Mark Winterbottom

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Mark "Frosty" Winterbottom (born 20 May 1981) is an Australian professional racing driver.

He is currently competing in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, steering the No. 8 in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. Charlie Schwerkolt Racing is the 18th ZB Commodore.

His career highlights include winning the 2013 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 (with Steven Richards), twice winning the Sandown 500 (2006 and 2015) and receiving the Mike Kable Young Gun Award in 2003.

Winterbottom has also won his first championship title in the 2015 International V8 Supercar Championship, making it Ford's first title in five years.

Personal life

Jim Winterbottom, the son of the 1969 and 1974 Australian Sprint Car Champion and former chairman of the Sprintcar Control Council of Australia, is the son of Winterbottom. Winterbottom, a student at Doonside Technology High School, took up soccer from the age of six and by eleven, he was competing with a state-level squad (Blacktown United) in matches throughout New South Wales. At the age of 11, he decided to give up soccer to pursue his motor racing aspirations.

In the Australian release of the 2011 Pixar film Cars 2, Winterbottom was used as the voice of the character 'Frosty'. In 2011, he also appeared as a contestant on Season 3 of Seven Network's celebrity show Australia's Greatest Athlete.

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Early career

Winterbottom rode in his first motorcycle racing career, competing in club level 50 cc events, rising to the 80 cc class and competing in fields that included riders Anthony Gobert and Chad Reed. When he could choose between his soccer commitments, Winterbottom raced as he could. She raced a dirt Mini-Speed Car and took the NSW and ACT State Championships.

Winterbottom took part in his first kart race at Wollongong (NSW) and announced that he would continue racing karts to the age of 21. During his ascension into Australia's kart championships and 25 state Kart Championships, Winterbottom claimed ten Australian Kart Championships and 25 state Kart Championships. Six Clubman Light titles, three Junior National Lights titles, and one Junior Clubman title were among Winterbottom's national titles.

Winterbottom travelled to America on a family holiday in 1998 and heard of a big karting competition being held nearby, so a last-minute decision was made to rent a kart locally and compete. The Knoxville State Championship title race was then won by Winterbottom. He appeared on invitation in Japan in 1999 and 1999 in the Suzuka Champions Kart race.

In 2001, Winterbottom was named as the Australian Formula A Kart Champion (Rotax 125cc Class).

Winterbottom made his Formula Ford debut in the Victorian Formula Ford Championship in 2001. After winning four races out of six rounds and missing one round due to karting commitments, Winterbottom continued to runner-up honours. In the 2002 Australian Formula Ford Championship, he won the Ford Kart Stars Scholarship Championship, gaining a Ford-supported ride.

He finished second in the 2002 Australian Formula Ford Championship, with two round victories, five race victories, and two pole positions. Jamie Whincup, Winterbottom's current V8 Supercars competitor, won the championship. He was awarded the Avon Formula Ford Rookie of the Year Award in 2002.

Touring car career

In 2003, Winterbottom became the Konica V8 Supercar Series champion in his debut season. In an almost flawless season, Winterbottom rode with Ford team Stone Brothers Racing (SBR) to five round victories and six pole positions. Two of Winterbottom's race victories were won from a back-of-field reverse grid system. In the fifth round at Phillip Island, he missed out on a clean sweep of the series due to an engine failure.

With SBR, he also made his debut in the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000, delivering a BA Falcon with Mark Noske. At Sandown, Winterbottom and Noske finished 11th before qualifying 16th at the 2003 Bathurst 1000 and then finishing at third place with engine problems.

He was the recipient of the Mike Kable Young Gun Award.

Winterbottom was a member of Ford's Larkham Motor Sport (LMS) and participated in the 2004 and 2005 V8 Supercar championships. Highlights from his debut season include a fifth-place finish at Bathurst and a sixth-place finish at Sandown in 2004. At the Darwin round in 2005, Winterbottom's highest qualifying result was fifth. The low light was at the V8 Supercars China Round, in which Winterbottom avoided injury after a loose drain coat penetrated the chassis floor and fractured the driver's seat.

Winterbottom rode with Ford Performance Racing (FPR) as the pilot of the number 5 Ford Credit Falcon during the 2006 and 2007 V8 Supercar championship seasons. This was the continuation of Winterbottom's long association with Ford Australia, beginning with the karting ranks all the way to a lead role in Ford's major V8 Supercars team.

He earned second place overall round finishes at Pukekohe and Surfers Paradise, along with Jason Bright in co-driving at the 2006 Betta Electrical 500. Winterbottom had risen from 22nd to third place in the championship standings by the mid-season, with two more podium finishes at Symmons Plains Raceway and second on Phillip Island. Winterbottom won his first V8 Supercars sprint race on Phillip Island. Winterbottom had a third season in the Drivers' Championship, securing third place in the main V8 Supercar Series series for the third time this season.

Winterbottom finished fifth in the championship, with the highlight being his first solo V8 Supercars round at the Desert 400 in Bahrain, preserving FPR's undefeated run at the international level. Winterbottom also earned four pole positions, including his first pole position at Pukekohe Park, which was followed by poles at the Sandown 500, Bathurst 1000, and the Desert 400. These four poles enabled him to win the 2007 V8 Supercars Pole Award. When Winterbottom was not leading the 2007 Bathurst 1000, he was forced to finish late in the race. Winterbottom has been appointed as the pilot of the number 5 FPR Falcon for another three years by FPR.

