Jamie Whincup dashes hopes

V8 drivers that had hoped to take the Whincup’s V8 Supercar Championship received a major wake up call as the defending champion Jamie continued his title defence with a dominant display in race 2 of the Clipsal 500.

Whincup’s main rivals barely laid a glove on the Team Vodafone driver in the V8 season opener in Adelaide as he dominated the race from the pole.

The win was the final step in completing the weekend sweep of winning both races and the pole, which he accomplished for the second year in a row.

Race 2 was a tamer affair compared to the season opening race from the day before. Apart from Jack Perkins literally knocking down the infamous turn 8 wall on the opening lap after a frantic start, there were no more major accidents.
Whincup lead from the green light apart, from being passed by HRT’s Garth Tander in the opening lap, Jaime was not passed on track for the rest of the race.

In somewhat of a role reversal from race 1, Craig Lowndes, who started second beside his Triple 8 teammate, was the one to mess up the start. Lowndes fell to tenth by the first corner, but came back to finish an impressive forth.
Garth Tander put the previous days result behind him to finish second and score his first points of the season and was followed home by his new teammate Will Davidson, who continued his impressive HRT debut with his second podium from as many races.

Championship favourite, Mark Winterbottom, had his hopes of a rebound from Saturdays disappointing result dashed when an early off damaged the suspension on his FPR Falcon which led to multiple pit stops and an eventual 24th place finish.

James Courtney was another that experienced problems after he crashed his Jim Beam Falcon hard into the turn 3 exit wall. While the team was able to repair the car for the race, it was never really set right and James would finish 26th after starting from pit lane.

For Whincup, it was doubly satisfying for the 26-year-old who was debuting the new FG Falcon – and perhaps left a little egg on the face of Ford, which has controversially withdrawn the bulk of its funding from Team Vodafone for 2009.
“It’s been a long three months since Oran Park (the last race last year), you come in with the No.1 on the car, a lot of expectation, a lot of pressure, and there’s a lot of question marks over things,” Whincup admitted.
“I didn’t know if I was going to run 25th or up the front. To have pole and two wins here this weekend means more than it looks from the outside.”

With a huge target on his back, the best Whincup’s rivals could manage was to pepper him with suction cup-tipped arrows.

Lee Holdsworth, Steven Johnson, Jason Richards, Greg Murphy, Steven Richards and Rick Kelly rounded up the top 10.

Jaime Whincup scored a perfect 300 from the event to Lead Will Davison (267) and Lee Holsworth (249) after two races of the Championship.

The V8s take part in an exhibition round at the Australian Formula One Grand Prix next weekend, before the next round of the championship in New Zealand from April 17 to 19.