Fying Kiwi Scott McLaughlin has continued his Supercars Championship dominance, scoring his seventh and eighth wins of the season at the CoreStaff Darwin SuperSprint.
Just a day after surpassing the great Peter Brock on the all-time race wins list, McLaughlin recorded his 51st Supercars win with two dominant performances on a super Sunday for the reigning two-time champion.
Race one was arguably his easiest win of the season, as he beat Holden's Shane van Gisbergen into the opening corner and was never headed, leading home his fellow New Zealander and Scott Pye.
"I got a pretty good start," McLaughlin said. "As always, it was good, hard racing with Shane.
"I really enjoyed it, but then our car, it just hooked up and took off. I knew Scotty [Pye] was going to come with fresh tyres there, so I decided to try and pull a gap."
Teammate Fabian Coulthard finished an excellent fourth, after starting sixth, but couldn't hold off a fast-charging Pye, who took his second podium in two weeks.
"The guys did an amazing job, the car is so much fun to drive now," said Pye.
"It took me a little while to click with it and find the nuances with this car, going from what I was in, but for sure in the races, I feel really confident.
"Following Shane, I was giving it everything I had, flashing the headlights. I wanted to get him so bad, but just didn’t quite have it in the end."
McLaughlin had his third win from three starts two hours later, extending his championship lead to an imposing 177 points over Red Bull's Jamie Whincup, who had a day to forget.
"I love the track and I love it when my car is like that," said McLaughlin. "That’s hands-down probably the best car I have ever driven - just all weekend, it was so solid.
"We had a good start and were able to use our tyres and do what we wanted to do."
