The Red Bull Racing Australia driver completed the 74 laps in a time of two hours, two minutes and 28.2244 seconds to collect an all-important 150 championship points.
Whincup now has a total of 2965 points heading into the season-ending Race 36 on Sunday and crucially now has a virtually insurmountable 110-point lead over his nearest rival, and team-mate, Craig Lowndes (2855) who could only manage a 15th-place finish on Saturday.
Lowndes headed into the weekend just 20 points in arrears of Whincup, but his championship hopes took a devastating blow when he finished almost 16 seconds behind Whincup in Race 35 in a time of 2:02:44.0437.
Lowndes now needs to outscore Whincup by an unlikely 111 points on Sunday to claim his fourth title.
To put the enormity of that task into perspective, if Lowndes wins Race 36 he would then need Whincup to finish no better than 22nd.
Meanwhile, the other two mathematical aspirants of the 2013 title heading into the weekend, Pepsi Max Crew FPR Ford pair Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison, officially had their faint hopes of glory extinguished on Saturday.
Winterbottom did not finish and Davison (2:02:34.0093) ended up fifth but both are now too far behind Whincup on the overall standings.
Davison (third on 2703 points) and Winterbottom (fourth on 2691) now trail Whincup by 262 and 274 points respectively and third is now the highest position they can finish the season in.
Jonathon Webb of the TEKNO Team Darrell Lea team finished Saturday's race in second position after clocking 2:02:30.0154, TEKNO Team VIP Petfoods' Shane Van Gisbergen (2:02:31.9986) was third and Team BOC driver Jason Bright (2:02:32.7279) ensured Holden cars filled the top four spots.
The 36th and final race of the V8 Supercars season begins on Sunday at 3:05pm (AEDT).