Top End clean sweep for McLaughlin in masterful Sunday display

Hidden Valley Raceway has proved itself as a happy hunting ground for Scott McLaughlin as the DJR Team Penske driver took his third straight win at the Darwin circuit this afternoon, gaining a clean sweep of the sixth round of Supercars this year.

After taking pole for the day’s earlier race and converting it to his 50th win in the championship, the two-time defending series champion didn’t look back as he took the lead on the opening lap to notch up win number seven for the year and at the Northern Territory venue.

Starting on the front row alongside polesitter Shane van Gisbergen, McLaughlin got the best jump off the line as the Triple Eight driver had to drop behind Nick Percat who dragged his Brad Jones Racing machine up from fourth to second at Turn 1.

Up front McLaughlin did his usual thing of stretching a margin to those behind him as he and Percat took relatively early stops, on an alternate strategy to van Gisbergen who was running long in his first stint to have good tyre condition at the end of the race.

With the stops completed for the lead pack, McLaughlin held the effective race lead from Percat with Scott Pye squeezing the Team 18 #20 car in to third, ahead of van Gisbergen who pitted late in the race to make use of fresh tyres and soon got up close to Pye, resuming their battle from the end of Race 17.

Despite the better tyre condition of his Dunlops, van Gisbergen wasn’t able to make progress and soon found himself having to defend from the Walkinshaw Andretti United #25 of Chaz Mostert behind him with Mark Winterbottom dragging his #18 Commodore into the party soon after.

van Gisbergen lost ground to Pye in the dying laps, leaving himself vulnerable to Winterbottom who had stopped even later for fresh tyres until the end which only let those in front gain more of a gap to secure their places on the podium.

Winterbottom was finally able to get past van Gisbergen with four laps to go, allowing Mostert to close in on the rear of the #97 car though he was unable to get near enough for a challenge, having to settle for sixth.

Out front, no one could touch McLaughlin who took the flag over 13 seconds clear of Percat in second and Pye in third to take win number 51 in his career while Percat’s podium was a return to the dais after a tough couple of weekends in Darwin.

Winterbottom made it a three-four result for Team 18 after he got past van Gisbergen, the polesitter ending up fifth ahead of Mostert, championship combatant Jamie Whincup, Andre Heimgartner, Anton de Pasquale and David Reynolds to round out the top ten.

Showing the two sides of the coin for DJR Team Penske, Fabian Coulthard was relegated to 11th after having served a 5 second penalty for making contact with Bryce Fullwood, escorting the WAU car wide at the last corner.

McLaughlin’s championship lead is now extended thanks to Whincup’s average Sunday in Darwin as the field packs up to head back in to Queensland for back-to-back weekends at Townsville’s Reid Park Circuit.