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Joey Mawson took the Race 1 victory of the S5000 Championship at Winton Raceway, dominating a last-lap dash for the win.
The ACM Finance.com driver was under attack from pole-sitter James Golding after taking the lead at Turn 1 but bested the Garry Rogers Motorsport driver after a Safety Car restart to emerge victorious.
Golding had placed himself in top spot on the grid for Race 1 with his time of 1:17.073s.
Aaron Cameron went off and crashed at Turn 3 with seven minutes to go in Qualifying, meaning the session was Red Flagged and stopped.
This gave Golding pole for Race 1, whilst Mawson was second with 1:17.137s and Cameron’s time of 1:17.579s before his crash in the wall left him to take third.
Golding had the better start, but the reigning champion Mawson swooped around the outside of Turn 1 to take the lead.
The Garry Rogers Motorsport driver then went off the track at Turn 4 and lost two more positions on the same lap.
This let Cooper Webster and Cameron go through into second and third.
Golding moved back past Cameron into third on Lap 3 at Turn 3 to split the Team Valvoline GRM team-mates.
By Lap 5, Mawson had created a gap of 2.8s to his closest competitor.
Golding dived up the inside of the entry of Turn 3 on Lap 7 to take second place off Webster and mount his attack on Mawson.
By Lap 11, Golding had shrunk Mawson’s gap to less than a second.
The next lap saw Mark Rosser collide with the barriers after dropping his left tyres off the kerb on the exit of Turn 3. This brought out the Safety Car with four laps to go.
The Safety Car returned to the pits to allow for one final lap of racing and the dash for the lead saw Golding come out worse for wear as he came under attack from Cameron.
The two went wide at Turn 1 and re-joined the track with Cameron in fifth and Golding seventh.
This left Webster to take second and Blake Purdie to take the last step of the podium.
Race 2 for the S5000 Championship will begin tomorrow at 09:50 AEST.
The Shannons SpeedSeries action continues tomorrow from 09:30 AEST, live and ad-free on Stan Sport, and free for international viewers on Speedcafe.
