Ford brought their SuperVan to Bathurst to parade it around for the 12 Hours of Bathurst. Fortunately, they also brought a Race Car Driver and Race Car Engineers. The result (reading between the lines) was someone saying "hey, I'll bet if we made these changes we could go REALLY fast".
So they did just that for the first Supercar round the next weekend. Tweaked the van, installed one (1) Romain Dumas, and pulled the pin. He reset the lap record that had been set by an uncorked Mercedes GT3 car just the weekend before.
It's not the overall lap record because some guy named "button" drove a McLaren F1 car around really fast a few years ago. But most of the racing there is closed wheel cars, and Romain set the closed wheel record. Also the commercial vehicle record, which is amusing given the nature of the van.
New record is 1:56.3247. Previous best (the Mercedes) was 1:56.6054. What I find particularly impressive about this is that Dumas is not a Mt. Panorama specialist, and that's a challenging track that does not allow for many mistakes. The Mercedes was driven by Jules Gounon, who has three Bathurst 12 hour wins.
Video! I love the noise.
For those who like their race cars more traditionally shaped and powered, here's the Merc.
Poor guy's left foot must be broken.
ROFL @ having a Ford van beat everything else.
A lap record video where I'm happy I don't have headphones.
Commercial is a loose term in your post correct? The AMG GT3 is more of a commercial vehicle than the transit utilized in this attempt.
Is your alter ego "Danny Jay" on Facebook?
"Commercial" means "for the purpose of doing commerce", ie a van or truck. I think that's simply the Aussies getting in on the joke. The SuperVan is clearly not a commercial vehicle, but it looks like one and the fun part about it is how much it doesn't look like a typical racecar.
I don't use Facebook much, maybe one technical support reply per week. So no, I'm not whoever Danny Jay is.
ooooooh, I love that sound!
"angry electric" 
I love how it is always in 1st gear.
STM317
PowerDork
2/26/24 3:44 p.m.
Why even have the gear indicator in the SuperVan?
I love that there's a "commercial vehicles" category in the tracks lap record book. Closed top and electric I understand, but commercial vehicles implies there's vans or trucks raced there on the regular.
STM317
PowerDork
2/26/24 4:13 p.m.
In reply to The0retical :
It is the land of utes
In reply to The0retical :
If there are two of anything, there's a race :) The Aussies do love their utes.
The race I'm looking forward to: there are three Lunar Rovers on the moon left over from the Apollo days. One of them even has a busted fender that was repaired with maps and duct tape. Sounds like a spec series to me.
boy, that turbo was spooling the whole time, from the sound of it 
In reply to DrBoost :
Secret picture of the dashboard of the SuperVan 4.2:
Van racing makes a lot of sense from a sq footage for advertising dollars and livery standpoint.
Wow, the brakes on on that AMG are insane! Watch how fast he slows coming into the chase at the end of conrod straight! 
As for that electric van: it's neat, but it sounds awful. I don't think I can unhear that.
I bet there's some Daijiban racers from Japan salivating now they know there's a "commercial" vehicle lap record to go for...
The van was neat, the vertical camera orientation not so much. Which is one of my main pet peeves.
