Championship leader Jamie Whincup (left) races alongside New Zealand's Shane van Gisbergen in the V8 Supercar action in Tasmania on Sunday. Photo / Mark Horsburgh
Championship leader Jamie Whincup (left) races alongside New Zealand's Shane van Gisbergen in the V8 Supercar action in Tasmania on Sunday. Photo / Mark Horsburgh
It's looking more certain that Jamie Whincup is on track to clinch his third V8 Supercars' title after his dominant display at the latest round in Tasmania.
Despite a less than successful outing, his TeamVodafone team-mate Craig Lowndes is not giving up hope of snatching the title from Whincup withtwo rounds to go.
Whincup picked up both wins over the weekend to extend his series lead to 194 points.
"No way [is it over] - what have we got, 600 points to go and the gap is less than 200," said Whincup.
"We need to keep our head down for as long as we can. We are going to be one or two but two would be fairly devastating."
Kiwi driver Shane van Gisbergen had a solid weekend but has now dropped to fourth in the championship behind Mark Winterbottom, just 14 points behind.
Ironically - considering how he struggled with qualifying earlier in the season - van Gisbergen's problem is no longer qualifying pace, rather the lack of a consistently quick race car.
"We ran with the leaders in the opening stint but I was just holding on," said van Gisbergen. "To do that I used my tyres up and didn't have the pace to stay with them.
"In the second stint I managed my tyres a lot better but by then they were too far up the road. The positive from this weekend is our qualifying performance - two second-row starts in a row is a good sign and gives us a good base to improve on next weekend."
Greg Murphy's recent resurgence took a bit of a hit in race one when the wheel of his car came off after a pit stop. Murphy stopped short of blaming the new tyre rule changes, where two crew members have to be involved now, but something went wrong.
"I radioed in the lap before, because I thought I had a puncture. Then I came up to turn one and two and turned her in and she was three wheeling," said Murphy.
"I don't know if [the wheel falling off] was to do with this new rule change or not but at the end of the day the wheel came off because it wasn't on properly."
Points after Rnd 12 of 14
1. Jamie Whincup 2817 2. Craig Lowndes 2623 3. Mark Winterbottom 2215 4. Shane Van Gisbergen 2201 5. Garth Tander 2187 6. Will Davison 2096 7. Rick Kelly 1977 8. Lee Holdsworth 1713
