Lee Holdsworth takes emotional first ever Mercedes win

Lee Holdsworth fought his way to take a first ever Mercedes and Erebus Motorsport victory in the second V8 Supercars race of the Winton 400 weekend.
”This is wonderful, we have worked so hard for this and I heard the crowd cheering on the last lap,” said Holdsworth.

The Mercedes driver put hard pressure on Brad Jones Racing’s Fabian Coulthard in the last couple of laps to get past and win the race by 1.5 seconds ahead of the hard charging Ford of Mark Winterbottom.

Winterbottom was the fastest man on the circuit by far in the last half of the race as the others struggled with their tyres. The Ford Performance Racing driver got past David Reynolds and Coulthard with just a few laps to go. Winterbottom closed in on Holdsworth in the lead, but there was not enough laps for him to get close enough.

Reynolds held fourth position in the end ahead of David Wall, making it three Fords in the top five, and the top Nissan driver in the form of James Moffat in sixth position.

Shane Van Gisbergen held on to the top positions in the early part of the race but soon struggled with fading tyres. The Tekno Autosports driver dropped down the order to finish 20th.

It was an equally tough race for Triple Eight Race Engineering drivers Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup, being far down the field. Lowndes crossed the line in 16th position while Whincup had to settle for 19th.

Volvo Polestar Racing driver Scott McLaughlin had another dreadful race. The 20-year-old got the jump on Coulthard from second on the grid to take the lead. But the lead lasted for only a couple of laps before he had to pit and change his battery.