No team orders at Prodrive

Championship leader Mark Winterbottom said there were no teams orders at play at the end of today's 200km race at the Castrol EDGE Townsville 400, but second positioned David Reynolds was careful not to make contact with his Prodrive stablemate.

Reynolds - who won the last start race winner in Darwin - came home a mere 0.26 seconds behind the Pepsi Max Crew Falcon and while viewers may have been urging him to make a dive and try for a pass in the dying laps, he knew he needed to drive rationally.

"I would have looked like an arsehole if I took out the Championship leader," the Bottle-O racer said post-race.

"I've taken you out before, you probably owe me one," Winterbottom quipped back, referring to an incident in 2013 when he punted Reynolds in Darwin whenReynolds was on for his first V8 Supercars win.

"It's always nicer racing your teammate than someone else but at the same time you don't want him not to have a go to win the race because he's going to sit behind you," Winterbottom said.

"It's good in our team they let you race within reason, but you know if he had have got it done I would have sat second and congratulated him."

While Reynolds wasn't quite close enough to make the pass for the lead, he was "scared" of Fabian Coulthard behind him in third, in the final laps and wanted to push on.

Coulthard put in a solid drive, progressing from eighth to the podium, and took second in the Championship from Craig Lowndes after his points haul.

"I could see Fabs coming from about 10 laps to the end and I was like, 'come on Mark, let's start going' so I tried to catch him and push him along a bit," Reynolds said.

"And then I made a few mistakes and then he sort of scooted off again and then with about four to go my tyres started to go really bad."

The fading tyres meant Reynolds felt he couldn't fully commit to attackingWinterbottom.

"I caught him and then I had a little look into turn 11 but I wasn't that 100 per cent sure, so I took the safe open and tried to do it again on the next lap but I couldn't get it done," Reynolds said.

"He drove a fantastic race and he got a good start and it probably could have been any three of us really so he did a real good job."

Both commented that the one-two result was good for the team, and the points earned pushed Reynolds up in the Championship order - he's now fifth, up from seventh after this race. Winterbottom extended his lead to 176 points over Coulthard.