The Contenders: Mark Winterbottom
Claiming to feel no pressure, factory Ford ace Mark Winterbottom has vowed to go on the attack at the Sydney 500 on December 6-8 in search of his first V8 Supercars Championship.
‘Frosty’ had great qualifying speed at the Sargent Security Phillip Island in his FPR Pepsi-Max Falcon FG II but couldn’t translate that into race wins.
Instead his 5-7-2 result dropped him from 88 points off the Championship pace to 124 points behind, albeit still in third place on the table.
Red Bull Racing Australia’s Jamie Whincup leads the title chase, with his teammate Craig Lowndes 20 points down.
With a maximum 300 points to be handed out over the two 250km races on the concrete-lined course, the only other driver in with even a theoretical shot at the title is Winterbottom’s teammate Will Davison who is 223 points off the pace.
Winterbottom believes it is Holden Commodore VF drivers Whincup and Lowndes who will be feeling all the pressure come the two Sydney Olympic Park races and that can only be to his benefit, encouraging him to go his hardest.
“Those two are not going to be so friendly in a couple of weeks time and I am just going to slide on through,” he predicted.
“Both those guys have got to race each other, because 20 points could go pretty easily. That’s about two spots or something.
“There has to be a point where they are going to start focussing on each other, there is no doubt.”
By contrast, he says he will be feeling little or no pressure at the Sydney Olympic Park track, where he has won once, in 2011.
“I can go there and just go all out,” he said.
“I don’t have to protect points; I can have a big crack, dive in gaps and just have a really good crack, which is what I am going to do.
“I will just go there and try and race. I am 124 down and I will just go hard. It’s probably the least amount of pressure I have had going in there.
“If Saturday works out to plan there might be pressure but there’s a point where one has to beat the other and there’s more pressure on them for sure.”
Winterbottom left Phillip Island frustrated by his inability to translate his two ARMOR ALL Pole Positions and third position qualifying efforts into race wins.
But his controversial clash with Craig Lowndes in Saturday’s 60/60 and contact with Shane van Gisbergen at the start of Sunday’s opener hurt his chances.
“I thought we would come away with some good points, but the races just didn’t fall our way,” he lamented.
“But we have a quick car so at Homebush if we can use that quick car to get good track position to get clear of the stuff that happens behind we will try and transmit this speed to there.
“The race pace wasn’t as good as the qualifying pace, but all in all you take the points you can get. There was a fair bit of contact out there and the car actually came out okay.
“Van Giz was on a mission dive bombing everyone, which was interesting. But I will try and rev my blokes (teammates Will Davison, David Reynolds and Alex Davison) up and hopefully they will do the same for me in a couple of weeks time.”
Tickets are still available for next week’s Sydney 500.
