All-time great: Whincup's career statistics

Most championships. Most race wins. Most pole positions. Most podiums.

Many consider Jamie Whincup to be the greatest of all time, and it's easy to see why.

The 2021 Repco Supercars Championship was Whincup's 18th and final full-time campaign, with the 38-year-old retiring after the Repco Bathurst 1000.

He won't be lost to the paddock; if anything, he will be more prominent off the track, with Whincup to lead Triple Eight Race Engineering in 2022 and beyond.

Whincup will rise to the Managing Director and Team Principal roles next year, replacing Roland Dane, who is scaling back his commitments.

The full-time racing career of Australia's most successful touring car driver nearly didn't take off at all after he was dropped by Garry Rogers Motorsport following a torrid 2003 campaign.

He made his main game debut as a teenager in 2002 for GRM, in a year he defeated future Supercars rival Mark Winterbottom to the Australian Formula Ford Championship crown.

Alongside Max Dumesny at the 2002 Queensland 500, he finished 20th in his first championship race. A Bathurst DNF followed, but he had done enough to clinch a full-time drive for 2003.

Aged just 21, Whincup returned with an enduro drive with Perkins Engineering, and finished an impressive ninth at Bathurst alongside Alex Davison.

He returned to the full-time fray in 2005 with Tasman Motorsport, and scored his first podiums at Sandown and Bathurst alongside the late Jason Richards.

From 2006, the legend began, with Whincup winning on his Triple Eight debut on the streets of Adelaide.

That year, he teamed up with Craig Lowndes for the first of four Bathurst 1000 wins, and finished 10th overall.

Between 2007 and 2020, Whincup finished in the top five of the championship, winning the title a record seven times.

In 2014, he became the second driver after Ian Geoghegan to win four straight championships.

In his razing championship run between 2011 and 2014, he recorded 45 race wins from 132 race starts.

His seventh title was arguably his best, defying a rampant Scott McLaughlin and DJR Team Penske to clinch the crown in the very last race of the season.

Already in 2021, he has brought up 550 race starts and 250 round starts.

He also represents more than 44 per cent of all race wins by drivers on the 2021 grid.

Jamie Whincup: Season-by-season Supercars statistics*