Victory for Jamie Whincup after contact with Craig Lowndes

Jamie Whincup won the first V8 Supercars race at Symmons Plains after a coming together with team mate Craig Lowndes.

“It’s an unfortunate situation – I’m sorry about the situation, Lowndesy deserved to finish higher than that. I’m not sorry about the move – it was a textbook move, I was well and truly in there… I feel like I did nothing wrong…” said Whincup.

Lowndes claimed the lead from second on the grid into the first corner from his Triple Eight Race Engineering team mate and held the lead for the first half of the race.

The safety car was issued on lap 21 after a spectacular brake failure from Rick Kelly. The Nissan driver was left stranded in the gravel trap and as the field resumed, Whincup dove down the inside of Lowndes. The two made contact, with Lowndes going off track and dropped down to eighth position in the end.

Whincup went on to claim the victory ahead of HRT driver James Courtney and Ford Performance Racing driver Mark Winterbottom in third.

Experienced V8 driver Russel Ingall claimed fourth position ahead of Volvo Polestar Racing’s Scott McLaughlin in fifth, who struggled from power steering issues during the race.

Shane Van Gisbergen had yet another troublesome race as he had to pit from sixth position after receiving a black flag for loose bodywork. The Tekno Autosports driver was able to eleventh position thanks to the safety car period.