Jamie Whincup & Sébastien Bourdais win at the Gold Coast

Jamie Whincup & Sébastien Bourdais have one the first of two races at the Gold Coast 600, as Whincup retakes the lead of the Championship after a DNF for Craig Lowndes and Andy Priaulx.

The race was a disaster for Craig Lowndes as the Triple Eight team chased an ignition problem all day, which had already hampered them in qualifying putting them down in 15th on the grid.

Opting to start from the pit lane, the problem was still apparent with Andy Priaulx pitting on the first lap as the team continued to work to resolve the issue. They rejoined several laps down but would retire later with a broken radiator after running over one of the errant bollards at the circuit.

At the start, every team elected to run their international driver for the first stint, with no major dramas for the 28 cars. Marc Lieb bogged down as the lights went out in the No.4 Stone Brothers Racing Ford Falcon, and was narrowly avoided by team-mate Emanuele Pirro, whilst Simon Pagenaud was held up behind in the No.33 Garry Rogers Motorsport Holden and lost ground.

Mika Salo in the No.6 Ford Performance Racing Falcon moved up to second behind Sébastien Bourdais, who pulled out a five second lead in the No.88 Triple Eight Holden, but both Salo and Pirro were judged to have jumped the start and had to serve an extra 10 second penalty on their first pit stops.

Alex Tagliani was the most aggressive driver in the early stages, making contact with Marc Lieb and Augusto Farfus in the No.34 Garry Rogers Motorsport car. Tags would also spin Pagenaud around on lap 37 shortly before handing over to regular driver David Reynolds.

On lap 15, Marino Franchitti for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport and Fabrizio Giovanardi for Britek both retired in separate incidents; Giovanardi with a mechanical problem and Franchitti with broken steering after being hit by Gianni Morbidell’s Triple F Racing Ford Falcon.

Lieb also lost further ground, tapped into the wall by Northern Irishman Richard Lyons in the No.5 Ford Performance Racing Falcon, who would be served with a drive through penalty for the incident.

With the international drivers required to complete 34 laps, the majority of pit stops took place soon after that mark, though there was a mistake by the Holden Racing Team, calling Ryan Briscoe in to hand over to Garth Tander one lap too early, which meant he’d need to complete at least one more lap in the car later in the race.

The first of three safety cars for debris was on lap 49, which gave an opportunity to Holden to get Briscoe to complete that single lap under the safety car and give the car back to Tander for the rest of the race.

With the second safety car on lap 56 right on the edge of the pit window, the majority of the field pitted again, though Tander lost time queued behind team-mate Courtney who himself was boxed in by the two Kelly Racing team-mates queuing in the pit box ahead.

James Moffat stayed out for Dick Johnson Racing, as did Fabian Coulthard (Walkinshaw Racing), Tim Slade (Stone Brothers Racing) and Lee Holdsworth (Garry Rogers) to regain track position, with Whincup restarting sixth just ahead of Will Davison.

On lap 76, Will Davison briefly got ahead of Whincup, but the two-time Champion got back ahead on the switchback and held off the FPR driver for the remainder of the race.

The drivers who opted to stay out started taking their final stops between laps 84 and 89 before the safety car was deployed for debris again on lap 90.

At the restart, Whincup pulled away from Davison in second, whilst Greg Murphy fought hard to hold off the No.5 FPR Falcon of Mark Winterbottom, but ‘Frosty’ managed to get ahead four laps later to secure the final podium position.

Moffat, now with no fuel concerns in the No.18 DJR Falcon was flying through the field, setting the lap record and passing HRT’s Garth Tander for eighth on lap 95, passing Rod Nash Racing’s Paul Dumbrell and HRT’s James Courtney the following lap, dispatching Rick Kelly on lap 98 and finally getting ahead of Murphy for fourth on lap 100, with Fabian Coulthard making similar progress moving up to fifth.

Whincup and Bourdais’ win scores the 2008-2009 Champion 150 points which overhauls the 100 point gap to Lowndes in the standings and gives Whincup a 50 point lead heading into the second race tomorrow, where another qualifying session will set the grid at 10:45am local time with the race at 13:40.