Dane: Lowndes car was told to go for it.

Until lap eighteen of the Supercheap Auto 1000 headline event of the V8 Supercar Series calendar at Bathurst, things couldn't have been going better for Craig Lowndes in the #888 Betta Electrical Falcon. Then Lowndes, already eight seconds ahead of the chasing pack, clipped a wall, and the rest, as they say is history. Triple Eight team boss Roland Dane gave his take on the race weekend to Crash.net.

Until lap eighteen of the Supercheap Auto 1000 headline event of the V8 Supercar Series calendar at Bathurst, things couldn't have been going better for Craig Lowndes in the #888 Betta Electrical Falcon. Then Lowndes, already eight seconds ahead of the chasing pack, clipped a wall, and the rest, as they say is history. Triple Eight team boss Roland Dane gave his take on the race weekend to Crash.net.

"We started off on pole, we clearly had the fastest car here all weekend then relatively early in the race Craig was pushing on and pushed a little too hard, hit the wall and broke a Watts link in the rear suspension, so we had to come in and deal with that," said Dane of the incident which saw Lowndes exit from the lead of the race and put the lead Falcon right down the order.

It was, surely, a mistake for Craig to be pushing so hard in the early running, on a slippery track, in what is a 161 lap race?

"We made a decision before the race to go for it with the 888 car and go as hard as we could and Craig maybe just went a fraction too hard," concedes Dane. "The problem with these cars is when you hit the wheel square on to the wall, which is what happened, and has happened to many people at this place and at other places, you hit it square on and you break the Watts link that locates the rear axle, and it's the weakest link on that part of the car, it's designed to be so it just broke it so that's the way it goes, and this is not a very forgiving place."

Though the blame for the first incident to the #888 Falcon could be laid at Lowndes feet, he couldn't have done anything about the dramatic wheel contact suffered once the car was repaired and back in action.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got hit by an errant wheel," explains Dane simply. "We ended up taking out both screens from the car, and the guys both Yvan and Craig having to do most of the race in fresh air, but they did a good job and brought the car home in fifteenth."

Through the first three days of the race weekend there was much media attention on the abilities of the second driver in the #888 car, former British Touring Car Champion and multiple ice racing champ, Yvan Muller. "I think he's enjoyed it," says Dane of the French star. "What he hasn't enjoyed is people talking rubbish about how long he takes to get up to speed - he did exactly what he was told to do and was very careful with the car. He knows Bathurst but he paced himself into the event very carefully because he didn't want to wrap the car up and cause problems for Craig qualifying it, he did exactly as he was told as he's a consummate professional."

There were more than two Triple Eight cars in the race, of course, and the second one did its job and brought a podium trophy back to the squad's Brisbane base. "The #88 car, which we'd always seen as an insurance policy, did exactly what it was meant to do and perform faultlessly and Steve Ellery and Adam Macrow did a great job and gave us a podium in the toughest touring car race in the world - so you can't be too unhappy with that," said Dane.

And what did Roland make of the numerous other incidents taking place around the 6.213km circuit? "That's their problem not mine, at the end of the day here to finish first, first you've got to finish, and it looks as though some people forgot that somewhere," he says with a grin.

Surfers' Paradise is the next round of the championship. Prospects for the Betta Electrical squad? "There are nine races over three events left and we'll try our best to win nine races."

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