie racing history.

If you have a car you’d like to see featured by our V8 Sleuth this year, send him an email here or visit the website here to get in contact.