Surfers Paradise: It's taken 2100 km of mostly contentious racing, but six-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup has finally avoided melodrama to win an endurance race and keep his title hopes alive.
After mishaps and controversy cost him victories in the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000, Whincup bounced back in the Gold Coast 600 with a gritty third and a dominant win in the twin 300 km mini-enduros at the punishing Surfers Paradise street circuit.
While he shared the race honours with his Triple Eight Holden teammate and championship rival Shane van Gisbergen, it was Whincup's runaway success in Sunday's deciding race that was a portent of things to come.
It was a reminder that his misfortunes at Sandown and Bathurst masked his superior speed at those events, and that despite gaining an edge in the championship points standings, van Gisbergen will have a fight on his hands to win his first V8 title.
The mercurial New Zealander was imperious in Saturday's opening leg of the Gold Coast 600, recovering from a 10-second penalty to win comfortably, and overcame a strategy disadvantage on Sunday to finish second.
Van Gisbergen's results extended his lead in the championship standings over Whincup to 148 points, which is a handy but by no means decisive advantage with just two events and six races to go.
They are alone in the battle for the V8 crown, creating a tense intra-team rivalry as the title comes down to the four 100 km races at the Auckland Supersprint early next month and the deciding pair of 250 km races at the season-ending Sydney 500 in early December.
Van Gisbergen, in his first season as Whincup's teammate at Red Bull Racing, is going for his first V8 crown, while Whincup is trying to regain his title to extend his record to seven Supercars championships.
With Whincup demonstrating on the brutal 2.984 km Surfers Paradise street track that he will be neither distracted nor dissuaded from keeping the pressure on the upstart interloper in the team he has owned for several years, there is every likelihood they will contest the title to the final race on the streets of Sydney Olympic Park on December 4.
Whincup's domination of Sunday's race, starting with him beating van Gisbergen to pole position, was the sort of imperious performance that had he and his co-driver Paul Dumbrell on course to win both last month's Sandown 500 and the October 9 Bathurst 1000.
A mistake in a pit stop by Dumbrell, who undid his safety harness before coming to a halt in a pit stop to earn a pit lane drive-through penalty, put them out of contention at Sandown, where they were the fastest combination.
They were by far the fastest pairing at Mount Panorama, only to be denied by Whincup incurring a 15-second penalty late in the race for causing a collision.
He finished first on the track, but the controversial punishment dropped him to 11th in the official results and handed victory to underdogs Will Davison and Jonathon Webb.
Triple Eight's subsequent attempt to overturn the penalty and restore Whincup's victory on appeal was not only unsuccessful, but deeply divisive.
Whincup shrugged off the furore to refocus at Surfers, salvaging a solid third on Saturday as the fall of the inevitable safety car interventions favoured van Gisbergen and his French co-driver Alex Premat.
Premat earned a 10-second pit stop penalty for prematurely restarting after an early safety car period, but van Gisbergen – a master of the Surfers street circuit with two wins from the previous four races – overcame the setback by adopting an alternative strategy to Whincup.
He took over from Premat sooner than Dumbrell was replaced by Whincup, allowing him to use his superior pace in the overlap to overcome the penalty.
In Sunday's race, Dumbrell excelled in his opening stint to stay at the front before handing over to Whincup, conserving fuel to go as far as possible, forcing Premat to complete an extra lap to avoid 'stacking' in the pits.
The move was decisive as van Gisbergen resumed amid heavy traffic that delayed his chase of Whincup.
Volvo's Scott McLaughlin and his co-driver David Wall, who were second on Saturday, gambled on a different strategy that saw McLaughlin scythe through the field from a late pit stop to finish third.
Following their seconds at Sandown and Bathurst, a win and a second in the Gold Coast 600 netted van Gisbergen and Premat the Enduro Cup title, awarded to the highest scoring combination over the three endurance race events.
