MOTORSPORT: Factory Holden Commodore's last win at Bathurst

After years of Bathurst 1000 misfortune and near misses, Shane van Gisbergen won Australia’s Great Race and ensured the glorious history of the Holden factory at Mount Panorama closes with a 34th win.

But he was challenged all the way, surviving two safety car restarts in the last seven laps and setting the fastest lap of the race on the penultimate lap.

Van Gisbergen triumphed with Garth Tander in the factory Red Bull Holden Racing Team on the basis of constant mistake-free speed and tactical smarts.

He led home the Tickford Racing Ford Mustang of pole qualifier Cam Waters and Will Davison by only 0.8sec after 161 laps.

Chasing the top two home was the Walkinshaw Andretti United Commodore of Chaz Mostert and Warren Luff, the latter completing a remarkable sixth podium in his last nine starts.

Apart from one brief shower starting lap 54, the forecast rain never materialised. But it was the moment van Gisbergen came forward and imposed himself.

A renowned wet-weather driver, he slithering to the lead at the only time in the race where tyre grip rather than aero downforce was the most important arbiter of lap speed.

He and Tander proved from that point onwards track position was king.

From around lap 100 onwards van Gisbergen and Waters formed a high-speed express, challenging each other for fast laps.

But the Kiwi had the edge, expertly exploiting the aerodynamic turbulence 2020 Supercars create to block his rival.

In the laps immediately after the final scheduled pit stop Waters pressed hard and even made a speculative dive at Forrest’s Elbow for the lead.

Van Gisbergen appeared to have broken his resistance by the time WAU’s Bryce Fullwood and Brad Jones Racing’s Jack Smith crashed at opposite ends of the track at the same time on lap 152.

At the lap 155 restart Zane Goddard smacked the wall at the top of the mountain and prompted another safety car. Released with three laps to go, van Gisbergen again edged away to the chequered flag.

Van Gisbergen was robbed of victory in 2014 when his car stalled in a pit stop and he finished second by the narrowest of margins in 2016 and 2019.

Tander, who drove faultlessly, scored his fourth win in the race. It also means he has the unique double of winning for both the Walkinshaw Racing and Triple Eight Race Engineering iterations of the factory Holden Racing Team.

HRT now ceases to exist because of Holden’s axing by General Motors, but Triple Eight will continue to race the Commodore in 2021 before moving to the new Gen3 Chevrolet Camaro in 2022.

“It’s the race you always want to win,” van Gisbergen, the 2016 Supercars champion, said. “It is so special to win here. The car just ran faultless all day and to win is so cool.

“It’s been a privilege to be a Holden factory driver the last few years. I hope we have represented them well.”

Waters was valiant in defeat, driving for most of the race with a failed cool suit to score his first Bathurst 1000 podium.

“I felt terrible in the car. Those last safety cars, I wasn’t really wanting to warm the tyres because I was feeling sick and stuff like that,” he said.

“I just wanted the thing to be over. I threw everything at it to try and pass him but it wasn’t to be.”

Defending Bathurst champion Scott McLaughlin’s race derailed on the appearance of a safety car on lap 97. It meant an extra stint for co-driver Tim Slade, in which he had to go head-to-head against the star regular drivers.

He dropped 13 seconds to van Gisbergen in that time and McLaughlin then had to fuel save in the DJR Team Penske Ford Mustang in his next stint to make sure he would make it to the line with only one more stop.

The safety car he needed to get back in contention came too late and he ended fifth in the race behind teammate Fabian Coulthard and his co-driver Tony D’Alberto.

McLaughlin did far better than Holden veteran Jamie Whincup, who crashed into the concrete at the Cutting on lap 33 while trying to round up belligerent Erebus Motorsport co-driver Brodie Kostecki.

To rub salt into the wound the DNF dropped Whincup from second to fourth in the championship behind Waters and van Gisbergen and ensured DJRTP retained the team’s championship.

Friday provisional pole qualifier Lee Holdsworth and co-driver Michael Caruso were never a factor on Sunday. The radio conked out in their Tickford Racing Mustang and Holdsworth had the same cool suit issues as Waters. Teammate Jack Le Brocq had to hand his Mustang back to co-driver James Moffat as fumes made him nauseous.

But the travails of Tickford were at least counterbalanced by the Waters/Davison result. Brad Jones Racing was a horror show.

The team’s fastest combination of Nick Percat and Thomas Randle was banished from fourth to 10th after the top 10 shootout because the car was 2kg underweight. In the race its chances were cruelled by an engine misfire and the recurrence of a power steering problem from practice.

Rookie Jordan Boys managed to crash the BJR Commodore he was sharing with Todd Hazelwood on pit straight, while the Macauley Jones/Tim Blanchard car had a recurrence of a door unlatching issue.

Jones then later botched an overtake of teammate Jack Smith and parked them both in the Murrays Corner sand trap. Smith’s final exit came after a high-speed tyre deflation in the Chase.

The end of the Supercars championship means Victorian teams will head home for the first time in 105 days after escaping the state in July because of COVID-19. Queensland teams will now have to quarantine for two weeks.

Supercars CEO Sean Seamer essentially confirmed on Sunday night that, as expected, the championship will resume at Bathurst next February.