Craig Lowndes fight to stay in the V8 Supercar Championship hunt was magnified when he grabbed the spanners with his team-mates at the Coates Hire Ipswich 300 in a desperate attempt to get his car on track.
The Championship contender blew an engine in practice this morning and Lowndes, still in his driving suit, joined his crew to replace it in just over an hour before he qualified the TeamVodafone Commodore on the front row of the grid.
With the miraculous escape and a clutch problem on the line by team-mate Jamie Whincup, Lowndes cruised to victory from the start line from Orccon Steel Racing’s Mark Winterbottom, and Whincup.
It typified the team player in Lowndes in that he helped the team by pulling off mufflers and helping with the engine change. As it turned out the new motor didn’t miss a beat, and nor did Lowndes.
“No team wants to have that happen,” said Lowndes.
“It was just lucky it was a practice session because normally that would have been a qualifying session at that time of day. Luckily enough we were able to get the car back into the pit bay.
“The guys assessed it, analysed that it was more terminal than we hoped and then got busy preparing it for qualifying. It was a hectic but very calm environment.
“The guys methodically went through everything, checked it all and made sure there was no stone left unturned. Then in qualifying the car was really good.”
Had that not happened Lowndes may well have kissed his Championship hopes goodbye.
“We will keep racing and keep trying. Anything is possible,” he said. “We saw that at Olympic Park last year at the final event that anything can happen. We will see what is to come.”
It was Lowndes' fourth consecutive race win at Queensland Raceway and brings his tally of race wins at the Ipswich circuit to ten.
Both Whincup and Winterbottom were content with their results. Given his start and an early safety car Whincup was fortunate while Winterbottom was grateful to stay in second in the title fight given this time last year the team had a shocking weekend.
“We were confident we had fixed the car (from last year),” said Winterbottom. “That was a good race for us, sometimes second can be as good as a win. That was a good race for us. We just need to find a little bit now but 12 months ago we needed to find a lap.”
Lockwood Racing's Fabian Coulthard equaled his season best race finish in fourth and Russell Ingall claimed his season-best finish in fifth.
Will Davison (Ford Performance Racing), Shane van Gisbergen (SP Tools Racing), Michael Caruso (Fujitsu Racing), Tim Slade (Lucky 7 racing) and Steve Johnson (Jim Beam Racing) rounded out the top ten.
Whincup still leads the series and Lowndes' win has closed the margin to 277 points.
The longer second race is preceded by another qualifying session tomorrow.
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