World of Sport: Bathurst 1000; Petit Le Mans; NASCAR Cup; Super Formula; WTCR; DTM; Motogp
Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander ensured the stalwart Australian Supercars marque bids its factory farewell on top
The factory Holden era came to a fitting end at Mount Panorama, with Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander combining for an emotional Bathurst 1000 victory.
There wasn’t much in the build-up that suggested their Triple Eight Holden Racing Team Commodore would lead more than 100 laps and win the race. Van Gisbergen and Tander didn’t have any specific problems through practice and qualifying – apart from an awkward moment when Tim Slade turned in on van Gisbergen in the first practice session – but there just seemed to be a small deficit to the outright pace.
For the most part everybody was chasing the pacesetting Tickford Ford Mustang from Thursday to Saturday. Cam Waters and Will Davison topped four of the seven practice sessions, while Waters could well have challenged teammate Lee Holdsworth for provisional pole had it not been for a poorly timed shower of rain at the end of qualifying. It was in the Top 10 Shootout, however, that Waters showed his hand. He became the only driver to break into the threes all weekend, his 2m03.559s a new Shootout lap record. Even single-lap master Scott Mclaughlin couldn’t get within 0.4s of the time, while van Gisbergen was fourth quickest, the best part of 0.9s off the pace.
With a big question mark over the weather on race day, the Bureau of Meteorology predicting a 90% chance of rain and storms, most teams took advantage of the dry morning conditions and started their co-drivers. The key exception was the lead DJR Team Penske entry, Mclaughlin able to comfortably beat Davison off the start into Hell Corner
and lead across the first stint.
The DJR Penske Ford’s advantage didn’t last long, though. Once Waters was in the Tickford Mustang, he was able to swiftly run down Mclaughlin’s co-driver Slade, before some smart pitstop strategy when the safety car made its first appearance helped Waters into the lead. By that stage van Gisbergen was running in third, Tander having put in a solid first stint in the Triple Eight Commodore. It wasn’t until the next safety car, 20-odd laps later, that the Holden pair really came into the game.
It wasn’t so much the caution itself, triggered by Jordan Boys hitting the wall at Murray’s Corner, that played to van Gisbergen’s advantage. It was the weather on the restart. After a week of talking about the potential conditions, the heavens finally opened, albeit very briefly, and only at the top of the Mountain. It was hardly enough rain to justify moving the start time forward by half an hour, but it was more than enough for renowned wet-weather ace van Gisbergen to swing the race in his favour.
As the field tiptoed over Mount Panorama after the restart, van Gisbergen dived down the inside of Mclaughlin, before passing Davison, who was in the