1. Format
    Jason Richards Memorial Trophy 

2. History
    Background  Championship era 

3. Winners

4. Multiple winners
    By driver  By team  By manufacturer 

5. Event names

6. See also

7. References

The Auckland SuperSprint (formally known as the ITM Auckland SuperSprint) is an annual motor racing event for Supercars, held at Pukekohe Park Raceway in Pukekohe, New Zealand. The event has been a regular part of the Supercars Championship—and its previous incarnations, the Shell Championship Series and V8 Supercars Championship—since 2001.

The event was previously held as a one-off non-championship round in 1996 and was then known as the New Zealand V8 International from 2001 to 2005.

Format

The event is staged over a three-day weekend, from Friday to Sunday. Two forty-minute practice sessions are held on Friday. Saturday features a twenty-minute qualifying session which decides the grid positions for the following 200 kilometre race. A twenty-minute qualifying session is held on Sunday, succeeded by a top ten shootout, the combined results of which decide the grid for the following 200 km race.^[1]

Jason Richards Memorial Trophy

Since 2013, the driver who scores the most points across all races during the weekend has received the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy. The trophy was introduced at the 2013 event in honour of Jason Richards, a successful New Zealand Supercars driver who died in 2011. Jason Bright and Brad Jones Racing, Richards' last teammate and team respectively, were the first winners of the trophy.^[2] In 2015 and 2017, Jamie Whincup, who was a teammate of Richards in 2005 at Tasman Motorsport and co-drove with him to a second-place finish at the 2005 Bathurst 1000, won the trophy.^[3][4] In 2016, Shane van Gisbergen became the first New Zealand driver to win the trophy.^[5]

History

Background

Pukehohe Park is one of New Zealand's most historic race tracks, and has long seen links with Australian motor racing. This dates back to the famed Pukekohe 500, which originally ran from 1984 to 1993. Several Australian teams, along with local and international teams, competed in the endurance Group A event with Australian-based teams winning the event several times. The event was often twinned with the Wellington 500, on a street circuit in Wellington City. In 1996, twelve cars from the Australian Touring Car Championship raced in the Mobil 1 Sprints, a two event series at Pukekohe and Wellington. In a precursor to his later Supercars success at the track, all three races were won by local driver Greg Murphy for the Holden Racing Team.^[6]

Championship era

The first championship round at Pukekohe Park for what was then known as V8 Supercars was held in 2001, entitled the Boost Mobile V8 International.^[7] It was the first round in the history of the Australian Touring Car Championship and Supercars not to be contested in Australia. Greg Murphy won the event, taking pole position and winning all three races for the Kmart Racing Team. Murphy maintained strong form at Pukekohe, winning again in 2002, 2003 and 2005.^[6] The 2002 event contained the 500th race in championship history, which was won by Mark Skaife.^[8] Jason Bright was the only other driver to win the event in the first five years, doing so in 2004, while Murphy finished third.^[9] In 2005 there was a major accident involving Craig Baird and Paul Dumbrell during the third race. Jamie Whincup slid off the track at the final corner and Baird and Dumbrell squeezed together as Whincup returned to the circuit. However, Baird and Dumbrell came together and spun, both hitting the wall before coming to rest on opposite sides of the track with severely damaged cars. The race was red flagged as a result.^[10]

The New Zealand event moved to the Hamilton Street Circuit for 2008 and remained there until 2012.^[11] Supercars returned to a slightly modified Pukekohe in 2013 and the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy was introduced.^[2] In 2014, Ford's Mark Winterbottom was the event winner, marking the first win at the event for Ford in its ninth running. The event was run over the Anzac Day long weekend, including a race on a Friday for the first time in championship history. For 2015, the event returned to being held in November, and was won by Jamie Whincup, the first win at the event for the successful Triple Eight Race Engineering team.^[3] It was a feat that the team replicated in 2016 and 2017 with Shane van Gisbergen and Whincup respectively.^[5][4] In 2018, championship combatants van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin each took a first and second in the two races, with McLaughlin winning the event on a countback due to his higher Sunday result.^[12]

Winners

Multiple winners

By driver

By team

By manufacturer

Notes

• {{note|1|1}} – The HSV Dealer Team was known as Kmart Racing Team from 2001 to 2004, hence their statistics are combined.

Event names

• 1996: Mobil 1 Sprints
• 2001–02: Boost Mobile V8 International
• 2003–05: PlaceMakers V8 International
• 2006–07: PlaceMakers V8 Supercars
• 2013: ITM 400 Auckland
• 2014–15: ITM 500 Auckland
• 2016–present: ITM Auckland SuperSprint

See also

• Hamilton 400
• Pukekohe 500
• Wellington 500
• List of Australian Touring Car Championship races

References

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