30^th April, 2002

Bowe angered by parity provisions

Ahead of this weekend’s third round of the Nation’s Cup championship at Sydney’s Oran Park, title favourite and championship leader John Bowe has spoken out on new penalties being imposed by race organiser Procar on his PHR Scuderia Ferrari F360 GT.

“Procar have seen fit to not only add 100 kilos of weight to the Ferrari but now reduce the rev limit from 8500 rpm to 8200 rpm, as well as reduce the restrictors on each cylinder bank by 1mm,” said Bowe.

Procar have previously added weight to cars that are seen to have a performance edge over others in the same class. Otherwise known as `parity’, this practice is used in an attempt to even up the racing.

Such parity measures were seen in their most public light in V8 Supercars, with the competing Commodores and Falcons all having to adopt similar aerodynamic aids on their bodies.

”Whilst I understand the need to keep the competition tight, in a class like Nations Cup you are never going to achieve total parity, simply because of the vast differences in teams, cars and budgets,” said Bowe.

“Surely with weight penalties already in place, it’s time to let pure performance cars like the Ferrari, Lamborghini and Viper do what they do best, perform.

“The problem we face now is that the engine penalties they have just imposed are an unknown quantity. We haven’t had any chance to test with these modifications in place. In fact we haven’t even got the restrictors from Italy yet, they are still on a plane somewhere.”

Bowe believes if penalties are to be imposed, they should only be restricted to the adding of weight .

“I have to admit that I’m annoyed about these new penalties,” he said.

“PHR Scuderia is a very serious & professional race team. It should be that other teams are looking to get to a higher level, not the bar lowered for them to catch up.”