Mark Winterbottom pulls away despite strong Triple Eight weekend

Ford Performance Racing driver Mark Winterbottom has further extended his championship lead after the V8 Supercars races at Hidden Valley Raceway, despite a strong show of form from main rival team Triple Eight Race Engineering.

Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes claimed a double one-two finish in the two first races of the weekend, with Winterbottom failing to finish within the top five.

”We’ve got to win races, there’s no doubt about that. Like Jamie said on Saturday – you’ve got to win races to get points and especially if the gap has blown out to that much. Even a 101 point gap – it didn’t sound like much (coming into Darwin) but it’s damn hard to close up,” said Lowndes to the official championship site.

But things were the other way around for the third and longer race of the weekend, which also saw Lowndes dropping down to 17th position after a puncture from contact with Winterbottom’s team mate Chaz Mostert.

”We were on a better tyre, obviously with tyre life, but we just got caught up with the congestion up into the hairpin and everything else and had contact with Chaz. Side contact and popped the tyre off, which meant we had to come in and put one of our next set of the tyres on the car – that front left had done, two stints, basically. We had to split and there just wasn’t enough tyres in our bank to juggle them, so we had to use one of our brand new tyres and then we put the other three on, the car balanced up again… we were almost a lap down by that stage,” said Lowndes.

Winterbottom meanwhile had started on soft tyres and climbed into the lead from tenth position on the grid.

”I think we were surprised at the FPR guys getting the longevity out of the tyre. They’ve been good at that and it is something they’ll continue to be good at, especially going into the long distance races at Sandown, Bathurst and all those tracks. We’re going to need better longevity out of our tyres which, as I said, FPR has got…” said Lowndes.

Winterbottom managed to win the race despite Shane Van Gisbergen storming in on him during the final laps. The victory has extended his lead from 101 points to Lowndes ahead of the race weekend to 161 points after.

”I thought I was in a world of hurt. It was sliding all over the place and the last corner he stick his nose in and my thing was out of control. I didn’t want one more lap, I’m glad it finished,” said Winterbottom.

The Ford Performance Racing driver ranks today’s victory highly and puts it above his Bathurst victory of last year in terms of his performance.

”It was an incredible race, different strategies certainly played a part. In terms of my performance I feel I drove better than Bathurst. There was only a two dog battle at Bathurst and here there was three. It just felt like you got every inch out of the car whereas you never really feel that way at Bathurst. If you do you end up in the fence,” said Winterbottom.

Reigning champion Whincup has moved up to third position in the championship, just 25 points behind Lowndes.

“It was really important for us to get back in form for this weekend and we had a great test day during the break so we’re looking forward to the second half of the season,” said Whincup.