The closest finishes of 2022 Supercars season
26 Dec 2022
The 2022 Repco Supercars Championship was full of dramatic and close finishes.
Of 34 completed races, 13 were officially settled by a margin of less than two seconds.
Seven races were decided by less than a second, up from four in 2021.
Remarkably, the two closest finishes of the season both came at Winton, with Cam Waters beating Shane van Gisbergen both times.
Waters denied van Gisbergen in a last-lap thriller in Race 13, before doing the same in Race 15 just 24 hours later.
Race 13 featured one of the more dramatic finishes of the year after van Gisbergen clouted Waters at the final corner.
A similar incident in Townsville saw Anton De Pasquale send van Gisbergen into a spin.
De Pasquale crossed the line 0.501s ahead, but was handed a five-second penalty after van Gisbergen turned down a redress.
Van Gisbergen's narrow victory over Will Davison in the Sandown finale was third on the list, the top three results settled by less than 0.5s.
Waters' other win of the season, over Davison in Darwin, was taken by 0.617s. The total winning margin of Waters' three wins was just 1.459s.
Five of the top 10 closest finishes came in a six-race span across the Winton and Darwin events.
All three Darwin results were settled by less than 1.2s.
The Repco Bathurst 1000, meanwhile, was won by van Gisbergen over Chaz Mostert by just 1.099s.
10 closest winning margins in 2022
Race | Event | Winner | Second | Margin |
16 | Darwin | De Pasquale | Davison | 1.183s |
29 | Pukekohe | van Gisbergen | Waters | 1.116s |
30 | Bathurst | van Gisbergen | Mostert | 1.099s |
34 | Adelaide | Feeney | Mostert | 0.964s |
18 | Darwin | Mostert | De Pasquale | 0.958s |
27 | Pukekohe | Davison | Heimgartner | 0.865s |
17 | Darwin | Waters | Davison | 0.617s |
26 | Sandown | van Gisbergen | Davison | 0.461s |
15 | Winton | Waters | van Gisbergen | 0.442s |
13 | Winton | Waters | van Gisbergen | 0.400s |
On the other end of the scale, van Gisbergen enjoyed seven of the top 10 biggest winning margins of the season.
The Red Bull Ampol Racing driver opened the year with a crushing 19.558s win in Sydney.
It came after van Gisbergen completed a bold three-stop strategy before putting his good rubber to use.
The Kiwi then clinched the title on the Gold Coast in Race 31 to the tune of 16.851s in an 85-lap race that race green for its entirety.
Van Gisbergen's OTR SuperSprint finale win in the wet was taken by 8.710s after he drove away from the field.
10 biggest winning margins in 2022
Race | Event | Winner | Second | Margin |
20 | Townsville | van Gisbergen | De Pasquale | 4.499s |
19 | Townsville | van Gisbergen | Davison | 5.196s |
9 | Albert Park | Mostert | Davison | 5.216s |
8 | Albert Park | van Gisbergen | Davison | 5.647s |
25 | Sandown | van Gisbergen | Mostert | 7.516s |
6 | Albert Park | Mostert | Reynolds | 7.683s |
24 | Sandown | Davison | van Gisbergen | 8.492s |
23 | Tailem Bend | van Gisbergen | Waters | 8.710s |
31 | Gold Coast | van Gisbergen | Reynolds | 16.851s |
1 | Sydney | van Gisbergen | De Pasquale | 19.558s |
The 2023 Repco Supercars Championship will commence in Newcastle next March.
Tickets are on sale on Supercars.com and Ticketek.com.
