MOTORSPORT: V8SC down to the wire

And then there were two. And in two weeks’ time it will be one. And the one is most likely to be Mark Winterbottom.

That’s what the 2015 V8 Supercars driver’s championship looks like as the field departs Phillip Island and sets course for the grand final on the concrete-lined streets of Sydney Olympic Park.

Winterbottom was best of the rest at Phillip Island in his Pepsi-Max Ford Falcon FG X, as Red Bull Holden Commodore duo Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup and Volvo’s Scott McLaughlin dominated the action.

Lowndes’ 1-3-1 result across the weekend’s three races compared to Winterbottom’s 7-4-4 finishes means the gap has shrunk to 179 points.

It’s still a handy buffer for Winterbottom. With 300 points up for grabs across three races in Sydney he needs to score an average 14th place finish to secure the title, even if Lowndes wins everything.

“A clean weekend in Sydney and we should be fine,” Winterbottom said yesterday. “But we’ve just got to go and do it now.”

If he does win it, it will be his and Prodrive’s first championship and an appropriate way to finish a 13-year relationship with Ford, which severs its already tenuous ties with the category after Homebush.

If Lowndes, who drove at Phillip Island in replacement car after his epic crash at Pukekohe two weeks ago, wins the title it will be his first since 1999 when he was at the Holden Racing Team.

The big loser from the weekend was Winterbottom’s Prodrive teammate David Reynolds. Second in the championship one point ahead of Lowndes before the action started, he was unceremoniously tipped into a spin by Tekno Holden Commodore driver Shane van Gisbergen in Saturday’s opening 60km sprint and finished last. He was running fourth at the time – ahead of Winterbottom.

What looked like a malicious act of bastardry by van Gisbergen on television turned out to have nuances revealed by onboard data and in-car video recorders. They were enough for SVG’s penalty to be restricted to 25 points, which isn’t even the maximum that can be imposed.

There were no nuances as far as Reynolds was concerned, telling van Gisbergen “you’re dead to me bro”. The Bottle-O Falcon driver never really recovered his composure after that and was 319 points off the pace by the end of the weekend and almost certain to finish third overall in the championship.

While by far his best-ever result, this will not be a year Reynolds will look back on without mixed feelings considering the ‘pussywagon’ calamity at Bathurst and the confirmation soon after he would not be retained by Prodrive for 2016.

The other championship up for grabs in Sydney will be the teams title that decides pitlane position. Prodrive has led this for most of the year, but with Winterbottom unable to score a podium since Bathurst and injured teammate Chaz Mostert out of the game since the same race, a resurgent Red Bull has closed to within just 71 points.

It should snatch its fifth consecutive teams title in Sydney, given Lowndes and Whincup have clearly regained confidence in their formerly recalcitrant Commodores and – barring an incident – should handily outscore Winterbottom and Steve Owen – who stands in for Mostert stand-in Cam Waters, who is focussed on winning the Dunlop development series.

Just an aside on Mostert. Despite not contesting a race since Sandown in September, the young gun is now unbeatable for the pole position award in 2015. That gives you an idea how much speed Prodrive is missing right now.

Speed and reliability have been missing from the factory Volvos for much of 2015, so it was great to see McLaughlin back where he belongs at the front of the field at Phillip Island, although he was not quite able to snatch his first win of the season in the Wilson Security GRM S60. His best shot came on Sunday in the 200km mini marathon, but when Lowndes pipped him into turn one as he exited his second and final pit stop he couldn’t challenge again.

Instead we had to look back to Winterbottom and Whincup for the door-banging action in the race, which came on the very last lap as Whincup drove on to the grass on the inside of MG Corner to snatch third place. While Prodrive management got upset and asked for a review, Winterbottom never regarded it as anything more than a racing incident. And that’s how it was judged by officialdom too.

This was one of few truly exciting moments in a weekend of predominantly processional racing. Phillip Island is a conundrum for the V8s, which are rarely able to turn on door-to-door racing at the circuit. Thankfully, we saw the last of the epically boring 60km sprints on Saturday. Next year they will be replaced by a single 120km race with compulsory tyres change.

Among the supporting cast the Nissans showed good form at Phillip Island and it was the carsales.com.au Altima of Todd Kelly that led home brother Rick (Jack Daniel’s Nissan) in fifth and sixth place on Sunday. A third Nissan driven by James Moffat finished eighth, but it was Michael Caruso who was the fastest of them all and could have threatened for a podium if not for a mandatory drive-through penalty after his wheels were spotted spinning at a pit stop.

For others it was not such a good weekend; Brad Jones Racing was never a contender, nor were the four Walkinshaw Racing cars including the two factory Holden Racing Team entries.

With WR’s confirmation it is cutting back to running just the two HRT entries from 2016 following our story on Friday, the focus for James Courtney and Garth Tander was on testing and development.

Testing and development was also the name of the game for Super Black racing, Erebus and Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport, where substitute drivers took over from the usual steers for a variety of reasons. In the case of LDM it was illness, with a blood infection ending Nick Percat’s weekend after Friday practice.

Paul Dumbrell, who these days only ventures out for the enduros with Jamie Whincup, stepped into the Commodore owned by his younger brother from Saturday and did a typically professional job.