The Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney will miss V8 Supercars’ season end at the Sydney 500 today. The 2010 V8 Supercars champion was injured in a spectacular crash in the first race at Phillip Island 360 last month.

Courtney’s HRT Commodore was hit on the driver’s side by Alex Premat’s car, which had left the circuit at high speed due to a tyre puncture. In the immediate aftermath, Premat left his vehicle and assisted Courtney from his car. Both drivers were taken to the circuit medical centre and both later released.

Courtney underwent further examinations revealing a fractured tibia and a tear in his right-side quad muscle and will be on crutches for six weeks, but is expected to be fit for the start of the 2014 season.

Holden Racing Team Managing Director Steve Hallam said Courtney’s recovery was his and the team’s number one priority. Nick Percat, who has a long history with the Holden Racing Team and Walkinshaw Racing will replace Courtney for this weekend’s racing.

Percat drove for the Holden Racing Team alongside Garth Tander during this season’s Enduro Cup and in 2011 won Bathurst in a Holden with Tander, but good news continued for Percat as the young gun was named to drive full time in a fourth Holden entry for the Walkinshaw Racing team in 2014.

Whincup driving for third straight championship win

This weekend, it is Jamie Whincup’s V8 Supercars Championship to lose in Sydney as he attempts to become the first driver since Mark Skaife in 2002 to win three V8 championships in a row, while team-mate Craig Lowndes is also looking for his first championship title since 1999. Whincup leads Lowndes by
20 points while Ford driver Mark Winterbottom is 124 points back and Davison 223 heading into the Sydney 500.

Lowndes will drive at Homebush with the confidence that he has had two consecutive wins in 2011-2012 and the knowledge that team-mate Whincup has never finished in a podium position at the Homebush event. The new entry was revealed on Friday, with James Rosenberg bringing his racing entitlement contract into the garage of the team which already runs the two HRT cars and the Supercheap Auto Racing-backed Commodore.

Rosenberg merging into HRT also keeps him in the same stable as Tim Slade, the driver he’s backed for the past five years, who will be piloting the Supercheap Commodore from next season.

The newest entrant in the V8 war, Volvo are set to join the V8 category next year in partnership with existing outfit Garry Rogers Motorsport (GRM), under the banner Volvo Polestar Racing and even before a wheel has turned in the factory. Volvo is already considering adding more Volvo cars to the V8 Supercar field as early as 2015. As it stands, Volvo will have the smallest number of entries on the grid in 2014 – with Holden’s 13 Commodores, Ford’s six Falcons,
four Nissan Altimas and three Mercedes-Benz E63 AMGs.