Slade rocks Winton

It took Tim Slade 10 years to win his first Supercars race – and 24 hours to win his second.

That was the amazing story to come out of the weekend at the Winton SuperSprint, with the Freightliner Racing driver claiming both chequered flags at the country Victoria venue.

The 30-year-old won Saturday’s race by more than four seconds from Scott McLaughlin, before storming home to beat Mark Winterbottom by almost seven seconds on the newly re-surfaced track yesterday.

A strategy-fuelled 200km race meant it was a guessing game mid-race as to whether Slade would lead the field after his final stop. But in another engineering masterstroke from the Brad Jones Racing team, Slade pulled out of pit lane ahead of 2015 champion Winterbottom and continued to build his lead, which stretched out to 6.68 seconds.

“... 226 starts, two (wins) in one weekend, pole and quickest in practice,” an ecstatic Slade said. “I hope this isn’t a dream … and I don’t wake up.”

A second-placed finish was like a win for Prodrive Racing Australia’s Winterbottom, who takes the championship lead after a solid weekend at his team’s test track. Winterbottom finished third on Saturday.

Fabian Coulthard was pleased with his recovery to take out third after a challenging afternoon yesterday.

After flying off the line the DJR Team Penske driver’s start was under investigation, but he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Shane van Gisbergen and Cameron Waters rounded out the top five.