Craig Lowndes was looking ꧂good for a to🍬p ten finish in the opening leg of the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, before a drive-thru penalty dropped him out of contention.

Starting from sixth on the grid after making it all t𝓡he way to the end of the V8 Supercar series' new-look qualifying procedure, last year's title runner-up ran st💦rongly in the top ten before turn four contact with Max Wilson turned the Brazilian's WOW/WPS Ford around at mid-distance and saw Lowndes handed a punishment which dropped him down the order.

Although his #888 Team Vodafone Ford then suffered a return to the handling 𒈔problems that had afflicted it in warm🎶-up, Lowndes managed to salvage a points finish by rising back to 13th place, just inside the new-look scoring positions.

"We had a difficult day - for a number of reasons," the crowd favourite admitted, "We had an issue with the rear of the car before the start of the race, which we believed we🍬 had fixed but came back to haunt us and I ended up with too muc🐻h understeer.

"We decided to get our pit-stops out of the way early on, but then I got stuck behind Max, who was still to complete a second 𓄧stop and was holding me up by about two s🏅econds a lap. Unfortunately, there was contact which resulted in a drive-thru' penalty and the goal from there was just to stay in the points."

Despite being disappointed with his result, and the early points deficit to the leader🦩s, Lowndes took motivation from the performance of Vodafone team-mate Jamie Whincup, who claimed third place.

"We w𒉰ill fix our mechanical issues for tomorrow's race and, knowing the speed that Ja🐻mie had, I am looking forward to tomorrow's race," he concluded.