Lowndes: "We dodged a bullet"

Craig Lowndes has set himself the goal of bouncing back to the front of the pack in the next round of the V8 Supercars Championship in New Zealand after admitting he “dodged a bullet” in last weekend’s Winton 400.

The Red Bull Racing Australia Holden Commodore VF driver went into the event with a 70 point lead in the Championship over teammate Jamie Whincup and exited with a 28 point buffer over Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom.

Lowndes could only finish eighth, 16th and seventh in the two 100km and single 200km races that made up the Winton Super Sprint round. But five time and defending V8 Supercars Champion Whincup also struggled for pace.

Lowndes was also aided by the drive through penalty applied to Lockwood Racing’s Fabian Coulthard when he appeared set to finish no worse than second in the 200km Race Nine and potentially challenge for the Championship points lead. Unusually, four other drivers also received drive throughs for pitlane speeding, including front-running Volvo ace Scott McLaughlin.

“I think we dodged a bullet in a lot of ways,” Lowndes told v8supercars.com.au. “Fabian getting a drive-through penalty helped us. A lot of cars having drive-through penalties was unusual.

“But yeah, we may have dodged a bullet but we know we still have to find more speed.”

After their dominant display the previous weekend at the Tyrepower Tasmania 400, where Whincup took all three ARMOR ALL Pole Positions and he and Lowndes shared the Symmons Plains Super Sprint wins between them, the RBRA crew were back in the pack at Winton, unable to get the outright performance or enough life from the Dunlop soft tyre.

“It’s funny how in Tassie everyone was saying how good we are, how we are dominating and we can’t be beaten … and we come to Winton and it all changes again,” remarked Lowndes.

“I think it’s proven the Championship is very much alive and it’s going to be a rough year for any team and car to get consistently going throughout the season and being fast.”

The Championship now heads to New Zealand on April 24-27 for the ITM 500 Auckland at the Pukekohe circuit. Last year, Lowndes had mediocre results there and knows he cannot afford to have that happen again if he wants to stay on course for his first Championship since 1999.

“I think last year I didn’t quite have the car pace I would have liked,” Lowndes admitted. “Jamie did. We will definitely learn from that and we will go on with that. But we definitely need to bounce back.

“We have a good foundation. We have a good baseline, and when we have issues like this or problems like this we dig deep and we will analyse all this once we get home.

“We haven’t been able to analyse Tasmania yet, so we will go home and have a big debrief of both rounds; one good one and one bad one. So it’s a matter of we will do what we need to do so we make sure we go to New Zealand in the best frame.

“We know we have good car speed, we know the cars are fast, we just have to get it right.”

At this early stage of the Championship, with only three of 14 rounds completed, Lowndes said he wasn’t watching the points score too closely. But he admitted he was enjoying sitting on top.

“The gap has closed but I am delighted we are still leading the Championship, there is no doubt about that.

“But it wouldn’t have mattered to me if we were 28 points in front or 28 points behind. We need to go to New Zealand and the rest of the year with the frame of mind that we keep pushing hard, being smart when we can’t win, score maximum points as much as we can, lick the wounds and get on with it.”

Lowndes announced last week he would be jetting to Europe in July (after the Townsville 500) for the Spa 24 Hour endurance race, in an AF Corse-prepared Ferrari 458. He last raced at the world-renowned circuit in F3000 in 1997.