Kiwi rules Adelaide
TWO pole positions, two race wins.
The numbers don’t get much better for Holden’s Shane van Gisbergen after the opening weekend of the Supercars championship in Adelaide.
As his Red Bull Holden Racing Team stablemate and defending champion Jamie Whincup failed to finish a Supercars race for the first time in 136 races, van Gisbergen made it four wins from as many starts on the streets of Adelaide in Sunday’s 250km finale.
In front of a record crowd of 85,100, van Gisbergen made the most of Whincup’s drama to leave South Australia with a 32-point lead in the championship standings.
It’s the 2016 champion’s 26th race win in his career and he joins Whincup (08, 09) and Marcos Ambrose (04, 05) as the only drivers to claim four consecutive victories in Adelaide.
Bathurst 1000 winner David Reynolds, who briefly jumped van Gisbergen midrace following a pit stop before being overtaken a few laps later, took out second place and leaves Adelaide in second place on the championship standings. Holden veteran Garth Tander came home third in a solid result for the 40-year- old driver.
Ford star Chaz Mostert was fourth, a position his teammate Mark Winterbottom seemed destined to claim before a drive-through penalty in lap 56 for excessively cutting the kerb at turn two of the 2.33km street circuit. Winterbottom would eventually come home 13th.
Whincup was 11 seconds clear at the front with 30 laps gone when his gearbox blew up, while Ford driver Scott McLaughlin had to settle for a 10th-place finish after a puncture on lap 25.
The championship’s next stop is the Australian Formula One Grand Prix from March 22-25.