18 Jun DARWIN POINTS HAUL FOR LOWNDES
Craig Lowndes had a strong weekend in the Top End, with the Autobarn Lowndes Racing driver scoring a solid haul of points from Hidden Valley Raceway.
While qualifying wasn’t a strong point for the outfit, good race pace paved the way for the 888 Holden Commodore to move up the leader board in both races.
In Saturday’s sprint race, Craig progressed from 12th up to seventh, while on Sunday he moved forward from 16th to tenth.
“All-in-all, I’m happy with the weekend, there are a lot of positives to take away, and we scored some good points to add to the tally,” said Craig Lowndes.
After 16 races, Craig remains placed fourth in the 2018 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship standings.
FRIDAY
- Craig 7th fastest in Practice 1
- Craig 5th fastest in Practice 2
“It was a really positive day. I think that what we learnt in the test last week is really showing dividends at the moment, the car is working well. Practice one, we really worked on a baseline of where we needed to be for practice two and I think that in the second session we progressed that. The car is nice to drive, we’re looking for a little bit of rear at the moment. The front is mega! We’re really happy with the front, we’ve just got to get a little bit of rear and after that we should be good, but they’re all very positive signs.”
SATURDAY
- Craig 10th fastest in Practice 3
- Craig qualifies 12th for Race 15
- Craig finishes 7th in Race 15
“We’ve always had a good race car. I think today was all about trying to push forward and be aggressive on our strategy, which we were. We came in early and actually followed a few other cars in, which was probably a little bit surprising. Our tyre life was really good. We just got stuck behind Rick (Kelly) there for too long and of course, with the super soft tyre and that sort of situation, you use them up faster than you want to. We’re very pleased starting 12th to finish seventh. It’s good for our points, which is obviously what we want, but we’ve just got to work a bit harder for tomorrow, be in the top ten to start with and make progress. Credit to the team, we made a very fast race car.”
SUNDAY
- Craig qualifies 16th for Race 16
- Craig finishes 10th in Race 16
“It was another solid day for the points. We’re happy, we made progress with the car today. Qualifying this morning was really intense, I think we only just missed out on the top 10, but the race is where it mattered. We had a good strategy, the car was definitely improved and we had good tyre life. We thought that the safety car might have helped us in the end with fresher tyres, but I just couldn’t quite switch the tyre back on after the restart. Although we lost a spot we gained it back. To finish 10th is a pretty good day. We learnt a lot, we’ll move on to Townsville now and keep plugging away.”