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2016 year in review: Aussie motorsport

Whincup survived a massive shunt in Sydney. (Image: VUE Images / Red Bull Content Pool)
Editor
29th December, 2016
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It’s been another big year in Australian motorsport with young talent, world-beaters, milestones and controversy claiming the spotlight throughout 2016.

The V8 Supercars continue to heat up every year as one champion of the sport brought up his century in an ever increasingly legendary career, while another Aussie legend brought an end to his.

Even the Dakar rally gets a mention.

Let’s take a look back at some of the big talking points in Australian motorsport this year.

Van Gisbergen continues 888 dominance

Hey, someone other than Jamie Whincup won the V8 Championship! Oh but it was Triple Eight Racing again. Oh well.

Shane Van Gisbergen broke through for his maiden V8 title this year, holding off a fired up Whincup in the final round of the season to win by 200 points and become just the third Kiwi to take the title.

Now for those who don’t follow the V8s religiously, 200 points may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that you can score 54 points for coming 26th in some races, so the final margin between the two was very tight coming into the last few races.

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It took 18 podiums including eight wins for the year to get past the six-time champion but Van Gisbergen made it look easy.

He picked up massive points in the enduros to break clear of Whincup thanks to one win and three second-place finishes in the highest scoring races of the year.

Despite the stiff competition at the pointy end of the standings throughout most of the year, the top four at the end of the season consisted of three drivers from the Triple Eight Racing Team.

Triple Eight has now produced seven of the last nine champions and won eight of the last nine constructors titles.

Their dominance has cast a shadow over the sport that has left very little breathing room for emerging or even established teams elsewhere on the grid.

Nearly every year in the past decade has had Lowndes and Whincup take two of the top three spots and now they have Van Gisbergen on board to complete the dynasty.

Time running out on Lowndes

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Craig Lowndes is undoubtedly a legend of Australian motorsport, breaking onto the scene in the late 90’s and taking the touring car championship by storm.

But it’s been 17 years now since his last title win back in 1999 as a 25-year old with the world at his feet.

He’s finished in the top four in his last 11 seasons in a row but hasn’t been able to add another championship to his tally.

He’s come second in the title race six times in that same period. Despite his age, he is still one of the best drivers in the country but continues to fall short of the top step.

Very few would argue that he doesn’t deserve a fourth championship but time is running out for the veteran.

He’s now 42-years old with a string of young drivers rising up beneath him, not to mention a six-time world champion to compete with inside his own team.

Despite having three championships to his name, they were so long ago now that it’s always felt like Lowndes has never been able to break the glass ceiling and reach the record-breaking potential he showed early on.

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He’s been the bridesmaid so frequently over the past decade and a half that you can’t help be hit with a sense of ‘what could have been’.

He still has a great car and a mountain of ability to pull it off. Maybe in 2017 he can take that top spot that has eluded him for so many years now.

Craig Lowndes Bathurst 1000

Whincup’s Bathurst horrors continue

The Bathurst 1000 is one of the biggest events on the Australian sporting calendar and every year attractions a sea of singlets, thongs and cases of XXXX Gold.

And every year there seems to be some kind of controversy or incident surrounding the race and the final results.

Jamie Whincup may already have four wins at the famed Mount Panorama circuit but he could have had so many more by this point yet continues to be undermined by bad fortune and himself.

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After winning three in a row with Craig Lowndes, they were shaping up for the quartet in 2009 before a clutch failure sent them sliding down the final standings.

He lost on the final lap by 0.2 of a second the following year before his Holden lost power late in the race to cost him the win in 2011 after leading for the most part.

Whincup took out his fourth win at Bathurst in 2012, but it was back to old habits the following year. The 33-year-old battled hard for the lead with Mark Winterbottom in 2013 but an error on the final lap saw him take his car off road and give Winterbottom the victory.

