Winning the SMSP war: Ford chasing Holden's Sydney tally

As far as circuits go, Sydney Motorsport Park has been a fairly even battleground for Ford and Holden.

The Eastern Creek venue will become just the fourth circuit in ATCC/Supercars history to host 70 races next month.

To next weekend’s Bunnings Trade Sydney SuperNight, SMSP has hosted 59 races. Across four consecutive events, it will host nine sprint races and two 250km epics.

In nearly 30 years of competition in Sydney’s west, Ford and Holden are almost neck-and-neck when it comes to success.

Holden has won 31 races to Ford’s 27, with Volvo winning one race via Scott McLaughlin in 2014.

Both Ford and Holden have enjoyed strong runs of sustained success at SMSP, with two drivers at the forefront of both runs.

Mark Skaife and Marcos Ambrose are the two most successful drivers at SMSP with 10 and seven wins respectively.

Between 1999 and 2002, Holden won 10 of 11 races at SMSP, with Skaife the victor in seven of them. Also at SMSP, in 2007, Skaife broke Peter Brock's round wins record.

Skaife (pictured in 1999) was a master at Eastern Creek Pic: AN1 Images

Between 2003 and 2005, Ambrose won seven of eight races staged at the circuit.

In the SMSP era - when the track was rebranded in 2012 - Holden has won 11 races to Ford’s seven.

A total of 21 drivers in history have won at SMSP. Five won their very first career races there.

Only two - McLaughlin and Craig Lowndes - have won with two different manufacturers.

Lowndes (pictured in 2005) won for Holden and Ford in Sydney

Lowndes won on debut under lights for the Holden Racing Team in 1996, and won the 1999 finale.

He won again with Holden with Triple Eight in 2012, seven years after he claimed the team’s very first race win in a Falcon.

McLaughlin’s thrilling 2014 win aboard the blue Garry Rogers Motorsport Volvo came six years before he won three of the six races in 2020.

McLaughlin, the dominant force for the Shell V-Power Racing Team between 2017 and 2020, also claimed four of the six poles at SMSP last year.

Current series leader Shane van Gisbergen has himself won four races at SMSP - but has never taken a pole position.

The 2021 Repco Supercars Championship will continue at next weekend’s Bunnings Trade Sydney SuperNight. Tickets for all four upcoming Sydney events are on sale now.

All sessions will be broadcast live on Fox Sports and streamed via Kayo. The Seven Network will broadcast live from 3:30pm AEDT on Saturday and 12:30pm AEDT on Sunday.