Auckland 500
.png) |
|
| Race Information | |
| Venue | Pukekohe Park Raceway |
| Number of times held | 11 |
| First held | 2001 |
| Race Format | |
| Race 1 | |
| Laps | 35 |
| Distance | 100 km |
| Race 2 | |
| Laps | 35 |
| Distance | 100 km |
| Race 3 | |
| Laps | 35 |
| Distance | 100 km |
| Race 4 | |
| Laps | 35 |
| Distance | 100 km |
| Last Event (2016) | |
| Overall Winner | |
 Shane van Gisbergen
|
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
| Race Winners | |
 Jamie Whincup
|
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
|
Shane van Gisbergen
|
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
|
Mark Winterbottom
|
Prodrive Racing Australia |
|
Jamie Whincup
|
Triple Eight Race Engineering |
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 has previously been known as the New Zealand V8 International from 2001 to 2005, the ITM 400 in 2013 and the ITM 500 in 2014 and 2015.
The event is staged over a three-day weekend, from Friday to Sunday. Three half-hour practice sessions are held on Friday. Both Saturday and Sunday feature a pair of ten-minute qualifying sessions which decide the grid positions for the following two 100 kilometre sprint races.
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. In 2015, 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.
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 a non-championship sprint round at Pukekohe Park. In a precursor to his later Supercars success at the track, all three races were won by Greg Murphy for the Holden Racing Team.
...
Wikipedia