Articles by Craig Lowndes

If that is the case, then I will be very sad, because he is still a very talented driver and I have enjoyed working with him these past couple of years.The reason he may have to hang up his helmet is that he is now chairman-elect of the new V8 Supercar commission which doesn't allow active drivers to be involved. Skaifey would take up his new two-year role after the Bathurst 1000 in October, so he could still race at Bathurst again in 2014, but it would be awfully difficult after two years with no racing experience.As we contemplate the sad end to a stellar career of an accomplished veteran, I'm also pretty excited about the calibre of young drivers coming through our category. It is important for our credibility that the young guns are competitive.James Moffat was a welcome addition to the top 10 in Townsville. Allan's son is doing a fantastic job in his first time as full timer in the A game. It's a huge learning curve, but we all had to start some time. His ability definitely means he deserves another year in the top level.Dave Reynolds is also doing extremely well, having qualified third on the Sunday race at Townsville. He's developing into a great young driver with potential and talent. Tim Slade is another great racer. He got turned around but came back through the field in Townsville, which shows a lot of maturity. And Triple 8's Andrew Thompson has shown a lot of maturity in the development series after being in the main game last year.Last week I promised I would explain some of the technical terms in motor racing during the long mid-season break. This week we'll look at trim switches and team orders.Trim switches allow the driver to "trim" how much fuel is injected into the engine. It's a four-position switch, and teams can alter what percentage of fuel each position takes out or puts in. Depending on how lean the teams want to run the engine, they can pull out up to a maximum of 20 per cent of the fuel. However, this risks heating up the pistons and possibly melting them.Often teams ask their drivers to run the leaner settings when they drive out to the grid, under safety car and generally any time where they aren't using full throttle and high revs. Teams can gamble to pit early under a safety car where they normally wouldn't be able to make it to the end of the race, switch to the leanest setting and try to make it to the end like james Courtney did in Abu Dhabi this year.Team orders haven't been visible in V8 Supercars, as most teams have a clear number one and a number two driver who know their position in the team.It's against the V8 Supercar rules for a team to tell a driver to move out the way for his team mate. But this doesn't stop team orders happening. It just means teams have to do it covertly.In our team, we're both fighting for the championship, so our sponsors, fans and even ourselves wouldn't be happy if we drove by team orders. Fans want to see fair racing and no one manipulating the result.

Racing has a lot of technical terms that people don't understand, so during mid-season break in the V8 Supecars I thought I'd try to de-mystify the process by explaining one or two each week. First up, let's look at heat cycles in tyres since this was an issue at the last round in Townsville. A tyre heats up when it's used and then cools down after a race. This is called the heat cycle. When it cools, it undergoes chemical reactions that bond chains of tyre polymers together, generally making them a bit harder. This means they last a bit longer and can be used again. This is why we got so much mileage out of the used tyres on Sunday in Townsville. Another technical point is about the bleed line at the entrance and exit to pit lane. There was a lot of controversy about this in Townsville when Garth Tander hit the line and the "floppy" (the upright floppy marker) on his entry to pit lane. The bleed line is supposed to delineate the lane so that cars entering or exiting pit lane stay out of the line of racing cars for improved safety. The penalty for crossing the line is a slow drive through pit lane at 40km/h which Mark Winterbottom copped for his last-second decision to swerve into the pits in Abu Dhabi at the start of the year. I also got one for accidentally clipping the bleed line on the exit in New Zealand last year. So I naturally expected Tander to been given a drive-through penalty for his infringement. However, the stewards have ruled that Tander's right wheels only touched the line and didn't cross it, therefore escaping a penalty. It seems that the ruling is like tennis - if it's on the line, it's in. There has been a bit of a misunderstanding about this in the past and so long as the officials stick to this ruling, I'm happy. The problem is when the stewards are inconsistent or when there is no clear rule.It's a tough job and a position I'd never want to be in, but the teams and drivers just want some consistency. Hopefully the new V8 Supercars Commission will sort this out. Good to see Mark Skaife has been appointed to this commission which will mainly look into racing rules, regulations and formats. He's got a level head and is still racing on a part-time basis, so he has a good understanding of the driver's point of view. He was also a team owner, so he understands their concerns. At Townsville, a couple of drivers, including me, had failures in their cool suits. When this happens and its 50 degrees in the cockpit it's even hotter in the cool suit because it has an extra layer of insulation. I normally don't sweat a lot, but I had sweat dribbling down inside my helmet. It was uncomfortable, but I train for the heat, so it didn't affect me. Anyhow, it's good that it failed now and we can look into why this happened and get it fixed before it occurs in the hotter part of the year or in a long stint during an endurance race.

