SHANE van Gisbergen claimed the Larry Perkins Trophy at Albert Park but he wasn’t the only driver with extra baggage after the Beaurepaires Supercars Melbourne 400.
Will Davison collected a pair of pole position cheques that, unfortunately, led to him continuing a pair of unwanted streaks.
Grove Racing also brought home a cheque and some silverware after its best round in two years, while a championship-winning number returned to the podium for the first time in almost two decades.
All the info in the Melbourne 400 edition of Stats Insider.
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DAVISON EDGES CLOSER TO AN UNWANTED 26-YEAR-OLD RECORD
As a result of Will Davison’s two runner-up results at Albert Park, the DJR driver now has 11 consecutive second places without a win.
Having last won in the 2016 Bathurst 1000, Davison lies second on the all-time list for accumulating second-place finishes between wins, sitting behind Peter Brock who set the record 26 years ago.
Brock scored 14 second placings between his Race 1 victory at Phillip Island in 1995 and his Race 1 win at Oran Park in 1996.
Davison now sits in front of Jim Richards (10), Mark Skaife (9) and John Bowe (9) for the most second places between wins.
Having scored pole position 22 times throughout his career, Davison has converted pole position to a race win only once, and he did it on his very first attempt back in 2009 at Sandown.
Since then, Davison has 21 poles without converting any of them into a win.
It’s worth noting that Davison has won driving a car that started from pole position during that time – Garth Tander qualified their Commodore on pole for their Bathurst 1000 win in 2009 – while he also set the fastest qualifying time for a race he went on to win at Symmons Plains in 2016 but lost pole through a grid position penalty.
The nearest streak to Davison’s is held by Craig Lowndes, who had a streak of eight consecutive poles without a victory between 2000 at Calder Park and 2005 at Bathurst.
CAREER-BEST PERFORMANCES FOR JACOBSON AND JONES
Garry Jacobson and Macauley Jones scored more points in a single driver round than ever before in their Supercars careers.
Jacobson recorded three top 10 positions throughout the four races and finished the weekend with 162 points, beating his previous best points haul of 114 points from the first Townsville round in 2020.
Before last weekend at Albert Park, Jacobson had only scored four top 10 finishes during his entire Supercars career.
Only one of his previous top 10s had come during a single driver round – Sydney Motorsport Park in 2020.
Similarly, Jones recorded his best solo driver result aboard a Supercar, equaling his best ever Supercars finish with a sixth place in the first race; his other sixth place was shared with Nick Percat at the 2018 Gold Coast 600.
Jones also beat his previous highest point score in a round (122 at Sydney Motorsport Park 2 in 2021) with 130 points from the four races at Albert Park.
THE RESURGENCE OF GROVE RACING
After a slow start to the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship, Grove Racing scored a surprise pole position for David Reynolds and a double podium with Reynolds and Lee Holdsworth in the second race.
The last pole position for Reynolds came back in 2019 for Erebus Motorsport in Townsville, and it was the first pole position for Grove Racing (formerly Kelly Grove Racing and Kelly Racing) since last year at The Bend.
The last double podium for the team dates back even further to 2018 at The Bend, a race that was also won by van Gisbergen.
Reynolds was the closest points challenger to van Gisbergen for most of the weekend, but suffered suspension failure in the final race of the weekend.
Despite this, it was the third-best scoring weekend for Grove Racing and its former guises throughout its existence since 2009.
Best scoring weekends for Grove Racing/Kelly Grove/Kelly Racing
| Event | Entries | Total Points | Points Per Entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 The Bend 1 | 2 | 432 | 216.00 |
| 2014 Bathurst 1000 | 4 | 768 | 192.00 |
| 2022 Albert Park | 2 | 357 | 178.50 |
| 2011 Gold Coast | 4 | 699 | 174.75 |
| 2022 Symmons Plains | 2 | 348 | 174.00 |
A LONG WAIT FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP-WINNING NUMBER
The #10 hasn’t tasted much champagne for some time in the Repco Supercars Championship, but Lee Holdsworth finally gave the 1986 championship-winning number something to celebrate when he took the #10 to the Supercars podium for the first time in 18 years.
Holdsworth started the second race from 15th on the grid and made his way up the order to fifth by the last lap, benefiting from a last corner incident between James Courtney and Mostert to secure a hard-earned podium in third.
The last time the #10 recorded a championship podium was back in 2004 on the Gold Coast, where Jason Bargwanna scored third position in the #10 Larkham Motorsport Orrcon Falcon.
However, Bargwanna did not stand on the actual podium, claiming the position later after Todd Kelly’s exclusion from race two due to a technical infringement.
This podium was also the second and last for Mark Larkham’s team (the first coming at Queensland Raceway in 2000) before it was sold at the end of 2005.
BITS AND PIECES
- Davison beat teammate Anton De Pasquale to pole for race four by only 0.0071-seconds. This is the closest pole margin at Albert Park with the previous best (including all the non-champ rounds) being 0.0128-seconds in 2019 Race 2 (McLaughlin to Mostert).
- Only van Gisbergen (six) and Mostert (three) have won races this year. The last time the first 9 races of the championship had only 2 race winners was in 1999. That year, Lowndes had won five with his Holden Racing Team teammate Mark Skaife winning the other four.
- After qualifying down in 24th position for race one, van Gisbergen raced his way up to a podium in third place. The last time a driver had gained 20 or more positions for a podium was Lowndes in 2018 at Barbagallo Raceway.
