McLaughlin increases points haul with another win

Scott McLaughlin claimed his 55th Australia Supercars Championship race win today in Race 28 at The Bend SuperSprint. In winning the OTR SuperSprint, he has increased his championship lead over rival Jamie Whincup to 263 points with two races on Sunday before heading to the final round at Bathurst in October.

“I had a lot better start than last Saturday, that’s for sure,” commented McLaughlin. “Shane (van Gisbergen) was coming at me pretty hard there, but I tried to leave a little bit in the bank when he was coming at me so I could charge on. When he really got to me and got his tyres hot, and he was in the dirty air, it was quite difficult for him.”

“It was a pretty good race for us today, and I have to thank the Red Bull Holden Racing Team for giving me a great car,” said van Gisbergen. “We ran a bit longer for our strategy and changed the rear tyres and tried to catch Scotty (McLaughlin), but he was just too good.

This weekend’s racing is on the shorter ‘West’ circuit configuration which removes six corners and one mile from the ‘International’ circuit that was raced on last weekend. 

An issue with the lights forced a delayed start and a second formation lap. Because the race was time-certain, it was reduced from 32 to 31 laps. Once it got underway, McLaughlin got off the start line without any problems to immediately take control of the race.

When the field had completed their stops, McLaughlin was the race leader but only had a gap of 0.7 to van Gisbergen who was on fresher tyres. Fabian Coulthard had fought his way up to P9 and able to hold off Whincup to the chequered flag.

Van Gisbergen didn’t let McLaughlin extend his gap and was within half a second in the closing stages of the race. But McLaughlin was able to hang on to claim his 55th Supercars race win, his 12th this season.

McLaughlin extends his lead in the Championship to 263 over Whincup, while Coulthard still sits 6th. The Shell V-Power Team has a 116-point lead over Triple 8.