Profile: Craig Lowndes

One of Australia's foremost sporting heroes, three-time V8 Supercar champion and five-times Bathurst 1000 winner Craig Lowndes is one of few to have successfully transcended the deep-rooted partisan divide between fans of Holden and Ford. The Motorsport Journal profiles the perma-smiling Aussie, who once again mastered Mount Panorama in a classic Bathurst 12 Hours for Maranello Motorsport at the weekend. 

Craig Lowndes celebrates on the podium after
winning the Bathurst 12 Hours. (Credit: Craig Lowndes)

As a fresh-faced rookie at the Holden Racing Team in 1994, Craig Lowndes caught everyone by surprise when with 11 laps remaining, he made a career-defining pass around the outside of John Bowe’s Ford for the race lead at Griffins Bend. Although Bowe would wrest the lead back in traffic and go on to win unchallenged when Lowndes' fuel light came on, it barely seemed to matter. A new star was born.  

Fast forward twenty years and the boot sits firmly on the other foot. In the dying minutes of the Bathurst 12 Hours enduro, it seemed a tough ask for Lowndes to hold off the charging Mercedes of Maximillian Buhk, who had a clear straight-line speed advantage and fresh brake-pads to boot.  Buhk came knocking, pulling alongside the Ferrari and tried to stick it out around the outside of the fast right-hander.  But Lowndes was never about to concede, and in a typically canny display of defensive driving, brought the car home to deliver Allan Simonsen’s former team an emotional victory, and add yet another accolade to an already glittering CV.  In a twist of irony, Lowndes’ team-mate watching nervously from the garage was none other than Tasmanian Bowe himself.

Lowndes missed out on a sixth Bathurst win in 2011 by just 0.3 seconds
to Holden rival Garth Tander. (Credit: Australian Daily Telegraph)

Lowndes’s phenomenal record on the mountain speaks for itself.  In the record books as one half of the youngest ever pairing to win the Great Race, alongside Greg Murphy at HRT in 1996, no-one could begrudge Lowndes fittingly winning the inaugural Peter Brock Trophy in 2006, dedicated to his late mentor, the great Peter ‘Perfect’ Brock. That kick-started a trio of consecutive victories alongside one Jamie Whincup in Triple Eight’s Fords, before a change in the regulations meant full-season drivers could no longer team up for the endurance races. Not that this would stop Lowndes, as semi-retired V8 legend Mark Skaife marked his return to Holden by co-driving him to a glorious fifth triumph in 2010, and has never finished off the podium since, famously contributing to one of the great finishes in 2011 when he hassled Garth Tander all the way to the flag.

At 39, the ever-popular Lowndes remains a massive draw and is still at the top of his game, setting a new record for the largest margin of victory in the first race in the new Car of Tomorrow era of V8 Supercars last year. He can also be well satisfied with being the only man to consistently keep the dominant man of this generation in Whincup honest in recent years, having finished second in points for the last three years in a row.  Should rumours that Lowndes is targeting an assault on the Le Mans 24 Hours in June come to fruition, who would count against him showing the rest of the world what they’re missing? I for one certainly hope it happens.

V8 star Jason Bright made the trip to Le Mans last year and had
a blast. Will Lowndes do the same? (Credit: John Dagys)