Jamie Whincup hails Triple Eight turnaround in team’s championship push

A big push towards the end of the year and relentless hard work have been the driving factors for Triple Eight Race Engineering to get back into contention for the Supercars team’s championship, according to seven-time champion Jamie Whincup.

Triple Eight could well secure their ninth Supercars Championship teams title this weekend if everything falls their way at the Supercars final round in Newcastle, trailing their rivals by the slimmest of margins coming into the weekend.

After a hard start to the year and an altogether difficult season where they’ve had to watch DJR Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin and Fabian Coulthard take 20 wins so far, the Triple Eight has won every race after October’s Bathurst 1000, coming home strong and within 116 points of the Ford squad.

At the post-practice press conference on Friday afternoon, after going fastest in final practice, Whincup says the team should be proud and that he, as well as team-mate Shane van Gisbergen, will do all the can do to win the title for the factory Holden team.

“We’re really proud of ourselves to get in to this position where we’re in contention; we’ve clawed our way back and given ourselves a shot,” Whincup said.

“Our job is to score as many points as we can for the Red Bull Holden Racing team and we’ve got no control over the other guys, they’ll do what they do, and see where we end up.

“It would mean a lot. In some way we’d love the biggest trophy of the year, the driver’s championship, but that’s unfortunately gone so the second biggest trophy is the team’s championship.

“Of course we’ll do everything we can this weekend, within the rules, to make sure we get there.

“We’ve worked bloody hard; if you’d have said we’d be in the contention after the Grand Prix (Melbourne 400) this year it’d be no chance so full credit to everyone, we’ve ground it out bloody hard to give ourselves at least a shot.”

If not for a mechanical failure which van Gisbergen suffered in the dying laps of the Sandown 500 while leading a Triple Eight one-two, the Banyo boys would actually be leading the team’s championship battle going in to the final race.

Though McLaughlin was able to wrap up the title at the Sandown 500 despite having two Did Not Start marks against his name this year, a tough back end of the year for team-mate Coulthard as well as a handful of team penalties have been some of the factors behind Triple Eight’s ability to reel the gap back in.