Holden's Jamie Whincup showed he would again be the man to beat this year after winning Saturday night's second 200km race of the season-opening round of the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina circuit.
Whincup, racing in the Triple Eight Commodore for the first time after his team switched from Ford at the end of last season, powered home to complete a clean sweep of the round ahead of Mark Winterbottom while Shane Van Gisbergen claimed his first career podium finish in third place.
Pole-sitter Winterbottom made a slow start to race two to hand Whincup the early advantage until a poor pit stop midway through let Garth Tander grab the lead.
But just as he looked like stealing victory, Tander lost a wheel nut that put an end to any chance of finishing on the podium.
Despite his dominant weekend, two-time V8 Supercar champion Whincup said the victories were far from easy.
"Nothing is easy. Don't underestimate how competitive this championship is. The battle with Holden Racing Team only had a couple of tenths in it for most of the race so that was an intense battle," he said.
"It did relax a little bit at the end. But 200kms, you only need one mistake and you end up in the wall so you need to focus right to the end."
Winterbottom fell as far back as fifth after his poor start but clawed his way back through the field to finish with his second podium of the weekend.
"It was a pretty promising start to the season ... to campaign a new car on a new track and make the gains we did is real credit to the team," he said.
"As a driver I have to probably tune myself a little to the changes but that will come qucikly ... if we can continue the progress in Bahrain - which is a circuit that has been good to us in the past - then I think we should be able to come home looking pretty good."
Van Gisbergen, the youngest driver in the field, capped off an excellent weekend with a new lap record.
"I'm so excited to have finally got on the podium, this result has been a long time coming for me," he said.
"The car felt strong all day, I feel like we were better in qualifying and managed to stay out of trouble in the race which was the plan. I was telling myself to keep it together on the last few laps but when I crossed the line it just felt great to have finally finished on the podium."
It was also a good day for Jack Daniel's Racing's Rick Kelly, who piloted his Commodore to fourth spot to hold off a fast-finishing Craig Lowndes.
Brother Todd Kelly had a difficult time after being involved in three separate on-track incidents.
His chances were dashed early when caught up in an incident in the opening laps of the race.
Kelly was forced to make an additional pit stop after suffering a puncture to his front tyre following contact with Daniel Gaunt on the entry to the Corkscrew section, dropping him down a lap to eventually finish in 26th position.
"We had a tough start to the weekend and I'm really stoked that we managed to fight back to get a fourth," said Rick Kelly.
"We just need to keep trying to finish in the top five and top three to get points and momentum for the championship."
The second event of the series takes place in Bahrain next week.