My Island Home
His record is impressive at Phillip Island and despite finishing practice two 14th, Craig Lowndes is brimming with confidence for tomorrow.
With 11 wins to his name at the seaside circuit, Lowndes is an Island specialist. He won two of the three races at the circuit in November last year and topped the first practice session today at the WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint.
Keep your eyes on the TeamVortex Holden Commodore tomorrow – as Lowndes sits just 15 points behind Championship leader Will Davison in second.
The 41-year old described the day as productive and says his car is right where you’d want it for qualifying.
“I'm really happy – the car is nice and looks after its tyres, so I'm really positive for tomorrow,” Lowndes said.
“I feel that the setup we've got in the car right now is good for a green tyre run, but we never did a green tyre run today.
“The car is a little bit on edge, which is where you want it to be if you were heading into qualifying.
“I think we're in the right area with where we are and I'm quite happy with the development and how we've progressed over the course of today's two sessions.”
The weather cooled off in the second practice session, which the TeamVortex crew wasn’t quite prepared for.
“We, to be honest, sort of ran out of things to try. We were quite happy with the car, but I think the conditions caught us out a little bit, being cooler.
“The car feels nice, we've just got to find a bit more speed in these cooler conditions.”
The first session was key for Lowndes – he was half a second quicker than closest competitor Garth Tander and felt the team made progress throughout the hour.
“We made a lot of changes in practice one, we had a good set of tyres to put on and, of course, the car developed for it,” he said.
“It's been a really productive day. I think that we learnt a lot in the first session.”
Red Bull teammate Shane van Gisbergen was the quickest Triple Eight car in the second practice, with Fabian Coulthard splitting ‘SVG’ and record-breaking fast man Scott McLaughlin.
The V8 Supercars final practice session kicks off at 11.30pm local time.
