Fifteen years ago, 23-year-old Jamie Whincup joined Triple Eight Race Engineering for the 2006 Supercars season. No one could’ve predicted the success that followed. Whincup was hired by Triple Eight for the role of number two and co-driver to Craig Lowndes. While Lowndes had already won three championships and come close to another in 2005, Whincup had bounced back from a disappointing rookie season that had seen him fired by Garry Rogers Motorsport at the end of 2003, a solid endurance campaign with Perkins Engineering in 2004 and a career-changing season with Tasman Motorsport in 2005.

In his first year with Triple Eight, Whincup won the season-opening event in Adelaide and teamed with Lowndes to claim victory at Bathurst. Whincup’s 10th in the championship standings wasn’t a true indication of his season, having missed two races as a result of accident damage in Tasmania. But by 2007, he gained the ascendancy within the team and began a championship-contending charge that would see him rewrite the record books.

After sixteen seasons with Triple Eight, Whincup will end his full-time career with the following records:

– The most Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars drivers’ titles.
– The equal most consecutive Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars drivers’ titles.
– The most Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars race wins.
– The most Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars pole positions.
– The most Australian Touring Car Championship/Supercars podiums.
– The most Bathurst 1000 wins for a current full-time driver.
– The most Bathurst 1000 podiums for a current full-time driver.
– The equal most consecutive Bathurst 500/1000 wins.

Whincup took his first championship win in 2008 and backed it up in 2009. After a narrow defeat in 2010, he fought back with four in a row between 2011 and 2014. Then, just as it seemed a new generation had taken over at the top, he won a seventh title in 2017. He also scored five Sandown 500 wins, four Bathurst 1000 wins and two Enduro Cup wins.

Between 2007 and 2021, he has finished inside the top five in the championship in each season and only outside the top three on two occasions. He has won races in each of his 16 seasons with Triple Eight and podiums in the last 17 seasons.

While he did all his winning with Triple Eight, his championship run has spanned two manufacturers (Ford and Holden) and four models (BF Falcon, FG Falcon, VE Commodore and VF Commodore), from the Project Blueprint cars into Car of the Future and Gen2.

Between 2008 and 2014, Whincup won over 30 percent of the races in each of those seasons and over 40 percent in 2008, 2009 and 2012. In his non-championship winning seasons between 2008 and 2017, he won 34.6 percent of the races in 2010, 22.2 percent in 2015 and 24.1 percent Ҭin 2016.

What’s remarkable about Whincup’s run is how close he came to eight consecutive championships between 2007 and 2014, with only a 67-point swing across two seasons needed to add to his tally.

In 2007, his first season as a championship contender, he missed the title by two points to the HSV Dealer Team’s Garth Tander.
Whincup lost a third place following a disqualification at Eastern Creek midway through the season, with those lost points ultimately costing him the championship. The team had incorrectly used a previous-spec rear brake, which was in the spares box to use at a post-event ride day.

In 2010, the season in which Triple Eight switched from Ford Falcons to Holden Commodores, Whincup lost the title to Dick Johnson Racing’s James Courtney by 65 points. Whincup won nine races compared to Courtney’s five, but unreliability in the change of manufacturers proved the decisive factor with engine troubles at Queensland Raceway and Phillip Island.

It meant his championship-winning run would only have ended in 2015, a season in which the new FG X Falcon outpaced the VF Commodore and a puncture at Sandown and a penalty at Bathurst took Whincup out of the title race.

Just when it seemed his run of championships had come to an end, with new teammate Shane van Gisbergen winning the title in 2016, Whincup prevailed in a tight championship race in 2017. Despite only four wins over the course of the season, his lowest since 2006, consistency was again the key to his success with 15 podiums despite only two pole positions ““ one of 14 consecutive seasons with more than 12 podiums.

His seventh title demonstrated his ability to compete against a new generation, particularly van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin; only adding to his greatest of all-time case.

