Michael Masin

Supercars needs to fix its penalty system. At the very least it needs to be explained better. Over the last few rounds, teams have claimed that penalties received for driving infringements have been inconsistent, and drivers and the media have labelled redresses as dangerous. The fans can’t agree about whats fair, but most don’t like the redress. At different times, drive through, time, points and grid position penalties have been used. At other times, position redresses have been used.

Most people will be familiar with BMC/British Leyland, the company that produced two revolutionary cars, the Mini and Range Rover, and countless dreadful ones. Well during the 60s and 70s they had a truly disastrous Australian operation, known mainly for the large P76 sedan. The advertising slogan for the Leyland P76 was ‘Anything But Average’. For most of Leyland Motor Corporation of Australia and its predecessor, BMC Australia’s history, average would have been an improvement.

The last Ford Falcon rolled off the Broadmeadows production line on friday, ending 91 years Australian-built Fords. The Falcon enjoyed a 56 year production run making it the longest running automotive nameplate on an Australian car. Longevity and stints at the top of the sales charts in the 1980s and 90s mean that 3.8 million Falcons have been produced. The Falcon spans eight generations, has been offered in six body styles, seven if you include the Fairlane, held a world record and finished on the podium of the London to Sydney marathon.

If you saw the podium for last Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, you would have seen Mark Webber reluctantly drinking from fellow Aussie Daniel Ricciardo’s shoe. The origins of the shoey lie in 1800s Germany, and more recently it has been a tradition for a handful of Australians. However it was only in 2015 that it entered mainstream culture thanks to a series of Australian car and motorcycle racers. The Americans gave spraying champagne and international racing colours. Our cultural contribution to international motorsport is drinking from a sweaty boot.

Two years ago today I became the owner of an FG Ford Falcon XR6. Australian readers will be familiar with these and so will many other people, but if you’re not a Falcon XR6 is essentially a 530i M Sport for Mondeo money. The XR6 has been the benchmark of the class it created since 1991, but what are they like to live with.

Because Supercars content will make up a large amount of my articles here, I thought it would be a good idea to write an introduction to the series for anyone unfamiliar with it.

According to specifications on Ford’s Australian and American websites, a Falcon cab chassis has a payload larger than over 80% of F150 variants. And only two F150s have a larger payload than a 2.2L Ranger 4x2 single cab chassis, the 5.0L V8 and 3.5L Ecoboost single cab. These F150s only offered 10 and 40kg more, not what you’d expect from a vehicle weighing 50% more. The F150’s aluminium body easily gives it the biggest payload in class, which would suggest that there’s no Silverado or Ram 1500 that can match a Ranger. I’m going look into this some more and write a blog post on it.