Photo: jamiewhincup.com.au

Whincup set to clinch second title

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Nothing short of a miracle will stop Jamie Whincup successfully defending his V8 Supercar Championship title at the Sydney Telstra 500 this weekend.

Whincup heads to the Homebush based Grand Final with an extremely healthy 281-point advantage over Will Davison.

With one hand already on the 2009 trophy, Whincup needs a mere 19-points from the race weekend to claim the title for the second successive year.

The V8 Supercar points system in force at Homebush means that Whincup needs only a single race finish in 28th place or higher to complete this feat, even if Davison does take both race wins and a maximum points haul of 300 from the weekend.

The Grand Final will be the fourth street race of the 2009 season, after the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, the New Zealand based Hamilton 400 and the SuperGP at Surfer’s Paradise.

The Clipsal and Hamilton events were whitewashed by double race wins for Whincup, as he collected a maximum a 300-points from both meetings, with Davison scoring well, but someway off that of Whincup’s tally.

Surfer’s Paradise was a different story. Whincup’s heavy points scoring halted briefly, but despite this, Davison failed to capitalise, managing to close the gap by only 61-points that weekend.

Regardless of the fact that Whincup’s championship advantage appears to be insurmountable, extraordinary happenings are not uncommon in motorsport.

With the street circuit nature of the Grand Final, thoughts can be cast back to Hamilton in 2008 Whincup endured a miserable weekend, as he failed to secure a single point at the event after crashing heavily during qualifying

Driver’s championship aside, the Team’s Championship is still wide open. TeamVodafone lead the way on 5,351-points, a solitary point ahead of the Toll Holden Racing Team.

The Sydney based final meeting of the season will comprise two races, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, each covering 200km.

The final round will also see the use of only the standard ‘Control’ tyre from Dunlop, as the extremely soft compound SP Sport Maxx ‘Sprint’ tyre is not available for use.