Craig Andrew Lowndes (born 21 June 1974) is an Australian racing car driver in the Repco Supercars Championship racing for Team 18. He is also a TV commentator.
Lowndes is a three-time V8 Supercar champion, a five-time Barry Sheene Medalist, and a seven-time winner of Australia's most prestigious motor race, the Bathurst 1000 and two-time winner of the Bathurst 12 Hour.
On 6 July 2018, Lowndes announced his intention to step down from full-time driving at the end of the 2018 season, continuing as a co-driver. As of 2026, he participates in his 33rd consecutive Bathurst 1000.
Lowndes also voices Conrod in Roary the Racing Car in both the UK and US.
Lowndes began his racing career at age nine, driving go-karts and riding dirt bikes.
Lowndes moved up to race cars in 1991, driving a Van Diemen in the Motorcraft Formula Ford "Driver to Europe" Series. Despite the car being several years old and receiving minimal sponsorship, Lowndes achieved almost immediate success. Lowndes won the Australian Formula Ford Championship in 1993 which qualified him for the Formula Ford Festival in England that same year, where he finished third. In 1994, he moved up to Australia's top rank of open wheel racing, Formula Brabham. His success in Formula Brabham driving an ageing Cheetah Mk9 against much more modern cars was rewarded with the Australian Silver Star.
In 1994, Lowndes joined the Holden Racing Team as a test driver. Having looked sufficiently promising in his maiden outings with the team, Lowndes was drafted into the No. 015 Commodore with Brad Jones for the 1994 Sandown 500. It was expected to be a one-off performance as Rickard Rydell from the BTCC was to join the team for Bathurst. However, Rydell was forced to stay home for family reasons, handing Lowndes a second opportunity to impress the team.
After a gruelling double-stint by Jones, Lowndes began the final stint of the race as the closest challenger to the dominant DJR Falcon of John Bowe. With eleven laps to go, Lowndes stunned the touring car establishment by overtaking Bowe on the outside of Griffins Bend. Bowe retook the lead a lap later when Lowndes was unsettled by lapped traffic. Nevertheless, second was an impressive achievement for a rookie driver. Lowndes won fans in pit lane when he later admitted that his passing move on Bowe was simply a case of missing his brake marker.
It would be almost a year before Lowndes would find himself back behind the driver's seat for HRT. Having been retained as their official test driver for 1995, Lowndes was forced to sit on the sidelines as the team persisted with their experienced line-up of Tomas Mezera and Peter Brock. At the season-ending endurance events, Lowndes was back behind the wheel and immediately impressed by taking his maiden pole position at the Sandown 500. His race would end in the gravel trap at Turn 1 after a spirited battle with veteran Glenn Seton. The rookie would prove his speed was no flash in the pain just a few short weeks later when he stormed to pole at the Bathrust 1000. His HRT Commodore would DNF early on in the race when both cars experienced oil pressure problems and eventual engine failure. The team had seen enough, however, and for the 1996 season Lowndes replaced Tomas Mezera.
In his first full season as an Australian Touring Car driver, Lowndes again surprised the establishment, winning the championship by 79 points from reigning champion, John Bowe. He also won both the Sandown and Bathurst races with teammate Greg Murphy, a rare treble. His Bathurst 1000 victory made him the youngest-ever winner of the race, and with Murphy, the youngest-ever driver pairing to win the Bathurst 1000. His unprecedented success prompted team owner Tom Walkinshaw to sign him to a ten-year management deal:
"We signed a deal earlier this year to get me overseas in 1997. Under the terms of the arrangement, he has got seven years to put me into F1. It's pretty rare for a young Australian to get a deal like this, although it's not so unusual in Europe for young drivers to get picked up at an early age."
At the end of 1996, Lowndes left Australia for Europe to pursue his F1 dream with Walkinshaw. A successful F3 test prompted both Lowndes and Walkinshaw to skip the category altogether in favour of the heavier yet faster F3000 series. Super Nova team boss David Sears was impressed with Lowndes, but his insistence on a two-year commitment wasn't to Walkinshaw's liking and ultimately led to the Scotsman signing Lowndes to the RSM Marko Team in the 1997 International Formula 3000 Championship. Lowndes would partner the highly rated Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya.
Qualifying an impressive sixth on debut at Silverstone, Lowndes' rookie season in the category ultimately proved underwhelming, his best finish of 4th in Enna paling in comparison to Montoya's three wins and 2nd in the championship. Commenting on his time at RSM Marko, Lowndes would describe the experience as markedly different from his time at HRT:
"There was one engineer who engineered both cars and (Montoya) drove the car very differently to what I did. They basically made the cars the same and very similar in set-ups and I just had to deal with it."
Despite his struggles, Lowndes was determined to carry on, but with sponsors reluctant to fund another season he duly returned to Australia and HRT.
Upon his return to Australia, Lowndes again won the 1997 Sandown 500 for HRT, partnered by New Zealander Greg Murphy. In 1998, he resumed his full-time race seat with the Holden Racing Team (at the expense of Murphy) alongside new teammate and former champion Mark Skaife. Picking up where he left off, Lowndes went on to win his second consecutive Championship.
In 1998, Lowndes flirted with a potential trans-pacific move to the American CART series. Although he tested with Team KOOL Green's Indy Lights outfit (with both he and fellow V8 Supercar regular Jason Bright setting competitive times, the latter for PacWest), Lowndes eventually decided to stay in Australia.
A third title would follow in 1999 with Lowndes finishing off the podium only once in the first 18 races. In the first full year of campaigning the new Holden VT Commodore, Lowndes had amassed a large lead by the time the series arrived for Round 8 at Calder Park Raceway. Having duly won the first sprint race, a poor start by Lowndes saw him bogged down in the field and subsequently tapped by another car which resulted in a spectacular roll over. Despite missing the following round at Symmons Plains Raceway due to injury, Lowndes still managed to clinch the Championship at the Bathurst Classic, finishing second in the final round of the season.