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Saturday, April 28, 2012

Those other people who race: Hairpin-flavored doughnuts

Welcome to a periodic feature in which The Rusty Hub takes a brief and irrelevant look at some minute aspect of professional racing.

The Inaugural Edition® finds us looking at this year's V8 Supercars* race from Tasmania. Ten laps into the weekend's second race, we see Supercars superstar Jamie Whincup either making a slight mistake or racking up some major kudos by hooning his Holden Commodore through the Symmons Plains hairpin with a 540-degree turn in what can only accurately be described as "Safeway carpark stuff."






Amazingly, Whincup went on to win the race. When interviewed about the spin, he assured us that he was thinking all along, "When in doubt, hit the throttle."

Also of note, "Frosty" is Ford Falcon driver Mark Winterbottom's nickname.






* If you're not familiar with V8 Supercars, the series is a bit like an Australian version of NASCAR except for two key points:

 (1) There are no oval tracks. The Aussies run on a mix of street circuits and road courses, including the intimidating Mount Panorama Circuit.

(2) The fistfights in the series are ONLY between the fans. In NASCAR, we're familiar with hotheaded drivers engaging in pushing matches. In the Land Down Under, drivers tend to behave themselves, but fans engage in fisticuffs over the familiar Ford/Holden (a General Motors subsidiary) rivalry. This ain't knifey-spoony, after all.

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