ONLY twice in the more than 63-year history of the ATCC/Supercars Championship has a manufacturer swept the top nine positions in a race.
The first instance was Round 2 of the 1979 season at Calder Park.
The second was Race 2 of the 2023 Darwin Triple Crown on Sunday.
Chevrolet’s lockout of the front three rows of the starting grid at Hidden Valley only became more telling by the end of 35 laps when Nick Percat was the sole Ford left running in the top 10, in 10th.
A time penalty relegated Percat to 19th, allowing Thomas Randle to inherit 10th.
Less than 24 hours after Cam Waters had been in the box seat to win the Darwin opener before his Mustang caught fire, the top nine sweep preceded a Race 3 in which six of the top seven finishers were Camaro drivers (Waters the exception in fifth).
By day’s end, the discontent around parity was perhaps as bad as it has been in Gen3, with even the more reserved of Ford team figureheads such as Stephen Grove (Grove Racing) and Bruce Stewart (Walkinshaw Andretti United) calling out the situation.
There’s plenty more to play out, it would seem, but for now let’s wind the clock back to that March day at Calder in 1979.
In similar circumstances to Darwin, each of the top nine finishers had driven a Holden Torana A9X with Bill Evans flying the Ford flag in 10th aboard an Escort.
Holden’s dominance that day actually could have been more too, had polesitter Allan Grice not been forced to retire from the race with engine trouble.
As it turned out, Peter Brock won the 50-lapper, 3.6s ahead of Bob Morris, while John Harvey made it a Holden Dealer Team one-three.
The one-way traffic at Calder formed just part a Holden-dominated year, despite Allan Moffat’s presence at three rounds in an XC Falcon Cobra.
It’s just one of two multi-race seasons in history to have had one marque responsible for every championship race win.
The other? 1988, when Ford Sierras reigned supreme – particularly those of Shell teammates Dick Johnson and John Bowe.
Of course, 2023 will not join those two cases, given Waters was classified as the winner of the opening race of the season in Newcastle.
Supercars is next in action at the NTI Townsville 500 on July 7-9.
