Whincup reaches 500-race milestone

Whincup was due to make his 500th start at Albert Park back in March, but the cancellation of the Australian F1 GP round due the coronavirus pandemic meant the 37-year-old had to wait more than three months to make his 500th race start – at the BP Ultimate Sydney SuperSprint at Sydney Motorsport Park on 28 June. 

Back at Albert Park, Whincup had secured pole for what would have been his 500th race - he did it at SMSP for his actual 500th race, too. Pole didn’t translate to a race win to mark the occasion, though, with Whincup just pipped by Brad Jones Racing’s Nick Percat in race 500 and finishing the weekend with 3-2-3 results from the weekend’s trio of 130km races.
Sitting at 501 race starts after Supercars’ return to racing on 27-28 June, Whincup becomes only the eighth driver in the sport’s history to reach 500 starts, joining legends like Russell Ingall, Garth Tander and Craig Lowndes. Of the active Supercars drivers, only Mark Winterbottom and Rick Kelly have more starts.

While he still has some time to go to eclipse Lowndes’s outright record of 672 Supercar starts, Whincup has both past and present competitors beat in most other measures, including race wins (119) and poles (86), while his seven driver’s championships is an all-time record. All those championships were achieved with Triple Eight Race Engineering, whom Whincup joined in 2006. When Triple Eight switched from Ford to Holden in 2010, Whincup become only the second man after Norm Beechey to win an Australian touring car championship with two different manufacturers.

Last year, in a forecast of his move away from driving into the administration side of the sport, Whincup was elected to the Supercars Commission and has been active in that role since, including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the category will be different on its return to racing. Whincup also owns a 15 per cent stake in the Reed Bull Holden Racing Team.
Despite being near the end of his driving career, Whincup has at least another season left in him, having signed a contract extension with Triple Eight earlier this year to remain in the category until the end of 2021.
“It’s a big number, very proud to have been in this fantastic sport for so long,” Whincup said on the eve of his 500th start.  “But as I keep saying, it’s only the beginning – I’ve got plenty of life left in me yet.”