Bowe Bows To Pressure And Is Back In Black
16/3/2004 5:15 (Press Release) -
Due to overwhelming public comment, John Bowe will return to his traditional black OzEmail Falcon livery for this weekend’s opening round of the 2004 V8 Supercar Championship at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.
Bowe, who competed in matching white livery of his team mate, Brad Jones’ Falcon at the Australian F1 Grand Prix last week has been amazed at the amount of interest from motorsport fans on the colour of his Ford V8 Supercar.
“We’ve been inundated with calls and e-mails from all sorts of people asking us to go back to the black and green livery that we had last year. We really had no idea that the concept of having each of our OzEmail Falcons a different colour was so popular,” said former Touring Car Champ, John Bowe.
“It seems the black car design has been a bit of a favourite with the BJR fans and they weren’t too happy we’d changed over to two white cars for the Grand Prix,” he added.
With the enormous levels of equipment now required to be carried by V8 Supercar teams to race meetings, management at Brad Jones Racing were looking for some economies-of-scale in their body panel stocks.
“We had initially thought that we would run two white cars this year, so we could haul less panels to the races. By having two different colour cars, we almost double the amount of spare body parts we need to have on board our team transporter,” said Team Boss, Brad Jones.
“But that idea is now out the window and we’ve gone back to having both sets packed and ready.”
“It’s been quite a learning experience for us, seeing just how passionate fans are about the look of the race cars they support. The level of interest shows how far the V8 Supercar category has come with its fan base,” Jones added.
After a challenging shake down for both of the OzEmail Falcons and the Australian Grand Prix, the team at BJR have been busy putting the final touches together for the opening event proper, starting in Adelaide on March 19th.
“We’re feeling pretty good about our chances at the Clipsal 500. John’s [Bowe] new car proved to be a good package and my car got better and better as the weekend went on. I’m not ready to make any bold predictions but it would certainly be worthwhile keeping an eye on us,” Jones concluded.
V8 Supercars’ showcase event, the Clipsal 500 gets underway on March 19th to 21st with a gruelling 250km race on both Saturday and Sunday. The Adelaide Street Circuit is based on the city’s ex-Formula One layout and attracts crowds of almost 300,000.
Release Date: 15/03/2004
Brad Jones Racing
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