Lamborghini Super Trofeo series a grand day out for ordinary billionaires

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen celebrates with his trophy after the Japanese Formula One Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit. Picture: AP

Just when you thought the party was over, the orange clown walked back in on Wednesday and turned the music back on. But the party never stopped at Lambo Land.

Last weekend, while you had your eyes glued to the F1 in Suzuka and the Mazda MX-5 Cup in the Suzuka of Australia, the city with world’s largest concrete sheep complete with very visible private parts, One Raceway Goulburn, the Lamborghini Super Tosser, sorry Trofeo Asia season secretly roared to life in Sydney.

Ordinary people were banned from the government-funded Sydney Motorsport Park and Resource Recovery Park because organisers declared the 23-car event private, to protect the lives of ordinary billionaires. Designed as an economical pathway into motorsport, anyone with a lazy $550k can enter the Super Trofeo Asia series. There’s a small excess of $45k (rising to $55k for a second claim) with a maximum payout of $145k.

To keep the racing close, the series uses identical Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo Evo cars, based on the Lamborghini Huracan LP 620-2. You can buy an ordinary street Lambo Huracan for $620,078 and do track days for $250: much better deal if you don’t like travelling to China, Japan, Korea (south) and Italy.

The easy winner was Charley Leong, 23 of Zuhai, the St Kilda (budget Bondi) of China who teamed up with an Irish person, Alex Denning. Our person of the Trofeo was gastrointestinal surgeon Ma Chi Min of Hong Kong. Doc Ma is 70 and managed a spectacular 17th.

Mad Max was sublime

Things no one else will tell you about F1 Japan: it’s almost impossible to pass on the Suzuka circuit so watching the test pattern is more interesting (for younger readers: TV stations actually closed for the night and went to the test pattern until the morning).

The drivers finished more or less in the same position as they started.

Qualifying was the real battleground, where Verstappen stole pole by 0.012s – a margin thinner than the paint on a Haas. Norris and Piastri botched their laps, with Lando admitting a “dipped wheel” cost him. Team boss Andrea Stella summed it up: “Milliseconds decided this. Not mistakes.”

Max won his fourth straight Japanese GP, cementing his title as The Dutch Lawnmower (cuts down rivals, leaves no drama). The McLarens were the fastest cars but Max focused on his tyres, drove perfect lines and didn’t have the very dopey McLaren strategy (“We’re not sure what our strategy is, but we’re very good at blaming others”). Pitting Leaping Lando the same lap as Mad Max? Genius, if the goal was to re-enact Groundhog Day.

The only two dramatic moments came when Max edged Lando onto the grass leaving pit lane and Carlos Sainz copped a grid penalty and a fine for missing Japan’s anthem, blaming a crook stomach. National anthems will do that to you.

But as national anthems go, Japan’s Kimigayo is a ripper. It’s only a single verse based on the words of a classical Japanese waka poem written in 1185. Old and short. Perfect.

The drivers to watch are: Mad Max, Chuck LeClerc and Andy Antonelli who looks 13 but is 18 and became F1’s youngest race leader at 18 years (8 laps in the lead) and the youngest driver in F1 history to set the fastest lap in a grand prix: both records were held by Mad Max.

Piastri will become an F1 world champ if McLaren ever let him pass Lando.

The MX-5 Cup

Once again Australia stopped for the second round of the Mazda Mania MX-5 Cup at Steve Shelley’s One Raceway.

Small plug here: Steve founded Deputy, an all-in-one cloud-based workplace management solution and is offering all 20 Weekend Australian motoring in the business section readers a free trial of his solution.

Anyway, the MX-5 Mad Max, Tim Heering, won as usual. The rest of his family filled most of the other places except they let Zac Raddatz on the podium and your correspondent filled his usual position.

Elsewhere

● Someone nicked 900 car engines from the Kia Motors factory in India but no one found out for five years. Best reader suggestion on how they got the engines out gets a free mention next week. If you nicked them, best not to enter.

● Maybe Mad Max winning in a Honda-powered car at the Honda-owned Suzuka Raceway was to blame but the company’s number two exec, Shinji Aoyama, resigned following an internal investigation into matters of inappropriate conduct. His resignation followed an allegation during a social gathering outside of work hours. In Japan, execs always engage in nomikai (drinking parties) with colleagues to strengthen relationships and maintain harmony, often going to bars, izakayas, pubs, or karaoke joints, often with persons of the opposite or other sex.

● In the only good policy announced this election, new Nationals candidate for Calare, Sam Farraway, has promised Bathurst a $14.9m upgrade to the Mount Panorama circuit if the Coalition is elected in May’s federal election.

● The FBI has created a task force to “crack down on violent Tesla attacks”. Cybertrucks have been set on fire. Bullets and molotov cocktails have been aimed at Tesla showrooms. AP reports that in Las Vegas several Tesla vehicles were set ablaze early on Tuesday outside a Tesla service centre, where the word “resist” was also painted in red across the building’s front doors. Authorities said at least one person threw molotov cocktails and fired several rounds from a weapon into the vehicles.

● For only $40m you can buy “The Schumacher Crown Jewel” – Michael’s 2001 Ferrari F1 car. On May 27, 2001, Michael Schumacher drove this car to win the Grand Prix de Monaco. Mick would go on to clinch the 2001 Formula 1 Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championships in this car with a spectacular win in Hungary just 12 weeks later, making chassis 211 the only Schumacher Ferrari to have ever won the Monaco Grand Prix and Formula 1 World Championship in the same season. The sale will be just before the qualifying lap in Monte Carlo.

● Tomorrow it’s F1 time on Kayo for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Same three: Leaping Lando, future world champ Piastri and Mad Max.

[e-mail]