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Lowndes to Search for Qualifying Speed

08 Dec 2013
To beat Whincup in the Championship more ARMOR ALL Pole Positions are needed.
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Craig Lowndes will spend the summer in search of the qualifying speed he is convinced stands between him and claiming a fourth V8 Supercars Championship.

The Red Bull Racing Australia ace finished second in the Championship to teammate Jamie Whincup for the third year running after the brake dust settled on the Sydney NRMA Motoring & Services 500 at Sydney Olympic Park yesterday.

Whincup started the two 250km Races from pole and second place on the grid in his Holden Commodore VF, but Lowndes could only manage ninth and 10th starting positions, failing in his publicly stated ambition to start alongside or ahead of his teammate so he could race him for position.

Instead, while Whincup managed a first and third, Lowndes finished only 15th after being embroiled in a controversial incident with Pepsi Max FPR factory Ford driver Mark Winterbottom in race one, and then was fifth on Sunday.

Across the year Whincup claimed 13 ARMOR ALL Pole Positions to Lowndes’ one.

“I think we just weren’t fast enough,” Lowndes told v8supercars.com.au. “Jamie’s qualifying sped was outstanding and he was able to capitalise on that side of it.

“We have to pick that side of it up. I think we can do that, it’s just case of getting more confident with the car and setting it up right.

“This weekend we struggled (in qualifying). We had the ultimate pace but we just never put it together in a clean lap. That’s more me than the car.”

Lowndes went into the final event of the Championship just 20 points behind his teammate and rated it his best shot at the title since he won in 1999 for the Holden Racing Team. But in the end, the gap blew out to 128 points.

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“It is disappointing because we gave ourselves every opportunity to win another Championship, but we just weren’t fast enough to win on the weekend,” Lowndes said.

“Them’s the breaks, Jamie did a fantastic job all weekend. He drove smart, he drove fast and he drove clean, so he deserves the victory.

“We will regroup and see what 2014 brings. But this year has been a great year, I have achieved a lot of milestone including breaking the all-time winner’s record. So we have ticked some boxes but we haven’t quite ticked that last one.”

The good news for his legion of fans is that Lowndes says he is motivated rather than deterred by finishing runner-up, the fifth time he has claimed the position in his career.

“I think every year we are getting faster and wiser about how we do things,” he said. “You always learn and this year we have definitely done that. We put ourselves in the perfect position to win the Championship but it just wasn’t quite there.”

He also paid tribute to his crew, led by engineer Jeromy ‘JJ’ Moore, who delivered him a car in which he finished every race of the year, a feat matched by no other driver.

“Mr Consistency! That has to pay-off somewhere along the line because it is a long year, so we definitely ticked that box,” Lowndes said. “We finished every race, which is the first item on the agenda, but now we need speed.

“We work as team and I was really desperate to win another Championship, which would be JJ’s first. We have worked together a long time. The car hasn’t always been perfect, but 80 per cent of the time it’s been fantastic and we work very hard.

“The relationship between JJ and I hasn’t always been perfect, but this year we have bonded better and I think it will only get better for next year as well.”

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