MOTORSPORT: Sandown 500 preview

“Win it or bin it”. That’s the approach Supercars superstar Jamie Whincup has declared he will take into the Pirtek Enduro Cup, which kicks off today with practice for Sunday’s Wilson Security Sandown 500.

In other words, Whincup intends to continue with a policy which has resulted in him missing out on victory at Sandown for the last two years and in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 for the last three years in memorable – and at times bizarre – circumstances.

“It may be the arrogance in me, but there is no way I am changing my strategy from last year,” the Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore VFII driver told motoring.com.au.

“At Sandown and Bathurst I have been highly criticised and I haven’t had the results I wanted. So it would be so easy for someone like me to change my strategy.

“I suppose it’s a bit of arrogance, but I am going to go on exactly as I did; win it or bin it approach.”

In 2015 at Sandown Whincup suffered a puncture during a pit stop when a bracket was dislodged from the pit boom by a team member and run over by the car. In 2016 his long-time co-driver Paul Dumbrell slipped out of his seatbelts too soon while rolling down pitlane and incurred a drive-through penalty.

But that’s just a warm-up for Bathurst, where in 2014 Whincup defied team orders to conserve fuel late in the race and lost the lead on the last lap. The following year he again disobeyed team orders to pit, passed the safety car and was penalised.

But it was last year at Bathurst where Whincup’s travails hit top gear. He crossed the line first but was penalised 15 seconds after knocking Scott McLaughlin off the road while passing him.

McLaughlin and the Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander then collided as the Volvo rejoined the road behind a slowing Whincup, who was attempting to redress and allow McLaughlin to resume the lead.

Triple Eight Race Engineering appealed the result but it was dismissed, meaning the six-time champ’s last win at Bathurst was scored all the way back in 2014.

“Last year [at Bathurst] in particular was painful,” Whincup said. “I think we topped every session all weekend and we crossed the line first, it was nuts.

“So to not stand on that top step due to an outside decision … that was painful. But that’s motorsport.

“The decision made by the judiciary was a bad one in my own opinion. Getting 15 seconds as a result of two people crashing into each other behind me? That was the wrong decision no doubt.”

After a strong recent run, including taking his record-breaking 106th Supercars win last time out at Sydney Motorsport Park, Whincup arrives at Sandown just 12 points behind Virgin Australia Supercars Championship leader McLaughlin, whose title charge faltered at SMP in the DJR Team Penske Shell V-Power Ford Falcon FG X.

In fact, the championship race has compressed significantly, with McLaughlin’s teammate Fabian Coulthard, Whincup’s teammate Shane van Gisbergen and Supercheap Auto Ford driver Chaz Mostert all less than 300 points from the lead. That’s a critical number because that’s how may points a win is worth at both Sandown and Bathurst.

Whincup knows that everything can change over this month of co-driver racing, which also includes the Vodafone Gold Coast 600.

“I went into last year’s season of endurance almost 150 points up and came out 150 points down,” he said. “We dumped a heap of ground on our opposition in this season of endurance, so I don’t want to do that.

“We are not leading at this stage so we certainly can’t afford to be dumping any points.

“We have shown great pace in all three events, but we haven’t made our own luck, we just haven’t done a good job and made any luck for ourselves, and anything that can go wrong generally has gone wrong.

“So we are trying to work a bit harder to generate a little bit more luck so things can go our way.”

Among the leading four pairings, only Whincup and Dumbrell are a familiar combination. McLaughlin aligns with former teammate Alex Premat, the Frenchman shifting from the seat alongside 2016 VASC and PEC champion Shane van Gisbergen.

Rising Porsche star Matt Campbell takes the seat in the #97 Holden, while Coulthard joins up with Tony D’Alberto.

Whether continuity or fresh faces turn out to be an advantage only time will tell, but it’s most likely the race winners will come from one of these four crews, or Mostert and Steve Owen. Only these five cars have won a race in 2017.

