Eight things we learned from Winton

1. Nice guy finishes first… twice

Winton continued its recent tradition of providing noteworthy wins; James Moffat in 2013 for Nissan, Lee Holdsworth in 2014 for Erebus, Chaz Mostert scoring for Prodrive for the first time in 2015 and now Tim Slade for Brad Jones Racing in 2016. The Supercars community was delighted for Slade to finally break through after eight years and 226 races. “Genuine nice bloke” was the consensus of opinion around the traps. The manner of his wins was crucial too. No mistakes, no luck, just lots of confidence-building skill. The wins were all about consistent high speed lappery, slick pit stops and a brave strategy call on Sunday that reacted to Prodrive’s innovative play to pit Mark Winterbottom three times and send him on a long run to the finish. So kudos not only to Slade but his engineer, Julian Stannard, who also scored his first wins. Courtesy of his lengthy beard Stannard now joins Chaz Mostert as a subject for debate by the FOX SPORTS commentary team; aka the Supercars fashion police.

2. Now for more

The expectation is that Slade and BJR will feature strongly at Darwin next month because of its combination of high-grip surface and soft tyres. Slade himself acknowledges that history suggests he will be competitive, but he is understandably cautious about making outlandish predictions for what the year will bring beyond that – who could blame him given the craziness of the season so far. Winton’s brand new surface brought the Freightliner Commodore to life on green tyres, but up until now Slade had been unable to qualify in the top 10. BJR technical boss Andrew Edwards and his engineering crew have new ideas and parts to try at a test before Darwin, so here’s hoping this is the start of something big. Right now Slade is seventh in the championship, 264 points from the lead. Who knows where a consistently competitive run for the rest of the year will take him? Hs predecessor Fabian Coulthard’s best finish in the championship for BJR was sixth in 2013. Team owners Brad and Kim Jones would probably regard that as a good target to beat.

3. 911

Slade’s double act made it nine winners from 11 championship races so far. If you don’t believe this is the most competitive, even and gripping start to a touring car/V8 Supercar/Supercar season ever then please nominate your alternative and justifications below. While the racing at Winton didn’t reach the extraordinary heights of Perth two weeks prior, it was still gripping at best and tense at worst. The new surface everyone had hoped would promote lots of two-by-two racing instead made it hard to pass. That was more obvious on Saturday than Sunday when there were some absolutely berserk moments. There are so many good teams, cars and drivers in this championship now that the margin between success and failure is ridiculously small. Get out a stopwatch and click it on and off as fast as you can. If you’re good you might do it in 0.15sec. The top four cars in qualifying on the 3.0km track Sunday were separated by 0.13sec; the top 10 by 0.39sec and the entire 26 car grid by just one second.

4. HRT

On Sunday Garth Tander and James Courtney qualified their factory Holden Racing Team Commodores, 0.536 and 0.5709sec respectively from pole. In just about any other road racing series where the cars make 650 horsepower modulated only by the drivers’ right foot they would have been in sight of pole. Instead they were 19th and 20th and Courtney looked completely and utterly desolate, sitting alone on the pitlane wall. Failure in this championship is measured in such small increments. The best result for the two cars across the two races was GT’s never-say-die 12th on Sunday. This was not the weekend HRT had hoped for at its test track. At the core of any race team – hell, any worthwhile organisation – are living, breathing, feeling people who hurt, suffer, worry, sacrifice and strive for the cause. Hopefully the results will soon come for HRT that make the pain worthwhile and the joy of success all the more pronounced.

5. Compounding that

It was not missed anywhere that as HRT struggled for pace, David Reynolds showed immense pace and a feisty attitude in racing forward from 17th on the grid to finish sixth in his Penrite Oils Holden Commodore VF… That’s an ex-Walkinshaw Racing Commodore that has now been significantly re-engineered by Erebus. Reynolds ended up setting the fastest lap on Sunday and it wasn’t a complete surprise he was so strong, as he only started so far back in the first place because of a significant error on his qualifying lap. Reynolds took particular pleasure in shouldering his way past Tander during his charge forward. There was no politeness in his move, and most assuredly none expected by hard-nut Tander. Don’t forget it was 12 months ago at Winton, Reynolds took exception to Tander’s on-track behaviour, an encounter that had an entertaining follow-up on Inside Supercars. This was not Reynolds’ best finish of the year as he scored fifth on the water-logged Sunday at the Clipsal 500, but it was a truer reflection of the development program Erebus has embarked on. Wonder what Mathew Nilsson, the former HRT technical chief moved aside in last summer’s reshuffle, made of all this? While he still works at Walkinshaw Racing, Nilsson spends race weekends engineering Reynolds’ team-mate Aaren Russell, who drives another ex-WR Commodore VF.