Lowndes leads Triple Eight 1-2 in race two

Craig Lowndes followed up a win in the first race with a victory in race two at Ipswich, leading home a Triple Eight 1-2 with team-mate Jamie Whincup in tow, with Tim Slade not far behind in third.

Lowndes and Slade got away well from the front row, but Whincup was quick to pass the Stone Brothers Racing driver, diving down the inside at Turn 3 on the first lap to take second, and the top three continued to breakaway from the pack.

The safety car was deployed on lap three after an incident involving Alex Davison, Karl Reindler, James Courtney and Todd Kelly.

Alex Davison in the Stone Brothers Racing Ford Falcon and Karl Reindler’s Britek Commodore had made contact at Turn 5, which resulted in Reindler spinning off the circuit. The drop in pace from Davison afterwards saw Todd Kelly’s Commodore slam into the back of him, and James Courtney’s HRT Commodore in turn running into the back of Kelly.

Todd Kelly was out on the spot, whilst Courtney brought the Holden back to the pits and retired with heavy front-end damage.

After the restart on lap six, there was steady progress from the two Dick Johnson Racing drivers, with Steven Johnson working his way up to sixth, passing Greg Murphy’s Kelly Racing Holden on lap ten. Johnson’s team-mate James Moffat moved up to ninth after passing both of the Ford Performance Racing drivers, though with a bit of bumping in the case of Will Davison and his new Ford Falcon chassis which has been christened ‘Kate’.

Garth Tander looked set to rescue a result for the Holden Racing Team after starting last and after his team-mate’s retirement, working his way up to 13th place, but was spun out on the final lap by Jason Bargwanna’s Brad Jones Racing Holden and dropped all the way down to 23rd.

Lowndes victory reduces the points gap to Whincup to 170 points after the second race, with Shane van Gisbergen 419 points down on the championship leader.

The third race of the weekend is the 65 lap feature race on Sunday at 15:05 AEST.