KELLY Racing’s Kiwi ace Andre Heimgartner scored another podium result on the weekend at The Bend Motorsport Park, moving himself up the list in an interesting category within Virgin Australia Supercars Championship record books.
With his fourth career podium on the weekend taken aboard the Ned Ford Mustang, Heimgartner is working his way up the list of drivers to have taken podiums but not quite reached the top step.
However, he’s a long way off the record held by long-time privateer Murray Carter, who scored 20 podium finishes in his time in the Australian Touring Car Championship (six second-places and 14 third-places) without taking a victory.
Heimgartner scored his first championship podium on the Gold Coast in 2017 sharing the Freightliner Commodore with Tim Slade, a deal that came about for Bathurst in the wake of Ash Walsh being unfit to drive after a testing accident in a GT car.
The rest of Heimgartner’s podium finishes have come with Kelly Racing – at Phillip Island in a Nissan in 2019 and this year in the Ned Mustang (at Sydney Motorsport Park and The Bend last weekend).
It should be noted that his second place finish in the primary driver Saturday sprint race at last year’s Sandown 500 is not counted by AN1 Data as a podium finish – podium finishes were only credited to the drivers who finished on the podium in the 500-kilometre race on Sunday afternoon.
Heimgartner now moves to equal fifth on the list of ‘Most Podiums Without A Win’, which is shown below.
| PODIUMS | DRIVER | 2nd Places | 3rd Places |
| 20 | Murray Carter | 6 | 14 |
| 6 | Alan Hamilton | 4 | 2 |
| Jason Richards | 3 | 3 | |
| 5 | Tomas Mezera | 1 | 4 |
| 4 | Malcolm Ramsay | 2 | 2 |
| Peter Janson | 1 | 3 | |
| Steve Ellery | 2 | 2 | |
| Andre Heimgartner | 2 | 2 |
