Why V8 Supercars are THE HARDEST to Drive

Great cars, scary circuits, loud noises, monster crashes, angry drivers and rain barely slows them down, what is there not to like?

Back in the mid-late 70s, Alan Moffatt teamed up with Jackie Ickx for the Bathurst 1000 - the story goes that Jackie took one lap in the car during practice, brought it back in and claimed the brakes weren't working. After a test lap, Moffatt said they were fine, to which Ickx said "but ze car, Alan, it does not stop!" Moffatt replied "I said it had brakes, I didn't say it would stop" 😂

MASSIVELY underrated on iRacing. Wish more people would drive it so we could get stacked grids.

The real skill is the ability to avoid kangaroos on the track

Really its because we have to drive them upside-down here in Australia.

As a south Australian, it fills my heart that international racing fans still remember how good the Adelaide Street track was

I think they did some tests recently between the Mustang and Camaro, they found a difference of a 0.2% or something like that in something to do with the Centre of Gravity, Which they've since then tried to fix. But to put it into perspective, The difference between the ZB and the Mustang when it released was rumoured to be something like a difference of 2.2%.

Being an Aussie and getting to witness these machines go around Bathurst is a privilege. The Ford v Holden rivalry has been going on for decades from the late 60s onwards. They switched to an open class in the 80s which saw BMW, Jaguar and then came the Nissan GTR v Ford Sierra with the Nissan blowing everything away. Nissans dominance led to Motorsport Australia deciding to go back to 2 manufacturers again in the mid 90s. It’s incredible racing and I recommend anyone visiting Australia to watch them live.

Last year, during the 12h of Bathurst, one of the Aussies driving a GT3 said precisely the opposite: he felt the GT3 cars a lot more difficult to drive because you only had 1 racing line and as cars relied on aero downforce, that removed any margin to drive (and play) with the right foot. He said that the SupercarV8 were a handful, but playful and organic.

IMO the main reason why they are so hard to drive is missing: no limited slip differential, not even an open one, just a spool. This means both rear-tyres are always spinning at the same pace and the outer wheel is getting the full torque if the inner wheel jumps over a curb and probably a 90/10 torque-split in normal tight corners making those cars very understeering on entry and very oversteering on the throttle at the apex.

Honestly people always compare completely different motorsport but V8 supercars requires the ability to manage the weight and grip as well as having the car setup for max “ chuckability “ where you can just send it into a car.

4:51 GM also stopped selling the Camaro, in fact, they stopped selling the Camaro before Holden was even shuttered. They replaced a zombie model with a zombie model.

Hey Scott, what about a video talking about Brazilian Stock Car Pro Series? We have a rich history since the 1970's and now we're on the 5th gen cars, using GM (Chevrolet Cruze) and Toyota (Corolla) body with LS engines equally tuned, some cool tracks and a grid with lots of ex-F1 and Indy drivers, like Antônio Pizzonia, Rubens Barrichello (2 times Champion of the pro series), Felipe Massa, Tony Kanaan, Luciano Burti and Nelson Piquet Jr, just no name a few. We also had races were the drivers share the car with another drivers, and names like Jacques Villeneuve and Antonio Felix da Costa raced here. I guess it worths to take a look!

Thanks for doing a video on the V8s. I reckon it’s the best racing series in the world. Hopefully overtaking gets easier this year and hopefully there’s someone to compete with SVG

It was originally called the Australian touring car championship and consisted of different car classes back in the 1960s. The Australian Ford and Holden clashes started then in the 1960s between the Falcon and the monaros, then later the toranas and Commodores while the Falcon name stayed. It was a series at the very essence of race on Sunday sell on Monday.

I miss the live axle days. Those setups were so insane, all the weird tech that went into making the solid axle work well was cool.

The new Gen 3 format reduced downforce by 40 percent the Gen 2 Supercars are only second or 2 off a gt3 race car on bathurst despite being much harder to drive with far less downforce

As somebody that grew up in Australia in the 2000s it used to be so much more compelling when it was Holden and Ford. I know times change and things evolve but it used to be so much more fun.

I’m 34 and have spent 33 years watching these cars… the last gen cars you wouldn’t know they’re hard to drive. Current gen trying to take them back to the VY/BA era and I love it

Considering it's the only Sunday afternoon racing here in Australia thanks to timezone differences, I've always been grateful it's been a good series, particularly late 1990/2000s.