Whincup Wins Race 11
He took the Championship lead yesterday – and second place in Race 10 – and today Red Bull Racing Australia's Jamie Whincup has won his fourth career race at Barbagallo Raceway.
Post race he said he may have his "mojo back" and that the win "feels awesome".
Whincup took the chequered flag ahead of Jason Bright, Mark Winterbottom, Fabian Coulthard, Will Davison, James Courtney, Shane Van Gisbergen, Craig Lowndes, Alex Davison and James Moffat. Today was Nissan driver Moffat's second top 10 result in two days.
There was talk of whether cars would or wouldn't stop for tyres during the race – a stop was not compulsory – and local Dean Fiore tried the full run. It looked as if he may have been on track for his best result at his home track, but Fiore was swallowed in the last laps of the race, eventually coming 13th.
Whincup extended his lead in the Championship when he took the chequered flag by a margin of 0.75sec over Bright and bitter Ford rival Winterbottom.
Whincup, who started from fifth on the grid, pitted for new tyres on lap 18 of the 42-lap battle and that proved to be the difference on the hard-wearing 2.42km circuit.
Bright did a good job to recover from a horror start when he wasted his pole position and dropped back to fourth at the first turn.
For the second half of the 100km race, Whincup and Winterbottom were battling at the front and anticipation was building that more bumping and barging was imminent.
The pair have engaged in a war of words over the past few weeks since a series of sideswipes at the previous event in Auckland last month.
But Bright ruined the head-to-head battle when he touched side mirrors with Winterbottom at 260km/h heading towards the final turn and passed the Ford Performance Racing star.
Tim Slade was the first of the Mercedes trio in 23rd.
The final race in the Chill Perth 360 will run at 2.25pm local time. Whincup will start on pole for the race – can Red Bull Racing Australia clean sweep this weekend after Lowndes' win yesterday?
