"To turn this around to potentially a race winning team within six months they (the team) should be congratulated. You are not a solo flyer in this game. There are a lot of people in the background making my life easier. It was a gamble in a lot of areas. We are sneaking up on it, not trying to make too much noise and flying under the radar until we get this thing sorted out.
"Being the first Holden team (today) is a bonus but we are not content with that. We have got further to go yet so this all blends well for the rest of the year. And the other good thing is that this is not once in a blue moon thing, we are always competitive."
While all the talk centred around Courtney and Ingall, Winterbottom quietly chipped away and again extended his Championship lead. He was close to making a move on Courtney but just did not get a window of opportunity.
"I didn’t give up because if I did Russell would have been on top of me," he said. "James didn’t make a mistake. I tried to keep pressure on him the whole time and he stayed on. When he does that you can’t do much more.
"Coming here we thought that if we could survive we are doing well but we’ve done even better than that and almost fighting for a win. In 12 months people are keep saying how much our cars have turned around and we’ve done a lot of hard work.
"Our weak tracks are not becoming strong so I can’t wait to get to our strong tracks."
Courtney held on with all he had in the closing five laps as Winterbottom threatened. Courtney started to wobble ever so slightly as his first race win got closer and closer. All the time Ingall was also creeping closer to the pair as the front battle raged.
Further down the order meanwhile Garth Tander finished fourth, followed by his Toll Holden Racing team-mate, Mark Skaife.
"I had a really good start and our pace early was encouraging, but tyre life was a bit of an issue late in the race so I needed to back off a little to look after them for tomorrow," Tander reflected.
