{"id":17588,"date":"2011-12-06T19:53:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T09:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/power-up.space\/?p=17588"},"modified":"2011-12-06T19:53:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T09:53:00","slug":"team-norton-takes-the-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/?p=17588","title":{"rendered":"TEAM NORTON TAKES THE TITLE!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
TEAM NORTON TAKES THE TITLE!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5 December 2011<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Norton-sponsored Triple Eight Race Engineering\u2019s Jamie Whincup is the 2011 V8 Supercar champion after an eventful weekend at the Sydney 500.<\/p>\n

The championship went down to the final race with Jamie and Norton-sponsored team mate Craig Lowndes the only drivers left in contention.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jamie merely needed to keep out of trouble and finish in the top five on Saturday to clinch the title, however fate was to deal another hand.<\/p>\n

The brutal Homebush ripple strips struck when the front right-side damper broke, sending him into the turn five wall at around 200km\/h.<\/p>\n

Able to limp back to the pits, the team repaired the car and Jamie eventually finished 20th, six laps down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like someone writes a script and we\u2019re all just puppets playing it out!\u201d said Jamie after his eventful race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been saying it all week \u2013 motorsport is a crazy thing. You can be so fast, but you can have a little incident go wrong, which is what happened to me today. We\u2019ll keep our heads up and fight back tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After a disastrous qualifying result saw him start 10th off the grid, Craig had a stellar race \u2013 which many pundits are calling his best-ever drive \u2013 racing through the field to win the race and take the championship decision to Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

Triple Eight gambled on Craig\u2019s fuel strategy, with only two stops for fuel. It worked, but could have ended very badly \u2013 there was less than half a litre of fuel left in the tank at the end of the race!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always said coming into this weekend that anything was possible, and the possible has happened,\u201d said Craig after his race one win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed Jamie to make a mistake or have something go wrong, which it did today, for me to have a chance of getting back into the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I know that tomorrow will be a vastly different day to today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s proceedings looked a little traditional, aside from some heavy downpours across the day creating havoc for car set-ups.<\/p>\n

Jamie qualified second on the grid, and Craig fourth \u2013 both at the pointy end of the field where they needed to be.<\/p>\n

Partially wet conditions saw a bizarre start, with half of the field electing to pit on the warm-up lap for slick tyres.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jamie and Craig both started on the grooved wet rubber, but pitted within a dozen laps for slick tyres as the track dried out.<\/p>\n

This put them both out of sequence, and down the order \u2013 Lowndes 10th and Whincup 18th \u2013 from where they had to fight for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n

After the final stops Craig was eighth and Jamie 18th \u2013 due to T8 stacking the cars in the pits \u2013 and they both moved through the field to finish second and eighth respectively.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jamie only needed to finish in the top 12 to end the title race, while Craig needed to win to stand any chance.<\/p>\n

The result saw Jamie take out the championship on 3168 points, with Craig only 35 points behind on 3133.<\/p>\n

The championship is Jamie\u2019s third, putting him on par with Craig and Touring Car legend Peter Brock.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole year swings on one moment, and it\u2019s such a big thing. At the end of the day it\u2019s a team effort, and we\u2019re one and two,\u201d said Jamie on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel bad for Lowndesy, but he\u2019s a part of the bigger team and we share each others\u2019 results. We\u2019re 1-2 this year, and hopefully we can both celebrate that,\u201d Jamie concluded.<\/p>\n

“We gave it our best shot but it just wasn’t to be … it’s been a great season, we’ve won lots of races and had some fantastic drives. I’ve got to thank everyone at Team Vodafone for a great year,” Craig said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Congratulations to Jamie, he’s done a terrific job all year, and has just been too consistent for me.<\/p>\n

“And congratulations to Team Vodafone for a 1-2; it’s an awesome performance. We’ll be back to try again next year.”<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TEAM NORTON TAKES THE TITLE! 5 December 2011 Norton-sponsored Triple Eight Race Engineering\u2019s Jamie Whincup is the 2011 V8 Supercar champion after an eventful weekend at the Sydney 500. The championship went down to the final race with Jamie and Norton-sponsored team mate Craig Lowndes the only drivers left in contention. Jamie merely needed to<\/p>\n

Read More\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17592,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17588\/revisions\/17592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}