Caruso holds on for maiden win

Caruso held on to a much-deserved win despite a late-race safety car period giving opportunities to rivals who would have not been able to challenge him without it.

Using fresh sprint tyres at the start, Caruso moved up the order in the opening laps to take the lead on lap right, opening up a margin over the rest of the field before making his first pitstop on lap 17, leading his closest challenger Rick Kelly by around eight seconds with about ten laps remaining.

However, when Tim Slade came to a stop on track, it brought out the safety car, setting up a nine lap sprint to the chequered flag. In the closing laps, the challenge first came from Craig Lowndes, but in the final lap he had another driver to worry about.

Alex Davison had left his new sprint tyres until the final stop, and having taken the restart in 13th, tore through the field as most of the field struggled on older control tyres, up to third just six laps after the restart, taking second from Lowndes on the final lap and would have taken the lead from Caruso given another lap (or two at most).

Lowndes came home third, having made a forceful pass just after the restart to get ahead of Rick Kelly who finished fourth, while Garth Tander ended up fifth after losing out at turn one on the restart, having spent the whole race up to that point just ahead of Lowndes.

Right behind Tander was Paul Dumbrell, with Caruso's team-mate Lee Holdsworth in seventh, Russell Ingall in eight and Shane van Gisbergen in ninth, not able to achieve team-mate Davison's heroics after using the sprint tyres in the middle of the race.

Jamie Whincup finished tenth and was never in the battle for victory, but was probably the only driver apart from Tander in the top-ten who did not use the sprint tyres in the second race after using them for quite a few laps in race one.

After starting 22nd and 23rd, Steven Johnson and Steven Richards made good gains to finish 13th and 14th, though Richards' team-mate Mark Winterbottom's race went the other way, finishing 17th after starting 3rd on used sprint tyres.

He finished a place ahead of HRT's Will Davison who was sixth at the restart but lost places on the restart lap and the following lap, including contact with James Courtney.

This proved crucial in the championship standings, allowing Whincup to stretch his lead over Davison to 144 points instead of shrinking to under 100, with Davison's team-mate Tander third, 318 points behind Whincup, with Lowndes, Holdsworth and Johnson close behind.

Pos  Driver                Make                  Time
 1.  Michael Caruso        Holden Commodore VE   1:25:24.6054 
 2.  Alex Davison          Ford Falcon FG        +     0.6079
 3.  Craig Lowndes         Ford Falcon FG        +     3.1961  
 4.  Rick Kelly            Holden Commodore VE   +     8.7740  
 5.  Garth Tander          Holden Commodore VE   +     9.3277  
 6.  Paul Dumbrell         Holden Commodore VE   +    10.0025 
 7.  Lee Holdsworth        Holden Commodore VE   +    11.9097 
 8.  Russell Ingall        Holden Commodore VE   +    12.9226 
 9.  Shane Van Gisbergen   Ford Falcon FG        +    15.2087 
10.  Jamie Whincup         Ford Falcon FG        +    15.7161 
11.  Jason Richards        Holden Commodore VE   +    16.1662 
12.  James Courtney        Ford Falcon FG        +    18.1198 
13.  Steven Johnson        Ford Falcon FG        +    19.9473 
14.  Steven Richards       Ford Falcon FG        +    24.2530 
15.  Michael Patrizi       Ford Falcon BF        +    24.6698 
16.  Marcus Marshall       Ford Falcon BF        +    25.1840 
17.  Mark Winterbottom     Ford Falcon FG        +    26.1051 
18.  Will Davison          Holden Commodore VE   +    34.4743 
19.  Jason Bright          Ford Falcon BF        +    34.5132 
20.  Fabian Coulthard      Ford Falcon FG        +     1 lap 
21.  Greg Murphy           Holden Commodore VE   +     1 lap 
22.  Dale Wood             Holden Commodore VE   +     1 lap 
23.  Cameron McConville    Holden Commodore VE   +     1 lap 
24.  Jack Perkins          Holden Commodore VE   +     1 lap 
25.  Tim Slade             Holden Commodore VE   +     2 laps 
26.  Dean Fiore            Holden Commodore VE   +     3 laps 
27.  David Reynolds        Holden Commodore VE   +    10 laps 
28.  Todd Kelly            Holden Commodore VE   +    15 laps 

Not classified/retirements:

     Driver                Make                  Laps
     Tony D'Alberto        Holden Commodore VE    35  
     Jason Bargwanna       Holden Commodore VE    34