There seems to be a guaranteed way to win this Saturday – you just have to do one thing right …
STORY: AARON NOONAN
IMAGE: AN1 IMAGES (DIRK KLYNSMITH)
THERE’S a really easy way for a team to seemingly guarantee itself victory in the Saturday race of the Vodafone Gold Coast 600 this weekend – lock down pole position.
It might sound obvious given the first step of winning a race is generally making sure you start at the front of the field, but the history books paint a very interesting picture.
Remarkably, ever since the ‘600 format was introduced to the event in 2010, the car that has started on pole position for the Saturday race has gone on to win it.
The list as is follows:
2010 – Tander/McConville (HRT)
2011 – Whincup/Bourdais (Triple Eight)
2012 – Whincup/Bourdais (Triple Eight)
2013 – Lowndes/Luff (Triple Eight)
2014 – van Gisbergen/Webb (TEKNO)
2015 – van Gisbergen/Webb (TEKNO)
2016 – van Gisbergen/Premat (Triple Eight)
2017 – Mostert/Owen (PRA)
On the flipside, winners of the Sunday race have come from all sorts of grid positions – twice in the last three years the Sunday winner hasn’t even started inside the top 10!
That list is as follows:
2010 – Whincup/Owen – 4th
2011 – Winterbottom/Lyons – 3rd
2012 – Davison/Salo – 4th
2013 – Reynolds/Canto – 1st
2014 – Whincup/Dumbrell – 2nd
2015 – Courtney/Perkins – 11th
2016 – Whincup/Dumbrell – 1st
2017 – McLaughlin/Premat – 13th
Quite what will happen this week on the Gold Coast remains highly uncertain given the rain that is forecast to continue all of this week – it’s set to be a slippery one when practice kicks off on Friday!
