THE opening day of the 2023 Kumho V8 Touring Car Series is in the books, with Jamie Tilley topping both Friday practice sessions.
Ahead of qualifying and Race 1 today, V8 Sleuth looks at another notable car in the field: the ex-Paul Morris Motorsport Holden VE Commodore being driven by Peter Abood.
Nicknamed ‘Indian’, the chassis was first raced by Paul Morris at the 2008 Adelaide 500 and went on to have a mix of internationally proven stars hop in the hot seat.
Three-time Superbike World Championship title winner Troy Bayliss shared the car with Dean Fiore at the 2009 Bathurst 1000.
The previous year’s visit to Mount Panorama saw an all-international pairing aboard, featuring American NASCAR driver Boris Said and British Touring Car Championship ace Matt Neal.
The duo did not make it to the chequered flag in the Great Race, although the true reason as to why was only revealed much later.
Neal spoke about the ‘Code Red’ ploy which was designed to help the sister car of Morris/Russell Ingall in a 2019 Saturday Sleuthing segment.
“They said if one car was out of it we might have to be a bit of a sacrificial lamb later on if it needed a pit stop or something,” said Neal.
“It’ll be a ‘Code Red.’
“We had an engine problem early and were two laps down. Boris is coming in for his pit stop soon, and I’m suited and booted.
“Dude (Morris) or someone came up to me and said, ‘we’ve got a problem with Rusty (Ingall), we need to pit so we’ve got to call Code Red.’
“I said: ‘Yeah man, tell Boris to just go park it somewhere. I’m fine, we’re out of it anyway.’ And they said, ‘no, we want Boris to come in and then you to go out and go Code Red.’
“I went ‘oh no… I already look like a dickhead in front of all these fans from years before, I don’t want to do it again!’
“So I’m in the car, and I’m going around thinking where can I park this. I didn’t want to do it up the top because I knew I’d get sledged by all the fans.
“So I’m going ‘round, and you’re going round at a fair lick, so I thought the safest place was the Chase. So I had to go and sort of fall on my sword in the Chase.”
After finishing the 2009 main game season with Fiore, ‘Indian’ was handed down to Triple F Racing’s Super2 program, raced the following year by Paul and Todd Fiore.
It returned for a number of Kumho Series/Super3 races in the hands of Jack Sipp between 2016-19.
Qualifying for the Kumho V8 Touring Car Series at Phillip Island is due to get underway this morning at 9:20am AEST.