Prodrive Racing (Australia) continued to lead the way today at Albert Park, with Mark Winterbottom and Chaz Mostert coming home for the team’s fourth straight 1-2 finish.
But while Winterbottom becomes the first man to clean-sweep the event since Russell Ingall in 1998, all cars from position 16 and back are being investigated for jumping the start.
The V8 Supercars have a rolling start unqiue to this event, and the leader controls the jump once he has received the green flag and passed into the acceleration zone.
While Winterbottom jumped immediately in the three earlier races, he kept the pack at bay longer this time – but cars began to fan out early, causing a concertina in the back of the pack.
Cars badly damaged include Marcos Ambrose, Nick Percat and Craig Lowndes, with James Moffat, Jason Bright and Will Davison also involved in the incident.
The turnaround to next Championship event Tasmania is quite short, particularly for the Queensland-based teams Erebus, Red Bull and DJR Team Penske, with around four days in the workshop, taking in the travel time required to get back from Melbourne, and down to the Apple Isle for a March 27 kick-off.
DJR Team Penske is working with a rolling chassis plan however, with the chassis raced at the Clipsal 500 on-hand to race in Tasmania.
Once the race was restarted, there was a hot battle between Shane van Gisbergen, James Courtney and Jamie Whincup, who finished third, fourth and fifth respectively – but the PRA cars were victorious once again.
From there, it was Garth Tander, Rick Kelly, Tim Slade, David Reynolds and Lee Holdsworth completing the top 10.
