Winterbottom slams backmarker after late-race drama

The Prodrive Racing Australia driver was hot on the heels of teammate Cam Waters during a restart with 12 laps to go, which meant he was well in contention for a top six finish.

However the 2015 champion ran wide on the exit of Turn 2 while trying to barge past Rullo, who had found himself third in the train behind the Safety Car despite running well down the order.

The fracas shuffled Winterbottom way down the order, the Prodrive Ford ultimately coming home 13th.

Following the race Winterbottom didn't just take aim at Rullo, but also the new-for-2017 Superlicence system, implemented by the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, which is based on an age-limit of 18 and a points criteria spread over a number of categories outside of Supercars.

Rullo, 16, was given a dispensation to join the championship this year after failing to meet either the age or points requirements.

“They've got this licence criteria and it's just stupid, parking up on an apex with 20 cars coming at you,” said Winterbottom, following his run-in with Rullo today.

“It ruined my race. He's still a lap down, finishes last, it doesn't affect his day.

“We would have finished fifth or sixth where we were and then I got damage when I had to go around him on the marbles.

“In the race we were doing the quickest first and last sector so we were quite quick until the incident."

Team boss Tim Edwards added: “The incident with Rullo was disgraceful. His mistake cost ‘Frosty’ eight positions, pushed him wide and caused damage to the car. It's ridiculous; Frosty was driving wounded after that.”

Rullo fired back saying that he was “not too fussed” by Winterbottom’s comments, and that he couldn’t have done anything differently.

“I had the two Penske guys behind me, and I didn’t want to potentially wreck the finish of the race between the Penske and the Triple Eight guys,” he said.

“Then Waters snuck through as well, which put me off line going into Turn 2. There was another bunch of cars behind me, so I tried to run as narrow as I could on the inside. Frosty tried to go around the outside, and I think he got on the marbles and ran wide.

“For me I couldn’t have done anything differently. I just had to make the most of the position I was in. I let three cars through, and I can’t really do anything when he’s trying to go around the outside. That was his call, and none of the other guys had issues with me.

“I don’t think I could or would have done anything differently.”

Rullo added that the fact that the incident wasn’t investigated by the stewards was a clear sign that he did nothing wrong.

“The stewards and the officials didn’t seem to see any problems, so that says a lot,” he said.

“It’s one of those things that happened. He can blame but on whatever he wants, but you have good races and you have bad races. I didn’t have a particularly good race either, but I‘m not going to throw the blame on Simona [de Silvestro] for turning me around at the start. I just had a bad race.

“He called me out about it, but I’m not too fussed about it. I’m switched on enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Winterbottom has had run-ins with rookies in the past. In Perth last year Winterbottom was controversially passed by Erebus driver Aaren Russell, who un-lapped himself while Winterbottom was trying to protect a precarious lead on a risky two-stop strategy.

He was in the rookie wars again at Queensland Raceway two months later when he came across a slow-moving Kurt Kostecki on the apex of Turn 2 during qualifying, the fall-out of which played its role in the introduction of the Superlicence system for this season.