Fast Facts: WD-40 Townsville SuperSprint

1) This event marks the 15th time the Repco Supercars Championship has held a round in the North Queensland city of Townsville and the second year in a row that the Reid Park Street Circuit has hosted two championship rounds on back-to-back weekends.

2) The undisputed King of the Townsville streets will make his final race starts at the circuit this weekend. The WD-40 Townsville SuperSprint gives Jamie Whincup three more chances to add to his tally of 12 race wins in North Queensland, while last weekend’s NTI Townsville 500 took his Reid Park career tally to 22 podium finishes from 31 race starts.

3) Jamie Whincup is also in a position to reach a notable milestone at this weekend’s WD-40 Townsville SuperSprint. The Red Bull Ampol driver will reach 700 laps led at the Reid Park circuit if he leads a total of 55 laps across the three races. That milestone equates to 2000 kilometres – double the length of the Repco Bathurst 1000 – spent in the lead of races in Townsville since 2009.

4) Eight sprint races have been held in Townsville prior to this weekend. The first two were in 2014, when the event’s traditional single Saturday race was split into two 125-kilometre sprints, while both of last year’s Townsville rounds were held under the three race SuperSprint format. The ARMOR ALL Pole Position winner has won four of those races; conversely, three of the races have been won from 10th or worse on the grid.

5) Five drivers on the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship grid have started all 31 races held in Townsville since the first event in 2009: Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen, Mark Winterbottom, James Courtney and Fabian Coulthard. Whincup and Winterbottom have the best finishing records of the quintet; both drivers have made it to the chequered flag in 30 of their 31 race starts at Reid Park.

6) Todd Hazelwood posted his best starting position of the 2021 season with third place for last Sunday’s race – his first top-10 qualifying result of the year. The Townsville streets have offered up both pleasure and pain for the Brad Jones Racing pilot: he finished his first ‘main game’ race at Reid Park in 2018 in 22nd place despite dislocating a shoulder in a mid-race clash with another car, while last year he snared his maiden Repco Supercars Championship pole position.

7) Cam Waters has a further chance to extend his impressive streak of consecutive Top 10 Shootout appearances at the WD-40 Townsville SuperSprint. The Tickford Racing driver made both Top 10 Shootouts last weekend to bring his streak to 26 – the most of any driver on the current grid – having not missed one since the start of the 2019 season.

8) The record for the closest margin of victory in Townsville has stood since 2015: Mark Winterbottom beat his then-Prodrive Racing Australia teammate David Reynolds by just 0.2706-seconds to win that year’s Saturday race.

9) Last weekend’s races set a new record for the largest ARMOR ALL Pole Position-winning margin in Townsville. Shane van Gisbergen’s 0.3572-seconds margin over Jamie Whincup in the Top 10 Shootout for Saturday’s race eclipsed the old mark set in 2011, when Craig Lowndes headed Mark Winterbottom by 0.3198-seconds.

10) The BP Ultimate Safety Car wasn’t called upon last weekend, which is unusual for a Repco Supercars Championship round in Townsville. It’s only the third time a Reid Park race weekend has gone without a Safety Car period; the 2017 event and the first visit to Townsville in 2020 were the others.