Anton de Pasquale breaks through for maiden Supercars win

Supercars rising star Anton de Pasquale has finally broken through for his first Supercars race win in his 71st race start, taking a first victory for Erebus Motorsport since the end of 2018.

An aggressive soft-soft tyre strategy saw him move up from eighth on the grid to take the win, fending off former series champion James Courtney to seal his maden victory as the championship contenders endured a tough day in Darwin.

Starting from the outside of the front row, Jamie Whincup was able to get the jump in his Triple Eight Holden over Scott McLaughlin’s DJR Team Penske Ford on the run to Turn 1, gaining the holeshot as Mark Winterbottom moved from fourth to second on the opening lap, getting past the two DJR Team Penske cars as Fabian Coulthard dropped to fourth.

Headaches soon came for the Brad Jones Racing crew as both team cars of Nick Percat and Todd Hazelwood ended up firing in to each other after a helping hand from Shane van Gisbergen, the Triple Eight driver spinning Percat in to his team-mate and suffering damage in the process.

It didn’t take long for Winterbottom to get under the rear wing of his old adversary Whincup, applying pressure to the seven-time champion as behind them McLaughlin was struggling to keep a hard-charging Anton de Pasquale behind him as the Erebus car made good use of the soft rubber.

Winterbottom made the move past Whincup on lap 3, moving in to the lead and looking to burn up his Dunlop soft tyres early on in the weekend. An early safety car on lap 5 put an end to Winterbottom’s chances of running away at the front as the field all entered the pits to take on tyres.

The first safety car since the season restarted came out thanks to Brodie Kostecki’s Matt Stone Racing Commodore ending up in the tyre wall as a result of contact between Jack Le Brocq and Rick Kelly, the Kelly Racing driver rejoining the track just as Kostecki was going past which caused the two to tag.

With the whole field having taken their pit stops, de Pasquale led the way on the soft tyre with only James Courtney in third following the same strategy as Whincup in second, McLaughlin and Winterbottom all bolted on the hard Dunlops.

McLaughlin was the biggest loser on the restart, having to bleed out of the throttle as he passed Courtney before the control line but then left himself vulnerable on the inside to Winterbottom, dropping to fifth as Courtney got past Whincup on soft tyres to take second place.

After the first lap contact which saw Percat retire, van Gisbergen was given a drive-through penalty for the incident, dropping him outside the top 20 as Kelly was handed an identical penalty for the Kostecki incident.

Triple Eight’s day went from bad to worse as Whincup was given a 15 second penalty for an unsafe pit release, being released from his pit bay in to the path of de Pasquale which saw them make contact.

McLaughlin was the next to be penalised after passing Courtney on the restart before the control line, also copping a 15 second time penalty which negated whatever advantage he was about to gain over Whincup.

The race finally normalised with de Pasquale holding a healthy lead over Courtney, both on the soft tyres as Whincup was the first of the hard tyre runners in third but with a time penalty hanging over his head, meaning Winterbottom in fourth on the road provisionally had the last step on the podium but with a fired up Coulthard behind him.

The second safety car of the day was deployed thanks to yet another Brad Jones Racing car incident as Macauley Jones dropped a wheel off the road, spinning on his own into the wall which took the #3 car out of the race.

Racing resumed with 10 laps left to run, de Pasquale again taking control of the field with Courtney in hot pursuit behind, none of the front runners having taken new tyres under the safety car period.

A time certain finish shortened the race from its expected 38 laps but de Pasquale was able to convert regardless to take his first ever Supercars win, just ahead of Courtney in a return to the podium for the 2010 series champion.

Team 18 had reason to celebrate with Pye and Winterbottom finishing third and fourth as Chris Pither took Team Sydney’s first ever top five finish. Coulthard ended up sixth while Chaz Mostert recovered from a 20th position start to end up seventh ahead of Cam Waters, Andre Heimgartner and Lee Holdsworth.

Championship leader McLaughlin dropped to 20th with his penalty as Whincup was demoted to 17th, both ending up behind van Gisbergen who had earlier served his pit lane penalty for the first lap pile-up.