Hill scores first Supercars win in historic MSR one-two

Hill pipped Feeney at the start and never looked back, leading home his teammate Nick Percat who displaced the Red Bull Ampol Racing Chevrolet Camaro on Lap 1.

It’s the first time MSR has ever locked out the top two spots on a Supercars podium.

It’s the second win for MSR at Albert Park following Percat’s victory a year ago and the squad’s fourth at any venue.

Hill’s first win comes just a day after scoring his first Supercars podium in Race 4.

“You could say I’ve been working for this a long time,” said Hill.

“Man, I just had a good feeling about today. I was so nervous before the race because I recognised the fact that if we could get off the line we could get the win today.

“Man, unbelievable. One-two for MSR! It’s so cool. Massive credit to them. They’ve put so much work in. They deserve this.”

On Percat, Hill said: “He was in a good place for me. I said over the radio, ‘Hey, we’ve got a good opportunity here’ so we had a bit of a plan in the truck beforehand. It worked out very nicely.”

Despite the staggered grid and being on the dirtier side of the road, Hill got the best getaway of the front-row starters. With the inside line into Turn 1, Hill got the holeshot.

Feeney tried to return serve at Turn 3 around the outside of Hill, but the #4 was wise to the Triple Eight racer’s attack and cast him wide of the apex.

That opened the door for Hill’s teammate Nick Percat to slip past Feeney out on the chute between Turn 3 and 4. Percat almost rounded up Hill into Turn 5 but Hill held sway.

Moments later, Ryan Wood and Jack Le Brocq made contact out of Turn 5. Wood’s left front wheel made contact with Le Brocq’s right rear, and that tipped the #9 Camaro into a spin.

Le Brocq nose-dived the wall and whipped around. The trailing pack managed to avoid the stricken Erebus racer.

For the incident, Wood was given a drive-through penalty.

After a brief Safety Car intermission, the race resumed on Lap 4 with Hill heading Percat, Feeney, Will Brown, and Andre Heimgartner.

It was a relatively sedate restart, bar Aaron Cameron who wagged the tail of his CoolDrive Mustang out of the final turn.

Just a lap after going green, the race was brought back under control of the Safety Car when David Reynolds and Thomas Randle came to blows at Turn 1 and the Tradie Camaro ended up in the gravel trap. That incident was investigated and no penalties were delivered.

Back-to-back Safety Car interventions reduced the race to a time-certain affair. The contest resumed with six minutes left on the clock.

At the head of the field, Hill’s lead never got much more than one second over his teammate Percat.

Brown put a late pass on Feeney for third and threatened to pass Percat in the dying laps. In the end, Hill claimed victory by just two car lengths over Percat. Feeney was fourth having started from pole position.

“To be honest, amazing for Cam Hill,” said Percat.

“To get your first podium, it feels like getting the monkey off your back and then he drove a faultless race. GOd start and opened the door up for me a Turn 3 with Broc so I could sneak on through.

“It’s a credit to the whole of MSR. I’m sure a few people had some words about us after Eastern Creek and we bounced back really well. I’m getting on in the tooth, getting old, but we still keep punching.”

Supercars continues on Saturday with back-to-back qualifying sessions at 9:05am AEDT and 9:25am AEDT to determine the grid for Race 6 and Race 7.

Results: Repco Supercars Championship MSS Security Melbourne SuperSprint, Race 5