Craig Lowndes has claimed another V8 Supercar Championship is still within reach despite a qualifying hiccup that dealt a blow to his hopes against TeamVodafone team-mate Jamie Whincup today.
For the second day in a row Whincup oozed control with another win at the Falken Tasmania Challenge, extending his Championship lead ever so slightly to 194 points. Ford Performance Racing pair Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom were second and third.
Having qualified mid-pack in 15th Lowndes had a huge fight on his hands on the super-short Symmons Plains track but battled his way back to fifth. It was a brave fight.
“We had to get back into the top six to stay in touch with Jamie. We managed fifth which was good. We just missed that one element which was qualifying,” Lowndes said.
“Every race that goes by it is getting harder and harder (to catch Whincup). We want to close the gap not extend it. It was hard work for us. We will still keep fighting, it’s not over yet.”
Whincup, too, is watching his back.
“No way (is it over) – what have we got, 600 points to go and the gap is less than 200,” said Whincup. “We need to keep our head down for as long as we can. We are going to be one or two but two would be fairly devastating.”
Lowndes’ poor qualifying set the early tone today. With Whincup on the front row and Lowndes back in 15th qualifying was a big moment in the great Championship picture.
“We had two sets of green tyres, the first run we got caught up in traffic and in the second run we had some clean air but I didn’t put the lap together. I didn’t do the job right and we suffered the consequences,” Lowndes explained.
As a result Lowndes’ team had to try everything to claw their way back in the race.
Would Lowndes need to gamble? He did. Lowndes came in after just 18 laps for his first stop to try to take him on strategy. As if they were enemies Whincup’s team responded almost instantly, pulling in soon after.
What difference did it make? With a few laps by himself Lowndes moved up into effectively sixth place and back in it. A mistake by Dumbrell after his first stop then handed Whincup a comfortable lead.
Dumbrell made an error on cold tyres coming out of the pits and effectively hampered Winterbottom and Davison, leaving Whincup to pull a gap. There were some hairy moments for Whincup throughout the race.
At one stage as he was battling traffic he almost lost control at the final turn in what could have been a nasty outcome. All the time Lowndes was plugging away safely in the top ten but still not close enough to catch his team-mate.
“There was a lot of dirt on the track and I was on the radio complaining about blue flags – pretty much everything about everything but me keeping my thing on the track,” Whincup said.
The Championship moves to the Norton 360 Sandown Challenge in Melbourne in just four days time.
Cole Hitchcock | Media Manager | D +61 7 5630 0315
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