The question everyone was asking before the start of this year’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 was: can anyone stop TeamVodafone’s Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup from claiming their third Great Race victory in a row?

After just over six hours of racing the answer to that question was a firm ‘no’, as the pair remain the only men to ever get their hands on the Peter Brock Memorial trophy.

Whincup took the lead of the 161-lap race after swapping with Lowndes at the team’s first pit stop and the pair never really looked like losing the race from that point on.

It was superior pace and fuel economy that saw the #888 Falcon dominate the race for Ford.

“Three years in a row; I couldn’t believe it. It’s amazing; the car has been fantastic all weekend,” Lowndes said about the hattrick.

“You couldn’t dream of it.”

Whincup said winning the Great Race “means everything” to him.

“To go three in a row; I just don’t know how to explain it… to win this race three times in a row is pretty special; I feel greedy in a way,” he said.

“The team gave us an awesome car and we had Lowndesy to bring it home…“

He indicated that the victory would help ease the pain of losing last month’s L&H 500 at Phillip Island after being in a winning position.

“I was quite shattered after Phillip Island… to throw it away with 10 laps to go was disappointing but this certainly makes up for that,” he said.

The three-peat emulates the Holden hattricks of Peter Brock and Larry Perkins (1982-1984) and Peter Brock and Jim Richards (1978-1980).

Meanwhile, Sprint Gas Racing’s Greg Murphy and Jason Richards drove a brilliant race to charge to second place.

It was the second year in a row that they were the best Holden combination, after finishing fourth behind the all-Ford podium at last year’s Great Race.

Murph chased down Steve Richards – who was sharing the #6 FPR Falcon with Mark Winterbottom – in the dying laps and passed the Castrol Falcon driver on lap 157.

The Kiwi set his fastest time on lap 159 as he chased the Triple Eight Falcon, but unfortunately he ran out of laps.

Ford fans held their collective breaths on lap 157 when the Bottle-O Commodore of Tony D’Alberto smacked the wall at Griffins Bend, which could have brought out a safety car and allowed Murphy to close the three-second gap to Lowndes, but the green Holden was able to rejoin the race under its own steam.

However, even had a safety car been deployed Murph may not of had the pace to pass Lowndes as he was struggling with both engine dramas and a lack of fuel in the last two laps, which forced him to switch to his reserve tanks and nurse the #3 Commodore home.

The Sprint Gas team fought back from a near disaster on the opening lap when Murphy and Lowndes collided. The incident bent the steering of the #3 Commodore and forced Murph in for an unscheduled early pit stop.

“I was a bit p****d about the incident at the start of the race to be honest; it damaged the car. We ran with a bent steering arm for 161 laps,” Murphy said.

“I have seen the vision of it and I am not overly stoked with it, but that’s the way it goes.”

Jeld-Wen Falcon drivers James Courtney and David Besnard finished third after Courtney drove a fantastic final half of the race, fighting back from an error of judgement by Besnard early in the race.

Besnard misdiagnosed delaminating tyres as a broken anti-roll bar, which saw the team make what turned out to be unnecessary changes to the setup of the #4 Falcon.

Before that error Courtney had been making the early running in the race and seemed to have the pace to match the Triple Eight Falcon.

Courtney took third place from Steven Richards – who appeared to be struggling with fading rear tyres – on lap 158.

The Jeld-Wen Falcon driver set the fastest time of the race of 2min 09.2775sec on lap 139.

It was the third year in a row that Courtney and Besnard have been on the podium after the pair finished second in 2007 and third in 2006.

Pole-sitter and Championship-leader going into the Bathurst 1000, Garth Tander, fluffed the start of the race when his clutch failed in the #1 Holden Racing Team Commodore off the line and was lucky not to get hit by the ensuing field (see separate story).

He and teammate Mark Skaife tried hard to fight back during the race, but Skaife clouted the wall on lap 102 at Forrest’s Elbow, ending any chance the pair had of race victory and surrendering Tander’s Championship lead (see separate article).

Tander has slipped to third in the Championship, with Whincup snatching the lead. Winterbottom has moved into second.

The first half of the race was relatively incident free with no safety cars in the opening 73 laps; however, there were eight in the second half of the race.

A number of teams also struggled throughout the day with delaminating tyres.

Fourth home was the #6 FPR Falcon, followed by WOW Racing’s Brad Jones and Max Wilson, Jim Beam Racing’s Will Davison and Steve Johnson, FPR’s Luke Youlden and Dean Canto, Jack Daniel’s Racing’s Jack Perkins and Nathan Pretty, Fujitsu Racing’s Jason Bright and Adam Macrow and Glenford’s Racing’s Fabian Coulthard and Alex Davison.

The victory was Lowndes’ fourth, which sees him join Murphy and Allan Moffat, who also have four Great Race trophies on their mantelpieces.

The Ford victory is also the first time that the Blue Oval has won three Bathurst 1000s in a row since the 1960s.

The next round of the Championship is at Surfers Paradise in two weeks.

How is this site news and updates?

There is an official Bathurst thread already.

Bloody moderators.

Its a bit retarded where happy is. usually when he's excited about the latest news headline, it's already ancient news to the rest of us FM modders.

multiple threads is ok by me due to ford winning especialy with the hat trick... Had it been a holden win... would not be interested...

oi u do realise that 2 mods are from wa...

pete BAN him

No one else had put an announcement up on the front page, still some bable about electric cars. If you guys feel the V8 win at Bathurst isn't worthy of front page news I can put the battery mobile back

that pic above desearves front page status... !!!!! and a small write up..

Hahaha, it would of been joyous replies all round if the server didn't go down on sunday. LOL

oh frank... shut up!

Go LOWNDSY!!!


Could be the next "king of the mountain"

I'm on it.

good man

Frank, I'm leaving friday morning and I'm going to come over there and loosen a bolt of your wheelchair. LOL