Pure grit has allowed Jamie Whincup to stay in the V8 Supercar Championship picture, albeit as the stalker rather than the stalked.
Whincup has stayed well in sight of Championship leader Will Davison, who finished 1-2 in today’s first race of the ITM400 in Hamilton, despite admitting he is not at his best.
Davison extened his lead ahead of Whincup slightly today with victory in his Tradingpost FPR Falcon from Whincup in the TeamVodafone Commodore. Holden racing Team’s Garth Tander was third.
Once again FPR got it all right for Davison but the tale was not so similar for team-mate Mark Winterbottom (22nd) who lost Championship ground after bending a steering arm.
Whincup remains positive and upbeat. He has won two of his three Championships from recent positions and it’s testament to he and his team that an off day equals second.
“Second is a reasonably good result,” Whincup said. “We’re making mistakes pretty much, we would have liked to have been up there but myself and the team keep making small mistakes which we’ll fix up for the next one.”
Even Tander is looking to take the Championship fight to Davison. It was a good day for HRT with James Courtney returning to the top ten after a recent struggle.
“It’s only round three so there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before December and there will be a lot of interesting racing to take place between now and then,” Tander said.
“So we just need to keep ourselves in the hunt and do what we can to continue to develop the car as the year progresses.
“It would have been nice to win the race, it would have been nice to have been second but third’s where we are at and that comes as a result of not having the longevity in that mid to late part of the stint so we can improve on that and make that better and we will.
“I’m really happy with third, it’s a great result for the team and all three of our cars inside the top ten today.”
Davison is in stellar form.
“You’re never comfortable around this place, you lose concentration for a second and you’re in the wall so quickly,” he said. “I really had to talk to myself a lot because I started going away with the pixies there in the last few laps.
“Clearly we’re pretty strong but we’re going to have to tweak it up a bit tomorrow if we are to hold on to it.”
Craig Lowndes finished fourth from Rick Kelly, who clawed his way back from 14th on the grid, today while the rest of the top 10 was made up of Steve Owen, James Courtney, Michael Caruso, Fabian Coulthard and Russell Ingall.
Kiwi drivers didn’t enjoy as much luck.
Shane Van Gisbergen flew off line from the front row of the grid but was swamped at turn one when he out-braked himself inside of Tander. It left both fighting for the lead until David Reynolds snuck through on the inside.
The Kiwi then had to pit to replace a front spoiler and copped a pit lane penalty for too many kerb hops. He finished 22nd.
"We got a really good start but I just got hit from behind at turn one and that put us wide,” Van Gisbergen said.
"At turn two I'm not really sure what happened, I'll have to have a look at the footage, but I came together with another car and that bent the steering. I spent a few laps going slow and making sure nothing would fall off, then I got going but we did no good today."
Reynolds was on target for a career-best fourth but a suspension breakage dropped him out with seven laps to go.
Kiwi fan favourite Greg Murphy had further dramas with his Pepsi Max Crew Commodore and ended up retiring, while Frenchman Alex Premat crashed out to cause the only Safety Car period of the race.
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