Swift Stats For This Weekend's Sandown 500

The Numbers...


Article heading image for Swift Stats For This Weekend's Sandown 500

It's endurance season in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship and it all starts this weekend with the RABBLE.club Sandown 500.

The race is the last before Bathurst and will give the winning drivers bragging rights and confidence heading to Mount Panorama.

Without further ado, let's run you through the important numbers.

1. This is the 47th time a Touring Cars/Supercars endurance race is run at Sandown, which started life as a six-hour event in 1964 and morphed into a 500 kilometre race in 1984. If we're counting all championship races, it's the 49th which is more than any other venue.

2. Pole position doesn't count for much at the Melbourne track. Only 3 pole sitters in the last 31 enduros have gone on to take the chequered flag with Cameron Waters and Richie Stanaway the most recent, last year. Track position's still important - the last five 500s were won by a car that started on the front row.

3. Speaking of Waters, the defending Sandown champion will start his 50th round this weekend.

4. No one's won more Sandowns than the great Peter Brock who bagged nine. The retiring Craig Lowndes holds the most wins of any of the current drivers with five - 1996, 97, 2005, 07 and 12.

5. Dick Johnson and John Bowe started from the lowest position for a Sandown winner when they took out the race from 15th in 1994.

6. Musical chairs aplenty in recent months with just 11 of the 26 driver pairings carried over from last year.

7. Among the three drivers to make their Virgin Australia Supercar Championship debuts is Kiwi Earl Bamber who'll be dropped straight into the hot seat as co-driver for series leader Shane van Gisbergen.

8. 2004 was a race packed with drama. It had the most number of safety car periods with 12 - or roughly a quarter of the entire race.

Practice for the RABBLE.club Sandown 500 starts on Friday morning.

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H/T: Supercars.com

Sean Maynard

11 September 2018

Article by:

Sean Maynard




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