Mountainous challenge
It’s time Kiwis ended Bathurst drought
There’s no doubt New Zealand drivers have made a big impact in Supercars over the last few years, but when it comes to Bathurst, success has been elusive.
Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin have been two of the most dominant drivers in the category in recent times, but not so at Mount Panorama. Van Gisbergen came second in 2016, but McLaughlin has only once managed to get in the top five.
The other leading New Zealand driver, Fabian Coulthard, has twice finished on the podium.
So if you don’t count Steven Richards, who while born in Auckland, has the thickest of Australian accents, you have to go back to Greg Murphy in 2004 to find the last Kiwi winner.
But surely this weekend it has to be time for a Kiwi to conquer Mount Panorama again.
Aussies Jamie Whincup and his co-driver Paul Dumbrell are the favourites, which is not surprising considering how convincingly they won the Sandown 500 last month.
Whincup is the GOAT of Supercars and Dumbrell plans his entire year being an understudy to him at the three endurance rounds.
They form a formidable combination, but then so too do van Gisbergen and his co-driver Earl Bamber, who’ve formed an unofficial Team NZ at Bathurst. If you’re looking for driver to support, you couldn’t do much better than going for a two-time Le Mans winner.
Triple Eight team owner Roland Dane said he put a lot of effort into making sure Bamber was the right fit for van Gisbergen and hasn’t been disappointed with how he’s slotted in.
‘‘I went to watch him race in Fuji last October in the World Endurance Championships, just to help make up our minds about offering him something here this year,’’ Dane said.
‘‘I was very impressed then. He came to the Gold Coast last year to have a look as well and the interaction has been first-class since then.’’
If Bamber was to become a fulltime driver in Supercars, which he doesn’t want to do, there’s no doubt he’d be superb at it, but Dane says there’s a clear pecking order in car
No 97 this weekend, with van Gisbergen the boss.
‘‘Earl is there to help Shane, he knows that,’’ Dane said.
‘‘He’s a professional driver, so it will be what Shane wants at the end of the day that counts.
‘‘But Earl knows his job. They
know each other extremely well, they grew up racing together and therefore Shane is very happy to have him in the car.
‘‘Not necessarily because he’s a Kiwi, but because they’ve grown up together, they know each other well.’’
While the Great Race is tomorrow, the largest TV viewing figures in Australia over the weekend are for the Top 10 shootout today, when the best drivers go for a one lap blast around the mountain for grid positions.
It means very little, but is thrilling
to watch. Last year McLaughlin set a new lap record of 2:03.8312 over the 6.213km circuit.
McLaughlin received a haka from New Zealand fans following that lap and remembers it fondly.
‘‘It’s very special and I hate when people say it’s the Lap of the Gods, because that’s Murph’s [Greg Murphy] lap,’’ McLaughlin said.
‘‘For me, it was a special day and I had the car underneath me to do the lap and that’s the coolest thing about it. I was able to do a really good lap around here and you don’t get that too often.’’
McLaughlin’s team-mate Fabian Coulthard, along with his co-driver Tony D’Alberto, has to be considered as one of the dark horses, while veterans Craig Lowndes and Richards could repeat their joint feat from three years ago.
Andre Heimgartner in his Nissan with Aaren Russell are outsiders and so too is Garth Tander with his Kiwi co-driver Chris Pither.
For the other New Zealander, Richie Stanaway, he’s doing everything he can to rule out his prospects of a good weekend.
‘‘We don’t even have remotely close to the pace to get any kind of result in the dry,’’ he said.
‘‘So the only hope for us is rain.’’ The forecast for tomorrow is dry all day and with the limited dry practice sessions the drivers have had over the weekend, it could be there’s a surprise winner this time.
And maybe, just maybe, it will be a New Zealander winning.