2015 Season Preview – Who will take out the title this year?

The 2015 V8 Supercars season starts this weekend with the first event of the year at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide. The question everyone is asking is can anyone beat six time champion Jamie Whincup and Red Bull Racing Team to the driver’s title and team’s championship respectively.

The off season has seen some major changes in the formation of the grid for 2015 with some driver, team and manufacturer changes. These include:

• David Wall moves from Ford’s Dick Johnson Racing to Volvo Polestar Racing. This move could put David in a position to challenge for wins and podiums. David also brings across the Wilson Security and Payce sponsorship from DJR
• Lee Holdsworth moves from Mercedes Benz Erebus Motorsport across to Charlie Schwerkolt Racing, who left Prodrive Racing Australia and has linked up with Walkinshaw Racing, which will give Lee his confidence back driving a competitive team. Expect to see him up the front more often and get a win / podium here and there.
• Making his debut for the first time in the V8Supercar Series is Ashley Walsh who is replacing Lee Holdsworth at Erebus. Erebus need a good year this year as they have struggled to get there engines to produce enough horsepower to match and be competitive with the Holden, Volvo and Ford powered cars.
• Also making his debut this year is New Zealander Andre Heimgartner in a new team called Super Black Racing. Super Black debuted last year at Bathurst and impressed all V8 Supercar fans in their first outing, so it will be interesting to see how the rookie team will go. They are linking up as a customer car from Prodrive Australia after Charlie Schwerkolt left. Like Ashley Walsh, Andre will no doubt struggle to be on the pace early.
• At the end of the 2014 Ford Australia announced to the V8Supercar world that they will no longer give there factory team Ford Performance Racing (Now known as Prodrive Racing Australia) any factory funding after the 2015 season. Ford fans took to social media showing there disgust in this decision and also saying that they will give there Ford back.
• Nick Percat found out before the last event of the year that James Rosenberg was to hand back his racing entitlements licence due to not being able to fund the car for this year. Since then Nick signed with Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport. Expect him to be consistently inside the top 15 each race. However, with Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport being a young team still trying to get the right package together, it will take them awhile to be consistently inside the top ten. But don’t be surprised if he is in the top ten, gets a podium or wins a race sometime this year.
• Marcos Ambrose makes his return to V8 Supercars this year after being away for ten years racing in NASCAR. He will be the solo driver in the DJR Penske Team, which sees Australian icon Dick Johnson and successful American motorsport owner Roger Penske join forces. Can the new partnership and the inclusion of the experienced Ambrose as their driver bring DJR back to the front of the field and be able to challenge for race wins and podiums?
• Red Bull Racing will still be the team to beat this year. Jamie Whincup has re-signed with the team till 2018 and Craig Lowndes is negotiating with them about extending his contract with the team. However his engineer Jeremy Moore is leaving the team to go overseas so if Craig re-signs he will have former FPR engineer Grant McPherson. Jamie Whincup will continue with David Cauchie as his engineer with Mark Dutton now team manager.  

My prediction as to who I think will win the Drivers and Team Championship:

I can see Holden Racing Team and James Courtney getting the victories this time because the changes at Red Bull are likely to take longer than they expect to bed in and work as was demonstrated at the first testing session of the year.