The question on everyone’s lips and in rev-heads’ minds leading into the Austin 400 is not merely who’ll collect the most championship points out of Winterbottom or Whincup, but, rather, will this whole Texas experiment be worth it? Whether the answer is yes or no, a long and nervous wait for Supercars stakeholders comes to an end at the Circuit Of The Americas this weekend, as the entire grid takes part in the most audacious trip into America’s sporting heartland by an Aussie sporting fraternity for many years.

Of course, overseas travel for our V8 Supercars stars is now an annual prospect, with their show hitting Bahrain and the UAE in recent times, as it’s looked to broaden its market and sponsor opportunities in areas previously untried by our domestic sporting leagues. Supercars officials are reportedly expecting America to be more receptive than audiences in those two centres, hoping a crowd of 40,000 locals makes its way to Austin to see how things are done Down Under as far as heavy horsepower is concerned.

If Texas doesn’t respond, electing to stick to its own flavour of fast cars, NASCAR and Indy (or the very appealing NBA and NHL play-offs currently being contested), at least the whole shebang will attract the attention of our own motorsports fans back home watching on TV.

What will probably eventuate is what happened back in 1987 when rugby league took State Of Origin to Los Angeles. Remember that? Americans didn’t know Peter Sterling from Peter Carey, but 12,349 Long Beach locals trotted down to Veterans Stadium in California to check out this weird sport played by blokes wearing no helmets or pads (there were serious doubts over that crowd figure, with Aussies with their ears close to the ground reporting that less than 2000 of those one-night rugby-goers actually paid their way in). The actual match was a screamer, appreciated by footy fans, again, back home. Summarily, the V8 lads will turn on a thunderous weekend of racing, before declaring, as Rod Humphries wrote back in 1987, that, “America is a sports island that has little or no interest in international sport.” Unless one of our drivers is prepared to throw a helmet at a passing competitor. The Yanks in the flyover states seem to like that  …