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Behind Will Brown’s laid-back exterior is a strong will to win, if you’ll excuse the pun. The 23-year-old has tasted plenty of success in his young career, with Toyota 86 Racing Series and Formula 4 championship wins in the same year and the inaugural TCR Australia title in 2019.

On paper, that’s plenty to boast about, but tellingly, when we ask Brown what he’s most proud of, he instead focuses on the one that got away.

“I think the most disappointed I have been was not winning the Formula Ford championship [in 2016]. I know that much” he says. 

“Most proud? I’m not too sure. I don’t really get too caught up in it. I think winning the Toyota 86 Series in its first year was great. But I always wanted to win Formula Ford.”

While it’s remarkable that the current Erebus Motorsport driver won both the Toyota 86 and Australian Formula 4 championships in 2016, he very nearly won three major national titles that season.

“Well, actually, a lot of people don’t know the reason I lost the Formula Ford championship was because Formula 4 and Formula Ford were on the same weekend for their first round” he says. 

“So I had to miss Formula Ford and I was 58 points down after the first round. We didn’t lose it by many points. 

“Formula Ford was the one I really wanted to win that year. If you look at the pedigree of drivers that have won it, and it went down to the final race after missing a round. I worked hard to try and get back, and we won several races in a row in that championship. I believe we still had an awesome year in Formula Ford; it’s just we missed the first round.”

Brown progressed to the Dunlop Super2 Series with Eggleston Motorsport in 2017 and finished ninth in the championship, even after a mechanical failure denied him a maiden win in Newcastle. It was the sort of luck that seemed to cruel his Super2 campaigns. 

“In my second year I came sixth in the championship; we were going great” he recalls. 

“I was thinking of one more year of Super2 and then hopefully I was going to get a drive in the main game. But with the third year things didn’t go to plan at Eggleston. We just didn’t have the year we wanted between all of the cars. I fell back to 12th in that year.”

Despite the championship success in other categories, Brown’s struggles to make inroads in Super2, prior to his runner-up finish with Erebus Motorsport-affiliated Image Racing in 2020, was clearly a frustration.

“I don’t know how to say it really. Each year the enduros saved me pretty much” he says. 

“At the end of every year, when I jumped in the Erebus car, in a really good car, I was able to be one of the top co-drivers and do standout drives like Gold Coast and Sandown, which sort of saved my career.

“At the end of 2018, Erebus signed me straight at the end of Gold Coast. We literally had a five-minute chat, me and Barry [Ryan], and he signed me. And, then at the end of 2019 it was the same. Betty Klimenko and Barry sat me down. We pretty much did that deal for me to be a 2021 driver for them”¦ and that plan has gone ahead. 

“Betty and Barry have placed a lot of faith in me. That deal doesn’t happen very often in Supercars and you don’t see it happen often at all, a guaranteed seat in a year’s time. So it was pretty cool to do that deal.”

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The start of the 2018 season was a big occasion for the team formerly known as the Holden Racing Team (HRT). With the glory days of Holden factory backing well and truly behind them, Walkinshaw Racing had to find a new way forward.

Enter two of motorsport’s biggest outfits: Andretti Autosport, headed by former IndyCar champion Michael Andretti, and United Autosports, run by the man whose day job is being McLaren’s Formula 1 team boss, Zak Brown.

In October 2017, Ryan Walkinshaw declared war on the powerhouse teams by announcing Andretti and Brown had joined the iconic team, which was then rebranded as Walkinshaw Andretti United (WAU). 

The two WAU drivers would remain the same as James Courtney kept his seat after joining HRT as defending champion in 2011, driving alongside the team’s new recruit Scott Pye, who managed a valiant second at Bathurst in the days following the announcement.

Despite United Autosports only taking a 25 percent stake in the team compared to the 37.5 percent which Andretti Autosport invested, it was Brown who had made first contact after purchasing a former HRT race-winning car. 

