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Ipswich Supercars: Flawless Lowndes cruises to Sunday win

Craig Lowndes put on a masterclass to win Sunday’s 200-kilometre Supercars race at Queensland Raceway.

Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden

Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden

Dirk Klynsmith

Third place, Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Craig Lowndes, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Jamie Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Jamie Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden
Chaz Mostert, Rod Nash Racing Ford
Michael Caruso, Nissan Motorsports

Starting from the outside of the front row, Lowndes made a perfect jump to lead team-mate Jamie Whincup into Turn 1. And, in terms of the lead, that was basically it. The veteran was either leader or effective leader for all 66 laps, splitting his three stints with stops on Lap 16 and Lap 36 and never coming under pressure at any point.

And having saved that extra set of greens during qualifying, it was really that simple for the Triple Eight star.

“It’s not often to get a really nice easy car to drive in a race like that,” said Lowndes. “It was really important to get a good start, we were able to do that and sort of control the pace. It’s very rare you get an easy, sweet car to drive.”

Behind Lowndes, however, things weren’t so straightforward. Jamie Whincup finished second, but it was hardly an easy day out. Having slipped back to P4 during the second stint, Whincup was forced to work hard in the third and final stint after emerging back in second.

First it was Mark Winterbottom who fancied his chances of getting by Whincup. Having held the Prodrive Racing Ford off, Michael Caruso had a go at getting by Whincup after clearing Winterbottom himself.

Finally it was Chaz Mostert’s turn, the fastest man of the third stint – thanks to having made his second stop on Lap 42, much later than any of the other contenders – running Whincup hard right to the flag. But like Winterbottom and Caruso before him, he just couldn’t quite get by.

“We’ll walk away from QR pretty rapt with two second places,” said Whincup. “The car was much better today, so well done to the engineers. But Lowndesy, too strong.”

Mostert finished second, having come from P5 after making that last stop. He cleared team-mate Winterbottom easily on Lap 55, before muscling his way past Caruso on the way into Turn 1 on Lap 60. That was as far as he could go, though, falling two seconds short of catching Whincup.

“Our strategy worked really well,” he said. “We stuck to our guns and just raced our own race. We’ve got to find something for [Triple Eight] next door. We’ve definitely for to find something to get a bit better balance on the soft tyre.”

Caruso followed Mostert home to finish a fine fourth, with Winterbottom banking plenty of points in fifth after giving the likes of Mostert and Caruso racing room late in the game.

Scott McLaughlin bounced back from a tough Saturday with a comfortable fifth on Sunday, ahead of Tim Slade, Chris Pither, Todd Kelly, and Fabian Coulthard.

Yesterday’s winner Shane van Gisbergen had a shocker of an afternoon. The Kiwi was in the game for the first stint, running around in fourth sandwiched between Winterbottom and Mostert. But a decision to take on a lot of fuel during the first stint cost him track position, putting him effectively eighth.

To make matters worse, he struggled with the Red Bull Commodore in the early part of the second stint, losing a spot to Mostert and having to work hard to keep Cam Waters behind him.

But it was on Lap 35 that things really took a turn for the worse. Having seen Scott Pye go off at Turn 6, van Gisbergen jumped into the lane in anticipation of a Safety Car. Problem was that Whincup was already in the lane, meaning van Gisbergen would have to stint. And when Pye drove out of the gravel himself and the Safety Car never materialised, van Gisbergen simply bled time.

He popped back out down in 18th on the road, which became 13th as the stops shook out. He did move forward to 12th by the finish, but still lost ground points-wise to team-mates Whincup and Lowndes.

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