The 2014 edition of the great race was arguably the peak of not only Whincup’s dramas but some of the most intense racing in the event’s history.

After starting third last on the grid in 24th, Whincup put on one of the great racing performances to fly through the field and take the lead late in the race. In a near-fictional twist of drama, he came under pressure in the dying laps from Chaz Mostert, who started from dead last at the beginning of the day.

Whincup was on his last legs with fuel coming into the final lap and ran out of juice as he came down Conrod straight, forcing him to move aside and let Mostert through for a historic win.

Last year Whincup again found himself in a winning position but was denied this time by a drive-through penalty with 20 laps remaining after he sensationally decided to overtake the safety car.

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Finally, we have this year.

Whincup crossed the line first after over six hours of racing but he didn’t take the spoils.

Under pressure late in the race as Garth Tander and Scott McLaughlin threatened Whincup’s lead, he collided with the two, taking them both out of contention and incurring a time penalty in the fallout.

The 15-second penalty pushed him back to 11th in the final standings despite his track position, allowing Will Davison to take the win in a Steven Bradbury moment.

He copped the wrath of Tander and McLaughlin and their respective garages while sizzling under the heat from his own team in a dramatic post-race fallout.

Rash decision-making under pressure has almost tarnished his Bathurst legacy after his historic treble with Lowndes in the mid-2000s.

A century of race wins

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Jamie Whincup became just the second driver in the history of the sport to reach 100 career race wins this year, following on from team-mate Lowndes who ticked over to triple figures last season.

He reached the mark with his third win of the year in Race 19 at the Sydney SuperSprint.

Four more wins from the remaining ten races has seen him close in on Lowndes for the overall career race wins record that currently stands at 105.

A hundred wins at the top level seemed like a near impossible feat not so long ago. Aside from Mark Skaife who finished his career with an astonishing 90 wins to his name, the next best is halfway back down the scale.

Veteran Garth Tander currently has 53 wins in fourth place on the all-time leaderboard, just highlighting the immense achievement that Lowndes and now Whincup have pulled off.

The icon Peter Brock set the standard with 48 wins and for a long time many believed his record was unassailable, but that was in an era with far fewer races than we see in the current climate.

The new standard of racing has changed the landscape of the sport and created new possibilities for many records such as this.

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Of the current crop, Tander is the closest to reaching the century of wins but age isn’t on his side with still a long way to go. Mark Winterbottom is the next best currently in the field back on 39 wins.

Whincup will no doubt extend his incredible numbers over the next few years and set one hell of an intimidating record, but we may not see another pass the hundred mark for a while yet.

Where’s everyone else?

Every point so far has revolved around Whincup or Lowndes, which has more to do with the opening point on Triple Eight Racing more than anything else, but what happened with the rest of the pack?

Young New Zealand prodigy Scott McLaughlin finished third in the driver’s championship with a pair of wins early in the season, showing immense talent and promising to challenge for the title in the coming years.

Bathurst winner Will Davison picked up another win in Tasmania but struggled with a slow car for most of the year and snagged just two other podium finishes across the 29 races.

Defending champ Mark Winterbottom had a fairly forgettable title defence, falling to the curse of inconsistency throughout most of the year despite notching up a pair of wins.

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Tim Slade had a breakout year in 2016, finally taking his first career win in his seventh season of racing. He wasted no time in doubling up, taking his second win one day later to whitewash the Winton SuperSprint round.

Nick Percat pulled a win out of nowhere in the opening round of the series but his joy would end there, ending the season with four retirements, one DQ and just two other finishes inside the top ten.

The Kelly brothers finished the season just 27 points apart. It would be Rick to take bragging rights, but they were down in 13th and 14th with a total of zero podium finishes between them.

Overall it wasn’t a great year to be someone out of the top four.

