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Return to Form at Phillip Island

26/04/2017

Chaz Mostert and Mark Winterbottom have returned to the podium with a 1-2 finish at the Phillip Island 500!

Chaz Mostert had two punctured tyres in Race 5 which hampered his race, but ended Race 6 on a high with his first race win since August, 2015.

Mark Winterbottom had a strong weekend finishing in the top ten for both races, more notably finishing second in Race 6.

Cameron Waters started the weekend slowly with two punctured tyres and an incident with James Courtney resulted in a finish down the field. Cam managed to turn things around in Race 6 finishing in the top ten without incident.

Saturday

Prodrive Racing Australia has managed to salvage two top 10 results in a day of punctures and penalties in Race 5 at the Phillip Island 500. Jason Bright and Mark Winterbottom were able to make the most of a bad situation, finishing seventh and eighth respectively. If it had not been for a puncture to the right-front of the #56 MEGA Racing FG X and a 15 second penalty handed to Winterbottom for crossing the blend line in pit lane, both cars may have been within distance of a podium finish.

Cameron Waters was the worst hit of the bunch with two blown right-rear tyres while also receiving a drive-through penalty for an incident with James Courtney at turn 11. Despite the undesirable result, Waters was pleased with the pace of his car.

Also suffering two punctures to his right-rear tyres, Chaz Mostert was able to recover from his lap-down position to finish 11th in a tough day of racing. Mostert, among other drivers has been left perplexed by the events in Race 5 with the team to look at possible solutions before the next race.

 

DRIVERS’ VIEW​


Mark Winterbottom - #5
Qualifying: 4th - 1m29.77s
Race 5: 8th

"It was just a weird day. You're in conservation mode so you're driving around getting told to do a second and a half off the pace you can do because the tyres aren't up to it. It's frustrating because it's not really racing, it’s just conservation. Serving the penalty was the killer. We would have been top three and had a good result. The blend line normally has a cone where you blend in and when you're following a car you can't see where you're going so it's a pretty steep penalty. I knew the rule but you just can't see so you follow the car in front. We should have had a podium but thankfully no tyres blown. There were blisters on our tyres so we weren't far away from it. It was a pretty average racing day, for people watching as well so we'll try and fix it."

Cameron Waters - #6
Qualifying: 7th – 1m30.01s
Race 5: 19th

"Yeah I didn't really have much luck in Race 5. We had pretty good pace. I think we were comfortably inside the top 10 or even around the fifth mark pace-wise so I was cruising around about there at the start and then we got the first tyre failure and from then it all went downhill. I got another one after that and from there our race was over. The car seemed pretty pacey so we'll move on and try again in Race 6."

Chaz Mostert - #55
Qualifying: 5th - 1m29.83s
Race 5: 11th

"Tough day. Obviously not just for us but for the whole category. It was pretty average out there to see majority of the whole field blow tyres. It's not very fun when you're driving around trying to conserve just to try and get a full stint on tyres. It's a pretty unique thing. All of the car setup stuff hasn't changed much from the previous sets of tyres from other years so it's really weird that these ones are blowing. There's obviously something going on. To end up 11th after two blown tyres and losing a lap, that's a dream result really. We lost a lot of points in the championship compared to a couple of our rivals but we'll regroup for Race 6, go through the data, work out what's going to work and wait for Supercars to say what's going to happen with these tyres."

Tim Edwards
Team Principal

"There's a lot to say about the race and I don't really know where to start. We had to tell the drivers to run under their ultimate car speed to try and save the tyre. At the end of the day it wasn't really racing out there, it was conserving. There's a lot to look at. There will be a few meetings and plenty to discuss before we race again."

