Whincup's Sandown 'Fast and the Furious' moment

Whincup and co-driver led a T8 trifecta at the opening enduro of the Supercars season, coming home ahead of Shane van Gisbergen/Earl Bamber and Craig Lowndes/Steve Richards.

It was an utterly dominant performance from the factory Holden squad, and largely a trouble-free 500 kilometres of racing for all three T8 Commodores.

Reflecting on the race, Whincup confirmed that it was a rare afternoon without a single strategic curveball.

In fact he reckons the only action came from a potentially unnecessary Safety Car at the end of Dumbrell's first stint, as well as a 'Fast and the Furious' moment with Lowndes later in the race.

"It doesn’t always go your way but [on Sunday] everything ran smoothly," said Whincup.

"There were no great curveballs with tyres or wrong gearboxes or seat belts coming undone. Actually, to be honest the only drama was the [first] Safety Car; they just made a mockery of that and could have cost us the lead.

"Thankfully we were far enough up the road that that didn’t wreck our race.

"The race was pretty straightforward. PD did a great job, like he always does, and we led from the front. Thankfully the guys upstairs [in race control] didn’t throw an entertainment Safety Car [at the end] for a bit of chalk on the outside, so that was nice. We just had a clean run, which is important.

"All in all the only funny thing for the race was that I hit a massive bit of rubber, looked in my mirror and it just smashed out Lowndesy’s headlight. It was Fast and the Furious sort of stuff.

"Apart from that it was pretty straightforward."

Sunday's win leaves Whincup 338 points behind teammate Shane van Gisbergen in the standings, with 1200 points on offer across the remaining four race weekends.

According to the reigning champion, and eighth title may be a long shot, but he's not giving up.

"Three hundred is a long way, but yeah, never say die," he said.

"We’ll just go out there and race hard and have a bit of a free swing and see what happens."

The dominant nature of his Sandown victory has also made Whincup and Dumbrell the clear favourites heading to Mount Panorama.

However, that's not a tag Whincup is overly comfortably with.

"We’ll keep our heads down. No doubt the opposition will throw everything at us after this weekend, and we’ll have to be on our A game."