Jamie Whincup will have to turn around a poor history of form at Sydney Olympic Park in order to take a record-equalling fifth V8 Supercars Championship title.
The 30-year-old turned a six point deficit to team-mate Craig Lowndes into a 20 point advantage by scoring a fourth, a second and a win from the weekend’s three races at Phillip Island.
Next month’s Sydney decider is looming as a straight fight between the two team-mates, with Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison now outsiders at 124 and 223 points behind respectively.
Whincup has been the class of the field for much of the last six seasons, racking up 67 race wins on the way to his four titles.
A fifth championship crown would see him equal the all-time championship win record co-held by Ian Geoghegan, Dick Johnson and Mark Skaife.
Remarkably, Whincup has yet to so much as finish on the podium in any of his eight starts on the punishing streets of Sydney Olympic Park.
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It is the only venue currently on the schedule on which he has not won. Lowndes, meanwhile, has tasted Sydney success in both of the last two years.
Although Whincup has clinched the title in Sydney on three of those four previous visits and last year strategically helped Lowndes to victory for the benefit of the team, he admits that the lack of results will play on his mind over the coming weeks.
“It will for sure,” he told Speedcafe.com.
“We’ve had pace there but we’ve never been able to put it together.
“I haven’t been on the podium there ever and we need to turn that around.
“We’ve had to do a lot of things this year that we’ve never done before and that really needs to continue at Homebush.”
Whincup and Lowndes will battle it out for the title after a season in which they have worked closer than ever before.
The introduction of the Car of the Future rule package proved a major threat to the team’s position at the top of the sport, necessitating a united front.
“We have worked closer than ever with Craig this year because we’ve had too,” he explained.
“Last year we had the cars sorted and we could go out there and race hard knowing what we had underneath us.
“We’ve really needed to work together this year to improve both cars. It’s by far the hardest we’ve ever worked.
“Craig won the first race of the year but we weren’t that pacey after that. The Brad Jones guys pretty much had our car and were doing a much better job with it.
“(That’s why) this championship is unbelievably important for me. It really is,” he added.
“This year is right there with 2011 in terms of hunger. When we got done in 2010 that was such a big motivator.”
As for joining three of the sport’s most legendary names as a five-time champion, Whincup says he’s trying to block it out.
“It’s something that I’m trying not to think about because it’s so crazy close and anything can happen,” he said.
“It’s great to have an opportunity (to do it), but at the moment it can’t be anything more than that for me.
“We just want to go to Homebush and do the best job we can. We’ve come too far to let ourselves down in the last one.”
