Coulthard wins first Darwin Supercars race
‘ A one-two for the team is awesome – couldn’t ask for much more.’ FABIAN COULTHARD
DJR Team Penske have fired back at Red Bull Racing’s challenge, with Supercars leader Fabian Coulthard and team-mate Scott McLaughlin scoring a one-two finish in Darwin.
Yesterday’s win extended Coulthard’s lead in the overall standings to 34 points, while McLaughlin closed the gap on second-placed RBR driver Jamie Whincup to six.
Whincup improved from ninth on the grid to finish fourth, but couldn’t find his way onto the podium, denied by fellow Holden driver Nick Percat.
‘‘A one-two for the team is awesome – couldn’t ask for much more,’’ Coulthard said.
The win capped a big week for Coulthard, who announced he and partner Becky Lamb were expecting twins later in the year.
‘‘This is massive. It’s going to be a big year so, hopefully, we can finish it off in the correct style,’’ Coulthard said. GETTY IMAGES
Pole-sitter Rick Kelly’s afternoon ended in disaster when his steering locked and he ploughed into a wall on the 18th lap.
With the safety car on the track, Coulthard capitalised on being the first driver in the pits and didn’t look back after racing resumed on the 23rd lap.
Moments before Kelly’s crash, defending series champion Shane Van Gisbergen had a tyre blowout, dashing his chances of scoring back-to-back race wins.
His day went from bad to worse when he made contact with Garth Tander with three laps remaining, preventing him finishing.
After starting the race 37 points adrift, Van Gisbergen sits 87 behind Coulthard.
Earlier, McLaughlin has set a Supercars lap record in Darwin to top a sizzling final practice session. The New Zealander was one of eight drivers to better Craig Lowndes’s practice record of 1min 6.0259sec set last year, topping the timesheets in in 1:05.5635.
‘‘The car was great and ran on a set of tyres there just to have a good feel for qualifying and it went down OK,’’ McLaughlin said.
Van Gisbergen made a late charge into the top 10 and teammate Jamie Whincup was sixth quickest.
After saying something in the car was ‘‘broken’’ on Friday, Van Gisbergen insisted the Holden had improved ahead of qualifying.
‘‘It’s good. We’ll just see where we are in qualy,’’ he said. – AAP