MOTORSPORT: Whincup returns to form

He’s baaaack!

Yep, Jamie Whincup made it clear he and the factory Holden Racing Team aren’t a spent Supercars force in Darwin over the weekend, top-scoring for the round and winning his second race of the year and the 120th of his career.

But it didn’t come easy. The seven-time champion crashed his Holden Commodore ZB in practice on Saturday morning and then copped a 15-second penalty when the team released him into the path of eventual winner Anton De Pasquale (Erebus Motorsport Commodore) after his pit stop that afternoon in race one.

At that stage it looked like his weekend was going to be a continuation of the last two Supercars events in Sydney, where he and teammate Shane van Gisbergen had been unable to score a win in six races or even finish on the podium in the last three.

Believe it or not, 2014 was the last time this team missed the podium four times in a row.

Whincup also had to survive a stewards review of his pit stop exit in the final race on Sunday after DJR Team Penske’s Fabian Coulthard had to jam on the brakes to avoid T-boning him.

The stewards found no fault, much to Coulthard’s disappointment as he had tied Whincup on points for the event, but lost the Darwin Triple Crown overall trophy on a countback based on position in the final race.

"I could have gone and drilled him much harder, but then it becomes a safety issue. I had the presence of mind that I wanted to have straight wheels on my car, because I had the rest of the race to go,” said Coulthard.

"But yeah, the question comes back to how much contact is too much contact?"

Whincup, who was racing Coulthard’s teammate and championship leader Scott McLaughlin for the race win, had a succinct response.

"We knew it was going to be close, but we certainly weren't just going to hand them the win on the plate. We were going to attack as hard as we could, and that's exactly what we did."

McLaughlin also had a scrappy start to racing, copping a 15-second penalty in the Saturday race for a safety car infraction and finished even further back.

That turned out to be pivotal for Whincup, who traded places at the top of the podium in Sunday’s two races with McLaughlin, the weekend finishing with the Ford Mustang driver’s title lead reduced from 107 to 101 points.

“I only need another 20 rounds to get into the lead,” remarked Whincup.

He won’t get that many chances, but he does get another three races at Hidden Valley next weekend, before the circus packs up and races to Townsville for a double-header at Reid Park.

After the furious debate over tyres that erupted after the last round in Sydney, the identical allocation of three hard sets and two soft sets of Dunlops didn’t trigger the same level of aggro and unpredictable results in Darwin.

Hidden Valley has a high grip and low degradation surface, which made the softs both fast and durable. The long straight and high ambient temperatures also meant the excessive aero wash generated by these cars helped drivers defending a lead from followers with better tyre quality.

Most of the fast runners conserved by going hard-hard on Saturday, which benefited De Pasquale’s soft-soft maiden win, James Courtney’s second in the Tickford Ford and Scott Pye’s third place for Charlie Schwerkolt’s Holden team.

From there most gravitated to the softs and it became a test of who could qualify up-front, drive clean and fast and had the best tyre quality. Step forward Whincup – who has made a career out of tyre management at speed – and McLaughlin, who drives anything well anywhere anytime.

It wasn’t entirely predictable though. In each race, the mandatory pit stop played a key role in determining the results.

On Saturday the stop was triggered by an early safety car that erased soft tyre runner Mark Winterbottom’s comfortable lead. He opted to swap to hards for the remainder of the race and finished fourth.

In the second race Fabian Coulthard had the advantage over McLaughlin only to be overcut by his teammate and then compounded the error by running off at turn one and surrendering second to Whincup.

In race three McLaughlin led the field away from his third pole of the weekend only to be undercut by Whincup through that contentious pit sequence. They then drove away from the field, never separated by more than a second until the last few laps.

Behind McLaughlin and Whincup, the consistent Chaz Mostert (WAU Holden) is third in the championship ahead of van Gisbergen, who copped a drive-through penalty for punting Brad Jones Racing driver Nick Percat into teammate Todd Hazelwood and out of the race on lap one of race one. Percat entered the meeting fourth in the championship and exited eighth.

2020 Supercars standings after five rounds:
Scott McLaughlin – 1024
Jamie Whincup – 923
Chaz Mostert – 814
Shane van Gisbergen – 753
David Reynolds – 736
Cam Waters – 733
Mark Winterbottom - 706
Nick Percat – 705
Fabian Coulthard – 682
Lee Holdsworth – 675