Will Davison resisted huge pressure from Mark Winterbottom and Jamie Whincup to take his second victory of the day in the weekend's third V8 Supercars race at Barbagallo.
The race turned on a safety car period that decided all the teams' strategies, and resulted in most of the field having to run much longer than they would have wanted to on the soft tires.
In the opening stint, those on softs flew forward. Polesitter Whincup (Triple Eight Holden) established an early six-second lead over fellow soft runner Winterbottom (Ford Performance Racing), while Brad Jones Holden man Jason Bright used the softs to surge through from 16th on the grid to third, ahead of top hard tire user Davison in the second FPR car.
A collision between Taz Douglas and Tony D'Alberto then prompted a safety car on lap 14, with pit stops for the whole field in a confusing pit sequence that saw controversy over whether the pace car picked up the correct cars at the right time.
The outcome was that Whincup, Winterbottom and Bright led the field at the restart, all on hard tires with a queue of drivers on faster softs behind them, led by Davison and Tekno's Michael Patrizi (up from a pre-pit stop 11th), but with all the soft runners knowing that 33 racing laps on the less durable rubber would be tough.
It did not take long for Davison and Patrizi to blast into first and second places ahead of Whincup and Winterbottom, while Bright drifted further back. But as expected, coming into the closing stages the drivers on hard tires were in much better shape.
Whincup and Winterbottom got past Patrizi with six laps to go and set off after Davison, closing up to his tail on lap 48 of 50. The reigning champion threw everything he had at his 2012 title rival, but Davison was able to hang on, and as Whincup focused on trying to take the lead, Winterbottom was able to sneak through into second at the very last corner to make it another FPR 1-2in a top three covered by just half a second.
Bright regained ground as others' soft tires wilted too and finished just behind the three leaders. Patrizi hung on for an impressive fifth.
Whincup's teammate Craig Lowndes fell from second to fourth off the line, then lost out badly in the safety car confusion and dropped to 15th, before recovering to sixth.