Whincup wins first race at Hamilton

Team Vodafone’s, Jamie Whincup, has continued his form from the first two races at Adelaide to win the first race on the street circuit on Hamilton, New Zealand. Whincup started on the outside pole and passed the pole sitter, Mark Winterbottom, on the first lap of the race and never looked back.

The race was not only Whincup’s first win at the circuit, but his first start after his car was destroyed, in a tangle with Todd Kelly, during the qualifying session of the inaugural 2008 event prevented him from taking part.

He not only smashed his personal result, but also cracked a voodoo which has plagued Ford since its only New Zealand race win in 2004 by Marcos Ambrose.

Winterbottom retained second spot for the remainder of the race and Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Lee Holdsworth finished the race third with Will Davidson recovering from a difficult qualifying session to finish forth and Steven Johnson in fifth place.

The race was not without incident. With the start of the race producing a number of accordions in the first few comers causing a number of ruffled panels.

One of the big incidents of the race was on a restart after a caution period for an incident in turn 5. After the green was waved, a misjudged overlap by HRT’s Will Davidson stacked the field behind, causing damage to a number of cars, most notably Garth Tander, who was drilled from behind by James Courtney. The impact was hard enough to bend the spoiler back on Tander’s cars.

But the biggest incident was in the dying moments of the race when Marcus Marshall slammed into a tyre bundle at the Tarua Chicane, launching his car a metre into the air and moving the bundle on to the track.

Marshall limped the #77 Falcon back to pit lane where it the damaged motor expired at the entrance of pit lane.

Whincup, who now has 450 Championship points under his belt, admitted he pushed his #1 Falcon to the point of losing the coveted first place.

“I was just pushing 110 per cent,” he said. “I almost nudged the wall a couple of times… it was fantastic to win the first event.”

Whincup also broke the lap record Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander set at the track last year on the next two laps.

“To do a record it’s obviously a good car, and the lack of tyres in the chicane helped,” Whincup said. “You could pretty much straight-line the chicane.”

But the 2008 Champ was cynical about the Safety Car deployment only minutes before the end of the 59-lap race.

“I was waiting for it, I must admit,” he said. “I was looking for a chip packet or something to blow across the track.

“It was a good one this time, it was a legit one.

“The tyres were in the middle of the track so it was fair enough, but it was always going to come.”

Winterbottom had a good start, but his Falcon was suffering a few issues and he had a longer than necessary pit stop.

“I should take up drag racing, I’m good until the corners, aren’t I?” he laughed. “On lap one I knew we were in trouble when he (Whincup) just went past.

“But there’s no use tangling on lap one to hold him out when you are struggling a bit anyway.”

Holdsworth started the race from sixth place and admitted he nearly took out teammate Michael Caruso on the start when Caruso bogged down from his fourth place starting position.

“We kept our race pace while everyone else fell off,” he said.

Wilson Security Racing driver Fabian Coulthard was the first Kiwi to cross the finish line, clawing his way back from his starting position of 21st to finished sixth.

Stone Brothers Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen was the next Kiwi to cross the line in ninth, but he was handed a 28 second penalty for contact with Autobarn Racing’s Paul Dumbrell early in the race and got relegated back to 17th.

Craig Lowndes also experienced problems which forced to the garage, but he latter return a number of laps down and deep in the field.

Race 4 of the championship will take place on Sunday at the Hamilton Circuit.