Tyre blowout puts Lowndes in a spin
damage in the crash, leaving his team in a scramble to fix the car ahead of today’s qualifying session for the first instalment of the Phillip Island 500.
Lowndes declared he would race today after being forced to sit out of the second practice session as the Triple Eight miracle workers went about the Commodore rescue mission.
“The boys are doing a great job,’’ Lowndes said.
“They have taken off all the extras to get to the damage and it will all be fixed. Structurally the car is in one piece, which is fantastic.
“Everything did what it was supposed to do and these are well built cars.
“I will definitely be out there tomorrow.’’
Lowndes revealed he was sent speeding off the track after a tyre blow out.
“I just had to brace myself and wait for the bang,’’ Lowndes said.
“The car took a lot of the impact but it was quite a hard hit. There wasn’t much I could do.
“The front right tyre just blew. We will investigate and move on with it tomorrow.’’
Lowndes will be thrown straight into qualifying with an untested car.
“That is unfortunate,’’ Lowndes said.
“But we will be out there. It might cause an issue but I don’t think so. The guys are very fluent in what they do.”
Chaz Mostert ensured Prodrive Racing Australia would make it a three-way Supercars fight when he stunned the field to join DJR Team Penske and the Red Bulls in a tussle at the top.
Mostert blasted a Phillip Island practice lap record to show this year’s heavyweights that Prodrive was no fading force.
Mostert clocked 1.29.57 in his flying Ford to announce himself as another genuine contender to big hitter’s Shane Van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin, who rounded out the podium.
“The boys gave me an awesome car today,’’ Mostert said.
“It is all looking promising for the weekend.’’ TWEED River Jockey Club general manager Brian Charman says the club is confident the Murwillumbah track will be ready for its next meeting despite the Anzac Day races being called off.
The club has abandoned its annual Anzac Day program that was to be held next Tuesday on the recommendation of stewards.
They said the track hadn’t recovered in time from flooding that put the track and some of the facilities under water for about five days early this month.
Charman said the club was comfortable with the decision, which was made in the hope of giving the track time to mend before the next meeting on May 8.
“Having known our track here I knew that it wasn’t going to be to the standard that they would expect it to be,” Charman said.
“It was just whether they thought it could go around.
“We are happy they have made a decision so we can make an early call rather then leaving it until Tuesday.
“Now we just put that behind us and work hard to make sure we get everything done before May 8.”
Stewards will return to inspect the track on May 1 to determine if it is ready for the next meeting and Charman is confident it will be.
“We have fertilised it, put out our winter grass, aerated it and taken advice from Sydney for anything else we should be considering,” he said.
“There is a lot of green grass out there and some shoots coming through some of the dead stuff already so we are confident.”
Charman said the loss of the Anzac meeting would hurt the club financially but it was a short-term pain that could have been worse if they went ahead and damaged the track further.
“Anzac Day is one of our calendar race meetings for the year,” Charman said.
“It’s where we get the opportunity to showcase the venue to the community.
“It does hurt us financially but if we had gone around and it had of impacted on our next TAB race meeting than it could have been even worse.”