Title hope ”definitely alive” for Craig Lowndes

Craig Lowndes took a 141-point bite out of Mark Winterbottom’s championship lead after the Gold Coast 600 weekend and the Triple Eight Race Engineering driver says his title hopes are looking better than ever.

“It’s definitely alive, there’s no doubt about that. We’ll just keep pushing on and do the best we can and if we can keep pressuring them, and we can get them to make more mistakes, that’s even better,” said Lowndes to v8supercars.com.au.

Lowndes secured a fourth and third finish with co-driver Steven Richards at Surfers Paradise and the Holden driver was surprised on their advantage over Winterbottom.

“I’m excited – I think the aim was to chew into Frosty’s lead 100 points each round which we’ve done more of that this weekend than I expected. You never know coming out of the Gold Coast what to expect in a sense of how straight the cars are going to be and what’s what. But for me I’m pleasantly delighted with our results regardless – not winning, but to be able to finish a third and a fourth, be in front of Frosty both times and score points with that, that was the aim of the weekend,” said Lowndes.

Winterbottom keeps a 258-point lead ahead of the final three race weekends and Lowndes expects the Prodrive Racing Australia driver to be back on form in the next race at Pukekohe.

“They were fast there last year, no reason they can’t be fast there again this year, so I think it’s more a blip on the radar. You’d like to think it was a bit more, but we’ll see what New Zealand brings. It’s also been a circuit for me that hasn’t quite gone to plan from time to time either so really I’m looking forward to getting there and more confident now after having Bathurst and this weekend out of the way,” said Lowndes.