MOTORSPORT: Everyone's a winner, well almost, in V8 Supercars

FULL STORY: Sir Jack Brabham dead at 88

Three races at Perth’s Barbagallo Raceway at the weekend won by three different drivers in three different makes. Ten drivers have now won in 16 championship races this year.

There’s a month’s break in the season until the Darwin round, while next weekend it’s the Indianapolis 500 in America, in which Australian Will Power will start on the outside of the front row, and the sixth Grand Prix of the year in Monaco, where Daniel Ricciardo won twice in Renault open-wheelers before graduating to Formula One.

The other two Australians in the Indy 500, Ryan Briscoe and James Davison, will start on the 10th and second last row, with rookie Davison having qualified fractionally ahead of Briscoe.

All three Aussies have Chevrolet engines in their Dallara cars, as does top qualifier Ed Carpenter.

American Carpenter is on the pole at Indianapolis for the second straight year, having averaged 231.067mph – about 372kmh, and the fastest since 2003 - on his best four-lap qualifying run around the 2.5-mile (4km) oval.

Carpenter’s 2 minutes 35.7992 seconds for the 10 miles (16km) was only 2.1509 seconds faster than the last qualifier, 46-year-old 1996 winner Buddy Lazier – the closest margin between first and 33rd in the classic’s history.

Sandwiched between those successes was the 97th Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercar race win for Craig Lowndes, in a Holden Commodore for Triple Eight Racing.

But FPR’s Mark Winterbottom, reigning Bathurst 1000 champion but without a national championship in his decade in the sport, still leads the series after fourth, second and third places at Barbagallo. Winterbottom’s lead over Lowndes was only trimmed from 107 points to 101 in the west.

Triple Eight still leads FPR in the teams championship, but the gap is only 93 points now – with a month’s break in the season until the Darwin round.

Triple Eight’s five-time champion Jamie Whincup hasn’t had a win, and only one podium, in the past three rounds but has climbed back to fourth in the drivers’ championship – still 73 points behind fellow Holden driver Fabian Coulthard of Brad Jones Racing.

Four of the participating makes have won races this year – Holden, Ford, Mercedes and Volvo. The odd one out is Nissan with its four Altimas.

A couple of eighth places was the best the Nissans could do in Perth – by Todd Kelly in race one on Saturday and James Moffat in the longer race three on Sunday, when teammate Michael Caruso came in 10th.  Ahead of those Nissans on Sunday though was the Dick Johnson Racing Ford Falcon of David Wall, in an excellent seventh.

Lee Holdsworth and Will Davison were fifth and seventh in Betty Klimenko’s Erebus AMG Mercedes E63s in Saturday’s first race but didn’t feature among the top 10 finishers again. On Sunday those Mercs suffered curious left rear tyre punctures, as did the Holden Racing Team Commodores of James Courtney and Garth Tander.

While McLaughlin and Mostert had won V8 Supercar Championship races last season in other guises – McLaughlin in a Holden and Mostert while on loan from FPR to Dick Johnson Racing – they were the stars of the Perth round. Mostert started fourth on Sunday, was third by the first corner, in the lead before the second round of pitstops, and kept a cool head to lead home Lowndes and Winterbottom.

“I had Craig down my neck all race and to race with him and trade lap times with him was cool,” Mostert said. “The team has been awesome all weekend. We were quick from Friday and that set us up for the weekend. [He was third and sixth in Saturday’s races].

“This event was my one-year anniversary in the sport, so it was great to cap the event with a win. It was a tough start to the year, but the last couple of rounds have been awesome and to come away eighth in the points [he had gone to Perth 15th] and with my first win for the [FPR] team is really cool.”

FPR team principal Tim Edwards said Mostert was “fast becoming the regular contender we knew he would be”.

“His drive Sunday was what you’d expect of some of the veterans and to see him on the podium with ‘Frosty’ [Winterbottom] and Craig [Lowndes] highlights the calibre of his performance.

“Mark’s strategy didn’t play out as we’d like, but his [championship] lead is still more than 100 points. We’ve still got work to do, but we’re happy with how things are going in general.”

Winterbottom was as delighted with Mostert’s success as he was to leave Perth with his championship lead little changed.

“It was awesome for Chaz. He needed that for his confidence. It’ll be pretty scary to see what he can do the rest of the year,’’ Winterbottom said.

“We didn’t get the strategy right on my car Sunday. We thought we would come home strong, but we missed the window slightly. To finish third was still not a bad day and to get a 1-3 result was great for the team.”

