MOTORSPORT: Whincup under pressure at Gold Coast 600

Having been unable to improve his faltering championship chances in the courtroom, Jamie Whincup must revert to the more familiar surrounds of his Red Bull Holden Commodore to try and achieve that goal this weekend at the Gold Coast 600.

But Whincup, the realist, isn’t kidding himself about his chances of reeling back in teammate Shane van Gisbergen’s 139-point lead as the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship enters its final three rounds.

Just 900 points remain to be won across the Gold Coast, Pukekohe in New Zealand and the Homebush street circuit.

“He is very quick and he will be hard to beat, but we will just do what we do and that’s race hard and try to be in contention come Sydney,” the six-time champion told media on Thursday at the Gold Coast.

“This weekend is going to be critical. There’s always different scenarios going on, there’s weather predicted on Sunday.

“It’s critical that car #88 has a good weekend. We don’t necessarily have to win, but we have to be clean and get as many points as we can.”

The problem is Whincup and Pirtek Enduro Cup co-driver Paul Dumbrell have been unable to fulfill that goal at the Sandown 500 or Bathurst, while van Gisbergen and Alex Premat have finished second twice.

Forebodingly for Whincup, van Gisbergen has an excellent record in recent years on the challenging Gold Coast track, having won the 300km Saturday race each of the last two years.

However, that was with Jonathon Webb in the Tekno Autosports Commodore. This year Webb is a rival and comes to his home track with Will Davison leading the PEC after their shock Bathurst win.

Whincup also has a great record here, although he and Dumbrell have only won once together on the Gold Coast.

So in reality, holding the gap could be beyond Whincup, let alone bridging it. His new for 2016 teammate has looked more convincing as the year has gone on, winning five races to three and displaying raw talent and a refined ability to be fast almost anywhere any time.

Whincup has had his days in 2016, but for the second successive season metronomic championship dominance has been out of his grasp.

Instead, he has found himself for the third consecutive year the centre of controversy exiting Bathurst. He vented in his personal website earlier this week, railing against Supercars “playing dirty” and “TV crews” for “cutting radio audio and pasting in over the top of footage laps later in an attempt to further fuel the ‘I don’t listen to my team’ criticism”.

But he also said the rejection of the team’s appeal against his 15-second Bathurst time penalty for bundling Volvo GRM’s Scott McLaughlin off the road had closed the episode for him.

“It’s taken up a lot of our time. It’s a speed hump,” he said.

“We’ve got our way through it and we’ll focus on doing the best job we can this weekend.”

Veteran Garth Tander, the third driver involved in the lap 150 Bathurst controversy, comes to the Gold Coast in the dying days of his tenure as a factory Holden driver with co-driver Warren Luff as the defending PEC champions and as the most successful driver on the Gold Coast with seven wins.

He will also make his 250th Supercars round start, making him number three on the list behind Craig Lowndes and Russell Ingall and the first to achieve the feat in a Holden.

“When I started in 1998 at Phillip Island, if you’d have said I would do 250 of these weekends I would have taken it! I’m very honoured to have reached 250.”

Tander and Luff are joined by plenty more who could figure this weekend, not least Lowndes and Steven Richards (TeamVortex Commodore), McLaughlin and David Wall (Wilson Security GRM Volvo S60), who will be looking to salvage something from bold championship bids that were effectively scuppered at Bathurst.

Then there’s Falcon duo Chaz Mostert/Steve Owner and Mark Winterbottom/Dean Canto, both looking to redeem something from a forgettable year.

But trying to tip a winner let alone a dominant pairing is fraught with danger at this track, as no crew has been able to win both Saturday and Sunday races.

But we do know strong qualifying is as important as passing is difficult on this spectacular street circuit. We also know safety cars will almost certainly intervene, making good strategic planning crucial. Avoiding stacking and having good fuel economy are two guiding principles to start with.

Meanwhile here's what to look out for at the Gold Coast this weekend:

>> The Castrol Gold Cost 600 comprises the 22nd and 23rd races of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. It includes practice on Friday and qualifying and 300km races on Saturday and Sunday. A Top 10 shootout is held on Sunday.

>> All qualifying and racing will be conducted on the Dunlop soft tyre.

>> All cars will have to make at least two stops. The co-drivers must complete one-third distance.

>> The anti-clockwise 2.96km track has a top speed of 265km/h. Average speed is 146km/h. The public road circuit is incredibly tough on the machinery, requiring the drivers to ‘fly’ the cars through the high-speed front and back straight chicanes to be on the pace. Brakes, suspensions and drivelines cop a pounding – as do the drivers!

>> David Reynolds owns the qualifying lap record at 1m 10.0480 sec. Will Davison owns the race lap record at 1m 10.0851 sec.

>> Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen have claimed one pole apiece in both 2014 and 2015, while David Reynolds and Craig Lowndes split the honours in 2013. Before that Jamie Whincup claimed four consecutive poles.

>> Shane van Gisbergen and Jonathon Webb claimed a race win together in both 2014 and 2015 in the Tekno Commodore, to make them the most successful recent pairing. James Courtney won at his first meeting back from his bizarre helicopter debris accident in 2016, with Jack Perkins co-driving to his first ever Supercars win.

>> Fox Sports and Channel 10 will telecast the action live.

Declaration: Bruce Newton is a paid contributor to the official supercars.com.au website.