Six-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup has won his first Bathurst 12-hour, holding out Shane van Gisbergen in a dramatic finish to the endurance race.

Whincup, along with Ferrari teammates Craig Lowndes and Finland’s Toni Vilander, finished the race a lap clear of the rest of the field after van Gisbergen crashed his Mercedes with 20 minutes to go.

It ended a thrilling day-long battle between the two teams, and earned the ire of van Gisbergen’s German co-driver Maro Engel.

“It’s not motorsport in my book,” Engel told Channel 7.

“I’ve got to watch out what I’m saying but all I’ve seen this weekend is a lot of mistakes from Shane.”

Reigning supercars champion van Gisbergen led Whincup out of the pits with 40 minutes remaining, before the latter put a wheel in the dirt to take the lead.

Trying to chase his Red Bull Supercars teammate down, he collected backmarker Andrew McPherson’s Porsche with 31 minutes remaining, prompting a safety car and drive-through penalty.

However the sanction was never served, after he lost control heading into the dipper and put the car into the wall, destroying the car’s radiator and ending his race.

“I just stuffed up,” Van Gisbergen said.

“I ended up in the wall and wrecked the car. Sorry to the team and sorry to my teammates, it’s not the way we wanted to finish.”

He said he would meet with Engel after the race.

“I’ll go and apologise to him. It’s my mistake, I’ll be angry at myself.”

Whincup’s dramatic win comes in his first attempt at the endurance race, and just four months after he was denied in an appeal to attempt to win last year’s Bathurst 1000.

It also marked Lowndes’ second endurance victory on Mt Panorama in four years in the Maranello.

Competition Motorsport’s four-man Porsche team of David Calvert-Jones, Patrick Long, Marc Lieb and Matt Campbell finished second, while Steven Kane, Oliver Jarvis and Guy Smith were third in the Bentley.