Venue Winton Motor Raceway First held 1985 Distance 120 km | Number of times held 29 Laps 40 Laps 67 | |
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The Winton SuperSprint (formally known as the Woodstock Winton SuperSprint) is an annual motor racing event for Supercars, held at Winton Motor Raceway in Winton, Victoria. The event has been a regular part of the Supercars Championship—and its previous incarnations, the Australian Touring Car Championship, Shell Championship Series and V8 Supercars Championship—since 1985.
Contents
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Format
The event is staged over a three-day weekend, from Friday to Sunday. Two one-hour practice sessions are held on Friday while a fifteen-minute practice session is held on Saturday. Friday also features a thirty-minute practice session exclusively for additional drivers, mostly co-drivers from the Enduro Cup. Saturday features a fifteen-minute qualifying session which decides the grid positions for the following 120 kilometre race. A single twenty-minute qualifying session is held on Sunday to decide the grid for the following 200 km race.
History
Jim Richards won the first two Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) events at Winton in 1985 and 1986. The 1985 event marked the only time in the history of the ATCC that a Holden did not compete in the race. Richards won the race by a lap over his teammate Neville Crichton, both in BMW 635CSis, while Kevin Bartlett finished third in a Mitsubishi Starion. Richards' 1986 win came only after the Nissan Skyline of Gary Scott was excluded for using oversized front brake caliper pistons.
Nissan would go on to dominate the event, winning every year from 1989 to 1992. George Fury's win in 1989 ended a fifteen-race winning streak by the Ford Sierra RS500, which had won every ATCC race in 1988 and the first six races of 1989. The race was run in wet conditions and featured various leaders, including Peter Brock in a Sierra, Fury and Mark Skaife in Skylines and Allan Grice in a Holden Commodore. Brock finished in second despite a spin while Skaife took his first ATCC podium finish.
The circuit was extended in 1997 and Larry Perkins took his first and only ATCC pole position at that year's event. His teammate Russell Ingall won all three races during the weekend to take overall victory ahead of Perkins and Glenn Seton. In the 2003 event, Greg Murphy was given a controversial drive-through penalty. Craig Lowndes lost the rear of his car going through the fast turn five and, as he applied the brakes to try and regain control, was hit by Murphy. The penalty was criticised by television commentator Neil Crompton and Lowndes said that Murphy "had been treated harshly". There was more controversy in 2004, when Cameron McConville passed Rick Kelly for the lead at the penultimate corner on the final lap. Brad Jones' car was stopped on the straight before the corner, with yellow flags being displayed and passing being disallowed as a result. Kelly was animated after the race, claiming that McConville had passed him in the yellow flag zone, but it was found that the pass had been made just as the two cars left the yellow flag zone and McConville kept the victory.
The 2009 event saw the introduction of the Dunlop soft tyre, the first time that the tyre company had provided two different slick tyre compounds since becoming the control tyre supplier in 2002. The 2013 and 2014 events saw some success for Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volvo, the manufacturers which had entered the series under the New Generation V8 Supercar rules in those two seasons. James Moffat, driving for Nissan Motorsport, took his first career victory in the first race of the 2013 event, while Lee Holdsworth gave Mercedes-Benz its first Supercars win in the second race of the 2014 event. Scott McLaughin took his first career pole position driving a Volvo S60 in 2014. In 2016, Tim Slade took his first two career race wins to win the event, also giving local team Brad Jones Racing their first event win at the circuit.