Whincup wins to stretch points lead-294

Jamie Whincup further extended his points tally by claiming the first V8 Supercars race of the weekend at Ipswich's Queensland Raceway.

The championship leader made a quick getaway from pole before the biggest talking point of the race occurred behind him.

Going into Turn 3 for the first time, Triple 8 teammate Craig Lowndes had been on a charge from fifth on the grid and pulled off what appeared to be an overly aggressive move on third-placed Mark Winterbottom.

Lowndes looked poised to displace the FPR Ford driver, but he ran too hot into the corner and nudged Winterbottom into an unsuspecting Fabian Coulthard, who was punted off the circuit and lost several positions. The incident is under investigation.

The head of the field ran line astern up to the half-time interval, with Whincup and Scott McLaughlin maintaining their starting positions, and Lowndes and Winterbottom third and fourth respectively.

The front-runners slotted back into their positions after the mid-race restart, but this time around Whincup was forced to hold off a charging McLaughlin who harassed the race-leader until the checkered flag, the gap between the pair never more than a second.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Winterbottom finally managed to exchange places with Lowndes on lap 27 to take the final podium position.

James Courtney crossed the line fifth after a fairly muted race, followed by Will Davison and Jason Bright.

Garth Tander filtered his way from 19th on the grid to claim eighth, while Coulthard could not make similar progress through the pack and was mired in the midfield after the first-lap incident. He finished 11th.