MOTORSPORT: Cold Frosty hot for the island

It was less than two years ago at Phillip Island that Mark Winterbottom all but secured his first Supercars championship.

But heading into this weekend's WD-40 Phillip Island 500, the Prodrive Racing Australia Ford Falcon driver's performances have drifted so far he is only 12th in the points standings, with his two younger team-mates Cam Waters and Chaz Mostert well ahead of him.

Teamed with Brendan Hogan, his third engineer in four years, 'Frosty' has been unable to extract decent performance from his Bottle-O Falcon, managing only two top 10 qualifying positons and one top 10 finish in four races this season.

"I only race this sport to be competitive and the last couple of rounds have been killing me deep down because I know we should be further up the grid than what we are doing," the ever-frank 35-year old said in an official team media release this week.

"I don't race to putt around the back and that is killing me lately, so my motivation is higher than ever to get a result.

"I want it for my engineer because he is under pressure, I am under pressure."

Crashes, injuries, tyre degradation
Winterbottom is one of several significant storylines headed into the third Virgin Australia Supercars Championship outing of 2017.

Others include the health of Will Davison and whether he will be able to complete the event in the Tekno Autosports Holden Commodore after fracturing an off-shoot to a vertebra in that horror 12-car shunt in the last championship round at Symmons Plains.

Out of that smash Nissan Motorsport's Rick Kelly also suffered leg muscle tears and will roll out in a new car at the MotoGP track after his Sengled Altima was written off.

Then there's the ever-present question mark over tyres. The field races on Dunlop's new construction soft tyre at a circuit that puts tremendous load on the rubber. Last year there were multiple front-left tyre failures for Falcons as teams got hungry on pressures and geometry.

It could easily happen again, especially considering the Supercars will run over two longer 250km races than the 120km and 200km outings conducted in 2016.

But after Tassie, the big picture story is the ongoing fight for supremacy between the factory Triple Eight Commodores of the Red Bull Holden Racing Team's Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup and the Shell V-Power Racing DJR Team Penske Falcons of Fabian Coulthard and Scott McLaughlin.

Coulthard broke through on Sunday at Symmons for the operation's first win since it was taken over by US motor racing mogul Roger Penske, achieving that milestone at a track that has been performance bogey for the team in the past.

Phillip Island, by contrast, has been good to the Queensland team, with both Coulthard and former team-mate Scott Pye scoring a podium there in 2016.

And McLaughlin has a great record there with his former team Garry Rogers Motorsport, taking both races in 2016 in the now departed Volvo S60.

But Triple Eight has the score on the board there too. Whincup has the most poles and his team-mate Craig Lowndes, nowadays driving a satellite TeamVortex entry, is the winningest Supercars driver.

Intriguingly, 2016 champion and 2017 championship leader van Gisbergen has yet to win at Phillip Island.

Meanwhile, here's what to watch out for this weekend:

>> The WD-40 Phillip Island 500 comprise the fifth and sixth races of the 2017 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. It includes practice on Friday, qualifying and one 250km race on Saturday and qualifying and a 250km race on Sunday.

>> The anti-clockwise 4.445km circuit south-east of Melbourne has a top speed of 290km/h. Average speed is 174km/h.

>> All qualifying and racing will be conducted on the new-construction Dunlop soft tyre. Dunlop rates this as the toughest tyre test of the year because of the huge lateral loads in a series of high speed corners.

>> Scott McLaughlin set the qualifying lap record last year in the GRM Volvo S60 at 1m 30.3918 sec. Jamie Whincup owns the race lap record at 1m 32.0246 sec.

>>> Craig Lowndes has more wins than any other Supercars driver at this venue with 11. Retired six-time champ Mark Skaife has nine, two-time champ and Ford hero Glenn Seton has seven and Garth Tander five.

>>> Two wins this weekend and Whincup will pass team-mate Lowndes to become the winningest driver in championship history, with 104.

>>> Whincup has claimed the most pole positions at Phillip Island with seven. Lowndes has five and 2015 Supercars champ Mark Winterbottom has four.

>>> The last 10 races at Phillip Island have been won by either Triple Eight Race Engineering or GRM.

>>> Nissan Motorsport's Rick Kelly makes round start number 212 at Phillip Island, equaling the late great Peter Brock on the all-time list. The 2006 champion has been a full-timer in the championship since 2002.

>>> Fox Sports will show the action live. Ten and ONE will show highlights on Saturday and Sunday.