The Debrief: A flying Ford, factory ZBs at sea

The Virgin Australia Supercars Championship headed to Phillip Island with Ford teams and fans buoyed by news the Blue Oval is coming back in 2019.

Ford’s announcement that the Mustang is entering Supercars next year dominated race week, and then its lead driver Scott McLaughlin dominated the WD-40 Phillip Island 500 itself.

From McLaughlin’s rampant form to Triple Eight’s quiet weekend with the new Commodore and Nissan’s breakout, Supercars.com looks at the big topics.

Old Fords are still going OK…

If all of the talk heading to Phillip Island was about Ford’s new-for-2019 Mustang, much of it crossing the bridge back into San Remo was about what McLaughlin did with its current model.

The 2017 title runner-up was almost belligerently-quick around 4.45km of road where any set-up weakness or hint of missing commitment is amplified.

Case in point was Sunday morning’s ARMOR ALL Qualifying session, which he finished 0.4014 seconds clear of the field, to take his sixth-straight pole at Phillip Island.

McLaughlin didn’t finish miles up the road on either day, but was a genuine cut above, managing the races in concert with Shell V-Power Racing engineer Ludo Lacroix.

He was visibly quicker when behind Jamie Whincup and David Reynolds, then made assertive - almost identical - moves at Turn 2 and never looked back on Saturday and Sunday.

De Pasquale stuck with it after practice, while Reynolds “tried it, thought it was dogshit, took it out” but saw the error of his ways on Saturday evening.

Leaning on his rookie team-mate’s set-up was just what Reynolds needed to go from finishing 18.3s behind McLaughlin to challenging for the win.

It’s all well and good predicting a new driver will challenge an incumbent, but De Pasquale is doing that, a handful of events into his Supercars career.

That’s something Reynolds hasn’t had since he joined Erebus in 2016, and it can only benefit his title bid.