Chaz Mostert has recovered from a disappointing Winton by leading home teammate Mark Winterbottom in a Prodrive 1-2 finish at the SKYCITY Triple Crown.
Mostert started on the front row alongside Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney and led into turn one as chaos ensued behind his FG X Falcon.
While Winterbottom qualified sixth, he moved through the field early as other Championship front-runners were caught up in incidents.
Fabian Coulthard and Jamie Whincup clashed at the firsth corner, damaging Coulthard’s new car and forcing him to retire with a broken steering arm, while Whincup climbed to 11th.
Further down in the field, Scott McLaughlin tangled with Craig Lowndes and Tim Blanchard – both Red Bull cars involved in early incidents.
The racing was wild as the V8 Supercars pushed the limits on the newly resurfaced track – said to have no grip offline.
The Safety Car intervened twice, with grass fires needing to be put out – but the fire remained on track with a restart incident between Shane van Gisbergen, James Courtney and Garth Tander seeing more title contenders suffer hard luck with just two laps to go.
Mostert kept it clean this time out the front and sailed home for his second win of the season.
“This track’s a bit of a bogey of mine so fantastic to get a front row start and to win the race was fantastic,” Mostert said.
“Can’t wait to watch Frosty’s in-car camera to see how he carved up all those cars.”
Winterbottom, who started from sixth was pleased with the podium finish, but believes he needs to get more out of his Pepsi Max Falcon.
“Pretty interesting out there but stayed out of trouble,” he said.
“The car was reasonable but not what I had yesterday.”
Rick Kelly – the pole man for the day’s second race, on the soft Dunlop tyre –came home third and led a slew of Nissans, with teammates James Moffat and Michael Caruso behind.
Scott Pye finished sixth, an improvement on his Winton result with DJR Team Penske.
Click here for full results.
Winterbottom now holds a 56-point lead over Lowndes, who finished 18th.
Stay tuned for the day’s second race at 5.15pm AEST.