At the BigPond 400 in Wanneroo, Western Australia, Winterbottom's highlight of 2008 was a dramatic round victory. In all three races, Winterbottom dominated pole position and won. At Queensland Raceway, Winterbottom was also a winner of the 2008 City of Ipswich 400. He placed second in the championship, just behind his former Formula Ford rival Whincup with further good results at Adelaide, Eastern Creek, Surfers Paradise, and Symmons Plains.

Winterbottom had a challenging season, finishing fifth in the championship, eight places ahead of teammate Steven Richards. His highlights included an event win at the Gold Coast 600 in New Zealand and pole positions for Race 3 of the championship at the Hamilton 400 in New Zealand, as well as race 5 at Winton Motor Raceway. On both occasions, he had troublesome races that resulted in little or no points for the championship. Winterbottom recovered from the challenges of race 5 to finish in second position in second place in race 6 at Winton. At the Australian Grand Prix, he also won a race in the V8 Supercar Challenge non-championship round.

In 2010, Winterbottom had a slim yet mathematical chance of winning the Sydney 500. However, a crash that also involved Whincup and James Courtney, ruled that Winterbottom would have been barred from the title race due to wet weather in the Saturday race.

In 2011, Winterbottom came in a distant third behind the Triple Eight Race Engineering cars in a distant third. He won twice at the Gold Coast 600 with international co-driver Richard Lyons and in the final race of the year at the Sydney 500.

With three race victories in the middle of the season, Winterbottom ended the season in third position. Winterbottom was in second place before the final round of the championship, but fell behind Craig Lowndes to finish third. The coveted Barry Sheene Medal for the best and fairest driver in the series was also awarded by Winterbottom.

On October 13th, Winterbottom and ex-teammate Steven Richards won the Bathurst 1000 together. However, Winterbottom was only able to finish fourth in the championship due to a poor start to the season, with three race wins. Will Davison, a teammate from FPR, finished third, just barely ahead of third in third, assisting in FPR's ascension to third place for the first time in the Teams' Championship.

Winterbottom's 2014 winterbottom began the season by winning the championship by 161 points after the 2014 Skycity Triple Crown in June. Despite high hopes of winning his first title, Winterbottom's campaign ended against the Triple Eight juggernaut. He did not win another race after the Darwin round. Winterbottom had a chance of going back-to-back in the competition until an incident involving Craig Lowndes resulted in him dropping back and then eventually finishing in fifth place. Winterbottom was second in 2012, second in second and out of reach, in the final round in Sydney. Shane van Gisbergen won the Sunday race, demoting Winterbottom to third place in the standings.

Prodrive Racing Australia (the new Ford Performance Racing brand, due to Ford's reduced help) debuted the Ford FG X Falcon in 2015, bringing immediate success, with Winterbottom winning four out of four races at the Australian Grand Prix, despite non-championship V8 Supercars Challenge. In the middle of the year's championship season, Winterbottom earned eight races, including a clean sweep of the 2015 Castrol Edge Townsville 400. Winterbottom took the lead in endurance events thanks to this. Winterbottom won his ninth game of the year at the 2015 Wilson Security Sandown 500 before finishing second in the 2015 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. Despite not winning a race after Sandown, Winterbottom maintained his first championship title in a showdown against Craig Lowndes in the final round of the Sydney 500.

Winterbottom's race was off to a slow start to his championship defense, with no one gaining a podium finish until the fifth race of the season at Symmons Plains. Winterbottom's first victory of the year was at the Perth SuperSprint, where he beat Scott McLaughlin by less than half a second. Winterbottom led the championship at two podiums in Winton before a bad weather in Darwin pushed him back in the standings. Solid results at Townsville and Queensland Raceway followed, placing Winterbottom third in the championship standings before the winter break. However, Winterbottom finished sixth in the championship in the second half of the season, with just one more race victory at the Auckland SuperSprint.

For the first time since moving to Ford Performance Racing in 2006, Winterbottom had a winless year. Highlights included podiums at the Phillip Island 500, Townsville 400, and Auckland SuperSprint, while the lowlight was crashing out of the Bathurst 1000 on the penultimate lap while battling for fifth place. For the second year in a row, Winterbottom earned sixth in the championship, but only after Craig Lowndes' late retirement at the season-ending Newcastle 500.

Prodrive Racing Australia was renamed to Tickford Racing in 2018, and Winterbottom started the year with a top-five finish at the Adelaide 500 before a pit lane penalty dropped him down the field in the Sunday race. His fortunes did not improve at Tickford Racing, which got off to a rocky start to the season before Winterbottom took home both his and Tickford Racing's first race podium of the year at Barbagallo. After 13 years with the team, Winterbottom was announced on November 1st that he would leave Tickford Racing at the end of the 2018 season. Despite a challenging final season for the team, in which he finished 12th in the championship, Winterbottom left the team with a record of 412 race starts, 38 poles, and 117 podiums.

Winterbottom revealed in 2019 that he will be heading to Team 18 in 2019, the first time he will have driven a Holden in his career.

Winterbottom debuted in the 2015 and 2015 seasons of the Stock Car Brasil championship, for Voxx Racing. He rode alongside Sérgio Jimenez to fourth place at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in 2014, but it wasn't until 2015 that he finished second with Marcos Gomes at the Autódromo Internacional Ayrton Senna that he finished fourth. Gomes won his first national championship title in 2015, just like Winterbottom. Despite starting from the back of the grid, Winterbottom returned to Brazil in 2018, finishing eleventh at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace.

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