BATHURST: Lowndes and Richards triumph

Some sporting wins are dubbed victories for the ages. Craig Lowndes' and Steve Richards' win in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst is undoubtedly one for the aged.

Forty-one-year-old Lowndes and 43-year old Richards drove their Red Bull Holden Commodore VF to a narrow but decisive win over the Pepsi-Max Ford Falcon FG X of Mark Winterbottom and co-driver and Steve Owen in front of a near-record crowd.

It was a reversal of 2015 V8 Supercars Championship form, with Lowndes scoring his first win since wracking up victory number 100 at Darwin in June, while championship leader Winterbottom had to admit defeat to a Holden for one of the few times this year.

Winning Bathurst meant the Triple Eight organisation defeated Prodrive Racing Australia for the first time at The Mountain since 2012. No other team has won the race since 2011.

Back then it was Garth Tander’s Holden Racing Team Commodore that triumphed and this year he was back on the rostrum, albeit in third along with co-driver Warren Luff.

Tander started only 22nd, one of the biggest victims of Saturday washed out qualifying – which was delayed from Friday’s perfect conditions after defending champ Chaz Mostert smashed his Pepsi-Max Falcon to bits and put himself in hospital with a broken leg and wrist.

Tander simply refused to give in and dragged his Commodore into third, driving with customary aggression and determination. Mind you Lowndes in 15th and Winterbottom in 14th also started outside the top 10. Last year Mostert came off the back of the grid. The message is you can win Bathurst from anywhere these days.

You can lose it from anywhere too.

Pole-sitter David Reynolds and co-driver Dean Canto battled with a car short on power-down grip all day. A great stint in the rain shower that doused the track just beyond mid-race put Reynolds right into contention. But toward the end, when everyone put it on the line, he wasn’t able to match the hardest chargers.

He was shoveled out of the way one lap after the final restart by Fabian Coulthard in the Freightliner Commodore, but both of them went wide allowing Winterbottom and Tander to move into second and third behind Lowndes.

Coulthard, with motoring.com.au’s Luke Youlden co-driving, finished fourth, with Scott McLaughlin and Alex Premat doing a great job in the Wilson Security Volvo S60 to claim fifth. Then came Reynolds and Shane van Gisbergen – a hero in the wet in his Tekno Commodore but unable to find real dry weather pace.

And where was Jamie Whincup? After dominating the first half of the race with co-driver Paul Dumbrell, Whincup had looked set to be a contender for the win despite losing time with a throttle sensor issue.

But then the final safety car period was called to drag Scott Pye’s smashed DJR Team Penske Falcon from the top of The Mountain. Ordered to come in behind Lowndes and stack, Whincup chose instead to press on and do another lap, passed the safety car in the process and copped a pit lane drive-through penalty.

Stacking may have cost him time and a result, his decision to disobey instructions definitely did and 18th was the final result.

It was the second year in a row Whincup has decided to disobey team orders at Bathurst. Last year he was told to save fuel in the last few laps but instead charged on in an effort to win or bust; and he busted, running dry on the last lap.

No such dramas this year in the finals moments. Instead the greatest issues in the race were created by the mid-race rain, which caught some out and played others into the game.

Lowndes suffered mightily, sliding around and going backwards on over-pressured wet tyres. Yet once it dried out, he was able to reassert his speed advantage over the field by driving back through to the lead.

In the final stint he controlled a gap of around three seconds back to Winterbottom, although it narrowed noticeably at the end.

“That last lap I backed off and really enjoyed the lap for what it was,” Lowndes said.

“I could see the crowd going wild across the top and the flags flying everywhere.

“It’s a great time for us and it’s great to be get back onto the podium and to be on the top step with Richo is really nice.”

It was Lowndes' sixth win in the Great Race and his first since 2010. It was Richards’ fourth. His last came with Winterbottom in a Ford back in 2013. Steven’s father Jim also has seven wins in the 1000.

Meanwhile, Winterbottom, who had watch Owen drop to 20th off the start, had his instruments cut out temporarily and then served a 15sec pitlane penalty, made the bold call to get back onto slicks before anyone else and forced himself back into contention.

“I wasn’t thinking about the championship. If I was, I wouldn’t have come in and put slicks on because it was sketchy,” declared Winterbottom.

“I always said coming in here I wasn’t just going to protect the championship I want to win it. It was slightly dry so I said to the boys ‘yeah just put them on’.”

There were many other cameos that played out on the race’s great stage, including:

>> Renee Gracie crashed the Harvey Norman ‘Supergirls’ wildcard Falcon on lap 15 on oil, but after the car’s front-end was rebuilt she and Swiss star Simona De Silvestro went on to be classified 21st and last finisher.

