Jamie Whicup and co-driver Paul Dumbrell won the 50th-anniversary edition of Australia’s most famous road race, the Australian V8 Supercar Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. It was the fourth Bathurst win for Whincup, who also leads the Supercar championship, but his first as lead driver, and the first for Dumbrell.
Fitting for the 50th anniversary of such a famous contest, the race came down to the final few feet of the final lap, with Whincup showing tremendous driving skill to hold off the charging David Reynolds, who was working desperately for his first series win. Reynolds co-drove with Dean Canto.
Whincup in the Team Vodaphone Holden had to conserve fuel in the final laps to make sure he'd finish, and had to try to save his tires as well—while Reynolds in the Bottle-O Racing Ford pressed him through every turn. Whincup was just a little quicker through the technical top of the descent, which kept his opponent from setting up a pass on the long downhill Conrod Straight.
Whincup’s task was made harder because Reynolds had a little more fuel. While Whincup had to run the engine lean, sacrificing horsepower, Reynolds could afford to run wide open. Still, the Vodaphone driver kept his Holden in the lead. The final margin of victory was three-tenths of a second.
“It wasn’t over until the last corner of the last lap,” Whincup told V8Supercars.com. “I was trying to juggle tires, petrol and conserve over the top—it was crazy stuff.
“You would not get a better motor race. You couldn’t have written it like this,” Dumbrell commented. “I honestly didn’t think we were getting home. ”I never thought in my whole career I would stand on the top step of the podium at Bathurst.”
The Bathurst1000 is Australia’s Daytona 500—a battle between basically stock-looking cars representing major brands (Ford and Holden, Australia’s arm of Chevrolet). The biggest difference is that in Australia stock cars don’t race in circles. Bathurst is a gorgeous and very challenging four-mile race course which climbs, crests, and descends Mount Panorama.
A record crowd of 57,000 turned out to watch the race, and over 200,000 for the four-day event including practice, qualifying, and support races.
The 1000-kilometer event—161 laps of the four-mile course—pairs V8 Supercar regulars with less experienced drivers, many from the from the related Dunlop development series. The second drivers have to run a minimum of 54 laps, and no driver can exceed 107.
This leads to some interesting strategies, as when teams try to start their top-tier drivers against the other teams’ second drivers, as Reynolds and Canto did, hoping for early track position. It can also lead to problems: SP Tools Racing miscounted second driver’s Luke Youlden’s laps by two and had to put him in for an enitere stint at the end while V8 regular Shane Van Gisbergen waited. Van gisbergen was the faster driver in the final stint, but he started in twelfth. Who knows how it might have worked out had the team counted properly?
2011 winners Nick Percat and Garth Tander lost their chance to defend when Percat hit the wall on lap 37. The car came back on track a few times as the crew kept trying to fix it, and finished 22 laps down.
As with most endurance races, the common strategy seemed to be to preserve the car until the final hour, and then go all-out for the win. Craig Lowndes and co-driver and Warren Luff in the second Vodaphone car demonstrated this, coming from nearly 30 seconds back at half way to 13 seconds back with 30 laps to go, to fifth and ten seconds back with 25 laps left. Lowndes made a tremendous rush in his closing stint to take fourth place with four laps to go and third on lap 159.
