Sandown Challenge

Sandown Challenge

Race Information
Venue	Sandown Raceway
Number of times held	33
First held	1965
Last held	2011
Race Format
Race 1
Laps	39
Distance	120 km
Race 2
Laps	65
Distance	200 km
Last Event (2011)
Overall Winner
Will Davison	Ford Performance Racing
Race Winners
Rick Kelly	Kelly Racing
Jamie Whincup	Triple Eight Race Engineering

The Sandown Challenge was a V8 Supercar motor racing event held at Sandown Raceway in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was held in various years from 1965 to 2011.

Opened in 1962, Sandown Raceway has traditionally been known as the host of endurance races, the first of which was held in 1964, an event which later evolved into the Sandown 500 event. As well as this, Sandown has a long history of hosting sprint rounds of the championship. Sandown held its first championship sprint round in 1965, as the only event of the 1965 Australian Touring Car Championship, but would not hold another championship event until 1970, when the series expanded to seven rounds. Since then, in various forms and with the exception of 1975, 1990 and 1993, Sandown has been included in every running of the Australian Touring Car Championship, which later became known as V8 Supercars. In fact, Sandown has hosted more championship rounds than any other circuit. In many of these years, Sandown hosted both a sprint and endurance event, while it also hosted the season-ending V8 Ultimate event in 2001 and 2002. In recent years, the Sandown 500 has become part of the championship calendar, and as such, the necessity for Sandown to also host a sprint race has diminished. As a result of this, Sandown hosted its last sprint round in 2011, with the Sandown 500 returning in 2012.

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