Motorsport: Courtney happy after V8 win

Ford driver James Courtney voiced his relief after ending a horror 2009 run with victory in the second race of the Townsville 400 V8 Supercar event yesterday.

Courtney, widely tipped as a championship challenger at the start of this year, has endured plenty of tough luck after an off-season move to Dick Johnson Racing.

That run continued in Saturday's first race in Townsville when engine troubles forced him to retire when leading after seven laps. But the 29-year-old turned it all around in yesterday's 72-lap race of the 2.87km street circuit.

He grabbed the lead by emerging from the pit-lane ahead of championship leader Jamie Whincup during a mid-race safety car period and never looked back.

Whincup finished second to extend his championship lead but only just, with Holden Racing Team pair Garth Tander and Will Davison finishing third and fourth respectively.

The TeamVodafone Ford driver now has 1560 championship points, with Davison second on 1386 and Tander third on 1212.

A relieved Courtney said the positive result had been a long time coming.

"It's been a really tough start to the year, we've had everything that could go wrong, go wrong," he said.

"It's just great to be able to reward the guys with a win."

Courtney said his win in Townsville compared favourably with his first V8 Supercar victory at Queensland Raceway last year and while championship aspirations may be a forlorn hope, he had plenty left to achieve in 2009.

"Our focus is now 100 per cent on race wins and probably more so on Bathurst; I think with myself and Stevie (Johnson) we have a fantastic package."

While Whincup had been pushing hard to make it two wins from two races at Townsville, he was happy with a second place finish to slightly extend his standings lead.

"Second stop, we've got a new lollipop guy who is South African and he was saying "go" but I thought he was saying "no"," Whincup said of the pit-stop which gave Courtney the lead.

"I don't think we would have got out in front of James anyway and from there on in I was just pushing hard and trying to make him earn his result.

The race was relatively incident free but Stone Brothers Racing and Kelly Racing had double retirements due to engine troubles.

Also Holden veteran Russell Ingall was left fuming at Ford's Steven Richards after an incident early in the race.

"Richo wins the trophy for the worst driving in V8 Supercars," Ingall said.

"He nailed Murph [Greg Murphy] in Tasmania and he's done the same thing to me here.

"We were on for a top-five finish, beautiful, a great weekend, but he's destroyed it."

Ingall failed to finish the race while Richards was 20th.

- AAP