J-Dub tears apart the field in NZ
TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup and his rocketship Commodore blasted the competition at the ITM400 Hamilton, racking up another two victories for the 2010 V8 season. The XXXX Gold Driver Ambassador now has six wins from eight races to his name and is the only driver to hit a four digit figure in the Championship points standings, leaving the rest of the field for dust.
Pic: J-Dub & GT battled it out on the streets of Hamilton.
Credit: Justin Deeley
Whincup scored pole position for the Saturday race at the ITM400 Hamilton and while fellow Commodore driver Garth Tander scooped pole from Whincup by a mere six one hundredths for the Sunday race, J-Dub took the lead early on in the 200 kilometre battle and finished six seconds ahead. Despite concerns in the lead-up to the event that cash-strapped Kiwis suffering in the midst of an economic downturn would not patronise the New Zealand event, they turned out in droves. Sadly, although the Kiwi V8 drivers put in a strong showing on the Friday practice, they couldn’t step up when it counted on home soil.
Young Shane van Gisbergen copped a rap on the knuckles for a profanity-laden outburst over his radio on Sunday during qualifying when his Falcon could not deliver the goods for a result in his mother country. And while Fabian Coulthard also had a number of setbacks over the course of the weekend, his Bundaberg Red Racing team distributed masks printed with the Kiwi’s face and urged fans to ‘get your Fabian face on’. There was a huge uptake of fans that took the challenge and Coulthard’s face was spotted all around the Hamilton street circuit. Some of the Aussie drivers also had their fair share of bad luck. Karl Reindler was supposed to be celebrating his 25th birthday on Sunday but the power steering in his Commodore failed early on in the 59 lap race and instead he suffered a tortuous day at the office. Despite wearing gloves, Reindler’s hands were a mess at the end of the day, marked with plenty of blisters, not to mention how sore his arm muscles were.
The weekend finished with controversy after three Falcons, including Mark Winterbottom’s #5 Orrcon Steel one, was excluded from the Sunday race because the left and right brake rotors were fitted on the opposite sides of the cars. This changes the way the airflow hits the brakes, which can be deemed to give an advantage, and Frosty now sits third in the Championship instead of second. Whincup’s two victories on the weekend means Holden has won nine out of 10 times the V8 Supercars have visited New Zealand, and it was J-Dub that achieved Ford’s sole win last year.
