Fast Facts: ARMOR ALL Sydney SuperNight

1) This event marks the 27th time the Repco Supercars Championship has held a round at Sydney Motorsport Park and the second year in a row that the venue has held back-to-back rounds during a season. The venue remains one of just five circuits to have hosted consecutive rounds across ATCC/SC history; Symmons Plains, Hidden Valley, Townsville and The Bend are the others.

2) This weekend will mark a first for the Repco Supercars Championship. The final race of the ARMOR ALL Sydney SuperNight will be the first in championship history to be held on a Sunday night. All previous championship night races have taken place on Friday and Saturday nights.

3) Red Bull Ampol Racing will reach a major milestone in its Repco Supercars Championship history this weekend. The ARMOR ALL Sydney SuperNight will be the team’s 250th championship round start since its debut at the 2003 Sandown 500, when Triple Eight Race Engineering bought out Briggs Motor Sport. Their 250 career starts places Triple Eight fifth among active teams.

4) Shane van Gisbergen may have won only one race last weekend but he leads the way in the chase for the $25,000 Beaurepaires Sydney Cup, awarded to the highest point scorer across the four rounds at Sydney Motorsport Park. Van Gisbergen holds sway on 272 points, with Will Davison (230), Will Brown (219), Nick Percat (214) and Brodie Kostecki (211) completing the top five.

5) Erebus Motorsport enjoyed its best Sydney Motorsport Park round in its history last weekend. The podium finishes for Repco Supercars Championship rookies Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki marked the first time Erebus had posted multiple podium finishes within a round at SMSP; they had only one prior podium finish (third for Anton De Pasquale in Race 8 of the 2020 championship) at the circuit. Brown’s front-row qualifying efforts for the first and last races also marked the first time an Erebus car started from the front row in a championship race at SMSP.

6) Anton De Pasquale’s hat-trick of ARMOR ALL Pole Positions last weekend rocketed him up the table of career poles at Sydney Motorsport Park. The Shell V-Power Racing Team driver now sits tied for third with John Bowe and Jamie Whincup on three apiece, vaulting him past Craig Lowndes (2), Dick Johnson, Glenn Seton, Peter Brock, Todd Kelly, Garth Tander and Andre Heimgartner (1 apiece).

7) De Pasquale also set a new record for the largest pole-winning margin at Sydney Motorsport Park last weekend. In Race 2, the Shell V-Power Racing Team driver’s ARMOR ALL Qualifying margin over teammate Will Davison was 0.6565-seconds. That eclipsed the previous record of 0.6440-seconds, the margin between pole-winner Mark Skaife and Marcos Ambrose in qualifying for the circuit’s round in 2002.

8) Mark Winterbottom remains on track to tie Craig Lowndes for the most championship race starts at Sydney Motorsport Park. The Team 18 driver, who grew up a couple of suburbs from the circuit in Doonside, has the most starts of any active driver with 34 following last weekend’s Bunnings Trade Sydney SuperNight, tying him for ninth overall with Glenn Seton. Starting this weekend’s three races will move him to a tie for fourth overall with John Bowe, Russell Ingall and Rick Kelly on 37. Winterbottom will equal Lowndes’ career tally of 42 by the end of the venue’s three remaining rounds providing he starts all eight remaining races.

9) Two wildcard entries join the field this weekend, with Tickford Racing’s Thomas Randle and Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Kurt Kostecki each making their final solo round starts of 2021. While neither driver has previously made a Repco Supercars Championship start at Sydney Motorsport Park, Randle took pole position and won last year’s Dunlop Super2 Series round at the circuit while Kostecki posted a pair of 10th placings in the circuit’s Super2 round in 2017.

10) It has been a while since the BP Ultimate Safety Car appeared at Sydney Motorsport Park. The last nine races at the circuit have been completed without a Safety Car intervention, equalling the longest streak since the nine races across the 1997, 1999 and 2000 rounds went Safety Car free. The last Safety Car period at the circuit was during the 2018 Sydney SuperNight.

Tickets for the three upcoming Sydney events are on sale now.