Before last season had even finished, fans around Australia were lauding Craig Lowndes as the 2006 V8 Supercar Champion. His form last year saw him net more race wins than anyone else – nearly half of all the races contested in fact – and many said that he should have been champion. A fair swag of the so-called critics agreed.

The reasoning was, the man with the most wins should take the title. Strangely, though, Lowndes wouldn’t have won under any existing system we explored. Should he have been champion in 2005? Probably not – there were too many errors from team and driver to collect enough points, and he knows it.

This year, if he is to win the crown, he and his team will need to pick up its act across the board. In short, the man widely regarded as the most naturally gifted driver in the field needs to cut the errors out. That performance lift needs to be matched by his team, the now amazing Team Betta/Triple 8 Race Engineering from Brisbane.

Yes, Lowndes could win the 2006 title, but can he? Could he become an Ingall in terms of wiping the mistakes out of his driving? The two legs of the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide told two stories, one of dominance and the other full of doubts.

"Sorry about that boys," Craig Lowndes said to his pit crew on Lap 18 of the second leg of the Clipsal 500. He’d just knocked the nose off his Team Betta Falcon while trying to wrest the lead from Cam McConville. Later he would be a largely innocent victim in a larger crash with McConville and others, but this one cost him three minutes and 28 spots on the track.

By the time he DNFed 30 laps later, he had only clawed back three of those spots. So that first mistake may not have ended his day formally, but it did metaphorically.

He’d started the weekend in fine style, winning the Saturday race with the kind of dominance that we’d seen a few times last year, and regularly in his days with the Holden Racing Team. He had confirmed his favouritism for the series, and many had already said it was over.

But as we know in V8 Supercar racing, nothing is that easy. Lowndes joked during the weekend that they should just give him the trophy and then we could all get on with the racing – he was in his own way pointing out to people the absurdity of the some of the statements being made about his coming season. He knew better, though he didn’t know he was going to bugger up so early in the year. Not that he wanted to either, it just happened.

"We didn’t have the Melbourne Grand Prix for anyone to judge what teams had done over Christmas, and I suppose everyone’s classified us as the favourite from last year’s
performance," Lowndes said just before Easter. "From a team that was wanting to win races and then become a dominant team, and we’re still into the second of a three-year program, and everyone’s now calling us favourites and one of the best teams out there. For us it is a great honour, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

"Eastern Creek, for Campbell and myself and everyone else, it wasn’t a true victory because we hadn’t beaten everyone on the day. Fair enough, we won but we were only equal with Marcos, we hadn’t raced him and won. It wasn’t until Queensland that we beat the Stones, we beat them in car speed, strategy and pitstops so that was probably a true win for us.

"We saw that as more of a victory than anything and I think from there we went from strength to strength."

The new partnership was reaping rewards early, perhaps earlier than many expected just as it had a couple of years earlier with FPR. But that win was a freak result on a gloomy day, and this was clearly the start of something. Finally, for the first time since turning Blue, he was a serious contender. It saw his popularity skyrocket again in the face of what to many outsiders looked a risky move.

Lowndes says he was never worried, though – he and his minders researched the prospects in great detail, and they had absolute trust in Roland Dane and Campbell Little as well as the rest of the team to give him a race-winning package. It was an easy decision, especially on the back of another FPR restructure that was surface level at best.

A couple of rounds into the year and he scored the first of five poles for the season. Then he landed the watershed first round win for Triple 8 and he was off and running. Fourteen race wins from 30 starts and more round wins than any other and his fans were out in force. It was a travesty of justice, they said, that he didn’t win the title.

Deep down, Lowndes knew better. And that is why he can win this year, even if round one was one step forward and one step backwards.

"We always analyse what we do and how we do it, whether it’s good or bad and I think Adelaide was probably the best of the highs and the worst of the lows. I think we had the car to do the job on that weekend and unfortunately we didn’t do it on the Sunday.

"Saturday was a dream run and everything was starting to go that way on Sunday with Rick having a drive-through penalty which, looking at the replay, I don’t think he deserved. We were probably a lap or two away from pitting when we had the altercation with Cam, so it’s one of those things. I took an opportunity which didn’t come off but it’s a little bit different to Bathurst. Bathurst we had a six-second lead, probably too ambitious and just, you know, made an error.

"If you look at the two incidents now, Bathurst was much more embarrassing than Adelaide. Adelaide I took an opportunity which came off in Saturday’s race when I passed Todd, but not on Sunday with Cam. It was one of those opportunities I took, didn’t work – Bathurst was just embarrassing, we shouldn’t have done what we did.

"It was probably the best car that I’ve ever had at Bathurst. We had great car speed, probably a little concerned with Yvan’s speed, but he was getting faster every time he got into the car and in fairness to him probably we should’ve worried a bit more about trying to look after the car than actually trying to get a lead like we did at Sandown. But you live and learn."

