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PREVIEW: What to look out for at Hidden Valley

With an exciting weekend of racing ahead, our very own V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan has taken a look at some of the highlights of racing at Hidden Valley…

Since Hidden Valley Raceway joined the calendar in 1998, the annual trip to the Top End has been among the Repco Supercars Championship’s most popular events.

Situated 10km east of Darwin, the 2.9km circuit features a 1.1km front straight and has provided no shortage of memorable winners and incidents.

Supercars champions Mark Skaife and Scott McLaughlin sit atop the all-time Hidden Valley race winners tally with eight apiece.

Four of McLaughlin’s wins came in the unique 2020 season that included two rounds – and a total of six races – at the circuit.

The highest placed of the current Supercars drivers is Jamie Whincup, who sits equal third on the leaderboard with Triple Eight teammate turned co-driver Craig Lowndes on seven wins.

Ahead of the 2021 Merlin Darwin Triple Crown, we look back at 10 memorable moments from Hidden Valley history.

1998 – Russell Ingall overcame a Race 1 shocker at Hidden Valley’s inaugural event to score the round victory; his hopes boosted when both Holden Racing Team cars fail to start Race 2 due to enginel issues.

2001 – Marcos Ambrose scored his first V8 Supercars round victory in just his fourth start, on a weekend where Holden drivers Ingall, Greg Murphy and Mark Skaife shared the race wins.

2004 – The rivalry between Ambrose and Skaife reached a flashpoint in the Saturday race when a last-lap, last-corner dive from the Ford driver results in contact. Ambrose’s teammate Ingall came through for the win.

2004 – Ambrose’s dramatic weekend took another twist in Race 2 when he hit Ingall into a spin amid the typically frantic jostle into Turn 1. Brothers Rick and Todd Kelly capitalised and shared the Sunday wins.

2009 – Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Michael Caruso scored his first career V8 Supercars race win. He made the most of new rules that gave each car one set of soft tyres to use across the two races.

2011 – Rick Kelly scored an unlikely Saturday race win from 12th on the grid. He sat fifth for a late Safety Car restart and swooped when a four-wide battle for the lead into Turn 1 turned pear-shaped.

2011 – Having been among those to lose out late on Saturday, Shane van Gisbergen bounced back for a stunning Sunday win. He celebrated with a memorable full-lap drift session in his Stone Brothers Falcon.

2015 – Craig Lowndes further cemented his legacy as a Supercars legend by becoming the first driver to score 100 championship race wins. He achieved the feat in the 888th race in championship history.

2015 – Proving that Hidden Valley’s biggest moments come in pairs, off-contract Ford driver David Reynolds took his first win in 20 months and marked the breakthrough with a ‘shoey’ on the podium.

2019 – Scott McLaughlin’s dominant early-season form continued in Darwin, where taking both race wins and pole in Sunday’s Top 10 Shootout means the Ford driver was the first to score the coveted ‘Triple Crown’.