A FORD Falcon V8 Supercar unraced in over five years is making a return to the track this weekend in the Combined Sedans category at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
The car is one of six former V8 Supercars competing in the support class this weekend.
South Australian Robert Vanderkamp is the owner/driver of the BF Falcon, the car originally built from a spare WPS Racing shell and campaigned by Rod Dawson’s Radspeed team.
The car never competed in the V8 Supercars Championship ‘main game’, and made its debut in the hands of Luke Youlden at Oran Park in 2008 in the final round of that year’s Fujitsu Series.
Youlden, Ryan Hansford and David Besnard were among a variety of drivers to spend time behind the wheel of the car in the Development Series between 2008 and 2010.
The car later competed in the Kumho V8 Touring Car Series in the hands of Nathan Assaillit and Scott Loadsman as well as Aaron Seton, who made his V8 racing debut at the wheel of the car in the Winton round of the series in 2017.
Its last race came in Seton’s hands at the Queensland Raceway round in that year.
Current owner Vanderkamp, from Goolwa in South Australia, bought the car in 2018 and had a brief test session at The Bend in 2021, though this weekend is the first time he’s raced it.
The blue Southcoast Marine-backed Ford retains its KRE Engines-built powerplant and a H-pattern gearbox.
Also competing in the Combined Sedans support category this weekend is former Development Series pilot Jonathan Beikoff, who returns to the Mountain at the wheel of the ex-Jim Beam Racing Falcon FG raced last year in the Super3 Series by Jarred Danaher.
His father Shane is also back at Bathurst this weekend, and will no doubt have plenty of fans given he’s at the wheel of the AU Falcon he ran on occasion in last year’s Super3 Series.
Victorian Allen Nash is back at Bathurst at the wheel of his Jack Daniel’s-liveried Commodore VE. The car – chassis PE 046 – is among all of the Perkins Engineering-built cars featured in V8 Sleuth’s hugely popular collector’s book documenting all of the PE cars.
We have limited stock remaining here of unsigned, media review copies we’ve made available for sale to those that missed out on a numbered, signed copy.
Rick Newman competed in the Combined Sedans class at last year’s Bathurst 12 Hour and is back at the helm of his ex-Briggs Motorsport Falcon, a car that started its life as an AU model in 2002 but has since morphed into a B-series model.
The other ex-V8 Supercar competing is Stephen Coe’s VE Commodore. Originally built by Paul Morris Motorsports, the chassis dubbed ‘HERCULES’ is the same car that rolled with Morris at the wheel at Pukekohe in 2007.
