MOTORSPORT: Red-letter days for Blue Oval

The Ford Mustang continues to march on towards the Supercars title in its first season despite aero tweaks to the ZB Holden Commodores.

DJR Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin won Darwin’s Triple Crown – both the weekend’s races at Hidden Valley and the Top 10 shootout – and has now been the victor in five races in a row and 12 of the 16 races this season.

McLaughlin’s 319-point lead over teammate Fabian Coulthard means he’d still be leading if he missed the next round in Townsville on the first weekend of July.

DJR Team Penske leads the teams championship by a thumping 814 points from Roland Dane’s Holden Racing Team, followed by the Erebus Holden and Tickford Ford squads.

Walkinshaw Andretti United, the former HRT, is only seventh – and fourth of the Holden teams.

The Supercars Commission quietly approved a small extension of the front undertray of the Commodores and a trimming of the maximum angle of their rear wings, from 19.5 to 18.5 degrees, for the Darwin round.

But it didn’t instantly give the Holdens performance parity with the Fords, especially McLaughlin’s over the 42 laps on Saturday, when he finished almost seven seconds clear of another Mustang, and 70 laps on Sunday, when he doubled the margin but a Commodore was runner-up.

The defending series champion after last season’s success in the last year of Ford’s Falcon, McLaughlin now has 37 wins in his career – one more than Allan Moffat in the days when it was the Australian Touring Car Championship with far fewer races.

“I’m 26 and just living the dream driving race cars and I’m lucky I drive a fast one,” McLaughlin said.

“I’ve got a great car, great team … the pitstops were unreal here.

“I’ll never get tired of winning. What a feeling.”

But McLaughlin insists he’s “not unbeatable” and has his sights on a first Bathurst 1000 victory in October, where he will be partnered for a third time by Frenchman Alex Premat.

Tickford’s Chaz Mostert made it a Mustang one-two on Saturday, with David Reynolds third for Erebus, while Will Davison was unlucky not to stay in the fight for the podium, copping a 15-second penalty after his crew sent him out into Reynolds’ path in the pitlane.

Reynolds improved a place on Sunday while Coulthard took the final podium spot.

Cameron Waters was fourth both days for Tickford and seven-time champion Jamie Whincup fifth both times, making great headway both times despite a flexing chassis on Saturday and dropping to the rear of the field after a couple of first-lap bumps on Sunday.

While Coulthard, winner of two races at Victoria’s Phillip Island in April (where McLaughlin was second in both), is the closest championship challenger to fellow his New Zealander, Reynolds is the top Holden driver of the season, albeit 459 points behind McLaughlin.

The top trio are followed on the points table by Mostert, winner of one race at Melbourne’s Grand Prix in March, then HRT pair Shane Van Gisbergen and Whincup and Tickford’s Waters.

Darwin was a good round for Tickford, unlike last year.

“Our car speed was very good and, for the most part, we executed very well,” team principal Tim Edwards said.

“The only difference right now is, while our cars are very good, a couple of cars – one in particular – are doing great.

“[But] we’ve got four cars in the top 10 of the championship – incredibly hard to do in any championship. But we want more than fourth place.”

The World Rally Championship doesn’t have the profile of Supercars in Australia, but it’s far more of a contest and a lot less predictable.

Only seven points separate the top three drivers as the series takes its six-week mid-season break after a surprise podium at the weekend’s Italian round on Mediterranean island Sardinia.

Toyota’s Estonian driver Ott Tanak was denied a third straight victory of the season when steering damage in his Yaris on the final ‘power stage’ caused him to spin, costing him more than two minutes and dropping him to fifth in the event.

However, Tanak took the series lead from six-time world champion Sebastien Ogier, who retired on the first of the rally’s three legs with broken suspension in his Citroen C3 but returned to grab four bonus points on the power stage.

Spaniard Dani Sordo inherited victory in a Hyundai i20, finishing 13.7 seconds ahead of the M-Sport Ford Fiesta driven by 25-year-old Finn Teemu Suninen and partnered for the first time by 50-year-old Jarmo Lehtinen, former co-driver to Mikko Hirvonen.

It was only Sordo’s second win in 164 WRC starts, while Suninen’s podium was his second (in his years) and Lehtinen’s his 70th.

Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen, the 2016 Rally Australia winner (with Volkswagen), charged on the final day on Sardinia in his Hyundai to nudge Welshman Elfyn Evans’ Ford out of third place.

Hyundai’s top driver, Belgian Thierry Neuville, was only sixth but three bonus points from third on the power stage boosted him to 143 for the season compared to Tanak’s 150 and Ogier’s 146.

Hyundai leads the manufacturer standings with 242 points to Toyota’s 198, Citroen’s 170 and M-Sport Ford’s 152, but Hyundai team director Andrea Adamo said the victory on Sardinia as a result of Tanak’s misfortune was “quite difficult to accept”.

“For the second time this season we have inherited a victory that we did not earn on the road,” Adamo said.

“We should not have to rely on unreliability [of other makes] to secure these results.

“At the same time, Dani and Carlos [Sordo’s fellow Spanish co-driver Carlos de Barrio] have worked professionally to put themselves in a position to capitalise on the situation.”

Sordo said his only WRC victory apart from Germany 2013 with Citroen was “incredible”.

“I am very sorry for Ott and Toyota … [but] we knew we had to keep the pressure on in case this sort of situation occurred”.

“I just can’t believe it happened. There was no chance to beat Ott on outright pace so we just did what we could and avoided mistakes. It wasn’t easy but we made it through to the end – and we now have this fantastic victory as a reward.”

The WRC resumes with its ninth round, and fifth consecutive gravel rally, in Finland on August 1-4.