McLaughlin defends drive after penalty
“LOOK, no driver in that position is going to agree with a penalty,” Scott McLaughlin said.
Nevertheless, the shattered Supercars driver maintains he raced fairly in the Race 26 cruel incident with Craig Lowndes that ultimately denied him his first Supercars championship title.
With two laps to go in the final race at the Newcastle 500, McLaughlin had just secured 11th place – the position he needed to clinch the title regardless of where Jamie Whincup finished – after two separate comeback drives through the field following penalties.
A self-confessed “little mistake” into Turn 1 on the penultimate lap allowed Lowndes to get a run on the No. 17 Shell Ford as they charged up Watt St towards Turn 2.
“(I’m) pretty gutted,” he said. “At the end of the day I wasn’t going to die wondering. I just gave it my all.
“I lost my left mirror, so I didn’t know where Lowndes was.
“I saw in my rear view mirror that he’d gone left; I protected that line but just left a little bit of room – I felt, like, a car width – for him, just in case he was there. Something massive happened because he bounced into me.
“I felt like I raced fair, and for it to be taken away like that, I don’t agree with it.”
The impact against the wall ripped the left-front wheel off Lowndes’ car and left it without brakes, sending him crashing backwards into the tyre wall at Turn 2.
The stewards immediately announced as the race continued that they were investigating the incident.
Within moments of the title contenders taking the chequered flag, they handed down their verdict: a 25-second time penalty that dumped McLaughlin down to 18th and handed the championship to race-winner Whincup.