For those of us who worry Lowndes doesn’t hurt after something like that, rest assured he does. But he says he manifests disappointment in a different way to others – with Lowndes there’s no dummy spit, just a period of self-reflection with a smile on his face to hide his pain.

"Oh no you can’t see any holes in these walls," he says looking around his part of the transporter, "or they’ve patched them up really well. I’m disappointed within myself for sure, but at the same time it’s not a bad job or sport to play within regardless of good or bad.

"I do get frustrated and generally I think Campbell’s probably seeing more of it every day. Between Nat and I we bounce off each other really well and we get over the lows but at the same times you appreciate the highs, and the last three or four years of ups and downs has had its moments.

"There are a couple of times I can think of when I raced motocross before I got into karts, and then in karts and Formula Ford, too, there were occasions when I’d spit the dummy and Dad would be at that point packing everything up and I’d be horrified. I’d be more horrified of what are you doing more than, you know, worrying about the issue of the car and he would say, ‘Well if you’re going to have that attitude we’ll just go home now. There’s no use getting shitty about it or spitting the dummy about something, let’s move on and let’s fix the issue and don’t do it again’.

"So I think in the junior ranks I’ve had it beaten into me to stop spitting the dummy or blaming people or getting the shits with the team because it’s an issue that you need to fix, and you’re not going to fix it by running and yelling and screaming at everyone else. So I think through Dad I learnt a valuable lesson about behaving in a better, more appropriate way when things turn to shit."

There’s a little switch somewhere in Lowndes that only he knows how to tap. He is a determined driver, more determined that he looks outwardly, and this switch turns him from happy Craig to race driver Lowndes. It can be that sudden.

Last year at Bathurst I stood with him watching the Shootout before he made his run at pole. He was able to joke about a whole range of things while taking in all that was going on... the track looks damp there, there may be some dirt around that corner... and then he flicked the metaphorical driver switch and he was in the zone. His demeanour changed. The crow’s feet on his eyes disappeared because he had stopped smiling, he had gained intent in his body language, he walked purposefully and only engaged in conversation that had meaning.

It was like a Jeckyl and Hyde moment as he dealt with what he rates as his greatest weakness as a driver – qualifying.

"Qualifying was always my weaknesses," says Lowndes. "Last year we got the most poles, but qualifying has always been my downfall. If you look at Formula Ford I never had a pole position, I always qualified in the top three or four but never had the speed to qualify on pole. Racecraft was always my strongest, actually thinking and strategising with either the team or just sorting it out myself, that was always my strength.

"Part of it is mental because to get it right for one lap you’ve got to be pretty confident with the car, you’ve got to know where your limit is on the tyres and you’ve also got to have a team or an engineer that can basically pump you up in a way of saying, ‘All right, you know we’ve tweaked the car, the car’s going to turn in, it’s going to have drive, it’s up to you to now go and do it’. And you go, ‘Okay, I know the car’s going to do it, now, can I?’.

"When I first got in a V8 Supercar all I was hellbent on was how to go faster, what do I need to do? I didn’t really understand the importance of the fans, so for me I had to go the other way – I had to go from being a race driver and switch into just a normal bloke again to go out and sign autographs.

"Brock helped me do that and especially when we started winning races to having microphones shoved up your nose. It was like, shit, hang on a minute. And so I’ve learnt over the years to relax and for me that works. I enjoy being busy and doing stuff and working, and talking to fans and doing stuff and then when it gets to a point where I go, ‘Okay that’s enough now I need to focus on what I’ve got to do’.

"If I focus on it too much I almost psyche myself out... I’ve got to make sure I brake at the 150 metre mark... I’ve got to make sure I’m in second gear. It almost wears me out."

It is about the relaxing the body and mind to allow the talent to work. He might, like all sportsmen, have to work on fitness and strength, but he’s also got to keep his mind in the right gear at the right time. His home life is important with Nat, Levi and Chilli Blue, being able to cleanse his mind on the farm by doing what people do on farms... you know, feeding horses and stuff.

"The way I operate is that I love this side of it, but at the end of the weekend you love to go home and just divorce from it," he says. "Basically just shut the door and walk away for a bit, go home and spend a couple of days with Nat and the kids and just run around and muster the cattle and figure out where we’re going to put them all. Or whether we’ve got to give the newborns some black leg injections, and worry about other stuff more than worrying about bumps and rebounds and springs and rolls and ride heights and two-tenths here and what’s the first sector look like and the second sector and you buggered this one up and you locked a wheel here.

"It’s good because I guess you’ve got the best of both worlds, you’ve got the business side of it and then you’ve got your private side of it. But I’m only home for half a day, and I’ll be on the phone to Campbell, ‘What are we doing here, what’s happening, what’s new?’. You know, ‘Do you want me down the workshop?’. So for me that actually keeps me charged."

