CRAIG Lowndes has an admirable habit of smiling whatever his race result but the occasion of his 98th and 99th career wins gave rise to a grin of Cheshire cat proportions.
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The popular Queenslander's perfect day set up the possibility of him recording a historic century at the same time as his country plays in a home cricket World Cup final.
But the Red Bull Racing driver was downplaying the prospect, just happy to pick up maximum points after leading home Mark Winterbottom (Pepsi Max Crew) and James Courtney (Holden Racing Team) in Race 4 of the series and then teammate Jamie Whincup and series leader Courtney in Race 5.
"It's been a great day and it's fantastic that it's all come together," Lowndes said.
"It's always nice when you come to this track where we know it's tight and tough and while it's not so much fun in the middle of the pack, when you're at the front it's really good."
In truth, the significance of Lowndes's impending milestone overshadowed the fact that both races were largely devoid of thrills.
The front three on the grid finished in the same order 25 laps later in both races.
Aside from Courtney and David Reynolds twice swapping positions and Andre Heimgartner causing a brief safety car interruption after overshooting the hairpin, the racing was predictably formulaic.
Indeed the only notable drama came between the races when Will Davison confronted Courtney over a multiple-car coming together which also occurred at the hairpin.
Accompanied by a conveniently-placed cameraman, Davison barged into Courtney's garage and remonstrated over the incident which denied him a possible podium finish.
Davison accused Courtney of picking on him, Courtney told Davison to "go and have a cry" and with so little on-track action to report, the watching media throng lapped it up.
"We are racing hard, he has got a little fired up. I just told him to look at the footage and get back to me. He is probably regretting a few things he said now and looks like a fool," said Courtney, who was subsequently cleared by race officials of any wrongdoing.
"Emotions are high. People say things they don't mean. It's racing. It's done and dusted so he can keep crying. Everyone wants to see passion. If everybody saw us as robots and no-one said anything it would be pretty boring.
"I thought it was funny. I think that made him even angrier that I was laughing it off."
Davison responded: "The arrogance on the bloke's just pathetic, I feel sorry for him.
"I seriously don't know what he was thinking. He's always just got to rub me up and he thinks it intimidates me but it's just a shame."
As their rivals squabbled, Red Bull continued its amazing record of winning 13 of the last 20 races at Symmons.
Whincup was largely untroubled in collecting his runner-up finish.
"We seem to get it right here at Symmons Plains, but we've been behind the eight ball with Car 1 all weekend, so it was nice to get in the window and have things start to make sense.
"The 1-2 is a great result for the team. We're not looking at championship points yet, just trying to go fast and win races. We'll reassess what happened today before the big 200km race tomorrow and see if we can be better."
The V8 Supercars will have a qualifying session at 11.55am today before the 84-lap Race 6 at 2pm.