Whincup ready to race at Gold Coast

Six-time Supercars Champion Jamie Whincup is happy the controversy around the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 is over, as he looks ahead to this weekend’s Castrol Gold Coast 600.

With his teammate Shane van Gisbergen now 139 points ahead of him in the Championship, Whincup is focused on maximising his results at the final three events of the season in his quest to take an unprecedented seventh Championship.

With Triple Eight’s appeal dismissed in the Supercars Court of Appeal on Tuesday night, Whincup says he is ready to race.

“It’s great Bathurst is done and dusted, it was a long couple of weeks – probably drew out a bit longer than it really needed to,” Whincup said. 

“We love the battle, we love getting on track and showing what we’ve got so I’m looking forward to getting on track and doing what we do best.”

Whincup knows the last two rounds have been costly in the championship stakes but is taking it in his stride approaching his home event this weekend, and his last 2016 races with good friend and co-driver Paul Dumbrell.

“We prepared really well for this season of endurance, it was just unfortunate … we had a good car, we were quick we were in winning contention but for one reason or another we didn’t get the result. 

“We’ve taken a decent hit at Sandown and now again at Bathurst and now I’ve got my teammate 150 points up the road with only three rounds to go.

“He’s very quick, he’s going to be hard to beat but we’ll just do what we do and that’s race hard, try and be in contention come Sydney and then race hard there.”

This morning, Whincup, van Gisbergen and their teammate Craig Lowndes launched a new Red Bull Racing Australia character clip, which sees them reprise their roles as ‘Cappy’ (Lowndes), ‘J-Dub’ (Whincup) and ‘Giz’ (Van Gisbergen).

Later, reigning Champion Mark Winterbottom and his Prodrive Racing Australia teammates Dean Canto, Cameron Waters and Jack Le Brocq took a break from their race preparations to have some fun at iFLY indoor skydiving.

Having written off his chances of defending his Championship title, Winterbottom is keen to put it all behind him and get good results in the back end of the season and win one of the coveted surfboard trophies this weekend.