It's almost here! You can hear the cars shouting, the walls reverberating, and the subtle sound of the handful of unhappy residents complaining. 'It' is of course the Coates Hire Newcastle 500 — the final round of the 2017 Supercars Championship season.
It's been a funny old year. Penske's Supercars tilt finally bared fruit, 'a team of rejects' won Bathurst, and the future of the sport got put under more scrutiny than it's ever had before. But we still have a handful of questions to answer before we get to 2018. Here's what we'll be paying particular attention to this weekend.
Championship
Photo / Matthew Hansen
Mathematics suggest we should be keeping tabs on Shane van Gisbergen, Chaz Mostert, Fabian Coulthard, Scott McLaughlin, and Jamie Whincup. But realists say that it's really all down to those last two names; McLaughlin and Whincup.
The duo are separated by just 30 points, which is basically nothing at this point of a season. Whincup has the upper hand but it sort of doesn't matter — they're pretty much on equal footing here. They've both won races recently, so there shouldn't be any doubts in regards to form. Whincup's won the title six times to McLaughlin's ... uh ... none times, which perhaps hands him a slim advantage.
A McLaughlin championship win in the grand scheme of things for us Kiwis and our dinky little country at the bottom of the world would be an enormous feat. Remember that prior to van Gisbergen's championship crown last year, a Kiwi hadn't won the series since Jim 'Pack of Bastards' Richards back in the Group A Nissan days.
It would add to Kiwi winners at Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship, plus in Japan's Super GT series, and the European Formula 4 circuit among other titles.
The downhill slalom
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As dissected earlier this week by the marvelous, all-conquering Mark Larkham, the new Newcastle street-circuit layout is a heck of a thing on paper and in theory.
Why? It's cambered, it's narrow, and packed with a variety of slow and fast corners. In particular, there's a beautiful little stretch of road from the top end of the circuit that winds along the beachside, downhill.
It looks bloody challenging, primarily because it's so narrow. If there's a concertina heading down, or if it's raining, it could be a damn treacherous and exciting little piece of road. Watching the Macau Grand Prix last weekend, I couldn't help but think that the two had some passing similarities (pun perhaps intended).
Danger? Macau? That can only mean...
Crashes
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Yep. Tight street circuits are known for ripped panels, crumpled carbon fibre, paint swapping, and the sight of dollar signs for parts distributors and mechanics.
Hence why a lot of casual racing fans love street races, and why a lot of teams and drivers hate them with passion.
These tracks are popular with Supercars bigwigs not because of crashes, but because they help take the sport out to the people better than any conventional race track. How are locals in built-up cities like Adelaide, Hamilton, Gold Coast, and indeed Newcastle going to be able to avoid the sport if it's racing right in front of their house?...
Tracks like these are here to stay, and that's not all bad. They're damn challenging things to master, and depending on track design they can produce cracking races.
We'll see this weekend which category the Newcastle facility fits into.
Street-circuit elite
Photo / Matthew Hansen
The challenging nature of street circuits tends to 'sort the men from the boys' as they say (sorry Simona de Silvestro). In these tightly confined environments, some drivers tend to shine particularly bright.
Shane van Gisbergen is one, James Courtney is another. Pretty sure Scotty Mac is decent on a street circuit, too.
Remember, nobody has raced here before. None of these teams have baseline set-ups that they can just plug in to their cars before practice one. It's all an unknown, and those scenarios tend to be a great leveler.
And in those conditions, watch the cream rise to the top.
Monday morning
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Back in the day, when you could get a pie and a coke for $2.50 from the dairy down the road and Bill Cosby was still an American hero, the Supercars Championship 'silly season extravaganza' was reserved for midnight on December 31st.
That's when most driver contracts would end and begin, and news of chopping and swapping would hit the newswaves in a bit chaotic mess as we all celebrated (or mourned) the beginning of another year.
Things have changed a bit, thanks to social media and all the other technological jiggerypokery of 2017. But in the recent past, certain announcements have been confirmed on the week following the Supercars series finale.
It might not be a hard and fast rule to sit on the other side of the last round of the year, giddy and eager for an immediate injection of silly season announcements. But, we're on the cusp of another interesting set of potential changes.
Will Davison's not confirmed for next season and Nissan Motorsport have to find a replacement for the retiring Todd Kelly. Jason Bright's retired too and now we don't know what he's going to do with his REC, while Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport have announced a shift to a Prodrive Ford (but no driver). Richie Stanaway, Todd Hazelwood, Jack Lebrocq and a few other younguns sit waiting in the wings — most of them deserving of a promotion.
It'll be an interesting ride. Keep your eye out.