There’s always a pile of stats made on the Mountain …
STORY: AARON NOONAN
IMAGE: SUPPLIED (SHELL V-POWER RACING TEAM)
THE 2019 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 sure has got race fans up and about in terms of the controversial ‘Fabian Coulthard go slow’ situation late in the race that left the majority of the field bottled up behind the slow Shell V-Power Mustang.
We leave that stuff for everyone else to report and instead focus our energies on taking a look at the stats that were generated from the big race on Sunday.
Prior to the race on Network 10 I reminded Scott McLaughlin that his record-breaking 2017 pole lap had broken a 25 year pole position drought for DJR/DJR Team Penske at the Bathurst 1000 and that, this year, was 25 years since the team had last won The Great Race.
The rapid Kiwi certainly didn’t fail to deliver and he and Frenchman Alex Premat (or ‘Frenchy’ as the podium crowd started to chant!) swept home to victory, one that does officially remain provisional at the moment.
Victory in the race made the duo the 60th and 61st drivers to win the Bathurst endurance classic and the second combination in three years to win the race for the first time (Reynolds and Youlden in 2017 the other).
Apart from that there were a whole pile of other telling statistics and items of interest.
– They scored victory from pole position, the first car to do so since Garth Tander and Will Davison for the Holden Racing Team a decade earlier in 2009.
– Alex Premat isn’t the first ‘French’ winner for DJR or DJR Team Penske at Bathurst. After all, that was John French alongside Dick in 1981 – ha!
– The win was the team’s fourth Bathurst 1000 win coming after 1981 (Johnson/French), 1989, 1994 (Johnson/Bowe).
– The win was Ford’s 20th Bathurst victory. It still trails Holden’s 33 wins.
– It’s the seventh time since 1980 that the pole-sitting car has won the race.
– Premat has been on the podium in three of the last four Bathurst 1000s – 2nd in 2016 with van Gisbergen, 3rd in 2018 with McLaughlin and winner this year with McLaughlin.
– Premat becomes another member of the exclusive club to have won the Macau Grand Prix and Bathurst 1000 – Kevin Bartlett (Macau 1969, Bathurst 1974), David Brabham (Macau 1989, Bathurst 1997), Rickard Rydell (Macau 1992, Bathurst 1998) and Premat (Macau 2004, Bathurst 2019).
– Premat is the first European Bathurst winner since Rickard Rydell in 1998 (Super Tourer Volvo).
– The runner-up result for van Gisbergen was his second at Bathurst, he was also runner-up in 2016 with Premat. For co-driver Garth Tander it was his sixth Bathurst 1000 podium finish and the 15th for Triple Eight.
– The third place for James Courtney was he and Jack Perkins’ first podium since the Gold Coast last year. It was Courtney’s first Bathurst podium result since 2008 and Perkins’ first in his 14th Bathurst 1000 start.
– 12 cars finished on the lead lap.
– Alex Davison kept his 100 percent finishing record going in the Bathurst 1000, he’s now finished all 15 times he’s started since debuting in 2004.
