Fast Facts: Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500

1) This year marks the 19th time the Repco Supercars Championship has raced for points on the streets of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast since the first points-paying event in 2002. Seven non-championship events were held as part of the annual Gold Coast Indy event prior to that (1994, 1996 to 2001). The event was run to a two-driver, twin 300-kilometre race format from 2010 to 2019. This year marks the first time the Gold Coast round has been held with a single driver, twin 250-kilometre race format.

2) Triple Eight Race Engineering will make its 600th race start in the Repco Supercars Championship when the Saturday race gets underway on the Gold Coast. Its championship debut came at the 2003 Sandown 500, and it will be the fifth team in ATCC/Supercars history to surpass that milestone.

3) The Gold Coast round marks Mark Winterbottom’s 50th round start with Team 18. He made his first start with the team at the 2019 Adelaide 500. Winterbottom currently has a perfect finishing record on the Gold Coast with 35 finishes from 35 race starts.

4) Shane van Gisbergen can potentially clinch his third Repco Supercars Championship title this weekend on the Gold Coast, but he is also closing in on passing Craig Lowndes on the list of career ATCC/SC podium finishes. If he can finish on the podium in all four races remaining in the 2022 season, he will equal Lowndes in second place on the list on 169 podiums. Van Gisbergen has missed the podium in only five of the 30 races held so far this year.

5) This year marks the first single driver Supercars Championship round on the Gold Coast since 2009. Only seven of the 25 drivers in this year’s field have ever competed in a single driver Gold Coast Supercars round: Tim Slade, James Courtney, Lee Holdsworth, Will Davison, Mark Winterbottom, David Reynolds and Shane van Gisbergen.

6) The record for the lowest starting position for a winning car in Gold Coast Supercars Championship races belongs to Scott McLaughlin and Alex Premat, who won the 2017 Sunday race from 13th on the grid. It's one of just two occasions the winners have started from outside the top 10; every other winning car has started no lower than sixth on the grid.

7) A single team has locked out the front row of the grid in Supercars qualifying on the Gold Coast just five times. Todd Kelly and Mark Skaife did it for the Holden Racing Team in 2003, Mark Winterbottom and Steven Richards for Ford Performance Racing in 2010 and Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen for Triple Eight in 2016 (Sunday), 2017 (Sunday) and 2019 (Sunday). Only one of those five lockouts was converted to a race win: van Gisbergen and Garth Tander’s victory for Triple Eight in the Sunday race in 2019.

8) No Gold Coast Supercars race, whether it be championship or non-championship, has ever had a 100 percent finishing rate with all cars that started being classified as finishers.

9) The Supercars lap record on the Gold Coast has, historically, been one of the hardest to beat on the calendar. The marker has stood since the 2011 race, when Will Davison set a best of 1:10.0851s in the Sunday race after the bollards were removed at the chicanes and the shortcut sensors turned off due to issues across the weekend. By way of comparison, the fastest lap set during the most recent Gold Coast round in 2019 was 1.1 seconds slower.

10) Only one driver will be making their Gold Coast Supercars debut this weekend: Broc Feeney. The 20-year-old Red Bull Ampol Racing pilot isn’t a rookie at the circuit, however, as he competed in the Aussie Racing Cars support races in 2018 and the Australian GT Championship support races in 2019.