DOUBLE TROUBLE

Mark Winterbottom staked his claim for the 2015 V8 Supercars championship title with back- to- back victories at the Townsville 400 on the weekend.

FROSTY BITES

TOWNSVILLE could have been a whole lot worse for Red Bull Racing Australia. As Mark Winterbottom extended his championship lead by blitzing the field in his Ford, Red Bull dug their heels in and salvaged a bag of points on a day when they did not deserve them.

Once again Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes lacked the speed to win races, but a typically dogged effort in the pits gave them the strategy to finish fifth ( Whincup) and ninth ( Lowndes).

It was a remarkable effort considering Lowndes was battling for last on the 16th lap.

Red Bull Racing Australia boss Roland Dane could have been apocalyptic after staunch rivals Prodrive Racing Australia dominated again, but he almost managed a smile after a salvage effort saw Lowndes reclaim second place in the championship.

“I was happy everyone worked Dane said.

“The teamwork was fantastic today. Jamie’s team and Craig’s team, as well as the respective drivers, did a great job under difficult circumstances.

“But we shouldn’t have been in the position that we were, but we had to try and get something out of it.

“We had to play the safety cars to our advantage and it wasn’t bad. We may have been able to push harder in the end but we didn’t dare, to be honest. We had a rough Sunday in Darwin when we were quick but didn’t bring anything back and the rest of the weekend hadn’t been flash here.’’

Red Bull Racing are clearly in a rut.

But they are a team that like to be challenged and right now they have one that just happens to be their biggest yet.

“There is an awful lot of water to go under the bridge,’’ Dane said.

“We will wait and see what happens and we are working very hard to try and ensure we have the equipment for the drivers to use. If some of the stuff works that we are doing, then hopefully we will be in a better position in the second half of the year.’’

The team’s problem is pace. with how together,’’

They struggled over the weekend, especially on the hard tyre, and whatever changes they made did not seem to work.

Dane admitted that they failed to unlock genuine speed.

“We didn’t really find any,’’ he said.

“We tried some things, some of which gave us a little, but we aren’t interested in coming fifth. We took some risks and they didn’t all come off.’’