Having led the way through qualifying, Mark Winterbottom produced a dominant display to give Ford Performance Racing victory in the opening race of the V8 Supercar Championship weekend in Bahrain.
In a repeat of the victory enjoyed by Jason Bright last season, Winterbottom was easily the quickest man around the desert circuit, with his quickest lap of the race being some seven tenths quicker than anybody else.
Having maintained his lead off the line, the 26-year-old pulled away and took the flag with a lead of over seven seconds from new points leader Garth Tander.
"The car was awesome today, Winterbottom reflected. I could cruise around and not even work up a sweat because it was braking well, turning well, we really tuned it perfectly for this race. The grip levels were better than during qualifying which is why we were able to lap faster in the race. The track is slower than last year so our set-up was quite different to last year, but our base set-up has been great since we first rolled the car out."
It was a different story however for team-mate Steve Richards, who had climbed up to 13th place before a collision with Lee Holdsworth forced him to make an unscheduled pit-stop.
Having also been given a drive-through penalty for the incident, Richards had to settle for 25th place at the finish.
"My qualifying result didn't help us today, he said. When you start the race in the middle of it you are more susceptible and after getting off to a stong start I got caught up in a concertina effect at the re-start and dived out of the way only to run into Lee Holdsworth. This damaged the car and shredded a tyre, the team did well to fix that and then the drive through penalty kept me at the rear of the field."
![Mark Winterbottom - Ford Performance Racing [Pic credit: FPR]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393812.jpg)
