Lowndes: It should never have come to that
30/4/2001 13:36 (V8 Wire - Jason Whittaker) -
Craig Lowndes says his hero-to-zero first race yesterday at the hands of an acrimonious officialdom should never have happened.
The Ford ace – who took line honours in the opening race only to be stripped of the result later – is crying foul, claiming his honest mistake should been rectified on the track and not in the stewards room.
"It wasn’t until the end of the race – and lots of celebration – that we found out that I’d passed Greg Murphy under a yellow flag on turn one as Greg was exiting the pits,” Lowndes explained.
"I’m annoyed that we could have rectified the problem if we’d known about it. We were only 12 laps into a 26-lap race. I could have let him pass and then concentrate on cleanly regaining the position on the track.
"No driver likes to be sitting in stewards’ offices for an hour and a quarter after a race if there’s an issue that can be corrected on the bitumen.”
After a lengthy hearing, CAMS officials handed down a 29-second time handicap, the effective time lost to a stop/go penalty, which pushed Lowndes back to 12th in the results.
Lowndes’ defence was that his vision was hampered by Murphy’s Commodore, blocking his view of the shown safety car board.
"We looked at the Channel 10 footage from the camera mounted in my 00 Falcon, and it’s evident that the position of Murphy’s car blocks my view of the flag marshalling point,” he said.
“I would have needed x-ray vision to see the flag, and the brakes of a jumbo jet to slow down enough to let his car, which was rejoining the track, pass me.”
Murphy, who was eventually awarded the race win, was also involved in having race one runner-up Marcos Ambrose penalised after the race.
While many deemed the Murphy-Ambrose coming together innocuous compared to other un-penalised incidents in previous rounds, stewards singled the Stone Brothers racer out by relegating him back to 13th.
"Murf is upset with me but he did give me a nudge earlier,” Ambrose said. "It wasn't tit for tat, but it's rough racing out there."
Murphy was later involved in a contentious stop/go penalty after jumping the start in race two. While his K-Mart Commodore never came to a complete stop in taking the penality, officials deemed justice had been sufficiently served.
“At least this round the stewards have been consistent in their rulings,” Murphy said. “Three of us made silly errors, and all of us have been punished."
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