Saturday’s winner Shane van Gisbergen has again tasted victory at the Adelaide 500, this time winning Sundays 250km, 78-lap race from Erebus Racing’s David Reynolds. The Red Bull Holden Racing Team driver has now completed back-to-back Adelaide 500 doubles and takes the lead in the Australian Supercars Championship.
“First thing is that it’s been a pretty amazing couple of years, four wins in a row and four shootouts in a row,” commented van Gisbergen. “I’m not sure what it is about this place but I love driving it and we’ve had some pretty awesome races here.
“In the race itself, Jamie (Whincup) had the car to beat today and we went a bit far with our set-up and were no good compared to yesterday. It’s a real shame we couldn’t get the 1-2.
“In our car, we had pretty okay middle stint, it was a long one, and I knew it was going to be close with Davey (Reynolds). I put in a couple of laps earlier and struggled to get going, so that made it even closer, it was a pretty tight battle to the end. I missed the apex at Turn 7 and heard a big ‘twang’ and I ran over something metallic and then as I came through Turn 8 I saw big smoke, so Scotty (McLaughlin) must’ve run through the same thing. It was a real shame and of course I was paranoid for the next few laps hoping my thing would hang together. I hate getting points gaps like that but that’s part of racing and hopefully we can have a few more battles throughout the year.”
Team mate Jamie Whincup took the lead off the line and looked well on his way to a first win on the season. He made his first stop on lap 16 and emerged five seconds clear of van Gisbergen as the effective race leader. That margin only grew over the next 15 laps and was out to more than 10 seconds by the time Whincup slowed with a transmission problem and crawled back to pitlane.
The retirement was Whincup’s first in 136 Supercars races, a run dating back to the Saturday Gold Coast race in 2013.
“Obviously it was a disappointing end to a bloody tough weekend,” commented Whincup. “We came here to push hard and attack, and unfortunately we crashed on Friday, which set us behind so we had a 4am finish that night and then a 1am finish last night.
“A result of the crash today was a cracked transaxle oil cooler that had been with us throughout the day and was slowly leaking oil, before running out completely and then we had no gearbox in the end. Unfortunately, that’s motorsport but we’ll go away happy with the speed that we showed.
Third home was Wilson Security Racing GRM’s Garth Tander followed by Supercheap Auto Racing’s Chaz Mostert.
Shell V-Power Racing’s Scott McLaughlin looked to be an early threat to van Gisbergen until a puncture delayed his attack, dropping him back down the order and eventually finishing in 10th. His front left tyre deflated through Adelaide’s super-fast turn eight, forcing him to limp back to the pits. He rejoined down the order in 22nd, and then mounted a stellar recovery drive to finish 10th after the additional pitstop. He is now fifth in the points standings after the opening event of the season.
“We’re gutted,” commented McLaughlin. “I think it was going to be a really great race being SVG and I, and we missed out on that which was disappointing. From where we started on Friday, the team did an incredible job to give me the car I had today. It was an absolute jet. Such a shame for it to be taken away thanks to a tyre, but that’s motorsport. We had some fun coming through the pack at the end there, too.”
Fellow Kiwi driver Andre Heimgartner was impressive in his debut for Nissan Motorsport but had a disappointing race on Sunday.
“We started in the top ten and ran pretty strongly before unfortunately we had smoke coming into the cabin and lost power – we brought it into the garage and worked hard to get back out and be classified as a finisher – it wasn’t how we wanted to end the weekend of course, especially when we had the potential for a top ten finish, but there are lots of positive take aways and we will regroup ready for the Grand Prix in a few weeks’ time.”
Richie Stanaway finished 20th and also went away from the weekend looking at the positives.
“Obviously with the drive-through and no safety cars it made it pretty hard to get any sort of result out of it,” commented Stanaway. “It’s pretty disappointing, I think I could have cleared (Nick Percat) in pit lane, but I waited too long, so a disappointing way to end the day. The pace wasn’t really there today either, so we’ll have to work on that the rest of the season, but I learned a lot this weekend and we’ll put it to use next time out.”
With the weekend’s results, Red Bull Holden Racing Team driver van Gisbergen leads the championship with a perfect 300 points over Reynolds on 258 and James Courtney on 240.
After their problems, McLaughlin and Whincup are fifth and 15th – on 207 and 102 points –respectively.
DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS
1. Shane van Gisbergen 300
2. David Reynolds 258
3. James Courtney 240
4. Chaz Mostert 216
5. Scott McLaughlin 207
6. Garth Tander 201
7. Craig Lowndes 180
8. Mark Winterbottom 177
9. Cameron Waters 168
10. Scott Pye 168
20. Fabian Coulthard 99
TEAMS’ CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS
1. Walkinshaw Andretti United 408
2. Triple Eight Race Engineering 402
3. Tickford Racing (Winterbottom/Mostert) 393
4. Erebus Motorsport 360
5. Shell V-Power Racing Team 306
6. Brad Jones Racing 264
7. Garry Rogers Motorsport 249
8. NISMO 246
9. Tickford Racing (Waters/Stanaway) 213
10. Nissan Motorsport 183
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