This will be our third year in North Queensland which was a previously an untapped market for V8 Supercars. It's a great street circuit designed by Mark Skaife with plenty in it for the drivers and the fans. You might say a street circuit is only as good as the streets available, but Skaifey has put them to good use with a combination of tight hairpins, fast flowing corners and a kink in the main straight. They've also chosen a good area a few blocks away from the CBD to minimise disruption and there are some high earth mounds to give the fans plenty of viewing over the wire barriers, plus like all street circuits there is a host of external activities and concerts to keep everyone entertained. This year I'm going to Townsville on a bit of a roll. We have great consistency and momentum and I'm looking forward to turning my Townsville record around. We are currently the second-best qualifier behind my teammate Jamie Whincup and if we can maintain a good starting position we have a good shot at a podium. The race format is two 200km races with one set of soft tyres in each race with two pit stops per race. The track will be colder than Darwin so the soft tyres should last a little longer, but there is a series of long right handers which will kill the left rear tyre. There are two clear strategies: start on soft tyres or finish on soft tyres. However, on street circuits there are usually a lot of safety cars which can undo the advantage you may get from starting on soft tyres, so I think the majority will try to finish on them. It's a lottery, really. It's also a great chance for some teams to snatch a win out of nowhere with a bit of luck. I have always been a bit critical of V8 Supercars expanding overseas into time zones that make it difficult for Aussie fans to tune in to the TV coverage. But now that V8 Supercars has done a deal to race at the new circuit in Austin, Texas, there is no point whining about it. We simply have to make it work. We will race on the Saturday and Sunday which means Australian TV coverage on Sunday morning, which is ok, and Monday morning, which is a bit of a problem. It may have been better to race Friday and Saturday, but we also have to appease the massive US TV coverage. As a driver, I think it's great to go to new countries and drive on new circuits. It's also a great opportunity to expand V8 recognition globally. America is a tough market to crack and getting a five-year deal is unbelievable. There will be a fair amount of pressure on both sides to make this work and I will put all my energies into helping, rather than hindering that process. Speaking of racing overseas, I still haven't heard whether I have qualified to race in any of the world endurance events. However, I'm grateful to have the full support of Audi Australia boss Uwe Hagen who wants us to return to the Bathurst 12-hour race next year. My ultimate goal is to race at Le Mans, Daytona and Nurburgring.

