Fast Facts: Winton 400

1. Victory in the final race at Symmons Plains in Tasmania last weekend has taken Craig Lowndes to 96 Australian Touring Car Championship/V8 Supercars Championship race wins.

Lowndes continues to inch closer to becoming the first driver in Championship history to win 100 races. He has claimed four of those wins at Winton, one in 2006, two in 2009 and the most recent in 2012.

He leads teammate Jamie Whincup by 70 points heading into the Winton event.

2. Winton is the home test track for 18 of the 25 drivers in the 2014 V8 Supercars Championship and history shows that honours have been evenly shared between the ‘home’ teams and the ‘visitors’ over the past eight years.

There have been 20 races held from 2006 onwards with Queensland-based teams winning 11 and the ‘locals’ claiming nine.

Last year three local factory teams – Nissan Motorsport, Ford Performance Racing and the Holden Racing Team – took the three Winton race wins.

3. This year is the 27th time the ATCC/V8SC has competed at Winton since the first event was held in 1985.

A total of 52 races have been held since then with Triple Eight Race Engineering and Dick Johnson Racing tied for the most wins by a team – eight apiece.

There was no Championship event at Winton in 1987, 1996 or 2005.

4. Norton Hornets driver James Moffat is returning to the scene of his first V8 Supercars Championship race win last season, though he, his Nissan squad and their Ford, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz rivals are in the middle of a Holden ‘red-wash’.

Commodore drivers have won the last 11 V8SC Championship races, covering the final two events last season at Phillip Island and Sydney Olympic Park and this year’s first two in Adelaide and Tasmania.

The last non-Holden to win a Championship race was The Bottle-O Falcon of David Reynolds and Dean Canto at last October’s Gold Coast event.

5. Hall of Famers John Bowe and Glenn Seton hold the record for most Championship race wins at Winton – five – though there are six pilots in the 2014 field that could equal or surpass their record this weekend given the three-race format.

Garth Tander, Jason Bright, Russell Ingall, Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes have all won four races, while James Courtney sits on three race wins at Winton.

6. It’s hard to believe given his major list of achievements, but Garth Tander has never taken a V8SC ARMOR ALL Pole Position at Winton – though he’s qualified second an amazing six times!

The Holden Racing Team driver is in a qualifying drought given he has now gone 42 Championship races since his last pole position in 2012 in Sydney, which was also the last time he qualified on the front row of the grid.

7. Consistent strong qualifying performances are what Championship wins are built upon but so far this year there has been a wild fluctuation in the qualifying results of the majority of the field. 

Only two drivers – Jamie Whincup and Scott McLaughlin – have started in the top 10 for every race so far in 2014.

Whincup is yet to qualify outside the top three and has claimed four ARMOR ALL Pole Positions, while the quiet achiever is Erebus Motorsport’s Lee Holdsworth who has been the sixth-best qualifier, averaging a start position of 9.8.

8. The likelihood of the Chrysler Pedders Safety Car appearing at Winton is very high given the Safety Car has appeared in 23 of the last 29 races (79.3 per cent) there since 2000.

The last time there was a whole event completed at Winton without the Safety Car making an appearance in at least one of the races was 1999.

9. Nick Percat and Robert Dahlgren are the only drivers in the field to have never competed in a V8 Supercars Championship event at Winton.

Percat won the Dunlop Series round at the circuit in 2012 and also won the Australian Formula Ford Championship round at Winton in 2009.

10. The second round of the Dunlop Series is the main support category at the Winton 400 and the home Victorian teams – as well as Albury-based Brad Jones Racing – should feel very confident about their chances.

Home teams have won nine of the 10 Dunlop Series rounds ever held at Winton, with current points leader Paul Dumbrell himself a winner back in 2002 – the year he won the series.

Dumbrell holds a 21-point lead over Taz Douglas with Ash Walsh, Andrew Jones and Chris Pither completing the top five.

Tickets are available now for the Winton 400, which begins on Friday.