Craig Lowndes is in a very happy place and the rest of the V8 Supercar field will be taking notice.
The three-time V8 Supercar great agreed to new terms with TeamVodafone this week and today he effortlessly claimed his first Armor All Pole Position at the Clipsal 500, a remarkable statistic for the most decorated current driver in the field.
With the Shootout returned to Friday in Adelaide and live on Seven for the first time Lowndes continued his form that ended last year when he narrowly missed his fourth Championship to team-mate Jamie Whincup.
Voting with their feet a massive 62,700 people came to the track on a Friday.
He starts on the front row of the grid for the first 250km race of the weekend alongside Garth Tander in the Holden Racing Team Commodore and in front of Will Davison’s Trading Post FPR Ford and Tekno Autosport’s Jonathon Webb. It was a career high for Webb.
“It’s not over yet, we’ve still got a race to go tomorrow,” Lowndes said.
“My weakness has always been qualifying and it’s nice to come here on quite a demanding street circuit. You need a lot of confidence in yourself to create a good lap here and the car is spot on.
“Tomorrow’s another 78 laps, you just can’t do one (today). If I couldn’t get pole position I was happy to be on the front row at least. Now we need a good race car.”
Tander’s race record in Adelaide is second only to Whincup, who will start fifth tomorrow which is the first time since 2006 he has not been on the front row in Adelaide, as one of the most successful drivers at the track.
“We got better and better through qualifying,” explained Tander. “Our aim was to be in the shootout but our lap was about two hundredths short of where it needed to be. Our goal all day was to get in the shootout and finish in the first two rows.”
Davison and team-mates Mark Winterbottom (seventh) and David Reynolds (eighth) all made the shooutout. Davison was the best performed of the trio.
“We topped very session except the one that set the grid,” said Davison. “The car is very quick. We needed a two-lap shootout and I think we would have been pretty good. I have been weak on one lap but very strong on the second.”
Whincup was just fifth fastest after an uncharacteristically off-the-pace effort, while Tim Slade, Winterbottom, Reynolds, Fabian Coulthard and Shane van Gisbergen rounded out the top 10.
Winterbottom had been the last car on the circuit after topping qualifying, but never threatened to take pole – the Orrcon Ford losing 0.3s to Lowndes’ benchmark in the first sector alone.
The V8 Supercars will return to the Adelaide Parklands Street Circuit for a morning warm-up at 905 tomorrow.
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