MOTORSPORT: McLaughlin wins Supercars title

Scott McLaughlin won his second consecutive Supercars championship at the Sandown 500 yesterday, but you wouldn’t have known it judging by the sombre mood in the DJR Team Penske garage post-race.

The team was hit with a $30,000 fine on Sunday morning after Mclaughlin’s qualifying engine from the Bathurst 1000 was found to be illegal.

He was also stripped of his fastest qualifying time at Mount Panorama and his Top 10 shootout pole. In addition he and co-driver Alex Premat were banished to the back of the grid for the Sandown 500.

They still drove through to finish ninth in their Ford Mustang despite a 15-second penalty for a pitlane infraction, ensuring McLaughlin’s title win.

The race was won by Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes in the factory Holden Commodore ZB, but only after their teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander were forced to pit from the lead with a few laps to go when a bolt fell out of the right-rear suspension.

The Tickford Racing Mustangs of Chaz Mostert/James Moffat and Lee Holdsworth/Thomas Randle completed the podium.

It was Mostert’s best result after more than a month of drama – and he retrospectively picked up the 2019 Bathurst pole as well – while Moffat collected some silverware on his legendary father Allan’s 80th birthday.

It was Holdsworth’s first podium since 2014 and his contract renewal by Tickford is now a done deal waiting to be announced. It was his young co-driver Randle’s first trip to the podium in a Supercars race.

But back to the latest Supercars controversy. Why, you may ask, did this engine issue only become evident a month after the Great Race?

The engine was changed out of the car Saturday night at Bathurst by the team because of internal damage – something verified by Supercars – and sealed up for later inspection, along with the engine McLaughlin and Premat used to win the race.

That inspection didn’t happen until after the Gold Coast 600, during which an illegal amount of valve lift in some cylinders was found.

A CAMS stewards hearing was convened on Saturday morning at Sandown and the first public hint something was going on came that evening when results of the sprint race that determined pole for the 500 were declared “provisional”.

By Sunday morning they were made official and then we found out why.

“The valve lift of the inlet valves in the Q (qualifying) Engine … was measured by Supercars Technical personnel to exceed the Maximum Valve Lift of 0.710” in 5 cylinders (highest recorded measurement 0.7135”),” the CAMS findings revealed.

“The measurements were undertaken on a number of occasions and were witnessed by DJRTP representatives.”

DJRTP responded in a statement:

“As the lift now measures a few thousandths of an inch high on a few valves, we can only conclude that either the engine wasn’t measured properly when it was initially assembled or the damage that occurred in the engine contributed to a change to the maximum valve lift in the forward cylinders.

“We apologize to Scott, Alex, our partners and our supporters, and we will continue to focus on winning our second consecutive Virgin Australia Supercars Championship.”

It’s fair to say the penalty rocked pitlane. DJRTP was already on the nose for the Bathurst safety car fracas, for which it copped a $250,000 fine ($100,000) suspended, a 300-point teams championship deduction and the second team Ford Mustang of Fabian Coulthard and Tony D’Alberto was banished to last place in the race.

DJRTP argues there’s no intent in any of the mistakes it’s made. Its rivals, already frustrated by having spent much of the season watching McLaughlin disappear into the distance in, are inclined to disbelieve them.

There’s no doubt Supercars has endured a season of political controversy, virtually all of it connected to DJRTP in some way.

On Sunday night McLaughlin talked of “this toxic paddock”. He was no doubt thinking of rivals such as Triple Eight that have lobbied hard behind the scenes to have the Mustang slowed and the Commodore made faster.

But other teams would argue DJRTP’s Bathurst safety car imboglio was the most toxic thing that happened in 2019. It’s hard to think of a more efficient way of getting the rest of pitlane offside than to so obviously meddle with their chances of a result in the Great Race.

McLaughlin himself is undoubtedly the biggest positive DJRTP has going for it. He has driven his heart out all year, is unrelenting in the car and unstinting in his defence and support of the team out of it.

In all this it’s easy to forget two weeks ago he wrecked a car in a bone-jarring accident on the Gold Coast and was in a brand-new Mustang for Sandown.

It says how much the siege mentality had descended on DJRTP last night that apart from a mandatory appearance on the telecast, McLaughlin was initially banned by team management from talking to the media.

Team Penske global boss Tim Cindric was in attendance at Sandown and if it was his call then it was short-sighted and only exacerbated the perception that the championship win was tainted. Cindric himself declined request for interview – apart from speaking to TV of course.

Once the ban was reversed and McLaughlin spoke, he was straight on the front foot.

“I don’t care what anybody else thinks,” he declared. “I’m proud of what we’ve done as a team.”

The championship will conclude on November 22-24 at the Newcastle 500 street race. The main focus will be on the teams’ championship, in which DJRTP holds a slender lead over T8.

Considering all that has gone before it, this will be a battle fought most keenly.

Click here for 2019 Supercar championship points.