Craig Lowndes after clash with Jamie Whincup: ”We’re over it”

Triple Eight Race Engineering team mates Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup collided in the first V8 Supercars race of the weekend in Tasmania while fighting for the lead.
”Normally the situation would be clarified as a racing incident but because we’re team-mates of course it’s under the microscope a little more. We’re over it,” said Lowndes.

The clash resulted in Whincup taking over the lead while Lowndes dropped to eleventh position, from which he later recovered up to eight position.

”I went for the pass and thought I had the line but it ended up with Craig off the track so I apologise for that. I’m lucky he’s a good bloke and he might let me off but I think I owe him one,” said Whincup.

”Race One of course was disappointing. Jamie and I have had so many good battles over all the years we’ve raced together but we’ve never had something like this,” said Lowndes.

While Whincup won both races, Lowndes had two tough races with him starting from the back of the grid for race two. This was because his times in qualifying were removed because of an illegal strip of tape on his Holden Commodore. Lowndes fought hard up through the field in the race, passing 20 drivers to finish fifth.

”Unfortunately we got handed a penalty to start at the back of the grid in Race Two after having a sticker over the safety hole in our window – which I don’t agree with – but at the end of the day that’s racing. We put our heads down and knew that we’d be in traffic so Jeromy Moore (engineer) and the team worked on adjustments to make us faster in the congestion. I knew I had to stay out of trouble and look after the tyres and we didn’t make any mistakes so we ended up going from 25th to fifth in 20 laps,” said Lowndes.

“The car was speedy and we made up all our positions on the straights despite getting rubbed around a little. I had a fire in my belly which obviously pushed me harder so I think the team will be asking me to bring that every weekend now.”