19 Jun STRONG TOP TEN RESULTS IN DARWIN
Craig Lowndes drove the TeamVortex Commodore to a pair of strong top ten finishes in the latest round of the Virgin Australia Supercar Championship at Darwin’s Hidden Valley.
Despite qualifying down the field on Saturday, the result of being blocked by traffic, Craig underlined the pace of the Triple Eight-tended Holden in practice by driving through the field to seventh place.
And on Sunday, after qualifying strongly in the top 10, Craig ran to 6th position.
“After the frustrations of qualifying on Saturday, we had a really positive day on Sunday with our top ten pace and strong run. All in all it’s much better for the championship, now we can carry some momentum to Townsville.”
FRIDAY
- Very hot, sunny conditions
- Craig 2nd fastest in Practice 1
- Craig 3rd fastest in Practice 2
“It was a great day, everything we learnt at the Test Day last week is definitely coming to fruition. We rolled the car out here and it was 90 percent right and ever since then we’ve just been tweaking it, which is exactly what we want and need to do. We’re really happy so far with what the team has done. Obviously we want to try to be on pole position and win races, so we’re not finished yet. We’re pushing hard, but the gains that we’ve seen already this weekend are coming from the Test Day last week, which is what we really needed. Credit to the team, we just need to keep pushing on and seeing if we can get some results.”
SATURDAY
- Craig 4th fastest in Practice 3
- Craig qualifies 18th for Race 11
- Craig finishes 7th in Race 11
“We had great pace in the lead-in but didn’t get a run in qualifying, when we got bad traffic on our best lap. So we started 18th, had a good start and there was the usual chaos at the beginning. We just wanted to stay out of trouble, which we did, we opted to do an early stop, had great tyre life and the car was working a treat. There’s no doubt that what we did earlier on in the weekend with our practice and race runs definitely paid dividends. The guys also did a great job in the pit stop. We had a good battle at the end of that race with Dave Reynolds, but we managed to get by and come home in seventh, so it wasn’t a bad day.”
SUNDAY
- Craig qualifies 8th fastest ahead of Top Ten Shootout
- Craig is 9th in the Top Ten Shootout
- Craig finishes 6th in Race 12
“It was a really good day today, really positive. We learnt a lot from yesterday. To be in the top 10 to start with was one of our goals. The Top 10 Shootout didn’t quite go to plan, but it’s hard when you’ve got one lap to get it right. We dropped a spot, we started ninth. We had an okay start, we got pushed back a little bit at the beginning, but as the race went on our strategy was good. Car speed was really good. We made a small adjustment to the rear of the car at the last stop, which really helped the balance. It was a credit to the team because we didn’t lose any time with that.”