Apparently the new track at Austin, Texas, will host Formula One and MotoGP racing in coming years and wants us to stage a round there as early as next year. While I am more than happy for our category to expand overseas, I have said many times that we have to be very careful not to extend ourselves too far, especially into different time zones that make live TV coverage difficult. I have no problems with extending into Asia where the time zone suits, but have spoken out about my concerns with driving in the Mid East. Now we look like racing in the US where live TV coverage would be early morning our time. Don't get me wrong; as a driver I can think of nothing better than driving on new and exciting circuits overseas. But we have to be mindful of the fans and a US time zone just wouldn't suit them. It is a bold move to go into a country dominated by Nascar racing, but I think we have a formula that would be interesting to the Americans with our noise, power, circuit racing and levels of carnage. Speaking of racing overseas, I was obviously interested in the results of the Nurburgring 24-hour race at the weekend after my recent participation in the four-hour event there for Audi. It was good to see Audis come in third, fourth and fifth. My hunger to compete in the Nurburgring or Le Mans 24-hours events next year just keeps on growing. Meanwhile, my focus has to be on the current season with our next round in Townsville next weekend. (JULY 9-10) Townsville is the mid-point in the season, so it will be important for morale to finish the first half on a high and be in a solid points position. Then we have a six-week break before the next round at Ipswich in August. That round will feature the welcome return of the popular three-race format we used to have and then reintroduced so successfully at Perth in April. Having three races definitely gives the weekend a different feel for the drivers with more opportunities to make gains or losses through bad starts. The added interest in Ipswich will be a 15-minute changeover between Saturday races. That's a first for V8 Supercars. That will make it very interesting for the teams and drivers with almost no chance to make any set-up changes or correct any panel damage. It will be up to us to drive clean and make sure the cars are in good shape for the second race. This format is so popular with the fans I think it's something they'll have to look at introducing in more rounds. The category is always looking at ways to improve the entertainment value for the spectators. And in the end that's what it's all about. We're an entertainment business. The fans pay good money to come along and we have to strive to deliver.

That's kind of how my round went at Darwin last weekend. Don't get me wrong, because I'm delighted with the results. Any time you can peg back about 100 points on the leader or your teammate is always a great weekend. But the fact is it could have been better and it could also have been worse. Qualifying on Saturday was good with the car set-up working the tyre as best we could. In the first Top 10 Shootout since Adelaide we didn't get the best out of the car and I was too cautious not to make any mistakes so we ended up seventh. The Saturday race was going to plan until we were disadvantaged with the queue-up in pit lane after the safety car. However, the carnage in the last restart definitely benefited us. I went into that first corner after the restart in ninth and came out fourth. There were a lot of mistakes made by a few drivers in that incident. We had four cars going into a two-car corner and none of the drivers was prepared to yield. Ultimately Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup ended up going off track and Frosty ended up being turned around. In the closing stages we had a bit of tyre life over Lee Holdsworth and managed to grab a podium finish. So that was my good fortune. Sunday started with the short 20-minute qualifying session and we only had one set of green tyres left to put in a good lap. We managed that right at the end for a third position start. Our strategy was definitely the better one with Shane, Frosty and I all pitting at the same time for the soft tyres. Not taking anything away from Shane, but he was lucky with that safety car late in the race when I was leading with an eight-second gap. That was a questionable decision to send out a safety car for the David Renyolds crash when he managed to drive back to pit lane without help. I suppose you can get dirty about it, but it's all part of motor racing and you have to take the good with the bad. I'm still delighted with two podiums and second on the series ladder. Jamie is a little disappointed after having good car speed, but then suffering the race one carnage and having their strategy come undone in race two with the late safety car. Shane has now leapfrogged Rick Kelly into third and looks to be the real danger. He seems the most consistent at the moment and after his second win this year he's full of confidence. Next up is Townsville in a couple of weeks which is the end of the first half of the championship. It's a great layout but it's a circuit where I've never had a good result. But the way the year is panning out maybe we can turn that around and go into the mid-year break full of confidence.

