Normally when you see a driver took the win from pole, it turns out the race was a fairly tame affair.
That was not the case at Phillip Island today in Race 10 of the V8 Supercar Championship. Mark Winterbottom put his Orrcon Steel Ford Performance Falcon on pole position and went on to claim the race win. It was what went on behind him to his Championship rivals that was the real talking point.
Will Davison in the sister Trading Post FPR came into contact with Tim Slade in the Lucky 7 car going through turn 3.
The contact forced him wide onto the grass and from there he struggled to slow the car. He reentered the circuit at turn 4, where Jamie Whincup in the #1 Team Vodafone Commodore was turning in. Davison slammed into Whincup taking them both out of the race.
It meant Winterbottom jumped to second in the Championship with Davison slipping to third. Whincup ended the day with just a 10 point lead.
It was that Championship position that Winterbottom focused on post race “I had a great race and the car was very good. When I saw Will and car number one on the side of the road I knew I would pretty much wipe out the gap I had to them both and that made the win a bit sweeter. Will’s incident was unfortunate but I have had my share of bad luck and I am happy that I am now only 10 points back. It will be a tough battle this year and day’s like today make things very close. I feel really sorry for Dave (Reynolds) as he was on for a podium but he has another chance tomorrow.”
For Davison he was left feeling Slade left him no room “We struggled a bit in the race though the team did a great job to get me into the lead. That said the car was hard on its rear tyres today. I had a tight battle with Frosty and then on the restart I was shoved off by (Shane) van Gisbergen and it was all on from there, apparently. He hit me at least four times which is really disappointing. Later in the lap I was moved wide by (Tim) Slade on a high speed part of the track which surprised me. There needs to be room left at those speeds. The impact broke the steering and after that I was a passenger in a ride which ended in a very nasty smash.”
That was not the only drama for Teamvodafone, with Craig Lowndes clashing with Jason Bright and being given a drive through penalty. Bright was able to recover and claim a fighting 8th, though less than he had hoped from his third place on the grid.
"I'm sure he didn't mean it but it cost us both and, at that stage of the race with around 18-20 laps to go, there was a lot more racing to do. " was Bright honest assessment post race.
"I think we definitely could have ended up with a podium today so tomorrow I think we've got a good shot. Given how much we've changed, and the rate that we're improving, if we can keep it up tomorrow we'll be very strong."
Surviving it all behind Winterbottom was Shane van Gisbergen in the SP Tools Stone Brothers Racing Faclon ahead of Tim Slade, who was undamaged from the incident with Davison.
It was a good recovery from Qualifying for the Kiwin “In Qualifying today we were struggling with front of the car. All last year we were super quick here so we looked at the difference between the car last year and this morning’s Qualifying. There were some things I thought we should change and Dave my engineer had some good ideas, so we put them together and made some changes for the race.”
“Once we got into a rhythm in the race, the car was pretty good. We lost a little bit of pace in the middle of the race but once we got out of the pits we had better tyres and were able to work forward and have good pace.”
“With the changes made today, I’m interested to see what it’s like in Qualifying tomorrow. I think we were one of the fastest cars today, if not the fastest so I’m pretty excited about tomorrow’s race.”
Slade was happier with Qualifying and happy to get on the podium “Qualifying for me was good and I think 5th is probably my best Qualifying this year. It was pleasing and rewarding to make some changes throughout Qualifying and working with my engineer, Wes, to make genuine gains – that was satisfying for me.”
“Then in the race I got off to a really good start although we didn’t quite have the car we needed to get the job done today. The safety car didn’t really help because we had gapped it out to everyone else, then the safety car brought us all close again.”
“It was action all stations left, right and centre and we all came together a little bit at turn 10. That sort of damaged the right front of my car and it made it really hard to get through left handers. That made things tough towards the end of the race.”
“Obviously I would have preferred to get today’s result based on speed alone, but you always take a win when you can get it. Tonight we need to look at all the data and work out what will be best for Qualifying tomorrow and then the race.”
Phillip Island 300 - V8 Supercars Championship - Races 10&11
PHILLIP ISLAND GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT
Qualifying Race 10
01 Mark Winterbottom, Orrcon Steel FPR Ford, 1:32.1320
02 David Reynolds, The Bottle-O Racing Team, +0.1199
03 Jason Bright, Team BOC, +0.2053
04 Will Davison, Trading Post FPR Ford, +0.2518
05 Tim Slade, Lucky 7 Racing, +0.2798
06 Rick Kelly, Jack Daniel's Racing, +0.2835
07 Craig Lowndes, TeamVodafone, +0.3048
08 Jamie Whincup, TeamVodafone, +0.3895
09 Garth Tander, Holden Racing Team, +0.4111
10 Lee Holdsworth, Irwin Racing, +0.5118
Phillip Island 300 - V8 Supercars Championship - Races 10&11
PHILLIP ISLAND GRAND PRIX CIRCUIT
Race 10
01 Mark Winterbottom, Orrcon Steel FPR Ford
02 Shane Van Gisbergen, SP Tools Racing
03 Tim Slade, Luck 7 Racing
04 Garth Tander, Holden Racing Team
05 Lee Holdsworth, Irwin Racing
06 Rick Kelly, Jack Daniel's Racing
07 Jonathan Webb, Tekno Autosports
08 Jason Bright, Team BOC
09 Michael Patrizi, Tekno Autosports
10 Steve Owen, VIP Petfoods
