Race
Whincup began with one of the best starts in the events history, starting 25th and leading the race by lap 22, after a tactical play by Red Bull engineer Mark Dutton to have him start the race against the co-drivers, giving the car to his co-driver Dumbrell with a lap long lead. [2]
Lap 45, Luke Youlden hit a kangaroo at 200 km/h that jumped on the track, hitting the driver's side door that left the car damaged, to the point that the door could not be opened. [2] Youlden's incident with the kangaroo bought out the safety car as a precaution, checking that there were not any more kangaroos near the track, whilst also removing the dead kangaroo from the track. [2] Unfortunately for Brad Jones Racing it was not the only incident that occurred during the lap, with Dale Wood ignoring the safety car yellow and running into the back of the third BJR car, driven by Jason Bright, ruling both cars out of the race. [2] This left Coulthard/Youlden as the only BJR car still in the race. [9]
After resurfacing the track prior to the race, the road at Griffins Bend began to open up, with three crashes being caused. [2] Race direction ordered a red flag to fix the track surface, making it safe to drive through the corner. [2] It was the first time in the history of the race that a red flag did not end the race, as not enough laps had been run to determine a winner, with teams joking about supplying 'half-time' oranges to the teams. Whincup revealed in 2018 he fell asleep in the Red Bull motorhome during the stoppage, being asleep for an hour and a half before a team member woke him up to start again. Controversy was ridden throughout the stoppage, as teams who had damage to their cars were allowed to fix and repair, despite it being in the rules, many of the leading teams called it an unfair advantage, which would affect the race's final result. [2]
Driving the same car that was damaged in the Sandown 500 two weeks prior, Holdsworth was again totalled by circumstances out of his control, as Ingall tried to pass Todd Kelly he unintentionally tagged Holdsworth with the car rolling onto its roof. [2]
By 4pm, the safety car nearly had to be deployed when a kid's rugby league football somehow made its way onto Conrod Straight, luckily an official was able to run onto the track and retrieve the ball while there were no cars near the area of the track. [2] [9]
Within the last hour, Van Gisbergen had built a large lead over the rest of the field, going in for one last pit stop before finishing the end of the race, when the car turned off and would not start up in the pits. [9]
By the last hour of the race, four cars from two different teams emerged as the leading pack, with Whincup and Lowndes from Red Bull Racing and Winterbottom and Mostert from Ford Performance Racing. After Lowndes was given a drive-through penalty for spinning Winterbottom, it left Whincup and Mostert at the lead of the race, with Whincup dangerously low on fuel and Mostert behind him by over two seconds. [9] [10] Despite his team warning him to conserve fuel, Whincup chose to ignore team orders, continuing to push on until two laps to go when it became apparent that he was not going to make it, while Mostert was still two seconds behind by the middle of the lap 160 was told by his team to stop conserving and catch Whincup, lapping two seconds quicker as a result. [10] When passing Griffens Bend on the final lap, Mostert squeezed Whincup's lead to 0.289 seconds. Mostert attempted to pass Whincup at Skyline, however Whincup took the racing line leading to the two nearly tagging each other, with Mostert pulling back at the Dipper waiting for another attempt at Forrests Elbow. [10] Mostert tricked Whincup, performing a criss-cross move that allowed him to pass on the inside racing line, blistering ahead on Conrod Straight as Whincup ran out of fuel at the same time as Mostert's pass. [10] During this time Moffat, then in third place was able to pass Whincup at The Chase, while Mostert drove to an unprecedented victory, only leading one lap during the race and executing the first last lap pass in the events history. [10] To add to his disappointment, Whincup was also passed by Percat after The Chase and Will Davison on the front straight, finishing fifth as a result. [10]
In an unprecedented moment, the first and second placed cars had both crashed during the race, all ironically at Griffins Bend, with the Mostert/Morris car came as a result of the track breakup, while the Moffat/Douglas car crashed once because of the track breakup and once in a collision with Jack Perkins. This made the Percat/Gavin car the rare honour of being the only podium finishing car that did not have any damage by race end. [2]
