Driver Feature: Steven Owen - Biding his time

by Stefan Bartholomaeus



March 2008

Not many were surprised to see Steve Owen dominate the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series season opener on the streets of Adelaide. The fact of the matter is, this bloke belongs in the main game. After being shuffled out of the top tier series this season, 2008 is about proving a point. His deal to drive Scott Loadsman’s Tint-a-Car entry in Adelaide may have been a last minute, ‘one off’ deal, but with race wins already in the bag, and three cars now in the Loadsman workshop, it was always unlikely to stay that way.

With Owen on board, Loadsman Racing has suddenly become one of the emerging teams in V8 Supercars. A former Australian Production Car champion, Loadsman bought his first V8 Supercar in 2005, and has been running around in the ‘development’ series ranks ever since. Despite upgrading his ex-Lansvale Smash Repairs VX to VY specifications for 2006, results proved hard to come by.

In an attempt to move further towards the front of the field, Loadsman took on the extra expense of a second car in 2007, taking delivery of Paul Morris Motorsport’s ‘Earnhardt’ chassis. At the same time, Loadsman also chose to run his older car in the Australian Motor Racing Series races, which resulted in several victories, including the Wakefield 500 enduro. Continuing to expand this year, the Loadsman team, with new sponsors Bolle sunglasses and Beaumont Tiles on board, now also have the PMM built ‘Gidget’ VZ in their keeping.

“We’re just sort of doing the final bits in finishing that off,” explains Loadsman. “We’ve got the shell, it’s all kitted up, we’ve just got to do some plumbing, put a seat and a dash in it and we’re up and running.”

As ever in motor racing, future plans depend very much on budget. With Owen remaining with the team for the rest of the season, Loadsman is adamant that he too will be behind the wheel, it’s just a matter of where. Whether the team fields one car in the AMRS or competes as a two car Fujitsu team is yet to be decided. Either way, the injection of Owen into the team is a positive one.

“I can get a bit quicker using his data, get the set up details from him... I think it will be positive” predicts Loadsman. “We’re getting on with the job, everyone is learning, and enthusiasm in the camp is pretty high, we’ve just got to keep doing a good job I suppose, and the results and the sponsors will come.”

And what of the third car? “We’re thinking of selling that one, and concentrating on the two new ones. Or we may just keep that as a ride car and use it on ride days. That’s in the too be decided basket.”

With an engine deal in place with Paul Morris, the Adelaide meeting saw Owen reunited with the very engine that powered him to sixth place in last year’s Bathurst 1000. The 2007 edition of The Great Race saw Owen put in an outstanding drive. After assessing the relative pace of its two drivers [Owen and Tony D’Alberto], the Autobarn team deemed it necessary to double stint Owen to the flag, which turned out to be a very difficult task considering the conditions. Often the extra mental strain brought about by a slippery track is more draining then blistering heat, as Owen himself found out.

“I ended up being in the car for nearly three hours” he recalls. “In those sort of conditions.... the track was changing so much, and we had guys crashing everywhere. I didn’t notice it at the time, but when we got out of the car, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad. I just felt so drained, I felt sick from the fumes. It was the way we planned it, and I thought no problem, because I’ve been working on my fitness a fair bit. But... three hours in those conditions, you know, it’s pretty tough.”

There lies just one example of the Autobarn Commodore being dragged into a position far higher than it should have been. On a basis of budget versus results, the entire crew on the #55 Commodore (run in 2006/07 by Marty Brant’s Independent Race Cars Australia team) were, to coin an old cliche, often ‘punching above their weight’. In 2008 however, the #55 Commodore will be without both Owen and Brant, as D’Alberto takes over driving duties, and his formerly Fujitsu Series team takes over car preparation. Frustratingly for Owen, it was a commercial reality of a series that is becoming increasingly expensive for teams to operate in.

“It’s pretty tough, when you go to Bathurst and you are 2 seconds a lap faster than your co-driver [D’Alberto], and he ends up taking your drive. That isn’t really something that you enjoy happening. I think it is a reflection of the way the category is going. It’s becoming too expensive for most of the teams to be able to get a sponsor to pay a driver. I mean, he is obviously bringing a lot of money into the team, and it is a small team, and it wasn’t going to survive unless it had money coming from somewhere, so it’s a shame that it’s going that way.

“That is a fairly sad reflection of where the championship’s heading, and I think a few alarm bells are ringing with a few of the teams. Hopefully they will try and get the costs down to make it more of a legitimate category where they can sort of choose the drivers rather than drivers choosing the teams.”

Whilst nineteenth in last years V8Supercar Championship, ahead of the likes of Jason Bright, indicates an entire season of solid performances, it has always been Bathurst where Owen has shined the brightest. Why is that?