…and luck with the safety car.We're back in the north where Russell Ingall, Garth Tander and I are the only ones who have competed at every V8 Supercar round.It's a special track for me. I won there in '96 and 2006 and twice in '07. The track is similar to Perth in that the tyres deteriorate quickly.At Barbagallo it's because of the grit that blows on to the track, but at Hidden Valley it's more to do with the surface and the heat, although they tell me it won't be all that hot this year. Anyway, you need a car that looks after its tyres in Darwin. Making that all the more difficult will the set of soft tyres we have to use in Sunday's race.It's the first time this year we've used soft and hard compound Dunlop tyres together in the one race, so that will mix things up for all of us. In the past the normal strategy is to start on a hard tyre and try to finish strongly on the soft set.When to make the tyre switch is the million-dollar question. It will probably depend on safety cars.A couple of years ago Alex Davidson and Shane Van Gisbergen got the timing right and got a huge benefit.I'll be on the radio talking non-stop to my race engineer JJ (Jeromy Moore) to figure out what we do and how early we get on those soft tyres. The critical thing will be to maintain a good lap time for as long as possible and hold on to your tyres.Wear on these soft tyres seems to be a lot higher than it has in previous years. We'd never run soft tyres at Perth before, but we were stunned at how quickly they ran out of grip. There is a fair bit of pit talk about whether this is a different type of tyre compound to what we are used to.In the end, it doesn't matter. We all have the same tyre, so it's the same problem for everyone.The other change this weekend is the return of the popular Top Ten Shootout. The fans love it. The Shootout really builds the tension in qualifying. I think it's a great element to the weekend and really spices things up. I've only had pole here once.It's a tough track with close lap times because it's quite short. The long straight is critical to a quick time. You have to come on to the straight carrying loads of speed and try to slipstream someone for that extra tow.It was great to hear that world touring car champion Andy Priaulx is confirmed for our team at the Gold Coast race this year. Last year he fitted in extremely well.This time I'll obviously be talking to him about Le Mans after my first tastes of endurance racing this year. Maybe we can have a chat about doing something together in the future.It was fantastic to see Audi win Le Mans at the weekend after two of their three cars were involved in a major crash.What a thrilling finish; just 13 seconds to the first of the two Peugeots after 24 hours of high-speed racing.I was a bit bleary-eyed early early this week after staying up to watch as much of the Le Mans as I could as well as catching Casey Stoner win the MotoGP and Mark Webber's third in the F1, both in appalling weather conditions.

First is the fact that only a few of us like Russell Ingall and Jason Bright have driven at every V8 Supercars round since it started in 1998. That was back in my HRT days and I remember one year driving up from Melbourne HQ with a big transporter loaded with merchandise and stopping off at all the outback towns and meeting all the people.A few years ago the Triple 8 team all rode motorcycles from Brisbane to the Darwin round. It was about 4500km in eight memorable days. It's a great to get out in the outback of Australia. We came into a small township on the west side of Cape York and we met Jimeoin the comedian in the middle of nowhere. Australia is a beautiful place and you just have to get out and have a look at it.We're not doing any whacky trips this year, but I'd like to do another bike trip again if our team principal Roland Dane will let us. Stay tuned and see what whacky ideas we can come up with in the next few years.Darwin is important to me because I have aunties who live up there and it's always great to see them.It's also important to our sport because it makes us truly national and there are few other national sports that include the Northern Territory. It's such a shame because the people up there are starving for sport and every time we go we get massive support from the fans. Almost the whole city turns out.It was a courageous move for the NT government to back the original race and it paved the way for other states to support V8 Supercars. However, all of those are at temporary street circuits. This is at a permanent track facility and each year the government puts back a lot of the money it makes out of the event to improve the facilities.The West Australian government has now got on track with supporting the Barbagallo circuit and we need more states to do the same so there is a lasting benefit to the people of their state.This week I've been doing a lot of driver training and ride days with competition winners and sponsors at Norwell with Jamie Whincup and Andrew Thompson. It's another great little track and the headquarters for Paul Morris Racing. They've done a lot with the place with go karts, a skid pan and a new 4WD course they've just opened up.It's been good to take my mind off the Nurburgring race of the previous weekend.We still don't know if Warren Luff and I have qualified to race in any of the 24-hour races like Le Mans next year. Audi is focused on the next two endurance races at Nurgburgring and Le Mans and after that they will look into whether we are accredited even though we didn't race because of my crash in qualifying. Regardless of whether we've classified, we both want to go back and set the record straight because we had good speed and had the ability to get a great result.

