Alarm bells ring as thorny Supercars trend laid bare

By Simon ChapmanJanuary 31, 2024 - 3:09AM

Alarm bells are ringing at Supercars with last year's champion Brodie Kostecki quitting his title-winning team.

Of all the Supercars drivers who have won championships since the year 2000 only two remain on the grid.

Scroll on as Wide World of Sports profiles every Supercars champion since 2000, laying bare an astonishing trend.

By 2000, Mark Skaife was already a two-time Australian Touring Car Championship winner with Gibson Motorsport in 1992 and 1994. 

His 2000 title marked the first of three in a row for the Holden Racing Team, which cemented him in Australian motor racing folklore.

Skaife defeated Garry Rogers Motorsport young gun Garth Tander to the title that year.

Skaife's second title with the Holden Racing Team saw him defeat Russell Ingall of Perkins Engineering.

His 2001-spec Holden VX Commodore is considered one of the most well-known liveries in Skaife's prolific history

The 2002 title run marked Skaife's final championship win.

It was one of the most dominant in Supercars history, winning 51.7 per cent of all races that season.

The 2002 season remains the largest championship-winning points margin, with Skaife beating Greg Murphy by a whopping 658 points.

In just his third season of Supercars, Marcos Ambrose became champion for Stone Brothers Racing. 

Ambrose dominated the first half of the season before Greg Murphy mounted a comeback in the second half. 

The Kiwi fell just short of the title for the second year in a row.

In the iconic Pirtek colours, Marcos Ambrose racked up back-to-back titles in a remarkable Supercars career that lasted just five years.

After 2006, he left Australia for a career in NASCAR that lasted a decade before returning to Australia.

From six starts, he never won the Bathurst 1000.

Russell Ingall was Mr Consistent in 2005. His championship was one not defined by wins or podiums.

Of the 30 races, 24 of them saw him finish inside the top 10. He was only a race winner twice but a podium finisher on eight occasions.

Ingall beat Craig Lowndes to the crown, whose four DNFs hurt any hopes he had of winning.

He retired from full-time driving after the 2013 season. 

Like Ingall before him, Rick Kelly's championship win in 2006 came down to consistency.

He took just one race win in a season where nearest rival Craig Lowndes won five races.

The championship was marred by a controversial finish in which Kelly spun Lowndes out in the season finale at Phillip Island, costing the Supercars legend a chance at the crown.

Kelly quietly retired from motorsport at the end of 2020.

The 2007 season title fight was waged between veteran Garth Tander and rising star Jamie Whincup.

Whincup, in just his fourth season, fell two points shy of the title in a thrilling finale at Phillip Island.

Tander was forced into retirement after being left off the 2019 grid.

After the agony of 2007, Jamie Whincup came back a year later with a vengeance. In a dominant display, Whincup won 16 races including a seven-race streak.

Such was his form that he managed to miss an entire race weekend due to a harrowing crash, scoring zero points, and still won the title ahead of Mark Winterbottom.

Whincup claimed his third consecutive Bathurst 1000 win that year too.

Jamie Whincup's second title was nearly as dominant as his first, putting nearly an entire round's worth of points on nearest rival Will Davison.

Whincup won 11 races from 28.

In one of the greatest shocks of the decade, James Courtney sealed the 2010 title after a chaotic finale.

Main title rivals Jamie Whincup and Mark Winterbottom along with a handful more crashed out when a sudden downpour lashed the Homebush Street Circuit.

Courtney was among the victims, but desperate efforts by his team allowed him to finish 15th while his rivals suffered DNFs – allowing him to clinch the title a day later.

Courtney went full-time in 2006 and has remained on the grid ever since.

In an intrateam battle for the ages, it was Whincup who beat Triple Eight teammate Lowndes to the 2011 title by a slender margin.

A horror finale in Homebush threatened to end Whincup's hopes.

In 2012, Jamie Whincup scored the fourth – and to date his most recent – Bathurst 1000 win.

It was another dominant campaign including 12 wins and 24 podiums from 32 races.

Whincup and Lowndes found themselves one and two again in 2013. 

It took Whincup seven races to get his first win of the year but would win 11 in total.

Whincup was never really challenged for the title in 2014, winning 14 races in all.

Shane van Gisbergen rose to the fore that year, finishing second and earned himself a promotion to Triple Eight the following year.

After a nearly decade-long drought, Ford finally found itself back on top of Supercars with the factory team and Mark Winterbottom.

That year, he beat Lowndes to the title while Whincup suffered his worst season since 2006 – ending up fifth.

Winterbottom made his debut in 2004 and is the longest-serving full-timer on the grid currently.

He and Courtney are the only remaining champions on the grid from the past 20 years.

By winning the title in 2016, Shane van Gisbergen became the first New Zealander since Jim Richards in 1991 to win the Supercars title.

Van Gisbergen won eight races to Whincup's seven. A horror run at the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000 all but condemned Whincup's hopes of victory. 

The 2017 title fight between Jamie Whincup and Scott McLaughlin remains one of the most dramatic in recent memory.

In a position to win the title, McLaughlin threw it away when he blocked Craig Lowndes and shoved him into the wall, resulting in a penalty.

Whincup won the title by just 21 points. He only took four wins in a season otherwise dominated by McLaughlin with eight victories.

Whincup retired from full-time driving in 2022 but has remained a co-driver since. 

After the harrowing scenes on the streets of Newcastle a year earlier, Scott McLaughlin strung together a dominant campaign to defeat countryman Shane van Gisbergen.

It marked the first of three titles for the Dick Johnson Racing driver.

The 2019 season was one of the most controversial in recent memory, largely overshadowed by allegations of cheating and a parity imbalance.

The introduction of the Ford Mustang caused chaos in a season that saw McLaughlin win a record-breaking 18 races.

McLaughlin won the Bathurst 1000 that year with Alex Premat. It was discovered the engine was illegal post-race, but the win was still awarded.