Lowndes aims for 101 and one

He's the first driver to win 100 V8 Supercar and touring car races, but Craig Lowndes has never taken victory in Townsville. And he knows breaking his duck this weekend would be a key step toward claiming his fourth Championship and first since 1999.

The 41-year old has won at every Australian circuit currently on the V8 Supercars championship schedule, but is winless at Reid Park. The other venue where he still registers donuts is Pukekohe in New Zealand.

Lowndes enters the July 10-12 Castrol Edge Townsville 400 running second in the drivers' Championship in his Red Bull Racing Australia Holden Commodore VF, 95 points behind Prodrive Racing Australia's Mark Winterbottom and his Pepsi Max Ford Falcon FG X.

He was also second to Winterbottom entering this event last year, but a calamitous run saw him drop to sixth exiting Reid Park.

His problems included a points penalty for hitting both Holden Racing Team cars at the start of the opening race, a crash and also being penalised back two positions from ARMOR ALL Pole Position on Sunday as a further penalty for his Saturday shenanigans. He then finished only 23rd on Sunday because of overheating issues.

And Lowndes agrees he never regained Championship momentum after that, finishing fourth in the tile chase as teammate Jamie Whincup motored on by for title number six.

"It is a circuit that will prove whether we are going to be in or out of this Championship," Lowndes told v8supercars in the build-up to the event.

"History shows we have struggled there. If you are going to be a championship contender you have to turn all those things around. I really enjoy Townsville, the style of track and everything else. It's just a matter of having the car right to extract everything out of it.

"We will go up there looking for that 101st win."

There is, no doubt, a huge level of support for Lowndes to win his fourth drivers' Championship and his first since his HRT days. And he has started 2015 in strong form, aligning with new engineer Grant 'Shippy' McPherson to claim three poles, three race wins and four other podiums.

Lowndes is clearly having a better run than Whincup, who languishes in eighth in the Championship, 286 points behind Winterbottom.

Lowndes has widely acknowledged the new perspective teaming with the former PRA engineer has given him this year. Importantly for Lowndes's Townsville performance, McPherson has a strong record at the hybrid circuit, having engineered Will Davison to victory there in 2013.

"Grant and I have sat down and discussed what we want to do and how we want to approach the weekend," confirmed Lowndes.

"Every track we go to he comes from a different background because of what he ran last year. But at the moment, between what we bring with a Triple Eight style of car and what Grant brings, I think in the mix of all that we have been able to extract the best out of the car.

"We know what we want to extract and achieve out of the weekend. It's just a matter of whether we can achieve that and if we can't win races we are just going to be focussing on maximising positions and points."

Meanwhile, Lowndes said he was relieved his 100th race win was finally achieved in Darwin last month, after sitting on 99 since Saturday in Tasmania.

"We can move on and think about the 101st win and not the 100th win," he said.

"Since Tassie we had been so close on many occasions to cracking the 100 without being able to get there. My mistake in Tassie on the Sunday, we had a tyre issue in Perth. It just wasn't meant to be at that point.

"So finally - and I don't know whether you call it fate or not - but to crack the 100th in the 888th race of V8 Supercars was terrific.

"I didn't think we had the speed to do it that day because of where we qualified, but of course with the incidents at turn one it just opened up the door for me to come through and from that point on I had a lot of things go my way ... for me it's been great to achieve that 100 wins."

Tune in to Inside Supercars tomorrow night at 7.30pm on FOX SPORTS 506 for more with Lowndes and Shane van Gisbergen, who feature on the panel with special guest Danny Green.

Click here for details on the TV broadcast across the Castrol EDGE Townsville 400.

The Castrol EDGE Townsville 400 will be shown on Saturday and Sunday on Channel TEN, with coverage beginning at 12pm and races LIVE from 4.15pm EST each day.

FOX SPORTS 506 will show the weekend in full kicking off on Friday and including all three practice sessions from 7am, as well as the weekend's qualifying and racing LIVE, starting at 7.30am on Saturday and 7.55am on Sunday.