Much was made of McLaughlin’s Volvo victory on Saturday. The combination had been knocking on the door all season, and had success in the non-championship races at Melbourne’s Australian Grand Prix in mid-March.

Perth was the Swedish manufacturer’s first triumph in the V8 Supercar Championship and it was acclaimed as its first in Australian touring car championship in 28 years – since another New Zealand driver, Robbie Francevic, won the national title in 1986. However, that overlooked the brand’s more modest success with Jim Richards in the lower-profile and short-lived 2-litre Super Touring championship of the late 1990s.

It is not hard to envisage a lot more glory for McLaughlin and Volvo in this era, although in Saturday’s second sprint – after starting second, having almost missed the start as a broken exhaust header was fixed – they finished fourth.

And on Sunday he went from third on the grid to 17th at the chequered flag after lots of contact with other cars and struggling with understeer.

McLaughlin also got into an argument with fellow Kiwi Shane Van Gisbergen, while Erebus was fined for using two steering sensors on Lee Holdsworth’s Mercedes during Friday practice. It had permission for the second sensor, but not to have them both active at once.

Meanwhile, on its home ground in Germany, Mercedes had a surprise win in the second round of the DTM series after it switched to wet tyres on the HWA-prepared car of Christian Vietoris as it rained at the start of the race at Oschersleben.

Audis filled the other two podium positions, while BMW – which had won the first round at Hockenheim two weeks earlier – could do no better than fifth.

Even with a 5kg weight concession since Hockenheim (BMW was penalised 5kg), Vietoris had qualified only 16th and the fastest Mercedes ninth, while the Audi of Spaniard Miguel Molina was disqualified from pole position for its rear wing having 2.7mm too much overhang.

V8 Supercar Championship driver standings after 16 of 38 races – 1. Mark Winterbottom (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 1199 points; 2. Craig Lowndes  (Triple Eight Racing Engineering, Holden Commodore) 1098; 3. Fabian Coulthard (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore) 1059; 4. Jamie Whincup (Triple Eight Race Engineering, Holden Commodore) 986; 5. James Courtney (Holden Racing Team, Holden Commodore) 928; 6. Shane Van Gisbergen (Tekno Autosports, Holden Commodore) 861; 7. Scott McLaughlin (Volvo Polestar, Volvo S60) 840; 8. Chaz Mostert (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 792; 9. David Reynolds (Ford Performance Racing, Ford Falcon) 757; 10. Jason Bright (Brad Jones Racing, Holden Commodore) 754.

V8 Supercar teams championship – 1. Triple Eight Race Engineering 2109 points; 2.  Ford Performance Racing 2016; 3. Brad Jones Racing 1813; Holden Racing Team 1589; 5. Erebus Motorsport 1380; 6. Nissan Motorsport II 1333; 7. Volvo Polestar 1151; 8. Dick Johnson Racing 1125; 9. Nissan Motorsport I 1094; 10. Tekno Autosports 886.

In a new qualifying format at The Brickyard, the field of 33 was set  on Saturday and the grid order determined on Sunday – with the fastest nine cars from Saturday in a separate “shootout” the next day.

The 229.382mph average qualifying speed for the field is the fastest in the event’s history.

Between American Ed Carpenter and Australian Will Power on the front row will be Canadian James Hinchcliffe, who little more than a week ago was concussed when hit by flying debris in the new IndyCar road race at Indianapolis.

While Power qualified third for Team Penske, fellow Aussies James Davison (KV Racing) – one of seven rookies in the field – and Ryan Briscoe (Chip Ganassi Racing) will start 28th and 30th – Sydneysider Briscoe having fallen back Sunday from mid-field Saturday.

On the last row – as well as the oldest driver, Buddy Lazier at 46 – is Sage Karam, only 19 and from Nazareth, Pennsylvania – home of the Andretti clan synonymous with Indy racing.

Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, 1995 Indianapolis 500 victor and 1997 F1 world champion, will start 27th in his first outing in the classic in 19 years, while Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, the 2000 winner at The Brickyard and an F1 and NASCAR racer since, has qualified 10th.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, the 2008 Indy 500 champion, is alongside Montoya in 11th.

Brazil’s reigning winner Tony Kanaan will start 16th, for Ganassi now rather than KV Racing, and his countryman and three-time victor Helio Castroneves fourth, directly behind pole man Carpenter.  

The only woman in this year’s field, Britain’s Pippa Mann, qualified 22nd.

Official line-up for Indianapolis 500 on May 25