Final standings – top ten

Pos Driver Vehicle Wins Podiums Enduro Points
1 Shane Van Gisbergen Holden 8 18 840 3368
2 Jamie Whincup Holden 7 17 555 3168
3 Scott McLaughlin Volvo 2 8 602 2806
4 Craig Lowndes Holden 2 7 516 2770
5 Will Davison Holden 2 4 681 2589
6 Mark Winterbottom Ford 2 8 303 2489
7 Chaz Mostert Ford 0 5 504 2361
8 Tim Slade Holden 2 3 468 2263
9 Garth Tander Holden 1 4 432 2252
10 Michael Caruso Nissan 1 2 444 2239

Toby puts an Aussie Price on the Dakar and dominates 2016

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Toby Price may not have been a household name for his exploits in the off-road rally racing scene before 2016, but a lot can change in two weeks.

In just his second showing at the famed Dakar Rally in January, Price ended the two-man dynasty of Spaniard Marc Coma and Cyril Despres from France.

The two had won the last ten Dakar rallies between them in the motorbike section before 29-year old Price became the first ever Australian to win the race across all categories.

He dominated the standings, winning five and taking three podiums out of just 12 stages, finishing just short of 40 minutes ahead of the next best at the end of the rally.

After a long career with KTM’s Off-Road Racing Team, Price made the switch to Red Bull Racing’s KTM Factory Rally team just three months before the race.

Three months after the victory at Dakar he also became the first Australian to ever win the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

The win at Abu Dhabi, a second place finish at the Atacama Rally in Chile and a victory in the season-ending Rally of Morocco were enough for Price to finish third in the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship.

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A rare achievement for any rider as he continues his search for a maiden World Championship win and the first for an Australian.

He wouldn’t neglect his home soil after so much overseas success however, winning the Finke Desert Race for the fifth time in his career in June.

His confidence was high enough that he almost took home a slice of history at Finke, taking on the rally that runs through central Australia in both the two and four-wheel categories.

Although he fell agonisingly short, winning the motorbikes but coming second in the four-wheel division, it took him to new heights having dominated the Australian scene for so long now.

Price is already in preparation for his defence at Dakar at the turn of the new year and is taking career best form into the historic event as he looks to go back to back.

Toby Price becomes the first Australian to win the famous Dakar Rally, taking out the motorbike class in 2016.

Cheers Webber, thanks for the memories

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The long and storied career of Aussie champion Mark Webber finally came to a close this year, announcing his retirement a month after his 40th birthday.

Webber has often been regarded as one of the greatest drivers never to win a Formula One championship after a career spanning 12 years and 215 race starts.

After a heroic debut for Minardi in 2002 that saw him drive from 18th on the grid to finish fifth in the Australian GP, Webber would battle his way up the pecking order through the mid-2000’s.

He performed far above his level with stints at Jaguar and Williams before finding a seat at emerging new team Red Bull Racing.

He got his first and long-awaited win in Germany in 2009, the first of nine in his career, making him eighth on the list of most wins without a championship.

Webber racked up 42 podium finishes in his F1 career and finish a painful third place in the driver’s championship three times in his final four seasons.

His 2010 tilt at the title was arguably his greatest opportunity to become just the third Australian F1 champion, but he found himself stuck at the wrong end of the pack in the final race of the season thanks to a shocker of a pit strategy, allowing young German Sebastian Vettel to steal the title from his grasp.

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Frustration followed Webber for many of his final years in the sport as team mate Vettel dominated with four championships in a row.

It took a change of scenery for the Canberra milk kid to finally win an elusive world title.

He took a seat at Porsche in 2014 for the World Endurance Championships and won the championship just one year later in his second season.

A long and illustrious career began as a plucky 14-year-old, starting out in the New South Wales state karting championship in 1991.

His career will be remembered for always performing above expectations and turning any situation into a successful one, that and his stellar feud with Vettel throughout the final few years of his F1 career.

He epitomised the Aussie battler and his WEC championship win in 2015 was a truly emotional one after so many years of hard work and toil.

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