Andy Priaulx holds off-sequence lead at Bathurst after 2/3rds

Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Andy Priaulx leads the Bathurst 1000km at the two-thirds mark of the race, but is due to pit soon, with the battle for the lead effectively between Ford’s Mark Winterbottom and Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup.

Priaulx in the wildcard Commodore leads the Garry Rogers Motorsport Holden of Greg Ritter and the Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport Holden of Paul Morris, but all three are due to stop shortly which will see Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom assume the lead of the race ahead of Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup.

Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell led the way throughout the first part of the second third of the race, until the race strategy was shaken up on lap 86 when the safety car was called for the second time after Greg Murphy crashed out the #22 Holden Commodore at Reid Park.

The #22 Holden Racing Team entry of Murphy and James Courtney therefore became the second retirement of the race after David Russell’s Nissan, which had hit a kangaroo earlier in the race.

The safety car worked out to the favour of Dumbrell, who was able to pit just as the safety car was called, but unfortunately for the Rod Nash Racing Ford of David Reynolds, as they’d already passed the pit entry and had to pit a lap later than the rest of the field. This saw them drop to 15th position and have been clawing their way up the order ever since.

When the race restarted on lap 90, Steven Richards found himself in the lead in the #5 FPR Falcon ahead of Warren Luff in the #888 Holden, though Richards’ team-mate Will Davison was able to dive straight past Luff and take second to make an FPR 1-2, with the Triple Eight cars of Luff and Dumbrell third and fourth.

There were two scares shortly to follow for Triple Eight, with Dumbrell making a mistake at The Chase on lap 92 and lost a spot to the Brad Jones Racing Holden of Fabian Coulthard. Three laps later, Dumbrell repeated the error, now losing another spot to the second BJR car of Andrew Jones, with the team pitting Dumbrell the following lap to put championship leader Jamie Whincup back in the car.

At the two-thirds mark, Andy Priaulx has cycled through to the lead of the race, but the effective race leader is Mark Winterbottom in fourth, but the Triple Eight car of Jamie Whincup has the advantage of having completed six of its mandatory minimum of seven pit stops.

Russell and Murphy are the only two retirements from the race, but problems have been experienced by the two cars which had to be rebuilt over the weekend after crashes in practice, with a starter motor problem for the #17 DJR Ford of Chaz Mostert, and the #47 Erebus Mercedes of Tim Slade now having fallen 22 laps behind following an extended visit to the pits.