“I think it’s just like anything, that’s the place that I’ve actually done more laps around” he explains. “I started my first Bathurst in 1999, and if you count the number of laps I’ve done around there, this will be my eigth Bathurst. I’ve been there more than any other track. I go very well there because I’ve been there. I go well at Winton because I’ve done a lot of laps there. We didn’t have a very good run in Tasmania this year for example, because it was my second year there. I think it’s just more a case of, the more experience, the better you go. I do like it though because it’s a challenging track, and it requires a lot of commitment, so it’s the sort of track that you love going to, whereas as you got to Tassie, and its pretty fun, its not a bad track, but its not inspiring.”

For a man who has only ever competed full time in Supercars with one team (Autobarn), it seems as if Owen has had a different coloured race suit on every time he’s been to the Mountain. The teams he’s gone to Bathurst with reads like a role call of V8Supercar operations. Garry Rogers, Mathew White, Mike Imerie, John Briggs, Robert Smith, K-Mart, Britek & Autobarn, he’s attacked the big race with them all. But which ones stand out? Driving the second car for the race winning K-Mart team in 2004 would have to be a start....

Owen pauses to deliberate: “They were certainly the best team, the best cars I’ve ever driven up there, but it was kind of a waste, because I was a co-driver. I was driving Formula Ford that year, so it was kind of, a very good car, but an inexperienced driver... I wasn’t in the series full time. Whereas last year, we actually did better in a much worse car, but because I’ve been in the category now three years, it was a much better result. We got close to Murph and Rick’s time [in 2004], but we didn’t end up matching it, and I think that is just an inexperience thing.”

The following year, Owen found himself in almost the opposite situation, going to Bathurst in an uncompetitive Britek car, after having competed in (almost) the full season with the Fujitsu backed squad. Sadly, a hard day’s work turned to nothing in the very last hour of the race.

“That was probably the most disappointment I’ve ever had at Bathurst” he remembers. “We were obviously struggling with a new car and new team that year, and we were qualifying in the 20s every time. We got a new motor and we qualified twelfth or thirteenth, and we were right behind Brighty [Jason Bright] on the grid, which was sort of nice, and he was wrapped at the time. We ran around all day and we were fifth with about twenty laps to go, and for some reason ran out of water, and ended up blowing up. It was probably the biggest frustration I’ve had up there.”

Away from Bathurst, Steve Owen has had a patchy career. After finishing second to Greg Ritter in a hotly contested 1999 Australian Formula Ford Championship, Owen’s promising future failed to really take off. A brief association with Hocking Motorsport in Formula Holden in 2000 was followed by several impressive drives with Imrie Motorsport in the 2002 Development Series, and a solo birth at Winton in the main game with Briggs. In 2004, he stunned the Development Series field by scoring pole in another one off drive, this time with the Holden Young Lions at Winton. Opportunities however, were limited.

For 2004, Owen made the unorthodox move of stepping back into the Formula Ford Championship on a full time basis. Many heralded it as a smart decision, one which enabled the then 29 year old a chance to get his name back up in the limelight as a coming star of tomorrow. However, as Owen explains, it wasn’t really planned that way.

“I had a deal in the Development Series that year for the full year, and we came to about a month before the first race, and that deal actually fell over. I wasn’t doing anything, and another guy who was meant to do Formula Ford had a similar thing, his deal fell over, and they had sponsors in place. I’d started working for a Formula Ford team, and it all just came together. They said they need someone to drive the car, and we’ve got a sponsor, and you’re not doing anything..... do you want to race it? [It was] sort of a little bit of an idea to jump back in and get my name up there, but it was also sort of just [because] I wanted to race something.

“There was certainly no plan. That’s the way everyone saw it, and it worked out well. The first two rounds, we sucked... absolutely terrible, and it was a combination of me getting back into Formula Ford mode, and it was a knew team that had come together, but after that we got going, and I think we ended up winning 12 or 13 races during the year and the way it all happened, it actually turned out very well. People say it was a good plan, because I jumped back into the main series the year after, but its funny, because when I was signing the contract to do that, the guy who I was signing it with, the team manager of that team [Britek], said ‘oh, did you race Formula Ford this year?’. So he actually had no idea, and it was more of the Bathurst and Sandown efforts that made a difference I think.”

Either way, the result was third overall in the championship, and a main game Supercar contract for 2005. Of course, his three year stint in the main game ended this year, but he will be back, and this time in a Falcon, for the Phillip Island & Bathurst endurance rounds.

In a move that may well kick-start his career ‘again’, Owen will be driving in the year’s two biggest races with Dick Johnson Racing, most likely being paired with Warren Luff in the #18 car. It’s an exciting opportunity to race for a team that made the podium at Bathurst in 2007, and as Owen is keen to point out, it is more than just a two weekend a year job.

“That’s actually going to take up a bit of time this year, because you practice on the Fridays with the main team and there is a lot of sponsor commitments with those guys too.”

It seems that, with his new found commitments to Loadsman Racing & Dick Johnson Racing, we will be seeing a lot more of Steve Owen in 2008 than we had first thought...


- Stefan Bartholomaeus
© 321 IGNITION Pty Ltd 2008




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