THERE are some pretty impressive numbers behind Triple Eight Race Engineering’s milestone 200 Supercars Championship race victories.
Shane van Gisbergen notched up the double ton for the team in Race 23 at the Robson Civil Projects Townsville SuperSprint.
The victories came across a 16-year period where the team established itself as the benchmark of success in the Supercars paddock.
In honour of the milestone, V8 Sleuth is proud to have partnered with Triple Eight to release a limited-edition collector’s print celebrating the team’s history-making triumph.
Click HERE to pre-order it in the V8 Sleuth Bookshop!
We’ve gone through our AN1 Data results database and broke down the numbers behind the team’s milestone triumph.
Incidentally, the team’s 201st championship victory – earnt by van Gisbergen a couple of hours later in Race 24 – notched up a couple of other significant team milestones.
That victory was its 150th campaigning Holdens and the 100th win for a Triple Eight car carrying primary sponsorship from Red Bull.
Here’s a breakdown of the team’s first 200 Supercars Championship race wins.
BY DRIVER
A total of 12 different drivers have contributed to the team’s double ton, ranging from Jamie Whincup’s 122 wins – all of his Supercars career victories have come with Triple Eight – through to French gun Yvan Muller’s sole Supercars victory alongside Craig Lowndes at the 2005 Sandown 500.
And yes, the sum of the numbers in the table below exceeds 200; the team has recorded 24 wins in endurance races where each driver earns a career victory to add to their tally.
| Race Wins | Driver/s |
|---|---|
| 122 | Jamie Whincup |
| 58 | Craig Lowndes |
| 26 | Shane van Gisbergen |
| 6 | Paul Dumbrell |
| 3 | Mark Skaife |
| 2 | Warren Luff, Steve Richards, Sebastien Bourdais |
| 1 | Yvan Muller, Steve Owen, Alexandre Premat, Garth Tander |
BY CIRCUIT
The team’s happiest hunting ground is Symmons Plains with 20 wins, with contributions from Whincup (12), Lowndes (5) and van Gisbergen (3).
Next closest are a pair of street circuits; Whincup, Lowndes and van Gisbergen again all contributed to its 18 race wins in Adelaide, while Whincup earnt the lion’s share of Triple Eight’s 16 wins in Townsville.
Triple Eight has claimed race wins at every single Supercars circuit it has visited bar one: Shanghai, where a fourth for Lowndes in the opening race was its best result from the championship’s sole round at the circuit in 2005.
| Race Wins | Circuit/s |
|---|---|
| 20 | Symmons Plains |
| 18 | Adelaide |
| 16 | Townsville |
| 14 | Gold Coast, Hidden Valley, Queensland Raceway |
| 13 | Sandown |
| 11 | Phillip Island |
| 10 | Pukekohe |
| 9 | Wanneroo Barbagallo, Sydney Olympic Park, Winton |
| 8 | Sydney Motorsport Park |
| 7 | Mount Panorama |
| 6 | Bahrain, Yas Marina |
| 4 | Hamilton |
| 3 | Circuit of The Americas, Newcastle, Oran Park |
| 2 | The Bend |
| 1 | Albert Park |
BY MARQUE
Triple Eight may have begun its time in Supercars as a Ford team but its success with Holden Commodores has far outstripped the numbers racked up by its Falcons.
van Gisbergen’s milestone win was the team’s 149th with Holdens, while the team’s final Ford victory (Lowndes at Barbagallo in 2009) was its 51st.
BY PRIMARY SPONSOR
The first of the team’s 200 victories came with Betta Electrical primary sponsorship, a deal that stretched back to 2002 in the outfit’s previous life as Briggs Motor Sport.
The electrical goods retailer’s colours were carried to 12 victories culminating in the team’s first Bathurst 1000 triumph in 2006, which came just days before the company went into receivership.
Triple Eight then began a relationship with telecommunications company Vodafone that ran until the end of the 2012 season, taking a total of 85 championship race wins in their signature fluorescent red.
The dawn of the Car of the Future era in 2013 marked the beginning of the team’s partnership with Red Bull.
The energy drink goliath has been the primary sponsor for 99 of the team’s first 200 wins, the latter 37 of those wins shared with Holden after the carmaker anointed Triple Eight with ‘factory’ status for the 2017 season.
But that equals 196: what of the other four?
Those were earnt by Lowndes in the ‘third’ Triple Eight car between 2016 and 2018. Two wins came in the colours of Caltex’s Vortex premium unleaded fuel brand, while two more came in Autobarn colours.
SPECIAL LIVERIES
Despite Triple Eight running some of the category’s most stunning one-off and retro liveries across its time so far in Supercars, just two have contributed wins to the tally of 200: the 2011 ‘camouflage’ livery for the Townsville 400, and the 2012 ‘chrome’ livery at the Sydney 500.
BUT WAIT, DIDN’T ANOTHER TEAM ALREADY CELEBRATE 200 WINS?
Yes, but Triple Eight is the first team to reach 200 victories in championship races.
The Holden Racing Team notched up 200 wins with its win in the 2011 Bathurst 1000 but that number included a host of non-championship race wins, including its ‘Great Race’ victories in 1990 and 1996 and races like the 1996 Mobil New Zealand Sprints or Australian Grand Prix support races that didn’t count towards the ATCC/Supercars Championship.
The team, now known as Walkinshaw Andretti United, has accounted for 180 championship race wins.
