Motorsport: Lowndes narrowly avoids disaster

Craig Lowndes narrowly avoided disaster in the secon race at Pukekohe. Photo / Getty

Pukekohe Raceway is definitely Craig Lowndes' bogey track.

The Red Bull Racing Australia driver had one his career's biggest heart-in-the-mouth moments when his left rear tyre exploded halfway down the 250km/h front straight in Saturday's second race.

With a masterful display of car control, Lowndes managed to stop the car spinning and had it facing in the right direction as it slide into the wall at speed.

The chasing David Reynolds avoided the debris and the spinning car to inherit the lead.

On the restart, and over the remaining six laps, Reynolds managed to hold off a hard charging Jamie Whincup to take the narrowest of victories with Kiwi Scott McLaughlin in third.

Fellow Kiwis Shane van Gisbergen, Fabian Coultard and Andre Heimgartner finished fifth, ninth and 18th respectively.

Reynolds has now leap-frogged Lowndes in title race to sit second behind series leader Mark Winterbottom.

None of the four New Zealanders in the field - McLaughlin, Shane van Gisbergen, Fabian Coulthard and Andre Heimgartner could manage to get a win in either of Saturday's two races, but McLaughlin and van Gisbergen did manage to get on the podium.

Defending V8 Supercars champion Whincup is determined to finish his season on a high after struggling for the majority of the season. With a second and a first finish on day one of racing, Whincup now leads the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy - in honour of the Kiwi driver who succumbed to adrenocortical carcinoma in December 2011.

Race one early Saturday afternoon saw Whincup start his race weekend with a wire-to-wire win. It was the Whincup's first win since Sydney Motorsport Park back in August.

Trying as hard as possible could, Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen couldn't get past the re-invigorated RBRA pilot and had to settle for second.

Winterbottom could only qualify seventh and couldn't make any inroads on the leaders and had to settle for finishing where he started.

Big winner on the day was David Reynolds, who managed to hold off Craig Lowndes to finish on the podium in third and close the point's gap on the Triple Eight driver.

Crowd favourite McLaughlin qualified in fifth but fluffed the start dropping back into the chasing pack and picked up some damage in a first corner melee dropping him back to ninth when the chequered flag came out.

The remaining two Kiwis in the field had a race to forget with Heimgartner crossing the line in 19th, while Coulthard got caught up in an altercation with Tim Slade and Will Davison dropping him to the ear of the field.

Today sees another qualifying session at 1.20pm for the 69-lap feature race at 4pm.