From go-karts to Holden and Ford touring cars, Formula 3000, Bathurst glory and the Finke Desert Race, a career built on endurance and consistency.
Craig Lowndes is an Australian touring car driver whose career spans Holden, Ford and Triple Eight machinery. He won the Bathurst 12 Hour in 2014 and 2017, and was the first driver to reach 100 race wins in the category.
Craig Lowndes is an Australian racing driver who built his reputation in touring cars, winning three V8 Supercar championships and seven Bathurst 1000s. He also won the Bathurst 12 Hour twice and in 2015 became the first to pass 100 race wins in V8 Supercars, before stepping back from full-time racing after 2018.
How did Lowndes start in motor racing?
Lowndes began racing at nine, in go-karts and on dirt bikes, then moved into cars in 1991, racing a Van Diemen within the Motorcraft Formula Ford series. The 1993 Australian Formula Ford title was his, and he finished third at the Formula Ford Festival in England.
The Van Diemen was several years old and had little sponsorship, yet results came quickly. In 1994 he stepped up to Formula Brabham, Australia's leading open-wheel category, where he raced an ageing Cheetah Mk9 against far newer machinery and earned the Australian Silver Star.
Three championships, seven Bathurst 1000 wins and a Finke Desert Race record are the marks of a driver who kept winning across very different machines.
How did Lowndes break into touring cars?
In 1994 the Holden Racing Team took him on in a test role, then called him up into a Commodore for the Sandown 500, where he finished second as a rookie. By 1996 he had a full seat, and he won that year's championship by 79 points.
At Sandown he shared a No. 015 Commodore with Brad Jones. With eleven laps to go he passed John Bowe on the outside of Griffins Bend, a move that briefly made him the leader. Bowe regained the place a lap later after Lowndes was caught out by traffic from lapped cars, but second was an impressive result for a newcomer.
In 1996 he replaced Tomas Mezera in the HRT line-up. In that first full season he won Sandown and Bathurst with teammate Greg Murphy, and the Bathurst win made him the youngest winner of the race. Team owner Tom Walkinshaw then signed him to a ten-year management deal.
What happened in Formula 3000?
By the close of 1996 Lowndes had left Australia for Europe, moving into Formula 3000 on Walkinshaw's backing. In 1997 he drove for the RSM Marko team alongside the highly rated Juan Pablo Montoya, qualifying sixth on debut at Silverstone. His best finish was fourth at Enna, and sponsors were reluctant to fund another season.
Montoya took three wins and finished second in the championship, which left Lowndes with a harder season to measure against. He went back to Australia and to HRT, where he won the 1997 Sandown 500 with Murphy before returning to a full-time seat.
How did Lowndes rebuild his career at HRT?
After returning from Europe, Lowndes resumed a full-time HRT seat in 1998 alongside Mark Skaife. He also tested with a Team KOOL Green Indy Lights outfit that season, weighing a move to American open-wheel racing before deciding to stay in Australia.
The third of his championships came in 1999 in a Holden VT Commodore, which was the first full year of that model in the series. Lowndes had a large lead before the Calder Park round, and he the title came at the Bathurst Classic, where he took second in the final round.
His 2000 campaign began as the favourite to win a fourth straight title. Reliability and consistency were a struggle, and he finished third behind teammate Skaife and Garth Tander. Three round wins, including the Queensland 500, were the highlights.
What were Lowndes' years with Ford like?
In 2001 Lowndes left Holden for Ford, signing with a new team led by former driver Fred Gibson. The two seasons that followed produced seventh and 11th places in the championship, and the partnership was hurt by reliability problems with the Falcon and uncertainty over the team's direction.
Fans admired his positive attitude through those setbacks. His black and silver Falcon was nicknamed the green-eyed monster because of its bright green headlight covers.
In 2003 he joined Ford Performance Racing and finished fifth in the championship, with a first round win since the Queensland 500 of 2000. Reliability problems hit the team again in 2004, when he finished 20th and left at the end of the year.
How did Triple Eight and the 2006 Bathurst win change his career?
Triple Eight Race Engineering signed him for 2005, a season that became his strongest since moving to Ford, with the most round victories and pole positions in the championship. His 2006 Bathurst 1000 win, by half a second over Rick Kelly, was his first there since 1996 and came a month after Peter Brock's death.
That 2006 season went to the final race with Lowndes level on points with Kelly. Kelly crashed into him heading into the hairpin, Lowndes lost a lengthy pit stop, and Kelly took the title. The protest that followed was dismissed, and Lowndes chose not to appeal, calling himself a Moral Champion for the season.
The Barry Sheene Medal, named after the late Barry Sheene and first handed out in 2003, went to Lowndes in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007 he won three races, including the Sandown 500 and the Bathurst 1000, and finished third in the championship with Jamie Whincup second. The 2008 Bathurst 1000 gave the pair a third straight win.
