Craig Lowndes backs up at Winton

Team Vodafone’s Craig Lowndes has back up his Race 5 win by winning race 6 of the 2009 V8 Supercar Championship. Lowndes once again started from the second row of the grid, this time using Dunlop’s super-soft tyre, while many of his competitors had only the standard compound at their disposal. However Lowndes’ result is preliminary due to a technical issue.

Both Mark Winterbottom and Garth Tander made good recoveries from their trouble of yesterday (Sunday) to finish second and third respectively, despite Tander’s car again showing significant damage from a collision with Steven Richards.

Shock early race leader, Paul Dumbrell, had picked the same strategy as Lowndes and by mid-race looked unbeatable, until a Safety Car period for a scary situation involving and burning GRM Holden and a trapped Lee Holdsworth, once again played into Lowndes’ hands.

Dumbrell’s Commodore wasn’t as strong on ‘hard’ tyres as Lowndes, Winterbottom or Tander and he slowly gave up positions as the race unfolded but was able to hang on to a forth place finish.
Championship leader and the man who has dominated the series so far, Jamie Whincup, finished a disappointing 13th after becoming a victim of major pit lane congestion, which started when his team-mate, Craig Lowndes, had to back up in his pit stall, causing a queue which blocked the pit exit.

Winterbottom was also blocked in the incident when he was sandwiched between the two Team Vodafone cars. The FPR driver eventually got away, but not before pushing a set of Triple Eight tyres out of his way with his front spoiler.

The 66 lap race once again saw a lot of passing with the new tyre rules, with many drivers posting best their bet finishes of the year including top ten runs by David Reynolds, Marcus Marshall and Jason Bargwanna.

Lowndes said the decision to reuse his soft option tyres was only made at the last minute, and he was grateful that the Safety Car was deployed at the right time for his strategy.

“We actually opted this morning to reuse our soft option tyre at the start of the race. We had to get to lap 20. We had good speed for 15 laps, but for the last five laps (on the soft tyres) Jamie and Frosty were starting to pull a gap,” Lowndes said.

He described the pit lane traffic jam as “chaos”, but said it seriously hurt his teammate’s chances in the race.

“It was a real shame for Jamie because we both had strong cars, but with the Safety Car everyone pitted and I overshot my marks… Jamie had to wait and I think Frosty got blocked in as well,” Lowndes said.

Though disappointed with the pit lane incident, Winterbottom was happy to finally turn his qualifying pace into a race podium.
“It was just great to finish a race,” he said.

“I was just trying to stay clear of the drama and get to the end. It was no good fighting the guys on softs early on because you saw yesterday that cars got turned around with guys just diving down the inside of them on softs.”

Frosty said he was confident that he could pass Lowndes in the pits had it not been for the traffic jam drama.

“Once the pit stop came up I thought I would jump him in the pits because our guys are usually pretty good in the pits, but I got boxed in,” Winterbottom explained.
“I came out behind Paul (Dumbrell) and Craig (Lowndes) and here (at Winton) it is all about track position.”

Tander was also happy to make only his second podium of the year.
“Our speed at the start wasn’t good… after the stop the car was fantastic,” Tander said.
“I had to conserve some fuel at the end of the race, but I was happy to get third.”

The Toll HRT driver joked that his end of the pit lane was incident free.
“We didn’t have any problem with congestion up our end of the pits; it was great,” he smirked.
However, he was concerned that his bonnet may have flown open thanks to damage caused when he was involved in a mid-race incident with FPR’s Steven Richards and a back marker.

“It was flapping around and I thought ‘that’s all I need is for the bonnet to come up and I will have to go back into the pits’, but luckily it stayed down,” he said.

Whincup still holds a 114-point lead in the Championship from Toll HRT’s Will Davision.