The four-year worst winless streak under threat

This weekend’s OTR SuperSprint marks the best opportunity yet for the Shell V-Power Racing Team to end its wait for victory in 2021.

The Ford team is the form outfit at The Bend Motorsport Park; Shell Mustangs have won six of the last eight races at the venue.

However, the team is on a four-year worst winless streak of 10 races, its previous worst streak ending in the beginning of 2017.

Much has been said about the team’s decision to bring in an all-new driver line-up for 2021, with Will Davison and Anton De Pasquale bring a mixture of experience and youth to the Stapylton squad.

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Both drivers have impressed to outlive the new driver curse; both drivers sit in the top 10 in the 2021 standings, with both drivers scoring two podiums apiece at Symmons Plains.

Regardless, Dick Johnson Racing Fords have gone 10 races without a win dating back to last season’s second visit to Tailem Bend.

In the DJR Team Penske era between 2015 and 2020, Shell Fords went winless for eight races twice, in 2018 and across the end of the 2019 and start of the 2020 seasons.

Before Fabian Coulthard’s breakthrough 2017 win in Tasmania, DJR went on a 117-race winless streak following Chaz Mostert’s surprise Ipswich victory in 2013.

While DJR looms as Red Bull Ampol Racing's biggest threat this weekend, with Walkinshaw Andretti United looming in the background, former team owner and broadcaster Mark Larkham believes it wont simply be a case of the champion Ford squad carrying over its dominant Tailem Bend form into this weekend’s event.

“There are eight guys who can win races, but they’ll go to the next weekend and be eighth, because they’ve fallen out of that window,” Larkham told Supercars.com.

“This track provides the biggest litmus test to get your car in the window. It’s such a critical part to the story. It underscores the nature of the relationship between driver and engineer.

“Teams will go back and do a debrief, going over the data of what worked and what didn’t, and why. During that process, the driver-engineer relationship evolves.

“When you arrive at a circuit like this, you’ve got to do two things: you’ve got to look deeply at the data from last year, but at the same time, your car and set-up may have migrated from the last time you were here, because you’ve continued to develop it down a theme.

“One of the most complex things in motorsport is knowing what to use from last year, and what to apply from the last three race meetings.”

Cars will roll out for Practice 1 at 9:15am AEST. Tickets are on sale now.

The event will be broadcast live on Foxtel and will be streamed on Kayo with highlights on 7 and 7 Plus.