Fabian Coulthard led home DJR Team Penske team-mate Scott McLaughlin in a drama-filled opening heat at the CrownBet Darwin Triple Crown.

The championship leader made the most of an early pit stop and a Safety Car interruption to jump to the lead in a race littered with incidents.

The pattern of the race was turned on its head when early leader and pole-sitter Rick Kelly crashed on lap 18 of 42, bringing out the Safety Car.

Shane van Gisbergen, who started fifth, suffered a puncture just prior while leading ahead of his mandatory pit stop.

The sister DJRTP Falcon of Scott McLaughlin managed to recover from a mistake that saw him drop from second to sixth in the opening laps to come back to finish second.

Brad Jones Racing’s Nick Percat claimed the final spot on the podium from Jamie Whincup and Prodrive’s Chaz Mostert.

Coulthard’s third win of the year has seen him open up a 34 point lead over Whincup.

Van Gisbergen has dropped 187 points adrift after he retired following a late collision involving Garth Tander and Jason Bright.

It proved to be a frantic start as Kelly saw off a challenge from the fast starting David Reynolds, who leapt from fourth to second briefly, before sliding behind McLaughlin into third.

There was plenty of bumping behind with Mark Winterbottom and Dale Wood pitched into a spin at Turn 1 after being caught in a squeeze with Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Garth Tander.

Further contact was to follow when Mobil 1 HSV racing’s James Courtney turned Todd Kelly’s Nissan around at Turn 14, while Michael Caruso spun trying to avoid his team-mate.

Stewards issued a 15-second time penalty for Courtney who was also involved in contact two laps later with Macauley Jones that ended with the latter spinning on the start/finish straight.

Meanwhile, the biggest movers proved to be Craig Lowndes and Tander who climbed to 14th and 15th positions from 18th and 20th respectively.

The action continued at the front as McLaughlin tried to pass Kelly around the outside for the lead but made a mistake and ran wide onto the grass at Turn 1 in the process.

This dropped the Kiwi to sixth, as Reynolds, Coulthard, van Gisbergen and Mostert followed through.

Coulthard was the first the lead group to duck into the pits on lap 5, which sparked a flurry of pit stops, including the leaders Kelly and his immediate pursuers apart from Reynolds, van Gisbergen and Mostert.

This gave Reynolds the lead but it was short-lived as van Gisbergen slid by to move to the front.

However, the complexion of the race changed on lap 18 when the Safety Car was called for early leader Rick Kelly, who found the wall at Turn 10 after suffering a stuck throttle.

Just moments earlier van Gisbergen suffered a right rear puncture, forcing him from the lead into the pits. He would stop again due to damage caused by the tyre failure.

The majority of the field elected to pits under he Safety Car headed by new leader Reynolds but a slow stop saw him rejoin in 11th.

Coulthard assumed the lead from Nick Percat and Tim Slade courtesy of their early pit stops and clear air running.

Fourth-placed McLaughlin made the most of the restart to jump Slade and Percat to second behind his team-mate Coulthard.

Slade, however, was the big loser as he lost eight spots in a lap as he dropped to 11th position.

McLaughlin began to set his sights on Coulthard closing the gap to 0.3s as the race reached the final 10 laps.

The action continued right up until the final laps when van Gisbergen tagged Tander, resulting in further contact with Bright, forcing the former out of the race.

Prior to that wildcard runner Jack Le Brocq found the side of Simona de Silvestro, spinning the factory Nissan.

At the front, Coulthard held his nerve at them to take the chequered flag from McLaughlin and Percat.

The top 10 was completed by Cameron Waters, Lowndes and Reynolds, who scythed from 11th to eighth, while Moffat was ninth ahead of Lee Holdsworth.

Result: Virgin Australia Supercars Championship CrownBet Darwin Triple Crown Race 11

Championship points