MOTORSPORT: Whincup breaks van Gisbergen’s winning streak
Whincup and Mostert rain on van Gisbergen’s Supercars parade at Symmons PlainsSo Shane van Gisbergen is human – and beatable – after all.
He still managed to equal the record for successful season starts, jointly held by Allan Moffat from 1977 and Mark Skaife from 1994, but van Gisbergen’s six-race romp through the first three rounds of the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship came to an end with race seven Tasmania.
Fitting, and ironically, it was his Red Bull Ampol teammate Jamie Whincup who did the deed in the second of three races in the Tasmania SuperSprint as he went on to claim the round at Symmons Plains.
But there were three different winners in the southernmost leg of the series, with SvG on top on Saturday, Whincup winning race two and Chaz Mostert ending a two-year dry spell by taking his first win with Walkinshaw Andretti United on Sunday afternoon.
All three victories went to Holden Commodores, although Cam Waters was the pacesetter for the weekend in a Monster Mustang that was quick over a single lap but far too hard on its tyres over the 44-lap race distances.
The two new signings for the Shell V-Power team, newbie Anton de Pasquale and veteran Will Davison, both bagged podium finishes over the weekend as the pair continued their adjustment to a new outfit that has jumped to second in the teams’ title fight behind The Bulls.
The Tasmanian meeting was the first in two years at Symmons Plains and the first without major COVID-19 restrictions, with a crowd of 17,572 attending over the two days of the meeting.
Despite the end of his winning streak, van Gisbergen – who hunts like a great white shark in the Supercars pack – has already built a 139-point advantage over Whincup in the driver’s championship, with Mostert moving up to third after the weekend at the expense of Waters.
“He’s in a class of his own,” said two-times Supercars champion Marcos Ambrose, after watching SvG in action.
Added Whincup: “He is on fire at the moment. He is driving unbelievably well.”
Teams will now regroup ahead of the fourth round of the Supercars series at The Bend outside Adelaide, one of the few bogey tracks for The Bulls in 2020 and one which gives some hope to Waters and the rest of the Mustang runners.
“We’ve got a good qualifying car with Cam Waters, but we’re struggling a bit for race pace. We just don’t have the pace over the race distance,” said Tickford team boss Tim Edwards.
Looking further ahead in the series, despite ongoing uncertainty over the Australian Grand Prix in November, Supercars has confirmed that the Trans-Tasman COVID-19 ‘bubble’ will allow the traditional visit to Pukekohe in New Zealand to go ahead on November 6-7.
“We’ve been working closely with Auckland Unlimited and ITM to put this event in place and we are excited to return,” said Supercars CEO Sean Seamer.
But the return to Pukekohe is bad news for the Hampton Downs circuit, which was drafted in for 2019 when plans for an Anzac Day event were in doubt because of a ban on major events in the Auckland region but is not currently on the Supercars calendar.
Race 2: Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen, Will Davison
Race 3: Chaz Mostert, Anton de Pasquale, Will Davison
2021 Repco Supercars Championship driver standings:
1. Shane van Gisbergen – 865
2. Jamie Whincup – 726
3. Chaz Mostert – 700
4. Cam Waters – 663
5. Will Davison – 623
6. Mark Winterbottom – 587
7. David Reynolds – 474
8. Anton De Pasquale – 462
9. Nick Percat – 439
10. Brodie Kostecki – 437
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