Asian Motor Sports

Ford ace Jamie Whincup bounced back to form to extend his domination of the V8 Supercars Championship with victory in Sunday’s confusing mini-enduro at Symmons Plains.

After 84 laps around the tight Tasmanian track, Whincup brought his Falcon home just 0.4 of a second ahead of the Holden of Will Davison.

New Zealander Fabian Coulthard sprang a late move on fellow Ford racer Mark Winterbottom with only a lap remaining to steal third place and clinch his first podium in the series.

Whincup ran away with the series lead when he took the first four races, at Adelaide and New Zealand, before his Team Vodafone teammate Craig Lowndes took over for races five and six at Winton earlier this month.

Holden finally got a win when Garth Tander won the opening Tasmanian race on Saturday but Whincup brushed off the brief challenge to re-set his focus.

“I feel like I lost momentum a little bit but we’re back now,” Whincup said.

“Today was a much better day - yesterday was tough,” Whincup said.

“We knew we had good speed but just couldn’t get everything together so we regrouped overnight and were great in qualifying this morning.”

The race was littered with safety car periods, cars running off the track amid hectic jostling, and the leaders admitted it was tough trying to keep up with who was where at times.

“Our engineers were keeping us up to date on what’s going on but it must be so hard for the fans - they must just see 30 cars going around,” Whincup said.

“But the (new) soft tyre really spiced things up.

“I think Mark Winterbottom was leading for a while and he had an incident and I think Will was in front of me as well - he had an incident so it was great to pick up the pieces.”

Whincup said he had an easier time spending most of the race in the lead and out of the frenzied jostling.

“But I had to keep the car straight. Will was very quick, he was pushing me hard and Holden Racing have been very strong down here the last four or five years, it really suits their cars and I knew it was going to be tough to hold Will behind but we were lucky, didn’t make any mistakes and kept it solid.”

Davison, who retained second place in the series behind Whincup, said his Commodore had the power to get past Whincup’s Ford but he needed more experience to utilise their strengths.

“I don’t want to play the points game but you’ve got to be sensible as well,” Davison said.

“We haven’t had the most ideal qualifying positions the last couple of rounds but we’ve been able to fight back with a great car and we’ve really kept the points tally ticking over really nicely.”

“It was a very tough race there with Jamie (Whincup). It was hard to know what was going on. There was traffic everywhere and lapped cars everywhere… it was frustrating when I saw him come out (in front of me). It was a race to the flag. I had a car that was capable of challenging him, but in the end it just came down to track position.”

Wilson Security Racing’s Fabian Coulthard made a hard charge at the end of the race on his ‘Sprint’ tyres to eventually finish third. He may have finished even higher had he not been blocked for a couple of laps by Autobarn Racing’s – Toll HRT’s Walkinshaw Performance sister team – Paul Dumbrell, who was a lap down and not battling for position.

Supercheap Auto Racing’s Tim Slade and Coulthard’s teammate Michael Patrizi both had their first ever V8 Supercar top 10 finishes with ninth and 10th respectively.

Race Eight Top 10

Jamie Whincup, Falcon
Will Davison, Commodore
Fabian Coulthard, Falcon
Mark Winterbottom, Falcon
Lee Holdsworth, Commodore
Russell Ingall, Commodore
Jason Bright, Falcon
Jason Bargwanna, Commodore
Tim Slade, Commodore
Michael Patrizi, Falcon

Championship Top 10

Jamie Whincup Falcon 1044
Will Davison Commodore 948
Steve Johnson Falcon 753
Lee Holdsworth Commodore 723
Garth Tander Commodore 720
Craig Lowndes Falcon 669
Rick Kelly Commodore 627
Fabian Coulthard Falcon 606
Shane Van Gisbergen Falcon 600
Mark Winterbottom Falcon 573