I drove the 20km track at the weekend for the first time and it is every bit as challenging as Mt Panorama. After second place with Warren Luff in an Audi R8 in the Bathurst 12-Hour earlier this year Audi invited us to take part in the four-hour race at Nurburgring to gain accreditation for the 24-hour races there and at Le Mans next year. But things didn't quite pan out. The track is just amazing. We were going 268km/h on the back straight and frequently over 250km/h with an average lap speed of 176km/h. It captures many of the aspects of Bathurst and even has a Dipper although it's not as intense or aggressive as Mt Panorama. There are a lot of very fast blind crests where you have to position the car correctly to set up for the next corner. The biggest challenge for me was reminding myself where I was on the track. It certainly didn't come naturally like Bathurst. There are also parts where the car gets all four wheels about four inches (10cm) off the ground. It's an incredible circuit. At this stage I don't know if we've succeeded because I crashed in qualifying and we never got to race. It's a bit disappointing in the end, but I learnt a hell of a lot. We had a two-hour practice session and one-hour qualifying yet I only managed five laps because it's the longest race track in the world. Luffy has driven there before and track knowledge is very important so we decided early on that he would qualify and I would start the race. Warren qualified with 8:18.6 and I did 8:25.2, so we would have been ninth on the grid and just six seconds off pole. The winning Porsche would have started alongside us in eighth and our sister car only qualified 18th. We were the second fastest Audi out of the six competing. Luffy had a fresh set of tyres to have another go so we could have been even better. Anyway, I'd just done my timed lap and was on a second timed lap when disaster struck. About the 8km mark I was passing a much, much slower Golf and he clipped my left rear wheel which sent me straight into the fence. The closing speed between the fastest category of cars like ours and the others is incredible. I haven't experienced that for a long time. Trying to get a clean lap with 200 cars of differing speeds was ultimately quite difficult. The crash was devastating for me and especially for Warren. Unfortunately, the car was unrepairable in the two hours we had left to get on the grid. Audi had an onboard camera in the car and they can see it's a racing incident with no one to blame. The Audi Experience Team was looking forward to having a good race and was happy with our times, speed and how we adapted to the car and the circuit. Even though we didn't race, we had qualified well and Audi is investigating whether we can now compete in the 24-hour races. It's unclear at the moment. Interestingly the winning car was the only Porsche hybrid in the field. With its F1-style KERS system it was fast, winning by a lap, mainly because it could do 10 laps to a tank where everyone else was only managing eight or nine laps. After the race we were straight on to a plane and home for a debriefing on the Winton round and then straight into a test day at Queensland Raceway with our focus on Darwin in a couple of weeks. Mark Skaife also had a chance to do a few more laps in the car in preparation for the endurance rounds. And it was good to see former World Rally Champion driver Chris Atkinson have a test in Russell Ingall's car. It's always good to see a driver from a different category have a go at our cars. There is a massive difference between our big and heavy rear-wheel-drive V8 sedans versus the sort of small, four-wheel-drive turbo cars he has driven.

