Shop
Craig Lowndes is set to drive at Bathurst until at least 2025 after signing on for an additional two years with Triple Eight Racing and will drive the Supercheap Auto #888 Chevrolet Camaro with Zane Goddard in this year’s endurance races.
The unbroken two-decade tenure – with Lowndes having started at Triple Eight in 2005 – is unprecedented for a driver and has included six of his seven Bathurst wins.
That’s the same number of wins as Jim Richards – including Gentleman Jim’s Supertourer win in 1998 – and matches that of Lowndes’ mentor, Peter Brock, sans years that Peter Perfect swapped cars.
To that end, Lowndes has a chance – even if it is remote – to match Brock’s tally of nine Bathurst 1000 wins in his three further entries at Mount Panorama, but has he already done so by virtue of equalling the number of non-car swap victories?
Who is the King of the Mountain?
When Lowndes won the 2018 Supercheap Auto 1000 with Steven Richards, it was his seventh win since his 1996 triumph with Greg Murphy for the Holden Racing Team.
Brock scored his seventh win in 1983 – and it’s this race where the debate starts.
The #05 Holden Dealer Team VH Commodore that Brock was co-driving with Larry Perkins that year started from pole position, beating George Fury’s Nissan Bluebird off the front row to lead the field up the mountain.
John Harvey, in the #25 HDT Commodore that he was sharing with Peter’s brother, Phil, took second from Fury as the Nissan slowed at the end of the opening lap to make it an HDT one-two.
Yet #05 didn’t last even 15 minutes, developing engine issues that saw it out of the race on Lap 8, with Allan Grice in the STP Roadways Commodore leading from Garry Rogers, with John Harvey third in the #25 HDT entry.
That’s the car that Peter Brock would step into, with brother Phil not completing a lap of the race as Peter Brock, Perkins and Harvey went on to win the race in the second HDT Commodore – number seven for Brock.
While his eighth win in 1984 – his third consecutive Bathurst with Perkins, and his second three-peat – was in no doubt, winning by two-laps in #05 as he led an HDT one-two, Brock’s ninth win in 1987 came amidst the politics of what was the World Touring Car Championship.
Crossing the line third, and not declared the race winner until months later after protests saw the Ford Sierras in first and second formally disqualified, it was again not #05 on the door of the HDT Commodore that took the win.
Brock’s #05 Mobil 1 VL HDT SS Group A that he was sharing with David Parsons went further into the race than his VH had four years earlier, but was out after 34 laps with engine dramas.
This time, it was Jon Crooke – who’d been entered as Peter McLeod’s co-driver in #10 – that missed out on the drive, and the chance to be a Great Race winner.
Adding to the drama was Brock’s acrimonious split from Holden in February 1987, which saw him switch the BMWs for the 1988 season when his ninth win was finally confirmed.
Regardless of how, the record books show Brock as a nine-time winner, and the images of him sliding the #10 VL around a wet Mount Panorama, elbow on the window, are now part of Bathurst folklore.
What’s more, the ability to change cars was perfectly legal, with rivals such as Dick Johnson entering a Group A Mustang ahead of the 1984 race to counter for any issues with the leading #17 Group C Falcon – given his dramatic Hardies Heroes crash in 1983 – with a pair of Mustangs entered for the Queenslander in 1985 under Group A rules.
That’s not the same as changing cars mid-race, of course.
By the time Craig Lowndes made his Bathurst debut in 1994, driving with Brad Jones at HRT, the ability to change cars had been outlawed.
While the focus was on a $100k bonus promised to Brock if he managed to achieve that illusive 10th win, 20-year-old Lowndes rocked the establishment as he passed John Bowe’s #17 Falcon EB at Griffins Bend to lead the race in its closing stages.
Brock had dramatically crashed out in #05 in what turned out to be a changing of the guard – and while Bowe took the place back from ‘The Kid’ to win Bathurst 1994, the Lowndes legend was born.
Fittingly, while Brock was the first to win Bathurst three times in a row – doing it twice, first with Jim Richards between 78-80 and again with Perkins from 82-84 – Lowndes was the second, achieving the feat with Jamie Whincup between 06-08.
While their careers overlapped, Brock and Lowndes have run in distinctly different eras – Brock won on his 50th birthday at Symmons Plains in 1995 while #05 started on pole courtesy of Mark Skaife at Bathurst 1997, when Brock was 52 years old.
Lowndes will be 51 when he makes what could be his last at Bathurst in 2025; this October, Lowndes makes his 30th start – the same number as Brock.
Lowndes and Brock share seven wins apiece in the car that they started the race aboard – so should the master and the apprentice, also both three-time champions, be equally revered when it comes to who is the King of the Mountain?
Have your say below in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
