MOTORSPORT: Triple Eight triple threat
Milestones galore in Sydney for Supercar starsIt’s no news to anyone that Triple Eight Race Engineering is the dominant force in Supercars racing. But Race 18 and 19 of the 2016 championship weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park took that into overkill territory.
Beforehand it was widely publicised that category legend Craig Lowndes would make his 600th championship race start in Sunday's 200km outing.
Lowndes brilliantly holeshot from row two of the grid and led early, but it was his long-time teammate Jamie Whincup who won, claiming the 100th Supercar race of his career. This came after his new teammate, Shane van Gisbergen, won the earlier outing, the Saturday 120km.
That makes its seven race wins in a row between the three cars and they now run 1-2-3 in championship points, with Whincup in a slightly more secure lead of 137 points exiting the weekend.
The early races of 2016, with unpredictable race winners and the championship lead spinning through different hands on a daily basis, is now far behind us. For now, the T8 cars have an ability to run faster and longer on the now commonly used Dunop soft tyre than any other team
And, oh yes, team majority owner Roland Dane, the undoubted driving force behind 10 years of Triple Eight domination, also nipped home to Brisbane on Saturday to take part in a citizenship ceremony, returning in time to see van Gisbergen defeat Whincup in one of the best races of the season.
In fact, just about the only aspect of the weekend the three T8 Holden Commodore VFs didn’t dominate was qualifying, which Prodrive racing Australia’s Chaz Mostert claimed on both days to make it five poles for the year, without once managing to convert one lap pace into a race win.
He is getting closer, finishing fourth on Saturday and then third on Sunday. But his start to the season has been so patchy due to his recovery from his 2015 Bathurst injuries and the inability of his Falcon FG X to hold on to its soft tyres long enough to challenge the T8 Holdens.
The sole other rostrum on offer went to the Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney with third on Saturday, showing grit in the wake of Holden’s recent confirmation that the Walkinshaw-owned team will not have factory backing from 2017 and the HRT name will be transferred north into Dane’s keeping.
Notably absent from the front-running fray was defending champion Mark Winterbottom, who had a typically moribund outing on home soil in his PRA Falcon. He now must stage an unlikely fightback against the T8 horde in the Pirtek Enduro Cup, which begins with the mid-September Sandown 500.
Whincup’s milestone Sunday win came courtesy of slick stop that allowed him to jump Lowndes by the narrowest of margins in the pits.
He became the second driver behind Lowndes to be awarded a golden helmet by the championship for 100 wins. He has collected those wins at an astonishing strike rate slightly better than 25 per cent and won all of them – and six championship and four Bathursts – since he joined Triple Eight in 2006.
Nevertheless it has taken a little while to collar the 100th win, finishing second in three consecutive races – twice bested by van Gisbergen and once by Lowndes.
That most recent runner-up slot came only after he was camped under van Gisbergen’s rear wing for the concluding stages of Saturday’s race. He got alongside at the Turn 2 hairpin but could not make it stick.
It was worth wondering whether van Gisbergen, an audacious and forceful but clean passer, would have been as diplomatic in the same circumstances.
"I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a sense of relief having secured my 100th Supercars win,” said Whincup.
“It’s an honour to join the likes of my teammate Craig Lowndes with this milestone. Today was a fitting day for the win. The car was ordinary in the first stint but the team dragged me up and we managed to get a fast pit stop at the end there.
“In terms of looking forward, I’m not trying to tick any particular boxes. I’m just out there for the fun of racing. We like racing hard and going round in circles as quick as we can and getting to the finish line first.
“The feeling of winning never gets old, it definitely drives me. There are a lot of people who represent the 100 wins and I’m grateful to all of them."
Among the supporting cast a few staked a claim for recognition. James Moffat had his best run of the year in the factory Volvo S60 on Sunday only to make an optimistic attempt at passing van Gisbergen for fourth and spin him off. He was hit with late-race drive-through that condemned him to an 18th place finish.
His teammate Scott McLaughlin showed consistent form in his Volvo to go 5-6 but he is not shaping as the championship challenger we had hoped for after his Phillip Island clean-sweep earlier in the season.
Fabian Coulthard posted two top-10 finishes (10-4) in his DJR Team Penske Falcon as the US-owned team showed signs of recovery after a difficult couple of rounds. Another gritty drive from Todd Kelly in the carsales.com.au Nissan Altima netted him ninth on Sunday.
But for the most part, the grid was merely a colourful backdrop for the Triple Eight triple threat.
V8 Supercars Championship points:
1. Jamie Whincup – Red Bull Racing Australia – Holden Commodore VF – 2109
2. Shane van Gisbergen – Red Bull Racing Australia – Holden Commodore VF – 1972
3. Craig Lowndes – TeamVortex – Holden Commodore VF – 1911
4. Mark Winterbottom -- The Bottle-O Racing – Ford Falcon FG X -- 1836
5. Scott McLaughlin – Wilson Security Racing GRM – Volvo S60 – 1749
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