S5000
the ‘real deal’
Fittingly, it was John Bowe and 1970s Formula 5000 star Warwick Brown who performed the honour of unveiling the rst S5000 car to the public at the category’s official launch at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Once the two Australian racing legends had pulled back the sheet to reveal the new machine, it was rolled straight out of the pit garage and, with test driver Tim Macrow installed, all of a sudden the beast was snaking its way down pitlane and onto the track in a fury of wheelspin from its enormous rear tyres, the glorious growl of its 5.0-litre Ford V8 engine echoing around Sydney Motorsport Park [ED: head to our Facebook page to see and hear this moment].
S5000 is the most exciting thing to happen in Australian motorsport in 30 years, John Bowe reckons. He might just be right.
In simple terms, it’s a modern day version of Formula 5000 category. It’s much more than a ‘retro’ category, though, because where the old ’70s F5000s used Chev, Holden, Ford and even Mopar stock block 5.0-litre V8s tted to a multitude of different chassis designs, S5000 uses a control quad-cam Ford Coyote ‘Aluminator’ V8 in a modern, one-make carbon- bre chassis, compete with ‘Halo’ cockpit protection device.
While the chassis is sourced from French manufacturer Onroak-Liger, much of the rest of the componentry and speci cation – suspension, the Holinger transaxle, even the engine tune spec – is done in Australia.
With a deliberately modest wing spec coupled with massive 17-inch wide rear and 15-inch front tyres, the S5000 package has been designed to encourage overtaking by favouring mechanical grip over aerodynamic downforce.
The low downforce spec will limit the ultimate performance potential but, with the Coyote Ford V8 tuned to about 560bhp, outright lap records are certain to fall at every circuit they visit. Put simply, these will be the fastest race cars in Australia outside of F1.
While the F5000 class provided the initial inspiration, the link between the old and new ve-litre V8 categories shouldn’t be overstated. S5000 is not a ‘retro’ category; the aim is to bring a return to Australia of world-class, high performance modern open wheel racing – at an affordable price.
Though speci c chassis prices and running costs are yet to be con rmed, the spec sheet suggests S5000 will offer a bigger performance bang per buck than any other current openwheeler formula anywhere in the world.
The six-round S5000 series next year kicks off alongside the TCR tourers at SMP in May.
Warwick Brown, arguably Australia’s greatest F5000/Can-Am racer, agrees with Bowe that it’s the most exciting development in local motorsport in years: “The concept’s great, I think that with the way they’ve done the wings they’re going to have cars that can race each other – I mean really race each other, like 5000s did in the ’70s.
“The thought of seeing 20 of these cars line up for a standing start, all with 550-600hp, and all going down to the rst corner – people haven’t seen that for a long time.
“This is a 2020 version of what we did in the ‘70s with 5000s.”