Bathurst 1000: All the latest news ahead of the Great Race
Scott McLaughlin is chasing his IndyCar dream in the states, but he is still a keen observer of V8 Supercars. And he has revealed who he thinks will take out the iconic race.
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Triple Supercars champion-turned IndyCar star Scott McLaughlin has anointed Chaz Mostert as the man to beat at the Bathurst 1000 again this year, despite series leader Shane van Gisbergen’s season of dominance.
As he confirmed his own hopes of one day returning to race in the Bathurst 1000 were on hold until he could achieve his goals in IndyCar, McLaughlin said the speed Mostert displayed last year to win his second Mount Panorama crown was the strongest he had seen a car in the Great Race for “a long time”.
Mostert claimed an emphatic victory with then co-driver Lee Holdsworth to become a dual Bathurst 1000 champion, setting a blistering pace with the fastest lap of the race and the qualifying lap record to take pole.
Remaining a keen observer of the Supercars championship from his base in the United States, McLaughlin said Mostert’s record-breaking speed last year was as impressive as he had seen.
“Chaz was super strong last year, probably the strongest I have ever seen a race car there for a long, long time with his speed,” McLaughlin said from the US.
“It’s hard to go past Chaz just for the speed that he had last year.
“That is very hard to beat.”
After Holdsworth returned to a full-time drive this year with Grove Racing, Mostert will have a new co-driver – McLaughlin’s former Dick Johnson Racing teammate Fabian Coulthard – for his Bathurst 1000 defence.
Mostert has claimed three race wins this year, equal second behind van Gisbergen who has dominated to win 18 races – equalling McLaughlin’s 2019 record – so far in 2022.
Van Gisbergen will take a massive 525-point championship lead over Cameron Waters into the biggest race of the year.
While he favoured Mostert’s chances, McLaughlin expected his former Triple Eight rival van Gisbergen to be a challenger.
“He is going to have his work cut out for him a little bit (against Mostert),” the 2019 Bathurst champion said.
“But he will definitely be one of the top three up there having a massive crack at it.
“I think at the end of the day Triple Eight has seen their weaknesses and tried to work them out and at least he has tried to put himself in a position now in terms of the championship to have a massive crack at it.”
McLaughlin finished fourth in his second season racing in IndyCar this year after leaving the Supercars series at the end of 2020 following three consecutive championship wins.
His hopes of returning to race at Mount Panorama last year were scuttled by Covid travel restrictions and has this year prioritised off-season IndyCar testing this year.
While McLaughlin said he hoped to race at Bathurst again in the future, he said his priority now had to be his IndyCar career as he did not want to do anything “half-arsed”.
“I would certainly love to race it again,” McLaughlin said.
“But I have just got to put all my eggs in one basket and that’s what I have always been like even when I was in Australia, it was Supercars …. now it’s IndyCar.
“Until I achieve what I want to achieve here and feel like I’m on top of my game here, I just don’t want to lose focus.
“Where I am at in my career, it would be hard to juggle. I don’t want to be half-arsed going into Supercars or half-arsed going into IndyCar, it’s either one or the other and I’ve had to make that decision.
“Definitely something once I get my feet here a bit more firmly, I would love to come back and put a full tilt towards a Bathurst attack.
“But right now I really need to focus on what I’m doing here and make sure that I am up and in that top tier to put up a fight for 2023 and beyond.”
Who will be the pride of the last-time Lions?
Ryan Walkinshaw has declared his defending Bathurst champions are hellbent on landing “bragging rights” as the last-ever Holden-badged team to win at Mount Panorama this year ahead of the squad’s switch to Ford next season.
As he turned up the pressure on runaway series leader Shane van Gisbergen as “the guy to beat at Bathurst”, Walkinshaw said his team was determined to close the chapter on its long and proud association with Holden with back-to-back victories in the Great Race.
In one of the most significant manufacturer shifts in Supercars history, Walkinshaw Andretti United shocked the sport in May when the former factory Holden Racing Team revealed it had chosen to field Ford Mustangs instead of General Motors’ Chevrolet Camaro when the series’ new Gen3 era begins next year.
Team boss Walkinshaw stressed the importance of having factory support from Ford — to bolster the team’s championship ambitions — had been a key factor in making the “tough decision” to switch from red to blue.
Walkinshaw’s father Tom created the Holden Racing Team in 1990 and it was the factory team until the end of 2016 when Holden shifted its backing to Triple Eight.
Now heading to Mount Panorama as the defending Bathurst 1000 champions for Holden’s final fling at the iconic track, Walkinshaw said the team was determined to finish on a high at Bathurst for its bleed-red fans.
“It would be absolutely massive,” Walkinshaw said.
“There are two races we really want to win this year; Bathurst is obviously one, the last time we will see a racing car with a Holden logo on the bonnet going around the track.
“It is a really big event for all the Holden teams and big bragging rights to be the team that wins Holden’s last ever Bathurst.
“The other one is the Adelaide 500 at the end of the season that will be the official last race for Holden in its history in the mecca of Holden where the manufacturing plant in Adelaide is that produced the vast majority of Holden cars throughout its history.
“It was a tough decision for us to go and change brands next season. It is definitely the right decision for our team, but it was an emotional one. It’s difficult to move away from a family you have been a part of for so long.
“But change is also exciting and we’re very much looking forward to partnering with Ford and being a part of their family.
“We have raced for the Holden brand for nearly 30 years … so our relationship with GM and Holden over that period has been like family and we want to try to go out on a high this year.”
WAU won its first Bathurst 1000 crown in a decade last year when Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth triumphed in a record-breaking rocket ship.
The win delivered Mostert, who had smashed the qualifying lap record to claim pole in the top-10 shootout, his second Bathurst crown after his last-lap win in 2014.
Despite the team’s blistering speed last year, Walkinshaw said it was championship leader van Gisbergen who should be considered the man to beat next week.
“I think you always have to look at the guy who is leading the championship as the guy to beat at Bathurst,” Walkinshaw said.
“Obviously we are defending the Bathurst title from last year but a lot has changed from then to now, so we won’t be looking back on last year too much, we will be looking at this year.
“This year the guys to beat are the guys who have been quick all season and Shane van Gisbergen has been one of those guys as have Cam Waters and Anton (De Pasquale) and Will (Davison).
“We will be focusing on trying to beat those guys first and foremost.”
After Holdsworth returned to full-time driving for Grove Racing this year, Fabian Coulthard will be Mostert’s new co-driver this year and Walkinshaw was confident the team had another winning combination.
“There is no secret that getting drivers right out of the championship as co-drivers genuinely helps,” Walkinshaw said.
“Fabs became available last year, it was a top priority that we brought him on board with Lee going back into a full-time gig.
“With both ‘Luffy’ (Nick Percat’s co-driver Warren Luff) and Fabian we are pretty confident that we have got two of the best co-drivers in the category and we’re very confident that both cars have the opportunity to win when it comes to Sunday at Bathurst.”
Walkinshaw said he was unsure whether the team would be able to replicate the blistering pace it showed at Mount Panorama last year until the cars hit the track for practice.
“We are quietly confident that we know we will have a competitive car, whether that will be as fast as it was relative to the field last year,” Walkinshaw said.
“We won’t know until a few practice sessions in, just how competitive the car is relative to everyone else and we won’t know until qualifying really before we see who has managed to catch up with the pace that we had last year.
“We know we were pretty strong there so we will go with something very similar to what we did last year and develop from there.”
Originally published as Bathurst 1000: All the latest news ahead of the Great Race
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