Any thing less than a championship will be rated as a failure by Lowndes in 2006. That’s how high the stakes are today. He knows he is in a good place, perhaps as good as when he helped lift the HRT out of doldrums and into supremacy

"This team 12 months ago wanted to win races and we believed we could, we believed we could be consistently up the front," says Lowndes. "But until you do it I think everyone has a bit of a doubt, and then we started to do it. Then we get to the end of the year and everyone says Triple 8 is team to beat next year, but we’ve got a few things that we need to still put in place yet to do that. Our ambition this year is to win the championship, you know Roland’s now keen on winning the championship, winning Bathurst... he is a greedy bugger but it’s good because it keeps us all on our toes.

"He’s desperate to win Bathurst, he wants to win the manufacturers’ title for Ford, he wants to be the team champion... he wants everything. But it’s good – he’s got the passion like everyone else in the team, so there is probably pressure within our own ranks to try and achieve that. To do the manufacturer thing we need to win races. To win the teams’ championship we need both cars up the front more regularly than we did last year, and I think with Jamie and ourselves running around we can do that. There’s a lot of things we can tick the boxes for and the championship’s always the biggest one."

And that is where discussion of consistency and handling the reverse-grid races come into it. Lowndes feels he and the team have all the right tools, but they may need to approach some things a little differently. He has genuine concern over the starts of the reverse-grid races, citing Dean Canto’s incident from last year as an example.

The team will be geared to call incidents for him, and he’ll have to respond with trust. And he’ll have his fingers metaphorically crossed.

"Well, we cross our fingers and basically we’re going to be more cautious on the starts... I’ll be looking for Campbell to relay as quick as he can. Shit! Stop! Crap! But I think the other interesting thing in this championship is because I think so many good drivers had such a bad start, like Skaife had two DNFs, Murph has had a DNF, we had a DNF, there are a couple of guys that are going to be storming back through the year, they’re going to be pushing pretty hard to rectify those issues.

"All we’ve got to do is just keep being up the front and it’ll sort itself out as the year goes on. Everyone’s going to have a bad weekend, it’s just a matter of when and how often. Hopefully Adelaide leg two is my only DNF this year and if I can make that my only DNF this year I’ll be doing well."

Russell Ingall won last year’s championship with an average round result of 6.6, and the year before Ambrose dominated with 5.1 while Lowndes in 2005 was at 8.6. Ingall had a 36-spot gain in racing over qualifying for the season, while Lowndes dropped 69 spots – the worst result in the field. Lowndes had four DNFs in races, Ingall one... Ingall’s worst result was 17th while Lowndes dropped in a 28th.

The message is clear, if you want to win the championship under this pointscore you need to finish races, and finish them well. Lowndes knows that, but he says he and Team Betta are up the challenge. And when he wins, yes, he did take the positive approach most of the way through the interview, it will be a biggie.

"Besides my first championship this will probably be the biggest I’ve ever had," he says. "To win the championship for both manufacturers has been my goal since I moved over, to show people you can win it in any car as long as you’ve got a team that’s capable of doing it.

"This is the 10th year since my first championship so it makes you hungrier to win. And I think having Jamie on board is good, he’s going to push me as well."

Roland Dane said last month that he plans to win the title this year with Lowndes by racing hard, not working out the calculations and driving to a points’ scenario. Lowndes agrees, although he did concede he may back away a bit if he needs to protect a big lead near the end.

"I think the championship’s going to be fought out right to the end, it’s going to come down to Phillip Island," he says. "I can envisage three or four guys going for the championship going into Phillip Island, because you know the cars are reliable, cars are fast and the competition is pretty tough."

Lowndes rates Skaife, Todd and Rick Kelly, Garth Tander and Steve Richards as likely to be in that three or four. No Fords?

"Yeah, I think it’s pretty thin there," he says. "Without Marcos now in Ford-land I think it you know we’ve lost a bit of talent, but in saying that we’ve gained a few with Will and Jamie, but they’re going to take time."

But fans in Blue don’t care how many Fords are near the front, so long as there is one in the front. And Craig Lowndes is planning for that to be him.

The reality is, he can win this championship and he a justifiable favourite. He learns from his mistakes because he is honest with himself, and the team does likewise. In the end, a racer is a racer and the best way to win a championship is from the front.

Yes, there’ll be hiccups like Adelaide, but in the end if you go hard enough and have the wherewithal to win races, it could become a game of catch me if you can.

A Little is a lot

Part of the key to Lowndes new-found energy is his relationship with Campbell Little. He says Little is able to pick up just from a look at the telemetry when he is getting agitated, and then he steps in to help sort it out.

"Cam knows now when I start hustling the car around or when I get frustrated, he can tell on the telemetry where I’m at," says Lowndes. "And that’s when he’ll get on the radio and he’ll say, ‘Alright, calm down just, you know, relax and get on with it,’ and he’ll know.

"Campbell was why the decision to move to Triple 8 probably wasn’t as big as some people think it was. Knowing Campbell and dealing with him and knowing what infrastructure I was able to walk into made me more relaxed."