Van Gisbergen extends lead despite bungled pitstop

Chaz Mostert claimed his second win of the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship in a chaotic Merlin Darwin Triple Crown opening race in Darwin. What should have been a victory for Shane van Gisbergen was stymied after a bungled pitstop at the Hidden Valley circuit.

“Firstly, the car was awesome today,” commented van Gisbergen who finished in 12th. “We had a lot of issues yesterday which I mentioned, but it was much better today.

“I had really good pace, and I knew that our race pace was great. Our start was awesome, and I managed to get out in front coming into turn one. The first stint was good, and the car was awesome, but then we had an unfortunate pit stop incident which costs us 30-seconds and ultimately cost us the win.

“It’s a real shame because we had the quickest car today, but we’ll work on all the positives and use them to our advantage tomorrow. I think we’ll be fine tomorrow. We just missed a really good opportunity today with all of the cars caught up at turn one, and I could have got a lot more points today.”

Van Gisbergen extended his series lead over Whincup, who finished one position behind his team mate in 13th, to 193 points courtesy of his fastest lap, with Mostert closing to 195 points of the championship leader.

Eighth-starting Mostert was one of the beneficiaries of the lap 1, Turn 1 chaos which wiped out pole-sitter Anton De Pasquale. It marked the second win in Walkinshaw Andretti United colours for Mostert following his Race 8 win in Tasmania. It was also Mostert’s first win in Darwin since 2015, the 15th of his career, and WAU’s first win in Darwin since 2008.

Second home was Cameron Waters followed by Nick Percat. The field will return for ARMOR ALL Qualifying for Race 13 at 9:45am on Sunday.

Race 12 Results