Whincup wins Hidden Valley race two
Team Vodafone's Jamie Whincup returned to victory lane after holding on to win the second race of the Skycity Triple Crown at Hidden Valley, despite Mark Winterbottom closing fast late in the race
Whincup, along with early leader Alex Davison, made the most of the soft tyres at the start of the race. But with Winterbottom using his soft tyres towards the end, what had seemed a comfortable gap for Whincup quickly shrunk as Winterbottom charged back through the field.
Running 13th in the middle of the race on the harder tyres, it probably appeared he was good for a top-five finish when he switched to the soft tyres. But the difference in performance was even more significant than it might have been expected, and just six laps after his pitstop he was in fourth position.
With 11 laps to go he was second and chasing Whincup down, but ultimately ran out of time to catch and overtake the leader. Shane van Gisbergen performed a similar feat to Winterbottom, vaulting from mid-pack to finish third.
Series leader Courtney was the next driver to use Whincup's strategy to take fourth. Lowndes should have finished in that place, but a pitstop which saw the car dropped with only three wheels on it cost him about 10 seconds, but again the soft tyres saw him make up huge ground in the closing laps.
Another strong performance by Tim Slade saw him move up from 14th on the grid to finish sixth, another soft tyre charger in the closing laps. However, it was the opposite strategy that Jason Richards used to recover from 21st on the grid to take seventh position.
Todd and Rick Kelly looked set for top-five finishes after battling with Whincup and Courtney in the first half of the race, only to drop down to eighth and ninth at the finish, with Steven Richards completing the top ten.
Will Davison finished where he started, 11th, while Garth Tander got caught up in an incident at turn one on lap one and never fully recovered, finishing 19th.
The hard luck story of the day was maiden pole man Alex Davison, who led half the race and was just a couple of second behind Whincup after their second stops, looking set to finish somewhere between second and fourth place depending on how his tyres held up in the closing laps.
But an electrical gremlin struck just after the pitstop, his car slowing to a crawl on track. He limped back to the pits but his day was over, retiring and scoring no points.
While points leader James Courtney didn't have a bad weekend, his points lead over Jamie Whincup halved from 114 points to 57. Lowndes remains third, now 246 points behind Courtney, with Shane van Gisbergen closing in, just 40 points behind Lowndes.
Pos Driver Make Time 1. Jamie Whincup Holden Commodore VE 1h24m35.0111s 2. Mark Winterbottom Ford Falcon FG + 4.0009s 3. Shane Van Gisbergen Ford Falcon FG + 6.8583s 4. James Courtney Ford Falcon FG + 16.8935s 5. Craig Lowndes Holden Commodore VE + 22.8749s 6. Tim Slade Ford Falcon FG + 25.5616s 7. Jason Richards Holden Commodore VE + 28.2032s 8. Todd Kelly Holden Commodore VE + 34.1017s 9. Rick Kelly Holden Commodore VE + 34.8879s 10. Steven Richards Ford Falcon FG + 35.9041s 11. Will Davison Holden Commodore VE + 38.9007s 12. Lee Holdsworth Holden Commodore VE + 40.4003s 13. Jonathon Webb Ford Falcon FG + 40.9716s 14. Fabian Coulthard Holden Commodore VE + 43.3163s 15. Michael Caruso Holden Commodore VE + 44.2006s 16. Steven Johnson Ford Falcon FG + 49.1844s 17. Tony D'Alberto Holden Commodore VE + 53.3298s 18. Greg Murphy Holden Commodore VE + 53.7928s 19. Garth Tander Holden Commodore VE + 55.9140s 20. Jason Bright Holden Commodore VE + 59.8941s 21. Jason Bargwanna Holden Commodore VE + 60.3981s 22. Dean Fiore Ford Falcon FG + 70.5553s 23. Paul Dumbrell Ford Falcon FG + 1 lap 24. Andrew Thompson Holden Commodore VE + 1 lap 25. Russell Ingall Holden Commodore VE + 1 lap 26. Karl Reindler Holden Commodore VE + 1 lap 27. Tony Ricciardello Holden Commodore VE + 1 lap 28. Daniel Gaunt Holden Commodore VE + 2 laps Not classified/retirements: Driver Make Laps Alex Davison Ford Falcon FG 47
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments