Jamie Whincup fought off his home track hoodoo – and James Courtney – to narrowly win race 15 at the Queensland House and Land.com 300 today (Saturday).
The TeamVodafone driver described his win as “really tough” but a huge victory for the team after he finished just over half a second off Courtney from Jim Beam Racing.
His perfect points haul during the race only helped to maximize his championship rivals of his teammate Craig Lowndes and Toll Holden Racing Team’s Will Davison and Garth Tander, who all DNFed.
Whincup and Courtney were able to skim through the oil to put on a screamer of a race, only for them to come across the same problem when Tander’s car dropped oil across the track on lap 28.
“We haven’t had very good results here in the past. Although we test here we always seem to over engineer things on the day, so a huge win for us,” he said.
Whincup attributed the hot conditions to the oil problems that his team has suffered this weekend.
“We’re all pushing hard to get as much horsepower as we can and get the engines to go as quick as possible but our situation hasn’t really changed much,” he said.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do tonight to make sure we get through 200 kays tomorrow.”
UPDATE: August 24, 2009 06:31 am
Toll HRT’s Will Davison has bounced back in the best possible way after Saturday’s DNF, winning Race 16 at Queensland Raceway.
Improving on his qualifying from yesterday Davison set the fifth fastest time in the 20 minute scramble for pole position early on Sunday and was set to start the race from the third row on the grid.
It was a vastly different day for Saturday’s race winner Jamie Whincup who didn’t quite have the race he would have liked.
Whincup eventually finished the race in 13th position and said the team did what they could with the tyres they had.
“The last thing I want to do is harp on about the soft tyre but really, there were two races going on today,” Whincup said.
“We did a good job with the tyres we had left from yesterday and ultimately came out of the weekend with some good points.”
“The rivalry between ourselves and HRT has gotten stronger so I am looking forward to good honest battle at Phillip Island.” Sportal.com.au
The only hiccup for Davison on his way to his third win in Holden Racing Team colours was on lap 51 when he had a brush with Tim Slade (Ingall’s teammate) when he was lapping the rookie between turns four and five.
“To bounce back like we did today …. I just went home yesterday and went to bed and came back a new person today,” Davison said of Saturday’s shattering experience.
“I was a bit concerned about the pace of the car on hard tyres but we obviously improved the car a lot from what we did in qualifying (fifth) today.”
Davison said he kept monitoring the advantage he had over Lowndes and was mindful of the charge Ingall was staging on the sticky tyres.
“I had a bit of fun trying to get through Russell’s teammate (Slade). We lost a couple of seconds there … a bit of door banging (and) he tried to run into me when he was a lap down which was interesting,” Davison said.
“It was all good fun and games so to hang on I can’t tell you what a relief it is.” V8 Supercars
| 
|