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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

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