V8 Supercars Round 1 review – Clipsal 500

The first round of the 2015 V8 supercars season from the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide was action packed event with some of the closest racing we have seen for a while.

Red Bull Racing’s Jamie Whincup started the weekend in his dominate ways with 2 pole positions for the first 2 races. He broke the qualifying record in the second qualifying session and won the first race, with Prodrive Racing Australia’s Chaz Mostert coming second and Freightliner Racing’s Fabian Coulthard coming third.

In the second race, Coulthard won his first race win at the Clipsal 500 after Whincup’s rear tyre let go before entering turn 8 and was very lucky he didn’t crash the car in the infamous turn 8 wall. Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney came second and Whincup’s teammate Craig Lowndes came in third.

Courtney won the Sunday race and defended his race win from last year. On the last lap of the race, Whincup had to slow down going into turn nine as the car in front of him was dropping oil. Mostert, however, didn’t realise this was happening, and tried to overtake Whincup turn 9 and they went side by side until there was no room at turn 10 and Mostert was spun into the wall after contact with Whincup and Nissan Motorsport driver James Moffat, had nowhere to go and unfortunately crashed into Mostert. The crash was deemed a racing incident.

Courtney joins three other drivers who have gone back to back at Adelaide:

Mark Skaife 2002 and 2003

Marcos Ambrose 2004 and 2005

Jamie Whincup 2008 and 2009.

Darrell Lea STIX’s Shane Van Gisbergen took the fight to Courtney in the final 50 laps trying to put a passing movie but was unsuccessful and came in second with Courtney’s teammate Garth Tander coming third.

Wilson Security’s Scott McLaughlin had no luck all weekend in the Volvo with major oil leak the happened on the warm up lap for the first race putting him out of the race.

In the second race, he jumped the start and was given a 10 second penalty in his pit stop which he served while the safety car was out. This is against the V8supercar rules so they added ten seconds was added to his finishing time and finished the race in 9th.

In the third race he had an alternator issue and had to have the battery replaced and went down a few laps, in a weekend that Scott would like to forget and not the best way to start of the 2015 championship.