08 May SOLID WEEKEND IN THE WEST
LAST MINUTE electrical dramas, being tagged into a spin, a deflating tyre and an unsuccessful chassis change in qualifying couldn’t deter Craig Lowndes from racing through the field from last to an impressive eighth in Sunday’s Race 8 of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship in Perth.
On Saturday Lowndes had moved the TeamVortex Commodore up two spots to seventh at Barbagallo Raceway in Race 7.
FRIDAY
- Craig 8th fastest in 1st practice
- Craig 6th fastest in 2nd practice
“It’s been a good day! We had two practice sessions, in the first one we ran through some changes we wanted to make and simulated a qualifying run, which gave us a good balance and direction for practice two. That session was really good, we had much better tyres and we really focused on getting a good qualifying car. We did that, but I’d still like a little bit more of a change to get the car that little bit nicer on a green tyre. All in all we’re really happy and really pleased with where we ended up. There’s no doubt it’s going to be a tough weekend on tyres, but it was a very positive day.”
SATURDAY
- Craig 24th fastest in Practice 3
- Craig qualifies 9th for Race 7
- Craig finishes 7th in Race 7
“We had one more practice session to finalise everything and we opted to do a race run. To do a 34-lap run around here on one set of tyres was pretty encouraging, it gave us a lot of confidence going into the race. In qualifying I made a few little mistakes and you only need to make a little mistake around here to make a big difference to where you start. Starting ninth wasn’t ideal, but it was good enough to stay out of trouble. In the race we had a good car, but we got caught in traffic early. We had an issue with the pit stop, which lost us a few seconds, but when we re-joined the car was really good. It was fast, looked after its tyres and once we got into clean air it was really quick. Finishing seventh from ninth was okay, we would have liked to be a bit further up, but that’s the way it goes.”
SUNDAY
- Craig qualifies 18th for Race 8
- Electrical dramas force rear of grid start Craig finishes 8th in Race 8
“It was a tough day. Qualifying didn’t go to plan, we made a change, but it unbalanced the car overall. At a track like this, a tenth of a second means a hell of a lot, as the lap time is under a minute.
“We should have started 18th but having electrical issues at the beginning of the race didn’t help us at all. I went to the back of the grid, stayed out of trouble, but (then) had an altercation coming into pit lane and I got turned around. Then we had a delaminated tyre, so we had it all going on!
“Credit to the boys – we had a great strategy, the car was working well and I couldn’t ask for any more to be honest. To fight our way from the back of the grid to the top 10 is a credit to the team that we didn’t give up and we kept fighting on.”