Supercars: Townsville race report with Roland Dane

It was certainly good to be back at the track for the Townsville 400 after having been overseas for the Darwin Triple Crown.

Although TeamVortex wasn't able to carry the qualifying momentum we enjoyed in the Top End into this weekend, the crew is undoubtedly still satisfied with two top 10 finishes – sixth on Saturday, 10th on Sunday.

888 took an entirely different route on the car's setup on Sunday.

Craig raced very well across both of the 200 kilometre races. Saturday's result was indicative of the strong pace the no. 888 Holden had, but he could have finished in sixth or seventh on Sunday if he hadn't got stuck behind slower cars. He lost 10 seconds or so over a short number of laps and that compromised his end result.

Lowndes finished in 10th position after starting the race in the 21st slot.

We took quite a drastically different route on the setup of the car on Sunday. John "Irish" McGregor (Race Engineer) knew something had to be done differently in order to get a different result. This worked well for the race, but Craig didn't get the best out of the tyre in qualifying on the first flying lap. The second flying lap on the super soft tyre compound is never as rewarding.

Craig Lowndes is currently at 7th in the Championship.

Still, starting from 21st in that race and getting to 10th in the end was respectable and we'll take that, especially given the skirmishes on the opening lap and the car damage as a result (purely cosmetic, but we'll of course go over the car thoroughly back at base in Brisbane).

The qualifying results this weekend were less to do with setups and more to do with the approach to getting the right lap and maximising what was on the table. We'll of course analyse this back at the workshop and see how we need to evolve to improve. Brutally honest self-analysis is a huge part of what we do here at Triple Eight.

888 has gathered the necessary data to see how they can improve at Ipswich.

As they have been for every round this year, the setups for the races were very good. The TeamVortex car undoubtedly has consistent race pace to compete with the top five and the way it looks after its tyres is only paralleled by Craig's Red Bull Holden Racing teammates, Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen.

Considering the damage that the car received on the opening lap, 888 is happy with the result.

The next event on the calendar is the Ipswich SuperSprint – our home track. Craig always goes well there, so that will give him confidence coming into it. He was very quick in testing there last month and I'd be surprised if he wasn't at the sharp end at Queensland Raceway.

Do you think Craig Lowndes was one of the top performers over the weekend? Let us know in the comments below.