The Darwin’s Hidden Valley Raceway has been a regular on the Repco Supercars Championship schedule since 1998, but the familiar Triple Crown format began in 2006.
A prestigious prize due to the difficulty of achieving the Triple Crown, it was originally awarded to the driver clean-sweeping the three races across the round.
For the first edition of the Triple Crown, Mark Skaife, Jason Bright and Craig Lowndes split the victories.
A format change arrived in 2008 when the Darwin Triple Crown was reduced to two races leading to the award handed to fastest in the opening qualifying session in addition to the pair of victories.
Craig Lowndes was close to winning the Triple Crown in 2007 after achieving two out of three race victories, but it wasn’t until 2010 when Mark Winterbottom scored the opening race pole and win when a driver was a chance of securing the prize.
A three race format returned in 2013, but the Triple Crown continued to be illusive to the Supercars drivers.
Jamie Whincup won the opening two races in 2014 to be close as was Shane van Gisbergen in 2016, but it was fellow New Zealander Scott McLaughlin in 2019 finally securing the Triple Crown.
Back to a two race format for 2016, McLaughlin completed a total sweep of the round by achieving both poles and victories in the midst of his dominate form at DJR Team Penske.
McLaughlin set a time of 1m 06.010s at the end of the three-stage elimination qualifying on Saturday to achieve pole before defeating Chaz Mostert in the opening 42 lap encounter.
With the Triple Crown in sight, another pole followed in the Top 10 Shootout ahead of sealing the deal in the final race as McLaughlin cruised to a comfortable 14s victory.
McLaughlin goes down as the sole winner of the Darwin Triple Crown in almost its 20-year history.