I drove the 20km track at the weekend for the first time and it is every bit as challenging as Mt Panorama. After second place with Warren Luff in an Audi R8 in the Bathurst 12-Hour earlier this year Audi invited us to take part in the four-hour race at Nurburgring to gain accreditation for the 24-hour races there and at Le Mans next year.But things didn't quite pan out. The track is just amazing. We were going 268km/h on the back straight and frequently over 250km/h with an average lap speed of 176km/h. It captures many of the aspects of Bathurst and even has a Dipper although it's not as intense or aggressive as Mt Panorama.There are a lot of very fast blind crests where you have to position the car correctly to set up for the next corner. The biggest challenge for me was reminding myself where I was on the track. It certainly didn't come naturally like Bathurst. There are also parts where the car gets all four wheels about four inches (10cm) off the ground. It's an incredible circuit.At this stage I don't know if we've succeeded because I crashed in qualifying and we never got to race. It's a bit disappointing in the end, but I learnt a hell of a lot. We had a two-hour practice session and one-hour qualifying yet I only managed five laps because it's the longest race track in the world. Luffy has driven there before and track knowledge is very important so we decided early on that he would qualify and I would start the race.Warren qualified with 8:18.6 and I did 8:25.2, so we would have been ninth on the grid and just six seconds off pole. The winning Porsche would have started alongside us in eighth and our sister car only qualified 18th. We were the second fastest Audi out of the six competing. Luffy had a fresh set of tyres to have another go so we could have been even better.Anyway, I'd just done my timed lap and was on a second timed lap when disaster struck. About the 8km mark I was passing a much, much slower Golf and he clipped my left rear wheel which sent me straight into the fence. The closing speed between the fastest category of cars like ours and the others is incredible. I haven't experienced that for a long time.Trying to get a clean lap with 200 cars of differing speeds was ultimately quite difficult. The crash was devastating for me and especially for Warren. Unfortunately, the car was unrepairable in the two hours we had left to get on the grid. Audi had an onboard camera in the car and they can see it's a racing incident with no one to blame.The Audi Experience Team was looking forward to having a good race and was happy with our times, speed and how we adapted to the car and the circuit. Even though we didn't race, we had qualified well and Audi is investigating whether we can now compete in the 24-hour races. It's unclear at the moment. Interestingly the winning car was the only Porsche hybrid in the field.With its F1-style KERS system it was fast, winning by a lap, mainly because it could do 10 laps to a tank where everyone else was only managing eight or nine laps. After the race we were straight on to a plane and home for a debriefing on the Winton round and then straight into a test day at Queensland Raceway with our focus on Darwin in a couple of weeks.Mark Skaife also had a chance to do a few more laps in the car in preparation for the endurance rounds. And it was good to see former World Rally Champion driver Chris Atkinson have a test in Russell Ingall's car. It's always good to see a driver from a different category have a go at our cars. There is a massive difference between our big and heavy rear-wheel-drive V8 sedans versus the sort of small, four-wheel-drive turbo cars he has driven.

Warren Luff and I are racing an Audi R8 at the famous Nurburgring circuit to gain eligibility for the Le Mans 24-hour race. At this point we don't have anything secured for next month's Le Mans, but hopefully we can look at doing it next year.Ever since our second place in the Bathurst 12-hour Warren and I have had a very good ongoing relationship with Audi, so when this opportunity came up they contacted us to fill a car. It should be much the same R8 as we drove at Bathurst.From the info we have the Audi will do about 8.5 minute laps, so on calculations with pit stops we should do about 27 laps in Saturday's race. Mark Batting from the winning German Audi team at Bathurst knows the Nurburgring like I know Mt Panorama and he will hopefully give us some tips and guidance.There's no time for sightseeing as we are back on the plane and home again by Monday for a debriefing on Winton and then a test day at Queensland Raceway on the Wednesday. Winton was a bit of an up and down affair and we ended up marking time, staying in second place in the championship.It started ok with the car working exceptionally well and scoring my first pole there. My bad start on the Saturday was my undoing.We have a process for operating the clutch and I was still getting used to the method. I bogged it down on the line and got swamped. We were three wide in the first corner and there was a bit of biff and barge which bent the steering. We didn't know it was bent until the boys were checking it on Saturday night.Before Sunday morning qualifying we also had to change engines. But I got the clutch right on the Sunday and had the best start I've had all year, and with a handful of laps remaining we were running in fourth. We had been trying to get 26 laps out of a set tyres but the tyre life is really only good for about 22 laps, so we lost rear tyre grip right at the end.We also had a very noisy third gear which I haven't experienced for a long time. Thankfully it didn't affect speed or performance, but no doubt the team will have a look at that.Jason Bright had the best race strategy of pitting late and only doing about 19 laps on his last set of tyres. He was able to easily come through the pack and grab another victory after his win in Perth. Jason has always been very quick, it was just a matter of getting his car sorted. Now he's done it two rounds in a row, so the team is obviously getting things together.It was also great to see the other Jason (Richards) get up on the podium and accept the team trophy.