MOTORSPORT: Red Bulls keep writing history

Red Bull Holden Racing Team duo Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup cleaned up at the first Supercars Championship round at South Australia’s new Tailem Bend circuit, making Triple Eight Race Engineering that fields their Commodores the most successful outfit in the championship’s history.

And van Gisbergen has regained the series lead from fellow New Zealander, Ford team DJR Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin with the endurance season to come now over the next three rounds.

Van Gisbergen won race 22 on Saturday ahead of the Nissan Altimas of Rick Kelly and Michael Caruso, while on Sunday it was Whincup (who had been fourth on Saturday) who led home van Gisbergen and Erebus Motorsport’s, David Reynolds.

Holdens filled the top six spots on Sunday, with Will Davison the first of the Fords in seventh. Reynolds had started only 12th for the Sunday race but neither McLaughlin nor his teammate Fabian Coulthard could challenge for a podium at the new venue in their Falcons.

McLaughlin had gone to Tailem Bend, 100km east of Adelaide, 41 points clear in the championship but now heads to Melbourne’s Sandown 500 on September 14-16 trailing van Gisbergen by 19 points.

‘The Giz’ led up until the seventh race of the season but lost the lead to McLaughlin at Darwin’s Hidden Valley in June. However, van Gisbergen has now finished first or second in the last seven races and on the podium in 10 of the last 11.

He said that heading the points table again – with 2778 points to McLaughlin’s 2759, Whincup’s 2416 and Craig Lowndes’ 2229 – was “pretty awesome”.

“There’s a long way to go. We need to keep our heads down, but the team gave us some rockets this weekend, a one-two is really special,” van Gisbergen said.

His and Whincup’s victories at the weekend have taken Roland Dane’s Triple Eight’s tally to 181 since it entered Supercar racing in 2003. That’s one more than Walkinshaw Andretti United, which was the Holden Racing Team until the end of 2016.

Triple Eight's record has come from 471 races, while the Walkinshaw outfit has started 779 races since its debut in 1990.

DJR Team Penske has had 101 victories from 872 races since Dick Johnson Racing’s debut in 1981.

Dane said the record was “extremely satisfying” for Triple Eight “as we get to our 15th anniversary” at Sandown.

Its first victory was by Lowndes at Sydney’s Eastern Creek in 2005, the year the three-time champion joined what was then a Ford team.

Although Lowndes heads into retirement from full-time Supercar racing at the end of this season without having added a fourth title, Triple Eight has taken Whincup to a record seven drivers’ championships and van Gisbergen one.

The Red Bull squad has also claimed eight team titles and won the Bathurst 1000 six times. The most recent Bathurst win was in 2015.

Sunday’s victory was Whincup’s 112th since being recruited by Dane to partner Lowndes in 2006.