Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom ended Holden’s dominance in Perth with a clean sweep of round four of the V8 Supercar Championship Series, the BigPond 400, at Barbagallo Raceway at the weekend.

The V8 Supercars share equal-billing alongside the IndyCar Series at the Gold Coast Indy 300, October 23-26.

As it stands Winterbottom sits in third place in the V8 Supercar Championship Series behind Perth local Garth Tander, who with his second from the weekend was able to take the championship lead from former team-mate and HSV Dealer team’s Rick Kelly.

“I’ve always said that Perth was one step along the way,” said Winterbottom.

“We just tried to survive the first three events and fight while we can. You’ve got to make the most you can of each event and capitalise no matter how you might be travelling."

Winterbottom had the perfect package in Perth, doing what Tander did last year by winning all three races, illustrating the importance of a good qualifying result although TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup rebelled against the theory to come from a 22nd starting position to third for the round.

“I’ve never had a car that was that good," said Winterbottom.

"You could drive around for 50 laps, get out and feel great. Sometimes they just go this way for whatever reason. It happened in Bahrain last year and again here but with not much in between.”

Current Series Champion Tander was circumspect about his second and taking the Championship lead on a day when his team-mate Mark Skaife was forced onto the sidelines following damage incurred during an incident in race two.

Skaife’s day started badly with media speculation of a possible retirement and it got no better when he was involved in a skirmish with Steven Richards on the first lap of race two, ending in a heavy hit into the wall.

Skaife had been pushed wide by Tander from the start and ended up on the slippery side of the track in no-man’s land when he contacted with Richards. It all came back to a poor start that put Skaife in the bad position.

The next round of the V8 Supercar Championship will be held at Sandown Raceway, Melbourne on June 7-9, which will be round five of a 14 round championship that takes in two international rounds (NZ and Bahrain) as well as the Gold Coast Indy 300 in October.



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