In 2017, Brown bought the 2011 Bathurst 1000-winning car of Garth Tander and Nick Percat (chassis WR 014) and subsequently got in touch with Walkinshaw through former Holden Dealer Team manager and Courtney’s agent, Alan Gow.

From there the wheels were put in motion, culminating in the announcement in October around the investment and then the cars turning a wheel for the first time at the start of 2018 with the debut of the Holden ZB Commodore.

Walkinshaw Andretti United only took five races to get their first Supercars victory with Pye in 2018, breaking through in wet conditions at Albert Park to claim the first major piece of silverware for the freshly rebranded super-team. But no one could have predicted it would take another 1121 days for the team to stand atop the podium again.

From the first win to the second, WAU went through seismic changes which were aimed at delivering championships, not just race wins. Trying to follow in the steps of the other international super-team DJR Team Penske, the squad which once had the backing of the almighty General Motors kept climbing up the pecking order, finally leading to Chaz Mostert taking the chequered flag first in Race 8 of 2021 at Symmons Plains.

“When I came to the team, there was a little dry spell for the team to get results” says Mostert.

“Now there’s obviously a direction there; the cars can be fast and you can win races, and it’s proven. I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself from last year into this year, trying to get this elusive race win for our team.

“To guys like Ryan, Zak and Michael, to have faith in me to lead this team and get a race win again, it’s so rewarding to give back to our guys and our sponsors.”

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The SupercarXtra Magazine-produced free digital program has you covered for the second consecutive event in Townsville.

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The program features the event schedule, preview, entry list, driver profiles, circuit guide, previous winners, records, support category previews and more, all free to read.

SupercarXtra Magazine issue #122 is also available now, in print and digital forms.

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The SupercarXtra Magazine-produced program is your must-have guide for the sixth event of the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship.

The program features the event schedule, preview, entry list, driver profiles, circuit guide, support category previews and more, incorporatingSupercarXtra Magazineissue #122.

Print versions of the program will be on sale at the event, while the digital edition is online now. 

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SupercarXtra Magazineissue #122 is currently available in stores, in addition to in print and digital forms from our online store. 

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Issue #122 features Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert on the cover, following his new deal with the team and return to the top step of the podium.

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Included is a two-sided pullout poster featuring Mostert and Marcos Ambrose.

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Issue #122 also includes the following:

ANALYSIS: Gen3 ramps up. The latest on the development of the Gen3 Supercar and the philosophy behind it.

ANALYSIS: Title battle heats up. The state of play in the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship entering the second half of the season.

ANALYSIS: Returning to New Zealand. Supercars’ hopes to celebrate its New Zealand anniversary with a return to Pukekohe Park Raceway.

ANALYSIS: Bathurst wildcards. The wildcard entry set to make history at the 2021 Repco Bathurst 1000.

COLUMN: Mark Winterbottom on the challenge of competing in Supercars.

COLUMN: Craig Lowndes on how he would like the Supercars calendar to look moving forward.

FEATURE: Chazzle dazzle. The union and progression of Chaz Mostert and Walkinshaw Andretti United.

FEATURE: The greatest of all time. The case for Jamie Whincup being the greatest driver in the history of Australian touring cars.

FEATURE: The next generation Dane. Jessica Dane on her rise through the ranks and future with Triple Eight Race Engineering.

FEATURE: The will to win. Will Brown’s journey to his full-time main-game arrival with Erebus Motorsport.

FEATURE: The solo path. Jake Kostecki and Zane Goddard on moving into their own entries at Matt Stone Racing.

FEATURE: Racing links. The ties that connect Supercars/Bathurst 1000 and the IndyCar Series/Indianapolis 500.

FEATURE: The rookie sensation. Marcos Ambrose and Stone Brothers Racing’s arrival as Ford’s great hope in 2001.

FEATURE: Arrival of “˜The Kid’. Craig Lowndes’ sweep of his full-time debut season in 1996.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: A look back at the reverse-grid experiments from 2000 to 2006.

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