How did Lowndes perform in the championship by season?
| Season | Team | Championship | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Holden Racing Team | Champion | Won by 79 points from John Bowe |
| 1999 | Holden Racing Team | Champion | Title clinched at the Bathurst Classic |
| 2000 | Holden Racing Team | Third | Three round wins, including the Queensland 500 |
| 2001 | Gibson Motorsport (Ford) | Seventh | Reliability problems with the Falcon |
| Following season | Gibson Motorsport (Ford) | 11th | Uncertainty over the team direction |
| 2003 | Ford Performance Racing | Fifth | First round win since the 2000 Queensland 500 |
| 2004 | Ford Performance Racing | 20th | Left the team at the end of the year |
| 2005 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | Most round victories and most poles |
| 2006 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | Bathurst 1000 win by half a second |
| 2007 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Third | Three wins, including Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000 |
| 2009 | Ford | Fourth | Wins at Winton, Gold Coast and Barbagallo |
| 2010 | Team Vodafone (Holden) | Fourth | Fifth Bathurst 1000 win with Mark Skaife |
| 2011 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | Five pole positions |
| 2012 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | Seven race wins |
| 2013 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | Adelaide opener won by over 20.5 seconds |
| 2015 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Second | First driver to 100 race wins |
| 2017 | Team Vortex | 10th | Winless season, his lowest since 2004 |
The 2010 season saw Team Vodafone switch to Holden Commodores as Ford cut its sponsorship. Partnering Mark Skaife, Lowndes won the Phillip Island 500 and Bathurst 1000 that year, and his first solo victory came at Symmons Plains in the Falken Tasmania Challenge.
The 2013 season opened in Adelaide, where Lowndes took Race 1 by more than 20.5 seconds, a record gap for the series. He added wins at Barbagallo Raceway and Hidden Valley Raceway that year, and a Race 1 victory at Gold Coast alongside Warren Luff.
What did Lowndes achieve at Bathurst?
Lowndes has won the Bathurst 1000 seven times, in 1996, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2015 and 2018. His 14 Bathurst 1000 podiums are the most in the event's history, and his 2015 finish was the 13th of them.
The 2009 bid for a fourth consecutive Bathurst title ended with a drive-through penalty and a clutch problem. A tyre delamination had cost the pair the lead of the Phillip Island 500 earlier that year.
On 7 October 2018 he won his seventh Bathurst 1000 with Steven Richards in 6 hours 1 minute, and the pair also took the Pirtek Enduro Cup that season. Lowndes was the second driver to win that cup more than once.
How did Lowndes win the Bathurst 12 Hour?
Lowndes first raced the Bathurst 12 Hour in 1994, sharing a Nissan Pulsar SSS to finish 14th outright. He later became a regular in the event with GT3 machinery, finishing second outright in 2011 in an Audi R8 LMS GT3 for Joest Racing.
He won the race in 2014 in a Ferrari 458 GT3 for Maranello Motorsport, sharing the car with John Bowe, Peter Edwards and former Formula One driver Mika Salo. He won again in 2017, this time in a Ferrari 488 GT3 with Jamie Whincup and Toni Vilander.
In more recent years he has been a mainstay for Scott Taylor Motorsport, driving its Mercedes-AMG GT3 entry.
What is Lowndes' record in the Finke Desert Race?
Lowndes first took part in the Finke Desert Race's Prologue in 2021, driving a UTV with Mark Dutton, the Triple Eight team principal, as co-driver. He made his official Finke debut the following year in a Chevrolet ZR2 Silverado with Dale Moscott, won the Prologue and set a record first-leg time in a production vehicle.
On the return leg a ball joint broke and forced him out. He returned in 2026 with the Silverado and took the Production 4WD class, being the one entrant to reach the finish.
Earlier, in 2010, he had entered the Australasian Safari and he claimed the Rally Raid on his debut attempt.
What honours has Lowndes received?
On 11 June 2012 Lowndes was made a recipient of the Order of Australia medal, announced in the Queen's Birthday honours for his motorsport success and wider community work. In 2018 he was named ABC Sports Personality of the Year at the Australian Institute of Sport Performance Awards.
On 16 March 2019 he entered the Australian Motor Sport Hall of Fame. His 500 kilometre endurance results add up to nine titles, split between six at Sandown, two at Phillip Island and one at Queensland.
He is also a television commentator, and as of 2026 he has started his 33rd consecutive Bathurst 1000.
What is Lowndes' legacy in V8 Supercars?
Lowndes is one of the most decorated figures in V8 Supercar history, with three championships, seven Bathurst 1000 wins, five Barry Sheene Medals and 100 race wins. He was the first to get there, and in 2016 he became the first to enter 600 championship races.
He stepped away from full-time racing after the 2018 season, announced in July 2018, but stayed with Triple Eight as an endurance driver. From 2022 he co-drove in a Supercheap Auto backed wildcard program that has launched several younger drivers towards the Bathurst 1000.
In 2026 he joined Team 18, racing a wildcard entry alongside Bayley Hall, and he continues to race in the Supercars enduro rounds.
.jpg){kind=link}