Published April 15th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
V8 Supercars - Phillip Island
Round 2 of the V8 Supercar championship has been run and won by Craig Lowndes. Although the FPR Ford lacked speed on the day, a good strategy and a bit of assistance from the weather saw him ake the win on the day.
Strategy played a great part in our victory today, and we had the right strategy whether it was dry or wet. We have done a lot just to get the team up and running, we didn’t have the car speed today that was obvious. For us, we had to take a gamble, and we did and it worked - it is a dream come true.
The weekend didn’t go quite so well for the Stone Brothers team though. After HRT’s Mark Scaife copped a drive through penalty for speeding in pit lane, Marcos Ambrose was looking good until he was tangled up with Jason Bright on the entrance to pit lane.
“I guess it was the one that got away,” said Ambrose.
“The way the race fell, we were certainly in a position to win the race.
“If the rain had held off for another two or three laps we would have been way out in front when the safety car came.“I don’t know what he (Bright) was thinking.
“I was coming in for wets and he just hit me on the inside.
“The crash went for about 400m because he just wanted to keep going and eventually he just turned me around.”
Coming from the back of the grid though, Russell Ingall had a much better race, eventually finishing 10th…
Ingall was pleased to get through the scheduled 300km race without any damage and pick up 138 valuable championship points to keep him eighth in the overall standings and the leading Ford driver.
“The car was a jet and a credit to the Caltex Havoline team who put it back together overnight,” said Ingall.
HRT’s Mark Scaife seemed to have plenty of car speed, and looked set to pull out a gap on the rest of the field until he was awarded a drive through penalty for speeding in pit lane. HRT took a conservative approach to strategy, and Craig’s srategy ultimately paid off, the results could have been very different had it not been for Scaife’s drive through. However, at the end of the race, Mark admitted coming in to pit lane a bit hot, so all’s fair I guess. Good to see a ford win one anyway!