Scott McLaughlin takes tight win for Volvo in Sydney
Scott McLaughlin took his second win of the season, and the first for Volvo in a 200km race at Sydney Motorsport Park, despite a late race drama which saw the New Zealander challenged hard by Walkinshaw Racing’s Nick Percat.
The race took place in completely different conditions to yesterday’s two wet sprint races, with the sun shining on the Sydney Motorsport Park circuit. Scott McLaughlin had secured pole position for Volvo ahead of the Brad Jones Racing Holden Commodore of Fabian Coulthard, but at the start, it was James Courtney who launched into the lead from fourth on the grid on the soft tyre in his Holden Racing Team Commodore.
The race was suspended behind the safety car before the end of the first lap, when Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom made contact with team-mate David Reynolds at Turn 3, which fired Reynolds into the Dick Johnson Racing Ford of Scott Pye. Both Pye and Reynolds slid off on the wet grass and into the concrete barrier at the exit of the corner, with both cars suffering signifcant and front and rear-end damage respectively, with Pye also winded in the crash.
The entire field opted to pit at the end of the lap to get the first of two mandatory pit stops out of the way, and that allowed Volvo to get McLaughlin back ahead of Courtney with a slightly slicker pit stop.
When the race resumed, Winterbottom was quickly handed a drive-through penalty by the stewards, which relegated him to 21st and last position, with two cars missing from the field today with Tim Slade’s Walkinshaw Racing Holden and Robert Dahlgren’s Volvo S60 deemed unrepairable after incidents in Saturday’s races.
McLaughlin began to pull away, while Nick Percat in the Walkinshaw Racing Holden passing Courtney on lap ten foreshadowed a problem for the 2010 champion, who came to halt just two laps later with a gearbox failure.
Championship leader Jamie Whincup was now in third, but lost a spot to the Nissan of James Moffat on lap 14.
HRT’s only remaining entry, that of Garth Tander, lost seventh place to a charging Jason Bright in the BJR Holden on lap 18, and just three laps later Tander was spun out at Turn 5 after contact from Nissan’s Michael Caruso, an incident which will be investigated by the stewards after the race.
Jason Bright was one of the first to take his second pit stop on lap 26, and that allowed him to get the undercut and move up to third ahead of Moffat’s Nissan during the pit stop phase, but Moffat was able to get back ahead of Bright on slightly newer tyres on lap 30, with Bright’s team-mate Coulthard also moving up to fourth.
A lap later and Coulthard was able to take third off of Moffat at Turn 1, while race leader McLaughlin and second place Percat were able to pit and stay safely ahead after their pit stops of the intense battle for third which incorporated Coulthard, Moffat, Bright, Whincup and yesterday’s double race winner Shane Van Gisbergen.
McLaughlin had a near five second gap over Percat throughout the next stage of the race, but a tyre issue saw that lead begin to reduce rapidly during the final seven laps, with the gap reduced to just three-tenths of a second at the finish.
Nick Percat therefore secured his first podium of the season with second place, with Fabian Coulthard securing the final podium spot in his BJR Holden.
James Moffat secured fourth for Nissan, with Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup finishing fifth, making a late race pass on Bright into Turn 1 on the final lap, and further extends his points lead over Mark Winterbottom, who had another disastrous race, qualifying down in 15th, serving a drive-through for the incident with his team-mate on lap one, and then while only up to 17th, having to serve a third pit stop due to a tyre problem on lap 43, which dropped him back to dead last in 20th position.
Whincup’s points lead is now extended to 135 points, as the season now heads into the Endurance event season, with the Sandown 500 next up on September 14th.
