Winterbottom edges further clear

Winterbottom won races two and three after finishing second in race one to secure the overall round win from Holden`s Russell Ingall and Ford`s James Courtney.

The Ford Performance Racing driver now holds a 122-point lead over defending V8 champion Garth Tander in the series, with the Holden driver fourth this weekend.

Winterbottom was flawless, setting up his triumph by surviving a race two crash-fest to win the middle peg of the three-race sprint round.

He got the better of fellow Ford driver and race one winner Courtney off the grid and also won the battle of the pit stops.

Then Winterbottom held off Ingall at the start of race three and didn`t give anyone else a sniff to close out the victory.

Ingall, with a second and two thirds for the weekend, finished second overall to post his best result since moving to the Supercheap Auto team at the start of this season.

Stone Brothers Racing`s Courtney, with a win, a second and a sixth place, was third overall after posting his maiden V8 race victory.

But championship third-placed Jamie Whincup and fourth-placed Rick Kelly lost ground on Winterbottom and Tander this weekend.

Ford`s Whincup finished sixth for the weekend, while Kelly`s hopes took a huge dive as he failed to finish race two.

He got inadvertently caught up in a lap 10 tangle between Mark Skaife`s Holden and Steven Richards` Ford, and ploughed into a fence wrecking his Commodore.

Kelly recovered to finish 13th in race three but is now more than 370 points adrift of Winterbottom at the halfway mark of the season.

Kelly`s was one of two huge crashes during race two - preceded by a six-car prang on lap three.

Jason Bright locked a brake, punted fellow Ford driver Craig Lowndes off the track, and then mayhem erupted around them.

Bright`s car collected Marcus Marshall, Kayne Scott, Andrew Jones and Michael Patrizi - all sustaining varying degrees of damage and bringing the safety car out for five laps.