Kiwi foes had Australians worried for a while, writes Eric Thompson.
Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife won their second consecutive L&H 500, the first of the V8 Supercars endurance rounds on Sunday.
But, it wasn't all that easy for the TeamVodafone pair. If Kiwis Shane van Gisbergen and John McIntyre hadn't run into car trouble, Lowndes would havehad a mighty scrap on his hands.
Lowndes is running four from four after winning all three races at the Ipswich 300 and remains in touch with championship leader Jamie Whincup, who finished second. Will Davison rounded out the top three.
"It's been a pretty smooth weekend for us as a team. Everything we have done has worked. It's been a big effort from the team all year, not just this weekend," Lowndes said. "When Shane was closing that gap I radioed in and said I didn't want to go any faster and burn the tyres and have nothing left to fight if he got to us. Shane got to about three seconds away but must have had a problem and then went backwards as fast as he came up to me. It was a blessing for me. We were pushing as hard as we could."
Van Gisbergen was rapidly chasing down Lowndes with seven laps to go when the Falcon developed tyre trouble, causing the Stone Brothers Racing car to drop down the field and limp home in fifth place.
After starting the race from the second row of the grid, McIntyre quickly settled into second place before losing several places in the first round of pit stops. When van Gisbergen jumped in on lap 48, the 22-year-old pulled out all the stops to climb back up into second place behind Lowndes and Skaife. However, with just a handful of laps to go the car picked up debris on the right-front tyre.
"To be honest, the day didn't look all that promising during John's first stint because he was complaining that there was a 'miss' and the car seemed a bit off," van Gisbergen said. "But once I got in I just pushed it really hard and while there did seem like there was something not quite right we had great speed and I was able to reel in the blokes in front. "During the last stint the Triple Eight guys obviously had some better tyres and were able to pull away. I pushed pretty hard and was able to hang in there but then in the last few laps, my tyres had pretty much had it and I was lucky to finish where we did.
"Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way things went this weekend and the race today - fifth is my best key-event endurance performance so that's something I'll remember. This weekend gives us a good grounding for Bathurst so I'm really looking forward to getting back among it then."
Earlier in the day van Gisbergen had his feathers ruffled when he and Lowndes had an altercation during the warm-up. They had a couple of coming-togethers on the track and had to be told by their crews to calm down.
New Zealand V8 champion McIntyre enjoyed playing with the big guns and can't wait to head to Mt Panorama for the Bathurst 1000, from October 6 to 9. "Today was a great day - everything pretty much worked to plan for car No9," he said. "My job was to keep us in contention and give Shane back a car in the best position I could, which we achieved. Looking forward to Bathurst, things are pointing in the right direction. We had great car-speed and I'm obviously comfortable in the car so I'm looking forward to another solid enduro performance."
Fifth place was good enough to allow van Gisbergen to hold on to third place in the series heading into the second endurance race of Bathurst.
