A brace of second place finishes for James Courtney was good enough to secure second overall from the latest round of the V8 Supercar Championship in Bahrain.
Having taken sixth in the opening race of the weekend, the Stone Brothers Racing man made a good start in race two to jump ahead of team-mate Russell Ingall off the line and then took advantage of a coming together from Toll HSV pairing Rick Kelly and Garth Tander at the first corner to jump up to second place as others took avoiding action. Despite doing all he could, Courtney settled for second place as he proved unable to catch runaway leader Mark Winterbottom.
After jumping ahead of Winterbottom off the line, Courtney led the final race after a fantastic start but he was unable to hold off a fast finishing Craig Lowndes when the Team Vodafone driver exited the pits on new tyres on lap 17. However, the results were still good enough to ensure Courtney finished second behind Winterbottom in the round standings.
“We ran quite well all weekend; Mark was the pace setter,” he reflected. “To get a great start and get ahead of Mark in the last race and to be able to pull a gap on him was great for us. When Craig came out of the pits I knew that he would have very good tyres so I really couldn't fight too much. I hoped that once his tyres went off he might come back to me but that didn't happen.
“All year we have had good speed and it's just little things that don't go our way that have prevented us from getting podiums. SBR has had three in a row now so it's great to finally have things coming right and get the rewards. I thought that a round win could finally be on the cards today. We've been getting closer and closer. We may not always have the outright pace of some of the others but we have been racing really well. It's been driving me crazy seeing these guys on the top step; hopefully our turn is not far away.”
![Russell Ingall - Stone Brothers Racing [Pic credit: BAM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/395107.jpg)
