THE cards could not have fallen better for Matt Stone Racing on a memorable Sunday afternoon at Hidden Valley.
Via Jack Le Brocq the team, in its sixth full season in the Supercars Championship, scored its first pole position, podium and race win all in one go in the Darwin Triple Crown finale.
But it didn’t come without hurdles.
First, there was the effort to repair substantial rear-end damage sustained in the earlier race. Box ticked.
Then, there was the race to the first corner. Le Brocq did enough to fend off fellow front-row starter Andre Heimgartner. Another tick.
The biggest threat of all? Losing out to an undercut or overcut during the pit sequence.
As it turned out, Triple Eight and Erebus Motorsport’s moves to pit Broc Feeney and Will Brown from fourth and fifth on Lap 16 made life easy for MSR.
The Yatala squad reacted the very next lap, as did Brad Jones Racing (Heimgartner) and Team 18 (Mark Winterbottom) in their respective missions to retain position.
And so, the coast was clear for the run to the chequered flag for Le Brocq.
“We were concerned about pits,” MSR owner Matt Stone confessed to V8 Sleuth.
“We had good pace and a good start and were running well and it was looking like the only way we could lose it was in the pits.
“We were pretty confident on what the strategy was going to be of the race with the majority of people we were racing but with that Safety Car in Race 1 and then the morning’s race being a bit hit and miss we didn’t have the greatest of information with what was going to be the winning strategy.
“We were hoping for about that (Lap) 17-18 mark and when the dominos started to fall around us we were just going to jump for it.
“So we jumped and obviously the Heimgartner car followed.
“Them being the best pit crew in pitlane was certainly concerning but our guys didn’t step a foot wrong and we matched them in the pits and kept on in the lead and it was easy from there.”
MSR made it two new race-winning teams in Supercars in as many days, Team 18 having won Race 1 via Winterbottom.
Nine different teams have now featured on the podium this season, with PremiAir Racing and the Blanchard Racing Team the only outliers.
