It certainly wasn't the easiest of weekends for Team Vortex and Craig Lowndes, when, off the back of a difficult season opener at the Clipsal 500 a few weeks earlier, Craig walked away from the Albert park Circuit down in 13th place overall.
Four tough qualifying sessions followed by four tough races, saw the Supercar veteran fighting just to stay on track as his Dunlop rubber betrayed him and left him struggling for pace.
The last race of the weekend was tougher than the rest because he was forced to start the event from the very last row of the grid due to the fact that the race officials deleted his qualifying time due to exceeding the track limits down at turn 12.
Keeping out of trouble at the start, which wasn't an easy feat being that it was a rolling start, Craig started his fight pack and began to carve his way through the field.
When he got up behind Rick Kelly however, his progress halted as his rear tyres once again started to lose their competitiveness.
"It was a much better day," Craig said of Sunday afternoon's race. "What we've learnt over the last three races we put into practice. We set the car up to what we thought might suit these conditions and I have to say it was very much a positive forward step. The car had much more speed. We had a bit of a road block in Rick Kelly - we caught him, we just couldn't find a way past."
"All in all, it's a really positive end to the week. I'm really excited about what we've learnt, but obviously it would have been nice to be closer to the front. With Tasmania in two weeks we can put all we've learnt into practice."
