OzRacingWrap

Mark Winterbottom stole the final race of the 2011 season from his rivals while all eyes were watching the cautious approach of the two Championship contenders. Frosty’s drive was, however,  overshadowed by the Championship fight between Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes, Whincup eventually doing just enough to take the title after a great drive by Lowndes landed him 2nd in the race.

The outcome of the race was virtually decided on the warm-up lap when Winterbottom along with half the field decided to start from pitlane and pitted for slicks. His charge was relentless, and when Will Davison and Lowndes pitted on Lap 12 his 14 second deficit turned into a 30 second advantage. From there it was about Winterbottom protecting his lead and Lowndes charging in the hope he could pick up enough points to claim the title - in the end he fell agonisingly short.

The race looked to be settling into an inevitable outcome when Whincup moved into the top 12 which was all he needed to guarantee the title, but five laps from home FPR’s world turned on its ear. Paul looked set for second in his final race in the main Series after an eventful race with two spins early, but he drifted into the marble and spun the Bottle-O Falcon and was t-boned by third placed Lee Holdsworth and narrowly missed by Lowndes. Both cars were out of the race.

Less than a minute later, Will Davison crashed the Trading Post FPR car and brought out the Safety Car after the damage car caught fire. Shane Van Gisbergen backed up for his second podium of the weekend, edging out Jonathan Webb who was again impressive at Homebush.

But it was the pre-race pitlane activity that had everyone talking strategy again.

“I spoke to Campbell for half a lap on the warm-up lap trying to work it out, but you can only talk one at a time so it takes a while to get through a conversation,” Winterbottom said. “In the end I just came in. I learnt my lesson here last year on how to drive here on slicks in the damp, but it is still pretty scary on that first lap when you charge out of pitlane on cold slicks on a wet track with no idea about how much grip you’ve got and you have a train of cars behind you.

“When it started to rain on about lap 10 I wasn’t so sure, but I’m glad we did it.”

He said this was the end of a tough year for FPR and the late season recovery by the factory Ford squad was something they should all be proud of and hopefully they can carry the form into next season.

“I’m confident, but next year is next year and we won’t know where we stand until the Clipsal 500.”

For Lowndes, a near perfect weekend was bitter sweet as he didn’t quite get enough points to snag the title from his teammate.

“Today was a day where we had nothing to lose,” he said. “We stayed on wets because it was the safer option and we needed to be able to finish, I spoke to JJ during those opening laps trying to work out the right time to pit, we just needed to know it was dry enough.

“Second was the best we could do today. Coming into the weekend we knew it was going to be a tall order to peg back the 188 points that Jamie had on us, and we had a really good weekend. As I said, we had nothing to lose, so maybe I should drive like that all the time!”

Like Winterbottom, Van Gisbergen was also happy with his late season form after a troubled few races in the middle of the season. He finished the series in fourth, another improvement and believes this will set him up well for 2012.

The incident pack race saw a number of retirements and plenty of damaged cars, and that kept Whincup on his toes for most of the race. He knew firstly that he needed to finish the race and then where he needed to finish relative to Lowndes to take the title.

“It was a different strategy for us, normally we are on full attack and this was very soft and safe,” he said. “On the restarts I just tried to make sure no one was near me.

“I’m going to use a cliché now, but it is hard to describe the emotions and sometimes it takes a week to get a handle on it anyway. It is a good feeling though.”