 

Results - Race 4

1) Fabian Coulthard – DJR Team Penske
2) Jamie Whincup – Triple Eight
3) Garth Tander – Garry Rogers Motorsport
8) Mark Winterbottom – The Bottle-O Racing Team
11) Chaz Mostert – Supercheap Auto Racing
19) Cameron Waters – Monster Energy Racing

Championship Points

1) Fabian Coulthard – DJR Team Penske: 514
2) Shane van Gisbergen – Triple Eight: 504
5) Chaz Mostert – Supercheap Auto Racing: 381
6) Cameron Waters – Monster Energy Racing: 360
12) Mark Winterbottom – The Bottle-O Racing Team: 279
20) Jason Bright – MEGA Racing: 198

Team Championship Points

1) Triple Eight: 975
2) DJR Team Penske: 957
3) Prodrive Racing Australia: 639

 

Sunday

Chaz Mostert had his first win since August 2015 in Race 6 at the Phillip Island 500. He and Mark Winterbottom took home a one-two finish in an impressive race, holding on to their tyres in a final stint of over 30 laps. Chaz Mostert now sits third in the championship after taking the win by over four seconds while his rivals finished down the field. Both Mostert and Winterbottom credited their engineers for the results with work done between the races to prevent any further tyre punctures this weekend.

Cameron Waters was able to recover from 20th position to finish sixth after being forced to stack twice in pit stops under the safety car. A crew error also brought Waters into the pits for an additional stop, however Waters was pleased with his pace, confident that if the error had have been avoided he could have finished even further up the field.

DRIVERS’ VIEW​

Mark Winterbottom - #5
Qualifying: 4th – 1m29.67s
Race 6: 2nd
"It was a really good race. To get back on the podium is really cool and obviously you always want to win but to do it behind a teammate is the next best scenario. I'm really happy with it. It's good for my confidence and good for Brendan (Hogan) my engineer's confidence because the first couple of rounds have been horrible. It's good to have confidence knowing we're going the right direction. We were competitive. We tuned the car up, the engineers did all of the work to take the load off the tyre so it's good that it was still fast enough and safe which is pretty hard to do so they did a good job. It was good to finish trouble-free."

Cameron Waters - #6
Qualifying: 5th – 1m29.70s
Race 6: 6th

"It was an okay day in the end. Qualifying was really good. I left a couple of tenths on the table with a little mistake so it was good to be fifth. The race was going okay until I had to double stack. I went back to 20th so it was really good to salvage sixth and get some more points and have a straight car. We're continuing to learn so I'm really excited to get to Perth now and give it a crack there."

Chaz Mostert - #55
Qualifying: 6th – 1m29.72s
Race 6: 1st

"Super pumped to finally get the race win in a championship race. Now we just have to go back to the workshop and work even harder. We have to assess what worked with the car and what didn't work with the car and try and make it better. Super pumped this weekend after blowing two tyres in Race 5 to come into Race 6. The win was really thanks to the engineers from the way they turned the car upside down to look after the tyres was pretty big. Big congratulations to the whole team but in saying that now we got one win we obviously want some more so we'll keep chipping away."

Tim Edwards
Team Principal

"It's fantastic. The team did a lot of work to get the cars to look after their tyres and we saw that it worked. It was a team effort, it's a credit to our group who have all done a great amount of work to get us here and prove that we're still in the mix.  What we learnt in Race 6 will undoubtedly help us in Perth so while it's great to get the win our focus now turns to the next event and how we can keep improving our cars."

Results - Race 4

1) Chaz Mostert – Supercheap Auto Racing
2) Mark Winterbottom – The Bottle-O Racing Team
3) David Reynolds – Erebus Motorsport
6) Cameron Waters – Monster Energy Racing

Championship Points

1) Fabian Coulthard – DJR Team Penske: 568
2) Shane van Gisbergen – Triple Eight: 561
3) Chaz Mostert – Supercheap Auto Racing: 531
7) Cameron Waters – Monster Energy Racing: 427
8) Mark Winterbottom – The Bottle-O Racing Team: 417

Team Championship Points

1) Triple Eight: 1083
2) DJR Team Penske: 1074
3) Prodrive Racing Australia: 879

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