Red Bull Racing Australia have done the clean sweep in Tasmania for the second consecutive season, Craig claiming his third pole position of the weekend and Jamie taking the race win.
The 200km race got off to a rocky start as the No.888 Holden made contact with David Reynolds in Car 55, turning him around and landing Lowndesy with a drive through penalty. This handed JDub the race lead and the reigning champion never looked to waver, despite having been off the pace all weekend.
“I wasn’t expecting to be standing on the top step of the podium this weekend, but I’m absolutely thrilled,” Jamie said.
“We haven’t had a bad weekend, my car hasn’t been that flash on the hard tyre, but the strategy was good, the pit stops were good and there were no artificial safety cars so we were able to race right until the end.
“It’s a huge shame not to see Lowndesy get the hat-trick and his 100 race wins, so hopefully that’s not far around the corner.
“It’s still early days, we’re not really thinking about the championship at this point, but it’s nice to be at the pointy end.”
His win today puts Jamie on 91 career wins, ahead of Mark Skaife and firmly in second place on the all-time winners’ list, while Craig is gunning for the incredible feat of his 100th win.
“We had good car pace today,” Lowndesy said afterwards. “I think that the disappointing part was obviously the start when I had contact with David Reynolds and received a drive through penalty, but we managed to recover and get going, which for us was a great result.
“I’m gutted because of the car speed to we had today, we could have at least stood on the podium. You’d think that we could have been on the top step, but now we’re into a break and we’ll move onto the Perth round, which is another track that I really enjoy and I’m looking forward to getting up there and seeing if we can get that 100th win.”
A below-average Clipsal 500 is now well and truly behind the team with the Drivers and Teams Championship leads now in the bag – for the moment. Jamie sits in first place on 483 points ahead of James Courtney with 464 points, who has Lowndesy breathing down his neck in third on 460 points.
The V8 Supercars championship now takes a month-long break as we prepare to head west for the Perth SuperSprint round at Barbagallo Raceway.
