While the annual trip to Bahrain proved to be one to forget for Jamie Whincup, Team Vodafone team-mate Craig Lowndes salvaged a race win from the twelfth round of the V8 Supercar Championship.
Like Whincup, Lowndes was forced to retire from the opening race of the Desert 400 after a first lap incident with Paul Morris left his Falcon with heavy damage to the right hand side and the team facing a busy night to prepare the car for race two.
However, with the car straightened out, Lowndes produced a fine drive in race two to come from the back of the field and take fifth place, which left him well placed for the final 31-lap encounter.
From there, Lowndes produced a fine drive to come home ahead of Stone Brothers Racing ace James Courtney for the race win – giving him sixth in the round and enabling him to go second in the drivers' standings going into the final two race meetings of the year.
"The guys did a great job overnight to repair the car, and it was very pleasing to be able to reward them with a victory in the final race," he said. "The charge through the field in race two was made that little bit easier when some of the other drivers had their own incidents to deal with.
"It was a real up and down weekend for the team with yesterday's incident, so it has been great to have the race three win for the guys who have been working so hard.
"It was tough but thankfully we were able to fight back and get some good points. I am now 20-points behind Garth with two rounds to go and as we have seen over the past two rounds anything can happen."
![Craig Lowndes - Team Vodafone [Pic credit: BAM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393807.jpg)
