Craig Lowndes was up for a fight at the Hidden Valley Raceway in Darwin this afternoon when, after his qualifying session didn't work out as he had hoped, he was forced to start from 18th on the grid.
Craig actually qualified 19th after encountering traffic at just the wrong time during the fifteen minute qualy session, however he moved up a place due to a penalty handed to a driver higher up the grid.
With chaos happening all around him at the start of the race, Craig kept his nose clean and worked his way through the field to eventually finish race 11 in seventh place overall.
"It's been an interesting weekend so far," he said. "We had great pace in the lead-in to qualifying and didn't quite get a run in qualifying, we had a few issues with traffic. We started 18th - we got promoted one spot - and we had a good start. There was a bit of chaos at the beginning. We just wanted to make sure we stayed out of trouble. We did that and the car was great."
With about 25 laps remaining, a safety car came out and due to his early pitstop, Craig was in the perfect position to take full advantage of it…
"We opted to do an early stop to try to feed everyone else in, which seemed to work,” he added. “We had great tyre life, the car was working a treat. There's no doubt that what we did earlier on in the weekend with our practice and race runs definitely paid dividends. We're really pleased and really happy."
"The guys did a great job in the pit stop. We had a great battle throughout the end of that race with Dave Reynolds, but we managed to get by and get home in seventh, so it wasn't a bad day."
