Scott maintains his Super-lative form
Another Supercar race. Another Scott McLaughlin victory.
If it wasn’t so impressive, it might be starting to get rather tedious.
The young Kiwi, who took out his maiden Supercar championship last season, continued his impressive start to his title defence with a win in the second of four Supercar races at Albert Park in Melbourne this weekend, adding to his triumph in the opener on Friday.
It was a particularly memorable victory as it was the 1000th ever race run in the Australian Touring Car Championship/ Supercar series since its inception.
It has been a perfect start to the new campaign for the 25-yearold, as he landed the first two races in the season’s first meeting in Adelaide earlier in March.
In this sort of form it’s hard to bet against him making it backto-back titles in his DJR Penske Mustang. But McLaughlin, along with everyone else in the Supercars paddock, knows that such dominance can all too often be illusory.
The one certainty he knows is that those chasing him down yesterday – Chaz Mostert, Cam Waters, multiple former champion Jamie Whincup and Fabian Coulthard – will be working constantly to close the gap.
Still, for now McLaughlin can look down on the pursuing pack from the points table.
In the second Supercars race, run just after lunchtime yesterday, he was on pole position and led from lights out to the chequered flag, although he admits that his beginning was not as good as it should have been.
‘‘Lucky I got the start, I think I bogged a little bit and Chaz [Mostert] got a bad one as well. The light sequence is quite fast and that caught us all out.
‘‘I was able to get off and control the pace from there.’’
McLaughlin was emotional on the podium on Friday evening after he learned of the devastating attack on the Christchurch mosques which claimed the lives of 49 people. The city is his hometown, and although he has lived in Australia for the past 15 years, he still has many friends there.
He was proud to wear a silver fern on his helmet and his car’s wing mirror to commemorate those in his home country reeling from the sickening attack. Most of the other drivers and teams did the same.
‘‘It was a fantastic initiative by Supercars,’’ McLaughlin said.
‘‘It’s my home town, it hit pretty hard yesterday, friends and stuff. I don’t have any family there any more due to the earthquakes, but that place has been through the wars, and it knocks you around. I had friends who were in lockdown, but fortunately no-one I knew got hurt but it’s very sad regardless.
‘‘You know where everything is, then seeing it on TV it doesn’t seem real. I have been in Australia for 15 years but I am always a Kiwi.’’
McLaughlin puts down his growing confidence behind the wheel to the fact that he has now won his first drivers’ championship.
‘‘I have ticked that box, so anything after this is a bonus. I am just focused now, I know what to do, I know what I need to do to win a championship, so I probably trust my own ability a lot more.
‘‘It was a massive tick off the bucket list. The next one is Bathurst. Today to win the 1000th race, I have done some pretty cool things in this category already, so that was pretty special.
‘‘It’s something no-one ever take off me.’’
‘‘The [starting] light sequence is quite fast and that caught us all out.’’ Kiwi ace Scott McLaughlin
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