Team Vortex driver Craig Lowndes got his Darwin Triple Crown off to a good start today when he set the second d and third fastest times respectively in Friday's two free practice sessions.
In the final few minutes of the first session, which had been red flagged due to an accident with Jason Bright, Craig put a set of scrubbed dunlops on the car to take him to P2, only a fraction of a second shy of Rick Kelly's best overall time.
Felling confident on a track he loves, and where he scored his 100th victory two years ago, Craig then used a green set of rubber to go third in the second and final forty minute session…
"It was a great day, everything we learnt at the test day last week is definitely coming to fruition," Craig said. "We rolled the car out here and it was 90 percent right and ever since then we've just been tweaking it, which is exactly what we want to do and what we need to do.”
Now the goal is to make sure the car is running perfectly so that Craig has a real shot at pole position and race victories on both Saturday and Sunday.
"We're really happy so far with what the team has done. Obviously we want to try to be on pole position and win races, so we're not finished yet. We're pushing hard, but the gains that we've seen already this weekend are coming from the test day last week, which is what we really needed. Credit to the team, we just need to keep pushing on and seeing if we can get some results."
