Record Bathurst lap of the gods

Five-time Bathurst 1000 champion Craig Lowndes broke Greg Murphy's seven-year strangelhold on the lap record last year when he set a blistering 1:6.8012mins (previously 1:6.8594) around the Bathurst track in practice session five before qualifying on the Friday.

His race engineer, Jeromy Moore, says it was the perfect lap ... almost. "He actually lost a bit of time in The Cutting compared with the lap before," he says. "He focused too much on exit speed rather than holding mid-corner speed."

So if Murf's lap was known as the Lap of the Gods, what's Lowndesy's lap called? "We haven't got a name for it. What's better than the Lap of the Gods? I suppose it's the Almost Perfect Lap."

Moore is quick to point out that Murf's record was achieved just after the track was resurfaced and before V8 Supercars brought in minimum component weights on crankshafts, conrods and pistons, and introduced the control cam profile which reduces valve lift.

Moore says no one in pit lane was expecting the lap record to be broken in that session. "It was quite strange because it was only a practice session, so we weren't really prepared for it," he says. "It wasn't like the whole pit lane was watching.

"As soon as we crossed the line we saw the number and on the timing screen they have the current lap record and then that changed. It's all on You Tube. You can see we all punched the air.

"I don't usually get too excited, but I was pretty happy. RD (team principal Roland Dane) was pretty stoked because he had been wanting to smash that record for a few years. It was something he wanted to rectify."

The highlights of the lap for Moore were the last few corners where Lowndes pushed hard. "Braking after the Chase where he hits 100 per cent braking was pretty special," he says.
"Everywhere else it wasn't hair-raising; it was just smooth.

"The steering traces show if he is sliding the rear and you may see it on the revs as a secondary thing, but our data showed there were not many corrections all the way round. It was just real smooth. It wasn't until that last sector when he pulled it out of the bag that we all started to get excited."

Moore says Lowndes knows the track better than most other drivers and excels on the downhill run. "Generally he's gone well down the hill from Skyline," he says."He knows exactly where to place the car and put each wheel. He carries quite a bit of speed down there and that's where you need to have the most commitment.

"The corners down the hill are linked - each corner sets the other one up after it - so if you're carrying too much speed at Skyline you'll be in the wall."

The 888 car was set up for qualifying with a green set of tyres. However, the crew were expecting to do more laps when the chequered flag ended the session, so the car wasn't running low on fuel.

"We weren't really going for it, so we still had about 20kg of fuel on board. We'd planned to do more runs but got the chequered flag." However, the conditions were perfect for a quick lap, Moore says.

"Everything just fell together at that time with the air and track temperature at 18C and 32C," he says. "Ideally you want the air temp as cold as possible and the track no more than about 32C."

So, could Lowndes break his own record this year? "Judging by his comments after the lap, he was happy with the set-up and he drove it pretty well, so driving wise there is no improvement to be made, but maybe a bit of tweaking on the car set-up could see us go faster," he says.