With the opening V8 Supercars race of 2007 at Adelaide on March 1, the recent big news in the Holden camp is the launching of the all-new VE Commodore.

Late last year, Holden released in Australia what is arguably its most important vehicle, the VE Commodore, to the public for sale. The development cost for the vehicle has been approximately $1 billion AUS. In the world market that might not sound like a lot, but for a market that has yet to top one-million sales figures (for all vehicles including trucks), that is a big commitment. The trickle-on effect for the V8 SuperCars series is that it allows the Holden teams to introduce the new Commodore for the 2007 season.

The new body shell will bring with it both new technical challenges and hopefully some improvements over the 2006 championship-winning VZ body.

Unfortunately for the Holden team,  the traditional V8 SuperCar ‘warm-up’ at the Melbourne F1 GP is not being run this year. This has to do with a new TV broadcaster for the series, which does not televise the F1, so there's no race (although AVESCO, the governing body for V8 SuperCars denies this and say it was scheduling issues).

The F1 round gives all teams an opportunity to have a ‘live’ test for the cars. It allows the them to get a real idea of how their vehicles are performing, especially against others in a true race format. Testing just cannot give you a true indication.

This may give the Ford camp a slight advantage for the first few events of the series. It will surely take the Holden teams a few races to shake out the cobwebs and get ideal race set-ups. In saying this, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Holden Racing Team is quick straight out of the box.