Strategy key for Frosty and Lowndes

they strive to recover from poor results in qualifying for today's 200km race at the Sydney Motorsport Park SuperSprint.

Winterbottom qualified only 12th in his Prodrive Racing Australia-prepared Pepsi Max Ford Falcon FG II, while Lowndes languished even further back in 19th in his Red Bull Holden Commodore VF.

Winterbottom leads the championship from teammate Chaz Mostert - who qualified third today - by 267 points in the championship, while Lowndes is a further nine points back.

PRA team principal Tim Edwards told v8supercars.com.au the team might time Winterbottom's pit stop early in the race to get him out of the midfield and into clean air, with a top five finish still the aim.

"We always have multiple strategy options and they are all dependant on different strategy circumstances," he said. "When you qualify where we did then that means we might not take the strategy that would have played out if he had qualified on the front row."

Edwards said Winterbottom's best sector times in his two flying laps qualifying were good enough to have put him on pole, but he was unable to cleanly execute either lap. He said Winterbottom's issues today were unrelated to his eighth place qualifying for Saturday's second race.

"Yesterday we didn't quite have the car setup right. That was a soft tyre qualifying and we didn't make the change we needed to make, so the car wasn't quite right."

Meanwhile, Lowndes blamed a gamble on set-up for his issues.

"We made change overnight and because we went straight into qualifying it was hard to go back on that change, so we had to live with what we had," Lowndes explained. "We probably didn't do the best lap for me, but it's just the way it is."

While Lowndes acknowledged that not taking advantage of Winterbottom's issues was not helping his championship chase, he said he could only focus on his own performance.

"We will probably be more aggressive in our race strategy than if we were up front.

"We just have to be mindful of what we are doing and not worry about what they (PRA) are doing," he added.