Mark Winterbottom’s championship lead continues to shrink

Mark Winterbottom left the V8 Supercars weekend in New Zealand with his championship lead once again reduced. But the Prodrive Racing Australia driver is nonetheless confident ahead of the two final race weekends.
“The less rounds there are to go, and the points lead you’ve got is good if you do the maths,” said Winterbottom to v8supercars.com.au.

The Ford driver had a 258-point lead coming into the Pukekohe weekend and left it with a 238-point lead over David Reynolds in second and Craig Lowndes a point further behind in third.

Winterbottom finished seventh in the first race, fourth in the second and eleventh in the third, not being able to match the pace of main rivals Reynolds and Lowndes.

“On the Gold Coast I qualified third, but this round lost a little bit of speed. In [yesterday’s] race that car was really good then. But you’re going to lose points, going to gain points – that’s what happens in the championship, just everyone focuses on the last [bit] because it’s getting to the end,” said Winterbottom.

Triple Eight Race Engineering driver Lowndes had a major moment in the second race when he crashed at high speed following a puncture. The team however managed to repair the car overnight, enabling him to qualify tenth and then climbing to second.

“I think it’s the team you need to congratulate, they did an all-nighter and it’s rare to get a car that’s stripped apart then runs faultlessly. To finally be on the podium here is pretty sweet, it wasn’t a win, but for sure it was the next best thing for me. To get some good points off the back of yesterday’s race two, it really shows what team spirit is all about,” said Lowndes.

Just one point ahead of Lowndes is Rod Nash Racing driver Reynolds who had a strong weekend in New Zealand with third, first and fourth.

“Overall it was a pretty good weekend. We had good car pace in qualifying and the sprint races but today in the longer race we didn’t quite have the pace to contend for the win. We weren’t far off but that’s enough around here. I am happy with the overall performance this weekend,” said Reynolds.

Phillip Island hosts the penultimate race weekend of 2015 in two weeks time.