Endings don’t come much sweeter than that.
Shane van Gisbergen had to dig deep to secure a Sunday victory clean sweep on home turf, and it was spectacular sight.
His duel with Cameron Waters for the lead of the final Supercars race to be staged around the classic Pukekohe track was one for the ages, but there was only ever going to be one winner from the tussle.
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Van Gisbergen seized the lead, and his home fans throning in support of their champion, revelling in the chance to see him do the business in the flesh for the first time since 2019, were thunderous in their approval.
It’s the way the weekend deserved to end.
But just deserts weren’t served to all, at least not if you ask Erebus, who have been left with a totalled chassis and a Bathurst entry at risk after a massive clash between Will Brown and Mark Winterbottom.
Angry words were exchanged, and then angrier words were found and exchanged again.
It was otherwise an intriguing weekend of waxing and waning form despite the championship hurtling towards a clear conclusion.
There were the winners and losers.
WINNER: SHANE VAN GISBERGEN
It would’ve been some kind of sick cosmic joke if Shane van Gisbergen, the season’s indisputable dominant force, walked away from the final Supercars weekend at Pukekohe tasting defeat.
And it did seem like the universe was set to have the last laugh at the Auckland track for the first two days of this race meeting. Triple Eight was out of sorts during Friday practice, and Van Gisbergen was out of contention for victory on Saturday relatively early and instead spent his race trying to secure some bonus points for fastest lap.
An upset briefly appeared to be on the cards.
But Van Gisbergen arrived in Pukekohe with the steadfast intention of defining the final chapter of the circuit’s Supercars history, and he wasn’t to be denied.
His win on Sunday afternoon was textbook stuff, controlling the race throughout, but his charge to claim honours in the evening from eighth on the grid was a salient reminder of what the double champion can do when he needs to draw on his performance reserves.
That his charge had to get him past Cam Waters, the man who is nominally his principal championship challenger, just emphasises the stranglehold the Kiwi has on the sport at the moment.
It took him several attempts to unpick Waters’s defence. The Tickford racer deployed every defensive weapon in his arsenal, and the pair came to blows — and so near to disaster — as they sized each other up.
But as in the championship race generally, Van Gisbergen’s rise proved unstoppable at the finish in a sweet crisscrossing move to take an enormously popular home victory.
“Unbelievable,” an emotional Van Gisbergen said. “From eighth, I didn’t think we could do that.
“I didn’t give up, I just kept throwing it at him. Cam had me pretty good, and I couldn’t get him.
“Next time, I wasn’t lifting.”
Taking home the last Pukekohe-awarded Jason Richards Memorial Trophy and an enhanced 525-point title lead, Van Gisbergen undoubtedly won the weekend.
WINNER: ANDRE HEIMGARTNER
Van Gisbergen wasn’t New Zealand’s only good-news story of course, with Andre Heimgartner’s solid 2022 season delivering him two podium finishes at home.
It took the 27-year-old up to eighth in the standings and doubled his podium tally for the season, but the emotional value was far greater than the points — after finishing second on Saturday, Heimgartner said he rated that runner-up finish more highly that his maiden Supercars victory.
“I’d probably say if anything it was probably better than the reaction at the Bend,” Heimgartner said. “You don’t get a crowd like that at the Bend so to do well in front of my fellow countrymen is pretty awesome.”
Speaking after his third-place finish on Sunday evening, he said the weight of the emotion of racing for the final time at Pukekohe was palpable for him as he took his place on the grid.
“Lots of emotions,” he said. “I was trying to fight it before the start of the race and just happy that we’re able to be amongst it and get a podium.
“The guys at Brad Jones Racing have just done an unreal job. I think this is sort of a dream for me, a dream end to Pukekohe.”
It certainly the race out on a high.
LOSER: MARK WINTERBOTTOM
But Sunday’s feel-good ending was a far cry from the bitterness of earlier in the day in the aftermath of a sickening 56G crash for Will Brown after contract with Mark Winterbottom
You’ve probably seen the video by now. Winterbottom and Brown were side by side through turn 9, but Frosty moved wide to the right, tipping the Erebus car into an uncontrollable slide ending with heavy side-on impact that left Will winded but thankfully without injury.
The stewards called it reckless driving in issuing a drive-through penalty to Winterbottom, but that was only the beginning of his problems.
After a somewhat remorseful but largely unapologetic TV interview, Winterbottom entered the Erebus garage to make amends with Brown but was met with a decidedly frosty reception.
He was accused of causing the crash on purpose for having been unhappy to have been passed at the hairpin. Erebus boss Barry Ryan even attempted to push him back out of the garage, apparently incensed by Winterbottom’s defence of his position and lack of immediate apology.
