Lowndes full of confidence after V8 practice

Craig Lowndes has ended the first day of V8 Supercars practice at Winton Motor Raceway on top of the time sheets after the four practice sessions.

The TeamVodafone driver set a time of 1:22.3376s, over a tenth of a second ahead of SP Tools driver Shane van Gisbergen. Rick Kelly was third in his Jack Daniel’s Racing Commodore VE.

Lowndes says that his early top spot fills him with confidence.

“It’s nice to be where we’re at right now,’ he said.

“It give us great confidence to know that the car is great on the Sprint tyre. We don’t know where we’re exactly at compared to the rest, but it’s is really nice to have a good car balance.

“There’s a few little tweaks we have to make, but yeah, I’m coming in with a lot of confidence.”

Fourth went to Paul Dumbrell who set his time in the dying moments of the session ahead of Jamie Whincup (TeamVodafone), Fabian Coulthard (Bundaberg Red Racing), Will Davison (Toll HRT), Steven Johnson (Jim Beam Racing), Tim Slade (Wilson Security Racing) and Alex Davison (IRWIN Tools Racing).

Championship challenger James Courtney, driving for Jim Beam Racing, finished the final practice session down in 19th – although he did not use brand-new Sprint tyres in his sessions.

Qualifying for tomorrow’s 11^th race of the V8 Supercars Championship Series will be held at 11.20am, followed by the top 10 shootout at 12.25pm and the race at 3.35pm.

V8 Supercars combined practice times – Winton Motor Raceway

Pos	#	Driver	Time
1	888	Craig Lowndes	1:22.3376*
2	9	Shane Van Gisbergen	1:22.4910
3	15	Rick Kelly	1:22.6453
4	55	Paul Dumbrell	1:22.6837
5	1	Jamie Whincup	1:22.7976
6	24	Fabian Coulthard	1:22.8598
7	22	Will Davison	1:22.8697
8	17	Steven Johnson	1:22.9820
9	47	Tim Slade	1:23.0629
10	4	Alex Davison	1:23.1316
11	10	Andrew Thompson	1:23.1322
12	6	Steven Richards	1:23.1456
13	5	Mark Winterbottom	1:23.1947
14	2	Garth Tander	1:23.2270
15	51	Greg Murphy	1:23.2873
16	33	Lee Holdsworth	1:23.3023
17	12	Dean Fiore	1:23.3650
18	3	Tony D’Alberto	1:23.3838
19	30	Daniel Gaunt	1:23.4208
20	19	Jonathon Webb	1:23.4306
21	18	James Courtney	1:23.4720
22	39	Russell Ingall	1:23.6507
23	8	Jason Richards	1:23.7451
24	14	Jason Bright	1:23.7632
25	34	Michael Caruso	1:23.8364
26	11	Jason Bargwanna	1:23.9342
27	7	Todd Kelly	1:24.0273
28	21	Karl Reindler	1:24.3323
29	16	Tony Ricciardello	1:24.8117