After the disappointment of season opening Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, TeamVodafone driver Craig Lowndes will return to Triple Eight Race Engineering's most successful vehicle for the second round of the 2008 V8 Supercar Championship Series at Eastern Creek this weekend.
Lowndes was involved in a spectacular accident during the final leg of the Clipsal 500, causing extensive damage to his #888 Falcon and leaving the team with work to do ahead of the second round of the season.
Because of the short turn-around between the races, Lowndes will return to the most famous car built by Triple Eight Race Engineering, 'Chassis 10', which provided him with his first round victory for the team at Eastern Creek in 2005. The same car carried him to nine round wins including the 2005 and 2007 Sandown 500's and the 2006 Bathurst 1000.
"The team has been working hard to get our spare car, 'Chassis 10', ready for me to compete in at Eastern Creek this weekend," he said. "We have had to make some changes to the car including swapping the H pattern gearbox to the sequential gearbox, but thankfully the car had already been given its major upgrades earlier in the year.
"Both Jamie and I, have had good results in this chassis. I won my first ever round for Triple Eight in her at Eastern Creek in 2005 so hopefully that is a good omen for this weekend. In saying that my new car is definitely the best car Triple Eight Race Engineering has built and we are all hoping to have it back on track for New Zealand."
Team-mate Jamie Whincup however enjoyed the perfect start to his season in Adelaide, as he secured pole position and then took victory in both races to lead the early season standings – something he will aim to repeat at the Sydney circuit.
