Jamie Whincup takes first win of 2019 in controlling Ipswich victory
Jamie Whincup has finally broken through for his first victory in the 2019 Supercars season after dominating proceedings in Saturday’s 120km race at Queensland Raceway.
The seven-time series champion started from the front row in his Triple Eight Holden Commodore and got his elbows out in the opening lap to show vintage form, coming home with a comfortable margin over the Tickford Racing run Mustangs of Will Davison and Chaz Mostert.
Whincup’s victory further extends his race win record tally to 114 in the Supercars championship, his first time on the top step since last year’s Sandown 500 with Paul Dumbrell.
Despite starting on pole, Scott McLaughlin was on the wrong side of the grid in the DJR Team Penske Ford and suffered off the line, going neck and neck into Turn 1 alongside Whincup as Davison from third made a blinder, getting up on the outside of the pair into the first turn.
A bump on the exit from Whincup gave him a chance to get past McLaughlin in the chute between Turns 1 and 2 as Davison followed suit, getting the shoulders out to move to second.
Behind the lead trio, Chaz Mostert had a blinding first lap in his Tickford Mustang, moving around the outside of Shane van Gisbergen and Lee Holdsworth at Turn 4 and 6 respectively, displacing the Triple Eight car and his team-mate for fourth.
As the pack started to calm down and spread out around lap 10, Whincup checked out up front, putting a 2.5 second gap over Davison as McLaughlin came in to take his pit stop, wanting to get an undercut on Davison.
An issue with the front left wheel going on meant the stop took over nine seconds, negating any advantage of an undercut.
Holdsworth took his compulsory stop a lap later, emerging behind McLaughlin as the two Mustang runners tried to take advantage of clean air while the front runners continued to circulate with Whincup enjoying a healthy four second lead.
Davison took the race lead as Whincup peeled off on lap 15, taking on four tyres and returning to the track well ahead of McLaughlin, in clean air and on fresh rubber. van Gisbergen, Todd Hazelwood from Matt Stone Racing and Fabian Coulthard all stopped on lap 18 with van Gisbergen dropping behind Holdsworth but on fresher tyres.
Davison and Mostert pitted from the lead on lap 19, both getting passed by Whincup and McLaughlin with Holdsworth splitting the pair though the two most recent stoppers had the advantage of newer Dunlop tyres to take them to the end.
With 15 laps left Mostert started to hitch himself to the back bumper of team-mate Davison as they both reeled in McLaughlin in second.
Davison finally got past the championship leader on lap 27 at Turn 3 as Mostert tried to follow through and got up onto the podium at Turn 4 on the next tour.
Whincup kept holding on to a comfortable lead and held it until the finish as Davison and Mostert settled down into second and third. In the closing laps, van Gisbergen kept ranging up on McLaughlin for fourth but couldn’t quite get to the championship leader, having to settle for the last top five spot.
A late race incident between Todd Hazelwood and Anton de Pasquale gave the MSR driver a 15 second post race penalty after escorting the Erebus entry off the road at Turn 2. The penalty dropped him down to 19th at the finish, ahead of Tim Slade who spun out of tenth place in the Brad Jones Racing Holden on the final lap and came home 24th.
