It's Down to Sydney

It's all down to the Sydney 500. The V8 Supercar title will be won or lost on the streets of Olympic Park in 12 days time – and there are four contenders, one of them chasing a fifth Championship.

Two more knife-edge races at the Sargent Security Phillip Island 360 today had all of the intrigue, edge of your seat racing and fight you could imagine and at the end of it all there are still four drivers in the hunt and two races left.

Red Bulls Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup appear in the box seat. The Pepsi Max Crew FPR pair of Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison are still amongst it.

Lowndes and Whincup dominated the majority of the second day of the Sargent Security weekend while Winterbottom and Davison hung in to take the battle to Sydney.

Lowndes won the first race of the day from Whincup while Winterbottom and Davison were seventh and eighth respectively. In race two Lowndes and Whincup seized the early advantage with Winterbottom in the mix from the front row of the grid.

Whincup now leads Lowndes by 20 points from being six points behind at the start of the weekend while Winterbottom is 124 points back and Davison 223 heading into the Sydney 500.

"I think it's on. It's no different this year. There's nothing in it," Whincup said.

"It's all going to come down to the last race. I think it's a good script and it's going to be a good battle. It's not just going to be the three of us out doing it easy, the other guys will all be in for a scrap.

"There's no margin really, we have all got an opportunity. It is so easy in Sydney to DNF or have a bad run. The three of us have got equal opportunity."

Lowndes has not won a title in 14 years amongst his record 93 race wins and multiple Bathurst titles; hoping this will end the Championship drought.

"We wouldn't go to Sydney if we didn't think we could win," he said.

"It's been quite an unbelievable season with different winners and you have also seen what's happened at different track. Going to Olympic Park it will be the same. It will be a bit of a lottery. We had a great run last year so let's see if we can do it again."

Winterbottom hopes that Whincup and Lowndes will out-fox each other in the season ender.

"There's not much pressure on me, I can just go all out. I don't have to protect points; I can have a big crack and dive in gaps which is what I am going to do. Both those guys have got to race each other because 20 points could go very easily," Winterbottom said.

"There has to be a point when they start focussing on each other. It's probably the best I've ever been going there. If Saturday works out there's going to be pressure on Sunday."

Whincup seized the advantage in race one during a frantic first 300 metres when the field converged at turn one and five-wide at insane speeds. How they managed to get through on cold tyres was a sight to be behold; and Whincup was the best of them all.

But the class of Lowndes prevailed as he worked back from eighth on the grid to battle through the field and ultimately pass Whincup for the lead in the closing laps.

In race two Whincup flew from fifth on the grid to second on the opening lap. Lowndes struggled with early balance, soon giving up the lead to his teammate and then second to Winterbottom.

The Sydney 500 runs at Olympic Park from December 5-7. Tickets are available through Ticketek for the grand finale.