>> Marcos Ambrose’s first race at the Mount Panorama in a decade ended with his co-driver Scott Pye in the wall and out of the race on lap 137. Pye has suspected broken ribs and may miss the rest of the season. But he will be back in a V8 next year. Ambrose? Who knows, he’s not saying until after the Gold Coast.

>> The carsales.com.au Nissan Altima never really recovered from its poor qualifying on Saturday. Twentieth place five laps off the pace was the result of various contacts with other cars, the wall and a black flag to remove flapping bodywork.

“The only real positive to take out of it is that the crew and the cars ran faultlessly all day,” said lead driver Todd Kelly.

>> This was Holden’s 30th win at Mount Panorama, while it was Lowndes’ fifth win in the last 10 years. Add in his first triumph back in 1996 with Greg Murphy and he now equals Holden heroes Larry Perkins and Mark Skaife on overall wins.

>> Lowndes also topped his early mentor, the late Peter Brock, for podium appearance at Bathurst with 13.

Pos Driver                                                                     Entry/Team Started Laps Race Time Points

1 888 Craig Lowndes and Steve Richards                    Red Bull Racing Australia 15  +14  161 6h 16:7.7070 300
2 5 Mark Winterbottom and Steve Owen                     Pepsi Max Crew 14  +12  161 6h 16:9.0720 276
3 2 Garth Tander and Warren Luff                               Holden Racing Team 22  +19  161 6h 16:11.6580 258
4 14 Fabian Coulthard and Luke Youlden                    Freightliner Racing 9  + 5  161 6h 16:12.1230 240
5 33 Scott McLaughlin and Alexandre Premat            Wilson Security Racing GRM 2  - 3  161 6h 16:17.4220 222
6 55 David Reynolds and Dean Canto                         The Bottle-O Racing Team 1  - 5  161 6h 16:18.6900 204
7 8 Jason Bright and Andrew Jones                             Team BOC 3  - 4  161 6h 16:19.7170 192
8 97 Shane van Gisbergen and Jonathon Webb           Team Darrell Lea STIX 6  - 2  161 6h 16:22.0180 180
9 18 Lee Holdsworth and Sébastien Bourdais             Preston Hire Racing 4  - 5  161 6h 16:22.4260 168
10 99 James Moffat and Taz Douglas                          Nissan Motorsport 5  - 5  161 6h 16:27.8980 156
11 22 Jack Perkins and Russell Ingall                          Holden Racing Team 17  + 6  161 6h 16:28.9020 144
12 9 Will Davison and Alex Davison                           Erebus Motorsport V8 11  - 1  161 6h 16:29.3300 138
13 23 Michael Caruso and Dean Fiore                         Nissan Motorsport 18  + 5  161 6h 16:37.2870 132
14 47 Tim Slade and Tony D'Alberto                           Supercheap Auto Racing 10  - 4  161 6h 16:39.2990 126
15 21 Dale Wood and Macauley Jones                        GB Galvanizing Racing 13  - 2  161 6h 16:39.6860 120
16 15 Rick Kelly and David Russell                            Nissan Motorsport 19  + 3  161 6h 16:42.9080 114
17 62 Aaren Russell and Drew Russell                        Plus Fitness / Go Karts Go 24  + 7  161 6h 16:51.2900 108
18 1 Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell                     Red Bull Racing Australia 8  -10  161 6h 17:9.6680 102
19 222 Nick Percat and Oliver Gavin                          Repair Management Australia Racing 21  + 2  159 6h 16:47.0680 96
20 7 Todd Kelly and Alex Buncombe                         Nissan Motorsport 16  - 4  156 6h 17:31.9450 90
21 200 Simona de Silvestro and Renee Gracie           Harvey Norman Supergirls 25  + 4  121 6h 17:51.3700 84
DNF 17 Scott Pye and Marcos Ambrose                    DJR Team Penske 7  -15  137 5h 18:32.4140 0
DNF 4 Ash Walsh and Jack Le Brocq                        Erebus Motorsport V8 26  + 3  135 5h 18:29.6910 0
DNF 3 Tim Blanchard and Karl Reindler                   Team Cooldrive 23  - 1  78 2h 57:48.9360 0
DNF 111 Andre Heimgartner and Ant Pedersen         Super Black Racing 12  -13  35 1h 19:31.6035 0
DNF 34 David Wall                                                    Wilson Security Racing GRM 20  - 6  15 36:15.2720 0