Adelaide Supercars: Scott McLaughlin wins Ford Mustang debut – Supercars

Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin braved extreme temperatures to win his first historic Ford Mustang victory in the streets of Adelaide.

It was actually a small flag victory for DJR Team Penske, who was 12.9 seconds ahead of Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen (Triple Eight Holden).

This victory was the first for a Mustang of the Australian Touring Car Championship in 46 years, the last one coming from Allan Moffat.

McLaughlin took the lead from the start from the second row. His cause was greatly helped by his teammate and pioneer, Fabian Coulthard, who skipped the start and then immediately took off.

Coulthard retained second place, but was quickly hit with a 10-second penalty for his premature launch. This quickly abandoned him in the 21st.

Red Bull Holdens finished third and fourth, Shane van Gisbergen jumping Jamie Whincup in turn 3 at the start. They came back at the end of the fifth lap, Whincup coming off the Kiwi at the last corner.

McLaughlin gradually strengthened his lead over the first stint, scoring a 5 on Whincup and a 8 on Van Gisbergen. He extended this advantage further by running longer than both Holdens during the two shutdown sequences.

The champion emerged with a 14-second advantage after his last stop, losing just one second of that lead on the last stint as he was attempting a comfortable win to pitch his title defense.

The Triple Eight came home in second and third places, Whincup having a second lead over van Gisbergen – who had been under strong pressure from Tick Ford's leading Ford Chaz Mostert at Tickford.

Mostert attempted to take third place with an ambitious attempt at Turn 9, but all he did was wide and eventually fell momentarily behind teammate Will Davison.

The battle of van Gisbergen / Mostert resumed after the second stop, before Mostert made another mistake: this time, he stuck on the path of Turn 4 and lost the best part of 10 seconds.

That meant it was Will Davison coming home as the second best Mustang and the best Ford Tickford.

He was only a second behind van Gisbergen and Mostert in fifth place.

Coulthard was sixth despite his 10-second penalty in front of a Holdens group led by Nick Percat, including Dave Reynolds, Mark Winterbottom and James Courtney.

Cam Waters ran in the top six from the start but had to leave the car at her first pit stop so that her suit was repaired as she had frozen early in the race. With an ambient temperature above 40 degrees Celsius, he had to get out of the car to be repaired in accordance with the duty of care regulations in the class.

He was not happy either, telling the radio crew that he was going to continue well. Instead, he had to wait 14 laps and the plumbing of the suit was repaired before he could get back on track.

The re-profiled lap 7 made its first victims in the race a third of the way, in an incident triggered by Lee Holdsworth – who, earlier in the weekend, had predicted chaos at that specific spot of the track – shooting in the wall.

As his Tickford Mustang got up, Scott Pye had nowhere to go. The two started again, but the repairs meant that Holdsworth lost six laps, while Pye did not reappear once in the garage.

Result a race