Motorsport: V8s heading for heat of the Top End

Jamie Whincup has some concerns over tyre wear this weekend. Photo / Alan Gibson

The race for the Australian V8 Supercar title hots up this weekend in the heat of the Northern Territory's capital, Darwin.

Round five of the 14-round series hits the Hidden Valley circuit where the drivers will have to be super fit as in-car temperatures will be getting close to 50C.

Not only will the drivers have to cope with the scorching temperatures, they'll also have to pay particular attention to their tyres. The Darwin race has a history of chewing up and spitting out the Dunlop Control tyre and teams are concerned about what's going to happen to the new, softer sprint tyre.

Defending champion and series leader Jamie Whincup is looking forward to the weekend mixed with a bit of trepidation concerning tyre wear.

"Darwin's the only round in the championship I haven't been on the podium," said Whincup. "I'm looking forward to changing that and we've got a lot of confidence going in.

"The car's quick and we've had a fantastic start to the year and we've just got to pull it all together [in Darwin] and get on the podium this weekend."

Whincup's positive outlook for a good result in both races is however tempered with a small amount of concern over how the sprint tyres, especially, are going to hold up.

"It's going to be a bit of an issue with the softer tyre as it won't last very long. They don't like heat and won't like a lot of corners, and this weekend they're going to play a massive role in the decisions made by the engineers as to when to put the tyre on and for how long."

Whincup jumped out the gate like a scalded cat at the beginning of the season and it wasn't until the fifth race that he was headed, and then only by his TeamVodafone teammate Craig Lowndes. Plus, it wasn't until the last round in Tasmania that a Holden, in the hands of Garth Tander, managed to wrest a race win from Ford.

"The Holden guys are very, very quick as are the Ford Performance guys. We're confident but the competition is fierce," said Whincup.

Meanwhile, Fabian Coulthard is making waves in the bottom half of the top 10 as the leading Kiwi driver in eighth and picked up his first podium finish last time out.

"I wanted to have a real go at Dumbrell [he was deliberately holding Coulthard up] but realised I was in too good a position to throw it all away," said Coulthard. "The other problem was he was driving another Paul Walkinshaw car and it involved team tactics.

"Darwin will probably be the hottest race we go to this year and I'm looking forward to it as I don't struggle with it being hot so it's looking pretty promising. It's really nice to have a new car for the first time and it's performing well and it's a lot closer to the other cars and we only have to fine tune it when we get to the circuit."

Another young gun, Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen, is also in the top 10, just six points back from Coulthard.

Van Gisbergen is a big fan of the softer tyres, having used them to good effect at the Winton round, coming from 27th on the grid to sixth in the first race, then getting another good run out of them in Tasmania.

"The sprint tyre is everything a driver of one of these cars could ask for," he said. "There's heaps of grip and you can really push the car hard. The downside is that the grip goes away quicker."

The first qualifying session was yesterday with the Top Ten Shootout and a 34-lap race today and the second qualifying session (for the second race) and longer 69-lap main race tomorrow.

POINTS

* Jamie Whincup 1044
* Will Davison 948
* Steven Johnson 753
* Lee Holdsworth 723
* Garth Tander 720
* Craig Lowndes 669
* Rick Kelly 627
* Fabian Coulthard 606
* Shane Van Gisbergen 600
* Mark Winterbottom 573