MOTORSPORT: Holden Commodores dominate Sandown

After three years of freaky failures and brain fades Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell have driven a faultless race to win the Sandown 500, leading home a Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden Commodore ZB whitewash.

Whincup and Dumbrell beat home Red Bull Holden Racing Team team-mates Shane van Gisbergen and Earl Bamber with Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards taking third in the Autobarn Holden Commodore ZB.

It was Whincup’s third win in the 500 with Dumbrell and his seventh overall, equaling the late Peter Brock. The past three years Whincup and Dumbrell have been knocked out of contention in this race by a bizarre sequence of punctures and pit stop penalties.

With Scott McLaughlin and co-driver Alex Premat finishing fourth in the Shell V-Power Ford Falcon FG/X, van Gisbergen now leads the DJR Team Penske ace by 55 points in the Supercars driver’s championship.

Triple Eight is also well on course to evict DJRTP from the strategically important first two garages in pitlane, as it leads the team’s title by a massive 657 points.

And being the first team to score a 1-2-3 in a Supercars endurance race no doubt made it an even more satisfying way for T8 majority owner Roland Dane to celebrate the 15th anniversary of his first race in the category.

McLaughlin was forced to adopt a radical low drag set-up for his Falcon to try and run with the T8 Commodores, which were stunningly fast in a straight line. But it a was fruitless quest that simply made the Ford a handful under brakes and in fast corners.

“We had to go above and beyond with our set-up this weekend to try to combat the pace of the Holdens,” McLaughlin said. “We tried things all weekend, some of which worked and some of which didn’t.”

It was the second meeting in a row where McLaughlin has been comprehensively outpaced by the Triple Eight drivers. A championship that looked a near certainty six weeks ago is now slipping away.

Six of the first 10 cars home were new-for-2018 ZB Commodores, with the second DJRTP Falcon of Fabian Coulthard and Tony D’Alberto seventh, the Castrol Nissan Altima of Rick Kelly and Garry Jacobson eighth and the Tickford Supercheap Ford of Chaz Mostert and James Moffat 10th.

The performance of the T8 Commodores is clearly a step ahead of the rest of the field, which now has the challenge of coming up with some sort of response ahead of the October 4-7 Bathurst 1000, or watch Whincup and co gallop away up and down the mountain.

“We’ve got smart guys, and I’m sure we’ll get on top of it,” said Coulthard. “Hopefully we can find something before we go to Bathurst where we’ll need some strong pace.”

The real solution is the new Mustang Supercar currently under development, but that won’t arrive to replace the ageing Falcon until 2019.

Whincup and Dumbrell were the class of the field all Sandown weekend, only missing out on pole position because a hailstorm hit during Saturday’s co-driver qualifying race.

That meant Whincup had to drive through from 11th on the grid in his qualifying race. He made it on to the tail of leader David Reynolds in the Erebus Penrite Commodore but couldn’t dislodge him.

But Dumbrell jumped motoring.com.au’s Luke Youlden from Sunday’s race start and the #1 Commodore was in charge from that point on. By contrast, our man had a hectic stint with more hits than Elvis. Luckily the car was undamaged and Reynolds was able to finish fifth.

By Sandown standards this was a remarkably low key race, with no car-wrecking pile-ups at the fiercesome rise or bad weather to interrupt the procession. There were two safety car periods, but neither impacted on the race leaders negatively.

Post-race Whincup paid tribute to the hard work put in by the T8 crew in developing the ZB this year, which has resulted in the team reversing McLaughlin and DJRTP’s domination. Red Bull Holdens have won seven of the past eight championship races.

“I've never seen so much dedication behind the scenes and so much hard work from the team,” Whincup said. “There's been so many parts going in the car to make them faster, to develop them and everyone has just been flat stick the past couple of months. The cars are definitely improving and we'll just keep our head down and keep on that track.”

The result slightly increases Whincup’s prospects of defending his seventh driver’s championship, but he still lags McLaughlin by 283 points and van Gisbergen by 338 points.

But with a maximum 1200 points up for grabs before the championship concludes no-one would rule Whincup out of the fray until it’s mathematically impossible.

Virgin Australia Supercars Championship pointscore
1 Shane van Gisbergen Red Bull Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore ZB 3054
2 Scott McLaughlin Shell V-Power Racing Team Ford Falcon FG X 2999
3 Jamie Whincup Red Bull Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore ZB 2716
4 Craig Lowndes Autobarn Lowndes Racing Holden Commodore ZB 2487
5 David Reynolds Erebus Penrite Racing Holden Commodore ZB 2435
6 Fabian Coulthard Shell V-Power Racing Team Ford Falcon FG X 2114
7 Rick Kelly Castrol Racing Nissan Altima 2098
8 Chaz Mostert Supercheap Auto Racing Ford Falcon FG X 2048
9 Scott Pye Mobil 1 Boost Mobile Racing Holden Commodore ZB 1906
10 Tim Slade Freightliner Racing Holden Commodore ZB 1862