He hadn’t cooled down by the end of the day either, when he launched an extraordinary broadside on the 2015 champion.
“He should lose his license,” he said, per Speedcafe. “It’s crystal clear that he did it on purpose.
“He said in the coverage that Will got him in the door at the hairpin, so he all but said it was retaliation — retaliation at the fastest, most dangerous corner on our calendar.
“Drivers that do things like that should have their licences taken off them.”
It’s seriously debatable that Winterbottom set out to put Brown in the wall, but with Erebus left with a massive damage bill and so clearly aggrieved — and apparently with the on-board evidence it thinks warrants a harsher penalty — how far the team is willing to take its convictions will be interesting to see, and Winterbottom may have some more penance yet to come.
LOSER: EREBUS, GREG MURPHY AND RICHIE STANAWAY
The knock-on effects from Brown’s retirement were massive beyond the risk of injury.
Not only did it count Brown out for Sunday evening’s race, but it’s put in serious jeopardy the car’s entry into Bathurst, now just
Erebus down a chassis less than a month out form Bathurst.
Erebus has a spare chassis, but the team is intending to run three cars at the Mountain, with Greg Murphy and Richie Stanaway set for a wildcard entry. They’re now in doubt to partake given the workload in building a new car while next year’s Gen3 chassis on the jig.
“We are committed to doing that wildcard for Boost and Murph and Richie,” Ryan told the Supercars website. “We don‘t want to do it half-arsed … we’ll wait until we get back to the shop before we say yes or no.
“We don‘t have a massive crew, we’ve got a very small group of people on board right now to do the wildcard program.
“Because of the Gen3 project and where that is, our timelines are so short on that, we can‘t afford to take that off and start trying to fix a car.”
Offers have already been made by other teams to help with the rebuild, but Ryan wasn’t willing to countenance field a Frankenstein’s monster of a car for the season’s biggest race.
The team will make a final call alter this week.
In the even the wildcard program is called off, Boost Mobile boss Peter Adderton might be inclined to offer a reprieve, suggesting on social media that he’d be willing to bankroll a third Boost car fielded by another team.
LOSER: DICK JOHNSON RACING
Will Davison’s Saturday victory looked like the beginning of an upset but ended looking like a false dawn, with Dick Johnson Racing’s weekend challenge tailing off dramatically by the end of the weekend.
It’s hard to know which of the two drivers has cause to feel most aggrieved.
Davison probably could’ve doubled up on victories on Sunday evening or at a minimum challenged Van Gisbergen for overall honours, but a poor pit stop completely undid his race.
He was released with an unfastened rear-left wheel, which forced him into a second stop and then earnt him a drive-through penalty — as compounding a defeat as you can get.
“We’re heartbroken and we probably murdered Will then,” team principal Ben Croke said. “We’ve done the job in pit lane all year, we just fumbled one there.
“[Will’s] heartbroken, like the rest of us.
“We’ll pick him up and we’re heading to the one that really matters now next.
“The cars are fast, Will’s doing an amazing job all year, so we’ll carry that into Bathurst.”
But it wasn’t the only sloppy stop to cost a result.
Anton de Pasquale was cost a podium finish in the stops when Andre Heimgartner — admittedly with some characteristically polished work from BJR — jumped him in pit lane, with Broc Feeney following him through. He finished fifth.
That was a decent turnaround considering damage to the car from the first-lap crash on Sunday afternoon but a nonetheless paltry return for what should have been a stronger weekend.
While the title has long been effectively done and dusted, both Davison and De Pasquale are now in the danger done, the former 669 points and the latter 602 points adrift. Unless they bring those margins down to below 600 points, they’ll both be eliminated in Bathurst.
The team also slipped to 341 points adrift, having been outscored by 245 points.
WINNER: JAMES GOLDING AND HIS 2023 CHANCES
A final note goes to James Golding, who after two years on the sidelines is showing strong signs of good pace just four rounds into his Supercars revival.
His No. 31 car is now a consistent top-10 challenger. Ninth, 12th and then a loose 18th in qualifying turned into a crash-affected 17th, 10th and 11th over the course of the weekend. It’s the second time he’s cracked the top 10 in as many rounds and just the fifth top-10 for the chassis all season.
It was also a big tick for the relationship with his new engineer, veteran Geoffrey Slater, who’s previously engineered with DJR and Tekno.
Combined with the fact that he’s outscored teammate Chris Pither since returning to the sport, Golding is making a strong case for his retention by the ambitious team in 2023.
PremiAir is yet to confirm either seat, but Tim Slade is expected to join the Gold Coast squad from BRT next year, meaning at least one of the current line-up will be asked to leave at the end of the season — effectively creating a shootout scenario.
So far Golding’s in the lead.
