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How the Triple Eight battle played into Brown's hands

17 Nov 2021
'We probably didn’t do each other any favours trying to get the win'
6 mins by James Pavey
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Will Brown was just seven years old when Jamie Whincup won his first race in Adelaide in 2006.

He was 12 years old when Shane van Gisbergen won his first race in Hamilton in 2011.

To Sunday’s BP Ultimate Sydney SuperSprint finale, Whincup and van Gisbergen combined for 995 race starts and 177 wins. Brown had just 37 race starts to his name.

Already, you can gauge what sort of experience and pressure was being heaped on the Erebus Motorsport rookie.

Brown, with young engineer Tom Moore in his ear, scored his first career win in one of the most enthralling races of the 2021 season following an intra-team squabble between Whincup and van Gisbergen.

The Red Bull Ampol Racing drivers fought over second and third place in the closing stages of the race while chasing down Brown.

The race was punctuated by three factors; the differing strategies between Erebus and Red Bull Ampol Racing, the Whincup-van Gisbergen battle and Brown’s racecraft.

Whincup and van Gisbergen launched from pole, with Brown clearing Anton De Pasquale on the first lap.

By the end of lap 6, Whincup was 1.1s ahead of van Gisbergen, with Brown within a second of the series leader.

Critically, Brown never let the Red Bull Ampol Commodores out of his sight. When he stopped for two tyres at the end of lap 13, he was 2.5s from the lead.

Erebus had failed to execute clean pit stops for Brown in previous weeks. Bungled stops arguably cost him two wins. On this occasion, the team laid down a 3.7s stop for Brown.

Whincup was 42 seconds ahead of Brown when he stopped three laps later. A longer three-tyre stop ensured Brown got ahead, but Whincup had the benefit of more grip.

It was the same story for van Gisbergen, who stopped on lap 18 for three tyres.

Whincup and van Gisbergen emerged in traffic; when van Gisbergen returned to the race, he was over five seconds from the lead and behind Chaz Mostert, Whincup and De Pasquale.

The series leader muscled past De Pasquale at Turn 4 on lap 21. On the following lap, Whincup and van Gisbergen demoted Mostert.

When Brown commenced lap 23, Whincup and van Gisbergen were 3.2s behind. Van Gisbergen made contact with Whincup at Turn 8 and apologised.

On lap 24, van Gisbergen drew alongside Whincup at Turn 2 and put two wheels on the grass over the Turn 3 crest. Whincup then fed his teammate wide at Turn 5.

It encouraged team manager Mark Dutton to double down on the first directive from Whincup’s engineer Wes McDougall, with Whincup told to let van Gisbergen through.

When the teammates stopped fighting, the margin to Brown rapidly dropped, proving the pace the Triple Eight cars had up their sleeve.

On lap 26, Brown was three seconds ahead of Whincup. On lap 27, Brown was 2.1s ahead. On lap 28, it was 1.6s, then 0.9s on lap 29.

Raging bulls: Whincup punts off SVG

By lap 30, Brown was forced to defend, but after three laps of smart racecraft, the Toowoomba-born driver made no mistakes and raced to victory by just 0.28s, becoming the first rookie in eight years to win a race.

So, where it did it go wrong for Red Bull Ampol Racing? Whincup, who is two rounds away from retirement, was adamant he could win the race and didn’t regret how hard he fought van Gisbergen.

"Unfortunately, we [van Gisbergen and I] raced each other hard,” said Whincup, whose aggression was on show 24 hours earlier in a start-line squabble with Will Davison.

"We probably didn’t do each other any favours trying to get the win. That’s the way it goes.

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"Dutto did tell me to move over, but I elected not to. There’ll be discussions over that.

"I’ve probably done the wrong thing there, but it certainly wasn’t the wrong thing 20 laps into a race, it was the right thing.

"We hardly get team orders over the radio, to be honest. It wasn’t like it’s every race meeting.

"I felt like I was in the box seat to win the race. I had an extremely quick car. We weren’t racing #97, we were just racing the rest of the field… in my mind, that was my race. I was just going to do everything I could to try and win the race.”

"I don’t regret anything… I raced as hard as I could today and that’s all I could ask of myself.”

The difference of Sunday was that Whincup and van Gisbergen were, at the time, fighting for second.

Bull vs Bull and the red mist descends

On three occasions in Townsville, they fought for the lead, often running line astern down the straight or touching through corners.

They had everything to lose with nothing to gain. On Sunday, they had nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

Dutton affirmed that the squabbling cost his team victory: "Certainly did, yeah.

"It’s one of those things. From the garage, we saw it one way, from the cockpit it was seen another way.

"We’ll debrief that and have a chat [about] which was the right way and which was the wrong way. It was probably pretty obvious, but we’ll discuss it.

"You debrief. You talk through it. You say what you could’ve done better and what you didn’t do better. We’ll discuss it professionally and we’ll move on.”

Van Gisbergen also stated that the team squandered a one-two finish: "It was obviously a good battle, probably entertaining, but I feel like we lost the chance at a race win.

"At one point I was enjoying the battle but also I’m thinking, ‘We’ve got to win the race’. It is what it is. I had a fun battle, but I felt like we could’ve been up front.”

Regardless, it was easy pickings for Erebus Motorsport CEO Barry Ryan, whose squad won its first race since Darwin 2020: "It’s great to see that Red Bull don’t work together.

"Our two drivers have been unbelievable the last three weeks working together and to hear what was going on in their garage.

Ryan's jab at last lap Bull fight

"I was just laughing because it was just unbelievable to get a result like that.”

Triple Eight can still score a title one-two in 2021; van Gisbergen will carry a 337-point lead over Whincup into this weekend's penultimate event of the season.

The Repco Supercars Championship and Dunlop Series seasons will resume this weekend at the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight. Click here to view the race schedule.

Every session of the event will be broadcast live on Foxtel (Fox Sports 506) and streamed on Kayo.

The Seven Network will provide live free to air coverage of the event. Tickets for the event are on sale now.

Race 28 lap-by-lap

Standing lap: Whincup 0.6s ahead of van Gisbergen, 1.0s ahead of BrownLap 6: Whincup 1.1s ahead of van Gisbergen, 1.6s ahead of BrownLap 9: Whincup 0.8s ahead of van Gisbergen, 1.9s ahead of BrownLap 11: Whincup 1.0s ahead of van Gisbergen, 2.2s ahead of Brown; Mostert, De Pasquale pitLap 13: Whincup 1.3s ahead of van Gisbergen, 2.5s ahead of Brown; Brown pitsLap 16: Whincup 1.2s ahead of van Gisbergen, 42.0s ahead of Brown; Whincup pitsLap 18: Van Gisbergen 39.1s ahead of Brown, 42.8s ahead of Whincup; van Gisbergen pitsLap 21: Brown 4.1s ahead of Mostert; van Gisbergen overtakes De PasqualeLap 22: Brown 3.2s ahead of Mostert; Whincup, van Gisbergen overtake MostertLap 23: Brown 3.2s ahead of Whincup; Whincup and van Gisbergen contact at Turn 8Lap 24: Brown 3.7s ahead of Whincup; Whincup and van Gisbergen battleLap 26: Brown 3.0s ahead of WhincupLap 27: Brown 2.1s ahead of WhincupLap 28: Brown 1.6s ahead of WhincupLap 29: Brown 0.9s ahead of WhincupLap 30: Brown 0.4s ahead of WhincupLap 31: Brown 0.2s ahead of WhincupChequered flag: Brown wins by 0.28s

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