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Fast Facts: Perth SuperSprint

26 Apr 2015
We know Lowndes is looking for 100 wins this weekend - what other history is he chasing? Who celebrates 250, and who's looking to beat a lean streak?
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1. Craig Lowndes will attract plenty of attention in Perth as he aims for a record 100th Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercars Championship race victory at a venue where he's claimed more wins (15) in his career than any other.

Lowndes will also be chasing history in the first qualifying session at Barbagallo as he aims for his fourth straight pole position after clean-sweeping all three at Symmons Plains.

Just one driver - Mark Winterbottom in 2011 - has claimed four poles in a row in the last 17 years.

Lowndes could join Peter Brock, Allan Moffat, Dick Johnson, Colin Bond, John Bowe, Mark Skaife and Winterbottom in this exclusive club.

2. Garry Rogers Motorsport will make its 250th Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercars Championship round start at Barbagallo.

The Volvo factory team made its championship debut at Eastern Creek in 1996 with a single car Commodore entry for Steve Richards and since then has competed in 590 ATCC/V8SC races.

GRM has been a two-car team since 1998 and recorded 21 race wins, 18 pole positions and 53 podium finishes in this time.

3. This year is the 38th time the ATCC/V8SC has visited Barbagallo (formerly known as Wanneroo Raceway). The first round was held there in 1973 and the championship has competed there every year bar one (2010) since 1978.

Only Sandown and Symmons Plains have hosted more ATCC/V8SC rounds than Barbagallo.

4. The V8 Supercars Dunlop Series will celebrate its 100th roundin Perth.

The first round was held at Eastern Creek in 2000 and since then the category has acted as the launching pad for a range of current V8 Supercars Championship stars.

A total of 34 different drivers have won DVS rounds with the record for most round wins held by Steve Owen (10) followed by Dean Canto and Paul Dumbrell (9).

These three drivers remain the only drivers to claim multiple DVS series wins since the category kicked off 15 years ago.

Click here for more on the Dunlop Series milestone.

5. Qualifying on the front row is crucial for success at Barbagallo Raceway given 70.5% of race winners in championship history have started on the front row of the grid there.

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The last time a driver won a race at Barbagallo from outside the top 10 was in 1997 when Larry Perkins won a rain-affected Race 1 in his Castrol Commodore.

6. Two big name drivers in the top five in the V8 Supercars Championship pointscore - James Courtney and Shane van Gisbergen - are both yet to finish on the podium, let alone win a race, at Barbagallo Raceway.

Both drivers have a best race result of fourth (Courtney on Saturday in 2009, van Gisbergen on Saturday in 2011) and neither has ever qualified in the top four in Perth.

7. Holden could become the first manufacturer in history to score 300 pole positions in the ATCC/V8SC.

The local manufacturer has a score sheet of 297 poles heading to Barbagallo, so a clean sweep of the three pole positions would given them the triple century.

Holden has scored 34 pole positions since Ford last scored one at Phillip Island in November 2013.

8. Nissan Motorsport's Todd Kelly will equal Dick Johnson for ninth on the list of ATCC/V8SC round starts in Perth.

Kelly will start his 204th championship round at Barbagallo and has the fourth most round starts of active drivers behind Craig Lowndes, Garth Tander and Jason Bright.

9. Only two races in ATCC/V8SC history at Barbagallo Raceway have been red-flagged and stopped.

Wild wet weather struck the 1988 race, forcing it to be stopped after multiple cars were stranded in the sand traps that surround the circuit. The race re-commenced under a complete restart, rather than as a continuation of the same race.

The second occurred in Race 2 in 2011 when Karl Reindler and Steve Owen collided on the start line when the former stalled on the grid. The race was red-flagged and restarted over its full, original distance once the accident had been cleared.

10. Ash Walsh (Erebus Motorsport V8) and Andre Heimgartner (Super Black Racing) are the only two drivers in the field competing at Barbagallo in the V8 Supercars Championship for the first time, however both have great success there in the Dunlop Series.

Walsh won the DVS round in Perth in 2013 and 2014 while Heimgartner won Race 2 last year.

The Perth SuperSprint begins Friday May 1 - click here for tickets and details.

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