25 years on: Lowndes escapes Calder rollover
This week marked the 25th anniversary of the accident that injured Craig Lowndes in 1999, which has since become a key chapter of the legend's racing career.
Just after the start of the second sprint at Calder Park on July 25, 1999, Lowndes was hit and sent into a violent series of rolls.
Lowndes suffered a knee injury in crash, but returned to clinch the championship, the third and final title of his Supercars career.
The backstory
By the time the V8 circus arrived at Calder, then Holden Racing Team star Lowndes had built a big points lead.
At Calder, Lowndes won the first sprint, his ninth win in 20 starts in '99, and started from the pole for Race 2.
HRT teammate Mark Skaife had also won six races through the first 20 starts, and loomed as Lowndes' only threat to the title.
Lowndes and Skaife shared the front row, with Jason Bright, Russell Ingall, Garth Tander, Neil Crompton, John Bowe and Steven Richards behind.
The crash
Lowndes made a poor start, and as cars collided around him, he was tapped and sent into a spectacular roll over.
The #1 HRT Commodore flew through the air and into an embankment, before coming to rest on its roof.
Naturally, Lowndes was out of action when the field reformed for the restart. Richards was also a non-starter, having powered from eighth on the grid before being caught up in the crash. Crompton was also sidelined, with his Falcon hit by Tander amid the chaos.
The rivals' response
Speaking on the Rewind podcast in 2022, Lowndes labelled the crash a “bad rollercoaster ride," saying: "I put my right leg onto the brake pedal… that was me basically bracing myself.
"Thankfully, at that point, HRT and the category had started to look at more safety elements. I didn’t know where I was going… I remember all the sparks coming off the car.
"I put my hands on my helmet to protect my neck, because we didn’t have a HANS device. Then I started to barrel roll… it was like a bad rollercoaster ride, because I didn’t know where I was going."
Crompton and Tander, among others, famously parked their cars and ran to Lowndes’ aid.
In the Rewind podcast, Crompton recounted: "He was as white as a ghost. I knew he’d actually been hurt, but it was more about whether he’d been gravely hurt and needed serious intervention.
"It's hard to detach the emotion… it is warfare out there, but there is a degree of religious camaraderie. We’d happily chop off each other’s fingers to steal a trophy, but there’s also a strange level of respect when it comes to looking after your brethren."
The recovery
Lowndes suffered a bruised elbow and torn ligaments in his left knee, which resulted in arthroscopic surgery. However, a stoic Lowndes returned to the track in a knee brace.
Skaife, through Craig Kelly, referred Lowndes to orthopaedic surgeon Julian Feller. As Lowndes recovered from surgery, enduro partner Cameron McConville subbed in at Symmons Plains, before the reigning champ returned at Winton.
"[Feller] put his hand on the inside of my left knee, the other hand on the outside of my ankle, and could move it almost three to four inches," Lowndes said.
"The pain that shot through my body… he said, 'You’ve done some damage'.
"I went against the team and got [surgery] done that afternoon. I thought, 'Bugger it, in 30 years' time, I’m going to be thankful I made this decision'."
The bounce-back
Lowndes returned at Winton, but finished 16th, seventh and fifth.
"First race back after the accident was Winton and right through to practice, qualifying and the first race I was a just a little bit uneasy," he told Supercars.com in the years after the crash.
"Having other cars around me, contact and everything else, so I struggled at the beginning of the weekend.
"As the weekend went on I got a little bit more comfortable, and by the end of the week I was back to my normal self.
"We went on to obviously win the championship – for me that was one of the memorable ones because of all the things going on with the accident, rehab, and everything."
The seeds of the comeback were sown at Winton, with Lowndes fighting through nerves to eventually deliver the results needed to win the championship.
At the next round at Oran Park, Skaife led Lowndes in three consecutive HRT one-two finishes. After finishing third with McConville at the Queensland Raceway enduro, Lowndes sealed the title with second at the Great Race, capping one of the great comebacks in Australian sport, let alone Supercars.
