Saturday Sleuthing: Craig's FPR Island winner
Todayon Saturday Sleuthing we're gearing up for next weekend's Plus Fitness Phillip Island 400 by profiling the car that recorded a special win on the 'Island back in 2003.
Our car in focus today is the Caterpillar BA Falcon which Craig Lowndes drove to Ford Performance Racing's first ever race and round win - in only the team's second Championship appearance.
The series visited the seaside circuit in April that year for a single 300-kilometre, 67-lap race, which was the second round of the Championship. Under threatening skies, a dramatic afternoon unfolded...
The field was headed by an all-Holden Racing Team front row of Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly with Lowndes qualifying sixth. On lap one, the then-Ford hero moved to fifth in a wild three-wide moment between Marcos Ambrose and Greg Murphy through the high-speed Turn 3.
Skaife comfortably led the first half of the race until he was handed a drive-through penalty for speeding in pit lane, which brought the Team Brock Commodore of Jason Bright into the lead.
Showers hit towards the closing stages and well-timed pit strategy put Bright in the box seat to win, until he made contact trying to pass a struggling, slick-tyred Ambrose who himself was trying to turn into the pit entry.
The incident sent Ambrose spinning, left Bright with damaged steering and gave Lowndes the race lead! The torrential conditions meant the race was soon brought under Safety Car and eventually red-flagged - 14 laps short of full distance - with Lowndes declared the winner.
So bad were the conditions that no traditional podium presentation took place with the place-getters handed their trophies and sponsor caps at the media conference in the much drier media room!
It was a slightly fortuitous victory, but it went down in history as the new factory Ford team's first, and Lowndes' first round win for Ford (he had won two races for Gibson Motorsport in 2001, but not an overall round).
It was also the three-time champion's only race and round win for FPR, who would then have to endure three disappointing years before winning again in V8 Supercars, by which time Lowndes had left for the Brisbane-based Triple Eight Race Engineering.
But what happened to Lowndes' Phillip Island winner from that murky day?
The car Lowndes drove that day was FPR BA01, the second BA Falcon chassis ever built (the first was the Prototype chassis unveiled at Bathurst in 2002 and driven by Dick Johnson).
Build work commenced in late 2002 at Peter Beehag's On Track Engineering factory in Queensland, before Glenn Seton Racing took delivery of the 'in-progress' chassis late in 2002.
GSR was bought out by Prodrive at the beginning of 2003 and morphed into FPR, meaning this chassis was part of the end and beginning of two historic eras for Ford in V8 Supercars.
Lowndes debuted it as the #6 Falcon in the non-championship Australian Grand Prix event in Melbourne and raced it in CAT colours at all rounds in 2003. Seton himself joined Lowndes for the endurance races and the pair finished second at Bathurst behind Kmart's Greg Murphy and Rick Kelly.
Lowndes moved into a new chassis for 2004 so this car was rebuilt and passed on to Seton, who raced it as the #5 Ford Credit Falcon from the AGP meeting until the Winton round of the Championship.
This car sat on the sidelines for the remainder of 2004 and, after an off-season overhaul, became Jason Bright's first FPR Falcon when he joined the squad in 2005.
Bright joined FPR as a driver during this time while also starting his own team, Britek Motorsport. The 1998 Bathurst winner raced this BA01 car in CAT colours from the AGP meeting until he moved into a new chassis for the Sandown 500.
FPR sold this car as a rolling chassis in early 2006 to Tony Evangelou, who raced it in that year's Development Series with Dexion backing.
Evangelou also made a one-off appearance in the season-ending V8 Supercar Championship round at Phillip Island, competing under the Racing Entitlements Contract unable to be used by Team Kiwi Racing at the time.
Evangelou's ANT Racing team ran current Supercheap Auto Racing star Tim Slade in this car for the opening rounds of the 2007 Development Series at Adelaide and Wakefield Park before Luke Youlden stepped in from the Queensland Raceway round with new yellow HPM Electrical colours for the rest of the season.
Youlden used the car to win the Bathurst round of that year's DVS in dominant fashion though the car then moved back to an idle state.
Evangelou himself rolled this chassis out again in a plain red livery for the DVS round at Sandown in 2008 - and then Bathurst was its last V8 Supercar race.
It lay idle until 2010 when Evangelou drove it to win the third-tier Kumho V8 Touring Car Series, which is run as part of the Shannons Nationals calendar.
Soon after this success, Evangelou sold the car to Ken Coppin in Western Australia, who still owns it today.
This chassis is one of a growing number of former V8 Supercars that are not only living on over in the West, but are still active on track.
Coppin has returned FPR BA01 to its original CAT livery as raced by Lowndes in 2003, and competes against a range of other ex-V8 Supercars and GT cars at Perth's Barbagallo Raceway in a category known as Super GT, which supported this year's V8 Supercar event in Western Australia.
The first-ever FPR Falcon - and race winner - may not have enjoyed the success that many of its more recent counterparts have, but it is an important car in the history of one of the sport's biggest teams.
Better still, it's still going strong today.
Many thanks to Greg Ross too for use of his images of the Ken Coppin-owned, FPR/Lowndes Falcon - greatly appreciated!
Saturday Sleuthing will take a rest next weekend for the Plus Fitness Phillip Island 400 but will return to the V8 Supercar website on November 22.
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