But endurance racing can throw up surprises, so the likes of Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards in the third Triple Eight entry, Brad Jones Racing and Garry Rogers Motorsport must be chances for a podium, while 2015 champion Mark Winterbottom and his co-driver Dean Canto will be contenders in The Bottle-O Ford.

Following Sandown, the teams have less than three weeks to prepare for the championship's Blue Ribbon event, the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 on October 8.

Meanwhile, here’s what to watch out for this weekend:

>> The Wilson Security Sandown 500 is the 19th race of the 2017 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship and the opening round of the Pirtek Enduro Cup, which means co-drivers share the cars with the regulars. Sandown includes practice on Friday; practice, qualifying and two qualifying races – one each for co-driver and main driver that determine the grid -- on Saturday; then the 500km enduro on Sunday.

>> The Sandown 500 is the 'retro round', which is appropriate as it has been hosting sedan endurance races since 1964. The 26-car grid will take on a nostalgic hue as old liveries are revived. Just like the NRL players switch to jerseys in the design and colours of yesteryear, this weekend the cars will run paint-schemes from previous eras. For instance, Erebus Motorsport is doing its take on Peter Brocks’s 1977 Bill Patterson Torana livery and Walkinshaw Racing on his 1994 HRT colour scheme.

>> The anti-clockwise 3.1km circuit in south-western Melbourne has a top speed of 270km/h. Average speed is 164km/h.

>> Sandown poses massive set-up challenges as it combines two long straights with a bunch of 90 degree turns and a super-fast series of curves over the rise at the back of the track. High kerbs and a patchwork surface that offers grip of enormously varying quality adds to the puzzle.

>> In a perfect, green flag scenario from start to finish, at a pinch teams could cover the 500km with three re-fuelling stops, but four is more likely.

>> Swapping drivers is more difficult this year as a result of the new leg protection set-up and window safety nets. Handling all of that, plus a six-point safety harness, cool suit plumbing and plugging-in the drink and radio communication systems within the time taken to re-fill the 111-litre fuel tank leaves no room for slip-ups (and this is the first two-driver race for the year).

>> Teams’ race strategies will be impacted by safety car periods. There have been at least two safety car periods in every Sandown 500 since 2012 and, on a relatively short track like Sandown, pitting during a safety car intervention virtually guarantees ‘double-stacking’ where drivers are forced to park and wait for their teammates’ car to be serviced in pit-lane.

>> Warm spring weather (for Melbourne) is predicted for the race with an ambient temperature above 20 degrees. This well help drivers maintain brake temperature (often Sandown’s long straights and Melbourne’s low temperatures mean brakes run too cool) which could test the durability of one set of brake pads. Despite the slick choreography of the pit-lane teams, a late race pad change raises the potential for chaos.

>> Sandown’s track surface is now dated, abrasive and low in grip – a ‘perfect storm’ for intense tyre wear and punctures.

>> Jamie Whincup owns the qualifying lap record at 1m 08.5730s. Chaz Mostert owns the race lap record at 1m 09.3416s.

>> Garth Tander and Warren Luff scored the win here last year for the old Holden Racing Team. Tander was let go by the team soon after, which had lost its factory status and has since become Mobil 1 HSV Racing.

>> Peter Brock has the most wins in the Sandown endurance race with nine, followed by Allan Moffat with six and Craig Lowndes with five. Jamie Whincup has four wins.

>> Jason Bright will make his 253rd championship round start at Sandown, bringing him level with Russell Ingall for third on the all-time round starts list in the championship’s record books.

>> This year marks the 18th Supercar endurance campaign for motoring.com.au's very own Luke Youlden, who'll team up for Sandown with David Reynolds in the Penrite Oils Erebus Holden Commodore.

>> Brock has the most poles with seven, Whincup has six and Moffat five.

>> Network 10 and Fox Sports 506 will show the action live.