Winning pass no problem

Prodrive Racing Australia had no issue with the pass that ultimately won yesterday’s race in Tasmania, despite yellow flags being out on track.

Chaos erupted with five laps to go in the 200km dash at Symmons Plains yesterday, after Cameron Waters’ car dropped oil on the circuit and sent a number of cars spinning out of control.

Race leader Shane van Gisbergen was one of those cars, and after a dominant performance ended up with no points for his efforts, unable to dislodge his car at turn four.

Mark Winterbottom was running in second place behind the van Gisbergen car but ran wide at the corner as drivers scrambled on track.

Team boss Tim Edwards said there was nothing wrong with winner Will Davison passing up the inside at that stage of the race.

“We certainly haven’t asked for that to be looked at,” Edwards told v8supercars.com post-race.

“He probably did [pass under yellows] but we were on the radio and literally it was all unfolding.

“Hard to have a go at Will or anyone about that – they were all skating and sliding trying to avoid doing what Gizzy did.”

The Monster Energy car of Cameron Waters – Winterbottom’s teammate – dropped oil on the circuit at the notorious hairpin, which immediately caught out Andre Heimgartner and Jamie Whincup before the race leader barrelled off track into the barrier.

“I got told on the exit of the hairpin,” Winterbottom said – meaning he'd already gone through the oil. 

“I couldn’t see the flags, I was jammed up Gizzy’s tail and sort of broke when he broke and that extra two metres got me back on track. I didn’t know about it.”

The current champion – who took pole position in unusual circumstances after Davison was penalised for blocking James Courtney in the qualifying session – described it as a “really cool race” and was excited to line up again at Phillip Island in a fortnight’s time.

“My car was good early on, I know where it’s weak and if we can fix that we’ve got a very good car.

“I’m excited by the weekend. We had some good battles there banging doors, a few bump passes and stuff it’s good.

“When you get that car, it’s really nice, you can return serve, so it’s good … anyone watching that at home who wasn’t impressed will be hard to please because there were some awesome battles.”

Winterbottom came out of the weekend improving from 11th in the points to fourth, but Waters dropped from fourth to 13th.

Problems started for the young driver when the engine cut out in pit lane and forced the crew to push to Falcon up to its pit bay.

Edwards explained: “It had a sensor failure earlier in the race and we replaced the sensor, but we just bolted the sensor in and the timing of the engine wasn’t quite right. So it wasn’t running cleanly and ultimately it’s had a mechanical failure just as a result of that.

“He was just driving around on part throttle, driving around just to try and get to the finish – we certainly didn’t think it was going to have a mechanical failure as a result of it.”

With stablemate Chris Pither crashing earlier in the race – his second big hit in two championship rounds – the team has some work to do.

His Adelaide chassis is repaired, but the car he steered over the weekend, which is Jack Le Brocq’s Dunlop Series chassis, will be assessed this week at the team’s Campbellfield workshop.

“Until we get it apart it’s hard. It’s certainly not in the realms of the accident damage in Adelaide, we just don’t know how deep it goes,” Edwards said.