Triple Eight on Bathurst: “We didn’t deserve to win it”

Triple Eight Race Engineering have left the Bathurst 1000 empty handed, after having both cars running in podium positions with just under ten laps to go, after race leader Jamie Whincup ran out of fuel on a dramatic final lap, and with Craig Lowndes given a drive-through for spinning title rival Mark Winterbottom’s Ford out at Murray’s.

Whincup had made his final pit stop with 28 laps to go and along with Mark Winterbottom, was on a fuel saving drive while the three cars ahead of him bolted away, but when the safety car came out again with just over ten laps to go after Tim Blanchard crashed the Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport Holden out at The Cutting, the five-time champion assumed the lead when the top three pitted, but as he pulled away from the FPR Falcon of Chaz Mostert, it became clear on the final lap that the final safety car hadn’t allowed him to save enough fuel.

“It looks like I didn’t manage the fuel like I needed to but I did the best I could, there wasn’t much more left to do,” said Whincup. I knew I was in trouble when we hit the pot earlier than expected. I got a number to stick to and I thought I was doing pretty well, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“I did what I could today and it didn’t pay off but we’re hoping next time it will.”

Team-mate Craig Lowndes looked set for a strong finish as well, having recovered from an earlier problem in the pits, but after tapping out Winterbottom, he picked up a drive-through penalty which relegated him to tenth.

“With all of the safety cars, our strategy, like everyone else, was all over the place and we decided to make a splash and dash at the end, but there was a lot of sun glare and I made a mistake and tapped the back of Frosty (Winterbottom) and got a drive through penalty for it.”

Team Principal Roland Dane was blunt about the team’s failure to win “The Great Race” today.

“I’m just gutted that at the end of the day we didn’t do a good enough job, we didn’t deserve to win it. If we had won it, we would have snagged it, we made too many mistakes,” said Dane to TouringCarTimes.

“The positives are the cars were blindingly quick, and Jamie was extremely quick when he was on the circuit, and we were smart in our strategy in getting the lap back and put him in the position to win the race from having gone a lap down, which is almost unprecedented.”

Dane placed the blame for Whincup running out of fuel of the last lap purely at his driver’s door.

“We’d been trying to tell him ever since that last stop to save fuel, and unfortunately he didn’t save as much as he was asked to. If he had, he would have won.”

Looking ahead to the remainder of the season, Triple Eight are now putting their sights firmly back on the Championship, having failed to win the Peter Brock Trophy this weekend. With Whincup finishing one spot ahead of Winterbottom in the race, and with HRT’s James Courtney and Tekno Autosports’ Shane Van Gisbergen suffering technical problems, the one saving grace is Whincup has extended his points lead this weekend over his chief rivals.