Today’s 200km mini-marathon at the Sydney Motorsport Park 400 saw an epic charge from the back of the field for Craig and a fifth-place finish for Jamie.
The No.888 Holden driver started from last on the grid after a mistake in qualifying that saw him go for a wander in the grass, sustaining damage to the front bar and ending his session prematurely. However, charging through the pack is one of Lowndesy’s specialities and he lived up to expectations, finishing ninth.
“I made a mistake coming through the last corner in qualifying today and after all the rain yesterday the grass was quite slippery which put me in the tyre bundle and damaged the car a little,” said Lowndesy.
“During the race we got caught up in a bit of traffic, but the car was great. I was able to push when I needed to and look after it when I had to, so we finished strong in ninth. The team did a great job bouncing back so now I’ll clean up my mistakes and we’ll head in strong to the first endurance race of the season.”
Jamie picked up valuable points for the weekend, his fifth-place finish helping to extend his championship lead to 135 points over Mark Winterbottom in second.
“It was a really tough day and at the end of it all we weren’t quick enough to challenge for the win. We made quite a few errors which put us back, but on the flipside we did a good job to score as many points as we did.
“It’s a little bit disappointing because we need to work on the soft tyres, we can’t afford to be running fifth or sixth on that tyre in these big 200km races with big points up for grabs. I feel like we did the best we could today but we’ve still got some work to do before we head in to the endurance season.”
The championship standings see Jdub on 2,025 points, his Ford rival further adrift on 1,890 points and Craig closing the gap back up with 1,812.
Next up, enduros! Join us 12-14 September for the Sandown 500.
