Craig Lowndes won the second race at Ipswich from fourth on the grid, with the podium result exactly the same as Saturday’s race with Mark Winterbottom’s Ford in second and Lowndes’ Triple Eight team-mate Jamie Whincup finishing in third.
Whereas Triple Eight had locked out the front row for Saturday’s race, this time it was Ford Performance Racing’s turn with the FPR team-mates locking out the front row with Will Davison ahead of Mark Winterbottom, with the two Triple Eight Holden Commodores qualifying on row two with Whincup ahead of Lowndes.
Qualifying was extremely close with the first 27 cars of the 28 car field covered by less than a second at the Queensland Raceway.
At the start, Winterbottom got the jump on his FPR team-mate, with Craig Lowndes also having a great launch from fourth on the grid to move up ahead of Whincup, and then passed Will Davison for second place further on the opening lap.
Davison struggled for pace in the early stage of the race and was passed by Whincup’s Triple Eight car and Russell Ingall in the Walkinshaw Racing entry on the second lap and dropped to fifth.
On lap six, Lowndes passed Winterbottom for the lead at Turn 3 and from then on was relatively unchallenged up front.
Will Davison was able to reclaim fourth position as Russell Ingall stayed out longer at the first round of pit stops. Lowndes and Winterbottom matched each other for pit stop strategy, stopping on laps nine and 37, with Lowndes receiving a pair of fresh option tyres for his final stint.
WInterbottom was still able to maintain the gap to Lowndes throughout the final stint, maintaining it at around two seconds, but was unable to directly challenge for the lead. Also during the final few laps, WInterbottom lost some ground in traffic as he caught Garth Tander’s Holden Racing Team Commodore and Todd Kelly’s car which were battling a lap down for 15th position.
Lowndes’ win is his third of the season, all taken within the last five races, and closes him up to 256 points away from his team-mate Jamie Whincup, who continues to lead the Championship. Mark Winterbottom is just 82 points behind Whincup (with 150 points available for a win in a standard race), with Will Davison in third, 176 points behind.
The next round sees the V8 Supercars Championship return to Eastern Creek at Sydney Motorsport Park for the first time since the 2008 season on 25th-26th August.
