New Super 5000 car revealed
Now we're getting somewhere
V8 open wheel racing in Australia is at last moving in a direction that makes sense again. On Wednesday, S5000 revealed a new car based around an Onroak-Ligier JS-F3 chassis running a Ford Coyote V8 engine. This new car will replace both the Formula Thunder 5000 and outgoing Super 5000 cars.
The announcement brings to an end several months of uncertainty of what forn a national open wheel championship sitting above F4 would take. Previously, there were two competing concepts. Billed as a modern version of Formula 5000, Formula Thunder 5000 was the first to emerge in 2016. The aim of FT5000 was to create a relatively affordable 5.0L V8 open wheel series, similar to the original F5000. It was to be a spec-series with a control chassis designed by Swift in 2008 for Formula Nippon with a Coyote engine. The car was designed to high levels of mechanical grip and low downforce. The cars were expected to cost $240,000 each. FT5000's problem was that it was never going to be approved by CAMS as a national championship or even a national series in its own right. FT5000 cars would have been forced to run under the Formula Libre banner.
The initial FT5000 prototype
Super 5000 came a short while later. Super 5000 was created by Supercars during a period through 2017 in which they attempted to gain a monopoly on professional circuit racing in Australia. Around the same time, Supercars had an unsuccessful attempt at buying the Australian GT Championship. Super 5000 cars were to be powered by used Supercars 5.0L V8 engines. The Super 5000 prototype resembled a 1980s F1 car, rather than a modern open wheeler designed by someone who knew what they were doing. Archaic looks was not Super 5000’s biggest problem, however. The 650hp engines would have made them very fast. So fast that they would be restricted to FIA Grade One or Two circuits. At the time, Australia did not have a single permanent Grade Two circuit. The only Grade Two circuit in Australia in 2017 was the Gold Coast street circuit. Albert Park the only Grade One, and also a street circuit. Tailem Bend has since opened and has been built to Grade Two specifications, but three venues is not enough for a national championship. Using Supercar engines would have also made them expensive. One Supercar engine typically costs around $100,000.. Super 5000 drew criticism from multiple Supercars team owners, who believed they would be too expensive to build. Not one Supercars team expressed an interest in racing them.
Supercars' old Super 5000 prototype
What we had was a stand-off between a category with a good idea but limited resources, and an over-ambitious one backed by a category organiser with more money than sense. Late last year the two parties agreed to work together to create a single unified formula.
This week, after a lengthy silence, a new car emerged. The S5000 car clearly takes after cheaper and less technically ambitious FT5000. The chassis is once again derived from one from a different category. The Onroak-Ligier JS-F3 is the control chassis for the Formula 3 Americas Championship, The S5000 version should be considerably faster, with a 560hp Ford Coyote Aluminator V8s in place of the F3-spec 270hp Honda 2.0l four cylinder. S5000s will be the fourth most powerful open wheel cars in the world after F1, IndyCar and F2.
S5000 will be run by Australian Racing Group, the same organisation behind the forthcoming Australian TCR Series. ARG is managed by former Supercars senior executive Matt Braid and underwritten by property developer Brian Boyd, who was one of the early financial backers of Super 5000. Chris Lambden, the instigator of FT5000, is the category manager. There does not appear to be anyone from Supercars involved in the management of the championship, which explains the dramatic departure from the original Super 5000 concept.
“The 2018 FIA-spec Onroak-Ligier tub, amalgamated with the V8 engine and Holinger rear end, makes up a totally contemporary Super5000 car that is going to blow people away. It will retain the modest downforce and mechanical grip elements that we have aimed for, so it’s going to be fast and safe and, at last, we have a serious, spectacular, high-level open wheeler category – perhaps Australia’s version of IndyCar”, Lambden said.
“There have been a lot of people expressing interest in getting involved, and with CAMS now ticking off the car and the championship series, it is well and truly on.”
Describing S5000 as an Australian version of IndyCar might be stretching things a bit, at least in the short term. At the end of the day this is more or less a V8 F3 car. Unburdened by having to perpetually play second fiddle to Supercars, S5000 has the potential to grow into Australia’s version of IndyCar, but it will take some time to get there. This will be a professional championship right from the start, however. It is a thoroughly modern and very powerful car that meets 2018 FIA safety standards. There will be no gentleman drivers.
“From what I can see it is too fast for gentleman drivers. I think we will see wealthy gentleman racers actually owning cars to put young guys in,” Braid explained.
“The interest is there from people wanting to buy cars and wanting to run guys and girls in them.
“When I say younger I don’t think there is an age limit but an element of professionalism is required to run these things. It could well be some Supercars-esque drivers that want to have play, down to some young drivers coming up through the ranks.
“There could be some international drivers, we have had approaches from the US, South America and Asia”.
As for local talent, S5000 is likely to attract drivers from Super2 or F3. Matthew Brabham, Will Brown and Thomas Randle are obvious candidates. Would Supercar drivers be lured over? It seems unlikely that any of them would drop Supercars for S5000 next year. Lambden are aiming for a 6-7 round S5000 championship, with most races run as Supercars support categories. This almost certainly rules out any Supercar drivers from competing. As the championship gains momentum and a following of its own, it will be able to headline its own events. At that point drivers will be able to do both Supercars and S5000.
The latest S5000 car eschews both the technical obsolescence of FT5000 and the ludicrous cost of the old Super 5000 to create something that moght just work. Lambden going it alone was never going to achieve CAMS approval for a national championship let alone financial stability and a full grid. Super 5000 was never going to attract entrants with deep enough pockets or come across as anything other than a retro-styled sideshow.
After two years of controversy, Australia will soon have a genuine professional open wheel championship that can deliver good racing between talented drivers while remaining financially sustainable. S5000 will be the most intriguing championship in 2019
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Comments (3)
I did not know that Wilson Security sponsored car racing.
The Supercars version was actually based on the looks of the old Lola T332 - T430 series Formula 5000 cars, not an old F1 car of the 1980s.
Personally I like what they have come up with for S5000. A high powered open wheel racer with minimal aero grip that relies on driver skill and being able to set up the car. On some tracks around Australia, the lack of downforce that's been deliberately engineered into the car (e.g. the smaller rear wing than the F3 version of the Ligier) will see the car's actually slower than the F3's despite the S5000's having upwards of 560 bhp from the Ford V8. Tracks like Winton, Sydney Motorsport Park, Mallala, Barbagallo etc ... tracks with either a short lap or a lot of corners will see them on occasions being slower. Even The Bend with its 290 km/h, 1 km long straight has seen F3's lap quicker (so far). But at others where horsepower comes into play, places like Sandown, Bathurst, Phillip Island, Queensland Raceway, Symmons Plains, those tracks should see the S5000's taking outright lap records. In fact, that's already happened at Sandown where the S5000 (and outright) lap record is now 2.9 seconds faster than any F3 time there.
This looks good. Very excited about this