Hazelwood wins Super2 crown as Nissans clash

Todd Hazelwood has won the 2017 Dunlop Super2 Series with a penalty-aided victory in the final race of the season in Newcastle.

Hazelwood started the weekend trailing Paul Dumbrell by 49 points, but took top spot and an 11-point advantage with victory in the opening race on Saturday.

Dumbrell’s difficult weekend continued this morning when he managed just 21st on the grid following a driveline failure in qualifying.

From pole, Hazelwood was slow away from the line with wheelspin.

That let rookie Will Brown take the lead into Turn 1, where Shae Davies drove around the outside of Hazelwood to take second place.

A clearly cautious Hazelwood then let Jack Le Brocq through to third on the second lap, and fell back towards the group of Macauley Jones, Bryce Fullwood and Richard Muscat.

The Bigmate Racing driver picked his pace back up to establish a comfortable margin and started the final lap in third place, which would have been more than enough to win the title with Dumbrell down the order.

with about 10 laps in and I was asking how many laps left but it went.

“It was bad luck, but we’ll do a bit of testing over the off-season and come back next year.”

Muscat, Anton de Pasquale, Kurt Kostecki, Jordan Boys, Nathan Morcom, Andrew Jones - who received a five-second time penalty for jumping the start - and Brodie Kostecki completed the top 10.

Garry Jacobson’s reign as defending champion finished with a 17th place, the Prodrive man turned around at Turn 11 on the second lap by Jack Perkins.

After serving a drive-through Perkins was 18th, while the incident delayed Josh Kean who later retired due to an engine failure