Mark Winterbottom clinches emotional title in penultimate race
Jamie Whincup claimed a second straight victory in the Sydney season finale, but all eyes were on Mark Winterbottom who secured an emotional first V8 Supercars title in third position.
”That’s awesome! I had some tears on the in lap. I’m speechless. I’m numb, I’ll take it all in tomorrow. Big thanks to all Ford fans who stuck with us and we’ve got the number one on the car now,” said Winterbottom.
Triple Eight Race Engineering driver Whincup started from pole and held the lead throughout the race.
David Reynolds started second, a position he kept during the race to finish two seconds behind Whincup.
Prodrive Racing Australia’s Winterbottom drove a solid race to finish third on his own with three seconds to Reynolds in second and two seconds to Holden Racing Team driver James Courney in fourth.
The Kiwi duo of Scott McLaughlin and Shane Van Gisbergen had a tough fight for fifth position with the Volvo Polestar Racing driver getting the jump on the Tekno Autosports driver at the start.
Van Gisbergen managed to get past a couple of laps later, only to drop back to sixth in the pitstop with yet another fast stop by the Volvo crew. McLaughlin crossed the finishing line in fifth, just four tenths of a second ahead of the Holden driver.
Craig Lowndes, the sole driver able to beat Winterbottom to the title ahead of this race, had a quiet race to finish seventh from ninth on the grid.
Rick Kelly, Scott Pye and Lee Holdsworth rounded off the top ten.
The last V8 Supercars race of 2015 starts tomorrow at 15:45 local time.
