MOTORSPORT: De Pasquale dominates in Sydney

Life was tougher than usual for Shane van Gisbergen as the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship resumed at Sydney Motorsport Park, but he still banked a win and extended his lead in the title fight.

The driver who made things tougher, and is starting to look like SvG’s long-time nemesis Scott McLaughlin, is Anton De Pasquale.

The youngster at Shell V-Power Racing was quickest in every practice session, qualified on pole position for all three races and scored two wins with his Ford Mustang.

Only a dud start, which was compounded by disqualification for a tyre mix-up at his pit stop in race two, cost him a potential sweep.

He now looks like the driver to beat as the championship will race three more times at SMP on consecutive weekends before the trek to Mount Panorama for the season finale on December 5.

“All good. We had a good few races,” said De Pasquale, in a massive understatement.

The Shell V-Power team was the outfit to beat, as De Pasquale’s teammate Will Davison was also on track for a win until his dashboard failed and he was jumped by van Gisbergen in race two.

“I just have to get the monkey off my back,” said Davison, close to tears.

Three races over two days meant the podium places were shared around, with van Gisbergen and his teammate Jamie Whincup both scoring for Red Bull Ampol Racing, Davison joining De Pasquale, Will Brown and Jake Kostecki doing the job for Erebus Racing, and Nick Percat taking a solo third place for Brad Jones Racing.

There was night racing, five-wide hustling, battles at the front and some torrid competition to get into the top 10 at a track which is famously fickle – 34 degrees on Friday, then 19 on Saturday night – and hard on tyres.

But there were surprisingly few incidents, no big crashes and solid reliability as teams got back to work after a three-month hiatus caused by COVID-19 travel restrictions.

“I feel like we are better than we were last year. This is not our strongest type of track, so I do feel we are strong,” said van Gisbergen, wrapping his weekend.

“We do need to find some speed. Our strength is tyre life, so maybe we can give up some of that for a bit more speed.”

Whincup promised The Bulls would take a “big swing” for the return to SMP next weekend, with a win-or-bust approach to beating De Pasquale and Davison.

The weekend finished on a high thanks to a torrid battle between De Pasquale and Will Brown, who threw everything at the race leader in an effort to score a landmark win.

“It was hard work. I torched the tyres getting to him,” said Brown.

“They told me to race to a lap time, but I’m a young bloke and I didn’t listen. I threw everything at him.”

For Whincup, who is winding down his final full-time season in Supercars, third place in the last race was a relief.

“My teammate was making me look pretty ordinary. He was going forward and I was going backwards. But we got it together for the final one,” he said.

With three more weekends of racing in the lead-up to the Repco Bathurst 1000, all in Sydney but with different formats and tyre allocations, the first three sprints produced such a mixed bag that it’s impossible to predict what will happen next.

Race 1 – 32 laps

Race 2 – 32 laps

Race 3 – 32 laps

2021 Repco Supercars Championship standings: