It’s the biggest event to hit Springvale since 2019…yes, the last time Supercars were in town!
And as the Red Bull Ampol Racing convoy prepares to head south, what better time to reflect on how wonderful it is to welcome Supercars back to Sandown, albeit to hear that sweet sound of V8 engines back at a Victorian circuit.
Now, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, you may not know that Shane ‘SVG’ van Gisbergen’s ‘fully sick’ attempt to land a triple-double-full-full-half-twist-double-full-somersault flip on his mountain bike didn’t pay off, and well, the rest is history.
So, how are you feeling SVG?
“I’m still a bit sore, but after some laps in a couple of cars during the week, and with a few more days to recover before the first session at Sandown, hopefully I can be fit and ready to go,” he said.
After starting from the back row at the Sandown 500 in 2019, the #97 was on track to claim victory until a failure ultimately ruined their day. Reflecting on the Sandown track, SVG says he doesn’t expect much of a change to racing in a shorter format.
“Sandown is simple in design but is a really fun track. It’s normally an enduro round, but hopefully it will be good for sprint racing.
“It’s a track with not many fast corners, so you can normally make some moves which makes the racing quite competitive and good to watch. It’s also forgiving if you don’t qualify well – it’s not the end of the world if you start the race towards the back of the grid,” SVG said.
2011 was the last year Sandown hosted a single-driver race, which was won by Jamie ‘JDub’ Whincup. With nine Sandown wins to his name, here’s hoping JDub can add to his tally before saying farewell to Sandown as a full-time driver.
“Sandown is a place the reeks of history. The track played host to Formula 1 cars back in the 1960’s, and it’s been an amazing place to run cars on. It’s been a happy hunting ground for us in the past as well. Whether its 100 kilometers or 500 kilometers, it doesn’t make any difference – we’ll try to qualify well and get around the track as quick as we can.
“It’s quite a unique track, and as I said it has a massive amount of history. Like all things in life, the simple things are quite often the best, and Sandown is quite a simple track; a big drag strip down the front straight, a big drag strip don the back straight, and a few corners in between. It’s simple, but challenging,” JDub said.
“We were obviously successful there in 2019, unfortunately to the detriment of car #97 who had a failure. We saw some mega competition at Bathurst for Round 1, so we’re expecting every team to throw everything at us this weekend, but we’re confident that the cars will have good pace and we’ll make sure we bring our ‘A-game’ to score as many points as we can.”
All the on-track action begins Saturday 30 March, with three 100-kilometer races to be run and won over the two-day event.
