Having fallen 124 points behind the championship lead, Mark Winterbottom is promising to ‘go all out’ at Sydney Olympic Park’s season finale.
The Ford driver lost a total of 42 points to new championship leader Jamie Whincup across the Phillip Island weekend, despite out-qualifying the Red Bull driver for all three races.
Winterbottom’s charge was hampered by contact with Craig Lowndes in Saturday’s Race 32 and with Shane van Gisbergen at the opening corner of Race 33.
The 32-year-old says he’ll further ramp up his aggression in his attempts to win both races and the maximum 300 points at Homebush.
“There’s not much pressure on me now, I can just go there and go all out,” he said of the championship equation, which sees Lowndes just 20 points behind Whincup.
“I don’t have to just get points, I’ll be there to have a big crack and dive in gaps. That’s what I’m going to do.
“Both of those guys (Whincup and Lowndes) have got to race each other because 20 points could go pretty easily.
“There has to be a point where they’re going to have to start focussing on each other, there’s no doubt.
“For me I just go there trying to race and go hard.”
Winterbottom admitted he was disappointed not to achieve more out of the Phillip Island weekend given his qualifying speed.
“When you qualify pole twice and third and I thought we’d come away with some good points,” he said.
“The races just didn’t fall our way, but with two poles we’ve got a quick car which at Homebush we can use to qualify well and get track position.
“Our race pace here wasn’t as good as our qualifying pace but you get the points you can get.
“There was a bit of contact out there so the car actually came home ok and thankfully got points.
“We could have easily been off the track several times over the weekend.
“Van Giz (in a Triple Eight customer car) was on mission and he just dive-bombed like there was no tomorrow,” he added.
“I’ll try and rev my blokes (team-mates) up and do their bit for me in a couple of weeks time.”
Winterbottom’s team-mate Will Davison will head to Sydney as a remote chance of the title after falling 233 points from the pace with a tough run of his own at Phillip Island.
