MOTORSPORT: Ford dominates Sandown 500

Do we have to wait any longer to declare Mark Winterbottom or his Prodrive Racing Australia teammate Chaz Mostert the only two potential candidates to win the 20015 V8 supercars Championship?

The reality is yesterday’s nose-to-tail one-two for the two Pepsi-Max Ford Falcon FG X drivers at the Sandown 500 has further pretty much isolated the teammates in the fight for the V8 Supercars Championship.

They look fast, reliable and organised. Just the opposite of the shambles this outfit sometimes was in the bad old days.

Winterbottom, aided by co-driver Steve Owen, took the win and extended his margin over Mostert — co-driven by young gun Cam Waters — by 24 points to 198 points.

The next nearest challenger is another PRA Ford Falcon FG X driver, David Reynolds, who with Dean Canto took fifth at the suburban Melbourne circuit. But he is a massive 360 points off the pace.

The rest are disappearing into the rear view at a rapid rate, a bit like the way the pursuers did after the final safety car period yesterday afternoon.

Shane van Gisbergen and Jono Webb were best of the rest in the Tekno Holden Commodore VF, with the Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander fighting through to fourth with the help of Warren Luff.

Tander now runs sixth in the championship and SvG seventh, the two of them shadowing Brad Jones Racing’s Fabian Coulthard in fifth, who was never a contender as the team performed to its usual lousy Sandown standard.

And what of Red Bull Racing, the team that won the last five 500km Bathurst warm-ups in a row? Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards were 13th and deservedly so after Lowndes again had a mistake-prone weekend. He now has ebbed to fourth in the championship.

Teammates Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell clearly had speed in their brand-new VF, winning both qualifying races on Saturday. They also dominated the first 100 or so laps on Sunday, in just the same way they have dominated this race for the last two years.

But heavy fuel consumption prompted them to pit out of sequence and they then had an issue changing the right front tyre. In the kerfuffle that ensued a bolt was knocked from the refuelling gantry and Whincup ran over it as he exited the pits.

He was back in two laps later for a new tyre and out of contention. The fact plenty of Whincup’s rivals were also in fuel trouble (although they will all deny it vociferously of course) but were saved by the late-race safety car called for debris on the track, only adds to the pain.

Now that he is back in eighth on the points table 629 points off the lead, only the most optimistic of true believers would rate Whincup a chance of winning title number seven.

Red Bull also looks likely to lose the teams’ championship, a title it has had a lock on for years. PRA will assuredly claim that.

If their Sandown speed isn’t illusory, what Whincup and Red Bull should do is help shape the title battle between Winterbottom and Mostert, a bit like the way a footy team that finds form late in the season helps determine the ladder by beating a few premiership contenders.

With the Bathurst 1000 looming next the battle will be well and truly joined. Whincup has been on the receiving end at Mount Panorama from Winterbottom (2013) and Mostert (2014), the latter passing him on the last lap as he ran out of fuel.

No doubt Whincup will see a Bathurst 1000 win as a salve in a bad year, but the reality is PRA (then Ford Performance Racing) won the last two years at Bathurst in the FG Falcon, a car the team bitterly complained about because of its aerodynamic imbalance. The FG X is a dramatically better car.

PRA/FPR scored its first ever endurance race one-two at Sandown. You wouldn’t bet against them doubling up at Bathurst.

The carsales.com.au Nissan Altima made an inglorious debut, striking technical problems before co-driver Alex Buncombe stuck it in the sand trap. Todd Kelly then soldiered on to cross the line 24th and final finisher.