» V8s: Whincup equals Skaife win record

Reigning V8 Supercars Championship-winner Jamie Whincup has drawn equal with Mark Skaife’s tally of 90 race wins with victory in the 2015 season’s opening race at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.

The Red Bull Racing driver qualified on pole with a record-breaking lap and led the race from start to finish. While it may have sounded like a dominant performance, he still had to withstand serious pressure from Prodrive Racing’s Chaz Mostert, who turned up the blowtorch after a late Safety Car interruption.

The final Safety Car was triggered by two events: Will Davison was forced to park his Erebus Motorsport Mercedes with an engine failure, while the same lap also saw contact between Andre Heimgartner and Dale Wood, which saw the former spinning and collecting fellow rookie Ash Walsh.

That left a last=lap sprint for race honours, which Whincup was able to survive despite the attentions of Mostert. The top-ten runners crossed the line covered by four seconds.

Fabian Coulthard wasn’t able to convert his front row start into victory, with the Brad Jones Racing Holden driver losing his second place to Mostert during the race’s pit stop sequence. The Kiwi still managed to cross the line in third place, earning his first ever podium finish on the street circuit.

Fourth place went to Craig Lowndes in the second Red Bull Racing Holden; the series veteran made four spots from his eighth-placed starting position. Mark Winterbottom finished fifth in the second Prodrive Ford ahead of Shane van Gisbergen’s TEKNO Holden, with the New Zealander making up five places from his eleventh-placed grid slot.

Seventh to tenth positions were claimed by all four Walkinshaw-stabled Holdens. Garth Tander led the way from Tim Slade and Lee Holdsworth, while James Courtney was left to rue a botched pit stop that saw him lose four placed courtesy of a slow right-rear tyre change.

Scott McLaughlin had a nightmare start to his season, failing to even take the start of the race when an oil pump failed on the warm-up lap. The resulting oil spewing onto his front tyres pitched the young Kiwi into a spin, leaving his mechanics with a frantic scramble to install a replacement engine into his Volvo S60 before the start of Race 2 later in the day, from which he will start on the front row.

2015 V8 Supercars Clipsal 500 Adelaide – Race 1 (33 laps):

	Driver	Team / Entry	Laps	Result
1.	Jamie Whincup	Red Bull Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	48:28.749
2.	Chaz Mostert	Pepsi Max Crew Prodrive / Ford Falcon FG X	33	+ 0.857
3.	Fabian Coulthard	Brad Jones Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 1.252
4.	Craig Lowndes	Red Bull Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 1.464
5.	Mark Winterbottom	Pepsi Max Crew Prodrive / Ford Falcon FG X	33	+ 1.978
6.	Shane van Gisbergen	Team TEKNO Darrell Lea / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 2.501
7.	Garth Tander	Holden Racing Team / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 3.018
8.	Tim Slade	Walkinshaw Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 3.294
9.	Lee Holdsworth	CS Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 3.871
10.	James Courtney	Holden Racing Team / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 4.120
11.	James Moffat	Nissan Motorsport / Nissan Altima L33	33	+ 4.595
12.	Jason Bright	Brad Jones Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 5.152
13.	David Reynolds	The Bottle-O Racing Team / Ford Falcon FG	33	+ 5.702
14.	Todd Kelly	Nissan Motorsport / Nissan Altima L33	33	+ 5.952
15.	Rick Kelly	Nissan Motorsport / Nissan Altima L33	33	+ 6.429
16.	Marcos Ambrose	DJR Team Penske / Ford Falcon FG X	33	+ 7.145
17.	David Wall	Wilson Security Racing Polestar GRM / Volvo S60	33	+ 8.611
18.	Nick Percat	Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 9.364
19.	Tim Blanchard	Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 10.142
20.	Ashley Walsh	Erebus Motorsport V8 / Mercedes E63 AMG	33	+ 10.345
21.	Michael Caruso	Nissan Motorsport / Nissan Altima L33	33	+ 10.663
22.	Dale Wood	Brad Jones Racing / Holden Commodore VF	33	+ 31.526
23.	Andre Heimgartner	Super Black Racing / Ford Falcon FG	32	– 1 lap
	Not Classified	Team / Entry	Laps	Result
DNF.	Will Davison	Erebus Motorsport V8 / Mercedes E63 AMG	28	Engine
DNS.	Scott McLaughlin	Wilson Security Racing Polestar GRM / Volvo S60	0	Oil Pump