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Tickford car, at Hell Corner two laps later. He then had to fend off Fabian Coulthard, who was reading the conditions just as well, before settling into the lead.
The crucial battle for track position had been won, but there were still more than 100 laps to go, and once the track dried out the Tickford Mustang still looked like the fastest car in the race.
As the next couple of stints wore on, the Penske challenged faded. Coulthard and Tony D’alberto lost time stacking during the next caution, while the sister Mclaughlin/slade entry was undone by that earlier decision to start the primary driver. By that stage, both Tander and Davison had ticked off their minimum co-driver laps and van Gisbergen and Waters were back in the cars, ready to triple-stint their way home.
What followed was a relentless two-horse race, both drivers putting in qualifying lap after qualifying lap. Waters appeared to have the edge in terms of pace but, in this era of aero wash, van Gisbergen knew that if he didn’t make any mistakes, and he placed his car right in the couple of spots Waters might get past, he’d be OK.
With his car getting better and better as the race wore on, van Gisbergen looked to have broken the Waters challenge midway through the last stint of the day. Then, with nine laps to go, Jack Smith ended up beached at The Chase right as Bryce Fullwood hit the wall on the run into Elbow.
The safety car gave Waters, who was struggling with a failed cool suit, a small rest and another shot at van Gisbergen. He got close on the restart, but not quite close enough. After barely a lap of racing the safety car made one more appearance, this time to clear Zane Goddard’s crashed car from the top the Mountain, which set up a three-lap sprint to the finish.
Van Gisbergen wasn’t going to let it slip from there, though, setting a 2m05.641s – the fastest lap of the race – on the penultimate tour. That gave him just enough breathing room to seal his first Bathurst 1000 crown in 14 attempts, as Tander added a fourth to his formidable record.
While van Gisbergen’s flawless run home was impressive, he later explained that it was that two-lap stint in the wet when he passed Mclaughlin and Davison that made all the difference. “On the safety car lap [the rain] started at The Cutting, and then as we got to the back straight it started to rain there,” he said. “You just had no idea what it was going to be like.
I was third at that stage [behind Davison and Scott Mclaughlin] and I just went a little bit later than the guys in front, where they were braking.
“If they made it around the corner, I’d get off the brake and try to go a bit quicker. It was working, but I got to the front and I was just lost. When you’re the pioneer you don’t know where the grip is.
“Fabian [Coulthard] caught me and I thought I was in trouble, but that set us up in the race because, as we know in these cars, it’s impossible to pass really. Every time Cam caught me [in the closing stints] I put the car in the right spot for a couple of laps, [his car] got hot and then I got on with my day.”
The win was significant in that it marked the end of Holden’s factory involvement in Australian Supercars, a direct result of General Motors’ decision to axe the famous marque. While the Commodore will return in 2021 for one last Bathurst, the Holden Racing Team won’t. That made Tander’s involvement in the win particularly meaningful, given he’s been a career Holden driver and won three of his four Bathursts in factory cars.
“Bathurst means a lot to the Holden
“I GOT TO THE FRONT AND WAS LOST. WHEN YOU’RE THE PIONEER YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THE GRIP IS”
people,” he said. “One of the fondest memories I have in my career is when we took the [Peter Brock] Trophy into head office in 2011 with Nick [Percat], and how excited everyone was that we had Bathurst success. Even going over to Elizabeth to the manufacturing plant and doing the same thing there, seeing the line workers getting a photo with the trophy was very special.
“I feel incredibly honoured. It’s a sad end to a fantastic brand. But I’m glad we were able to give some light in these final moments. I’m really, really honoured to be part of it.”
Adding to the send-off was Chaz Mostert and Warren Luff finishing a fine third in the lead Walkinshaw Andretti United entry, the Clayton team having run the factory Holden concern from 1990 to 2017, when the works status was handed over to Triple Eight.
The Mostert and Luff car never looked like an outright contender, but a solid, trouble-free day – typical of WAU at Mount Panorama in recent years – yielded a well-deserved podium.
Waters, meanwhile, was left physically spent after his battle with van Gisbergen thanks to that faulty cool suit. “The boys told me it wasn’t working for my first stint this morning,” he said. “I didn’t run the cool suit for the last three stints and each lap was a qualifier, so I was feeling pretty buggered after that race. That was one of the toughest races I’ve done.
“I felt terrible in the car. Those last safety cars, I wasn’t really wanting to warm the tyres because I was feeling sick and stuff like that. I just wanted the thing to be over. I threw everything at it to try to pass [van Gisbergen] but it wasn’t to be.”
The win may have eluded him for now, but there was a sense that Bathurst week marked a coming of age for Waters, who many figure will be a genuine title contender next season.
“I think we’ve taken another step,” he said. “The cars are slowly getting to where we need them to be and doing what we need them to do, and from Townsville [in late August and early September] onwards we turned a corner. It’s in a happy place at the moment, the car, it’s doing what we need. We need a little bit more, but I think this year was really good for us as a team.”