For race winner Lowndes, he continues his form at Phillip Island after winning the previous 300km event held at the Victorian circuit in 2003.
"Our car wasn’t quite as quick on colder tyres, but once we’d settled down our car was reasonably quick," said Lowndes.
"Marcos (Ambrose) was having some sort of trouble with tyre degradation and I think he actually had a tyre delaminate, so we were able to get by him and then pull a gap on both he and Garth Tander and go onto win the race quite comfortably.
"Tomorrow’s races are going to be a longer, we don’t know what the weather’s going to hold for us yet, so we’ll make some changes from today’s results."
Garth Tander continued his purple patch of racing form this weekend by finishing second. Establishing himself and the HSV Dealer Team as the top Holden outfit as the season draws to a close, Tander booked himself a front row start for tomorrow’s opening race – a perfect opportunity for another great start.
"I thought the start was fair! I didn’t get any wheelspin, and I noticed that the two in front did get wheelspin. It was a really good launch and away we went," said Tander of his start.
"We have been getting good starts since Indy – we changed the car a little bit to get better starts, so we are really happy with that. After the pit stop we had massive, massive understeer and just could not push on the out-lap at all. I had the world’s slowest out lap, so that is basically how these guys got in front.
"Marcos had a problem at the end and I caught him and he let me pass him, which is quite nice, as he needs as many points as possible. We were happy to finish second and look forward to tomorrow."
Ambrose suffered with tyre degradation issues near the end of his race, however he holds some good car speed, which bodes well for Sunday’s races.
"We are all saying it is up to Russell to loose it, not for us to win it, but the priority is for Ford to win this weekend and the manufacturers’ championship," said Ambrose.
