Headed into the 2016 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, many fans anticipated a year-long battle between Red Bull Racing Australia teammates Jamie Whincup and Shane Van Gisbergen. Supercars fans have been treated to exactly that as the duo sit atop the championship and the season’s penultimate round in New Zealand at Pukekohe Park Raceway proved to be the dramatic peak of the year. Qualifying for all four races involved the two typically separated by just thousandths of a second and starting adjacent on the grid’s front row in three of the rounds. With one exception, the racing was great and exemplified the rivalry between championship leader Van Gisbergen and Whincup.
After winning the first race with a better start, Whincup raced the hometown Kiwi racer Van Gisbergen hard in Race 2. The pair spent most of the first two laps side-by-side, which is no easy feat at the narrow Pukekohe circuit. If either had given less room, particularly into the final two turns, there would have been a massive accident. The two gave each other respect and the New Zealand crowd went absolutely when Van Gisbergen got the better of Whincup to win at the track just down the road from where he grew up.
Race 3 saw the conflict between the teammates many had anticipated all season, since the two had developed a rivalry while Van Gisbergen was driving for other teams before 2016. Whincup dove for a gap to overtake Van Gisbergen, but he locked his rear wheels under braking into the corner. Whincup’s car kicked sideways with the locked brakes into Van Gisbergen, sending both spinning out of podium positions. Whincup took a drive-through penalty as a result that cost him big championship points while Van Gisbergen charged back to third place from eighth after the contact.
Whincup again bested Van Gisbergen in the weekend’s final race. Van Gisbergen’s points accumulation in all four races earned him the Jason Richards Trophy, named for the late Kiwi driver who died of cancer in 2011 at 35 years old. Van Gisbergen became the first Kiwi to win the award and his overall points accumulation gives him 191 points on six-time champion Whincup headed to the final 2016 round in Sydney on December 3 and 4.
Each win in Sydney is worth 150 points so Whincup has an outside chance at a seventh title. However, Van Gisbergen could win his first Supercars title with a single fifth-place finish or even a pair of 16th-place finishes.
