Craig Lowndes is predicting Red Bull Racing Australia will bounce back to its winning ways in the Perth 400 this weekend – and the record book backs him up.

As RBRA and its predecessor TeamVodafone, Triple Eight Race Engineering – through Lowndes and teammate Jamie Whincup – has won seven of the last 11 V8 Supercars races at the Barbagallo Raceway.

During his career Lowndes has claimed 14 wins at the short 2.42km circuit, including an incredible 12 races in a row between 1996 and 2000 (he missed 1997 because he was racing in Europe).

The 39-year old scored one win there last year in his Holden Commodore VF, over-taking Mark Skaife for the all-time V8 Supercars win record in the process, while Whincup claimed the other two in an RBRA clean sweep, which came after the team had struggled in the preceding two rounds at Symmons Plains in Tasmania and Pukekohe in New Zealand.

This year RBRA dominated the Tyrepower Tasmania 400 but struggled with a variety of setup, mechanical, strategy and human errors at the Winton 400 and the ITM 500 Auckland.

“There is no doubt we will bounce back and this weekend is a great opportunity for us to do that,” Lowndes told v8supercars.com.au. “For us it is a matter of getting our heads around the setups we know work at Barbagallo.

“Last year in WA for me was obviously a fantastic weekend,” he added. “I managed to finally overtake Skaife for the all-time wins, it’s a track that I enjoy and we go back to a soft tyre which has been kind to us this year.

“So I am excited about that. I know we are returning to a circuit where we will do much better than we have in the last couple of meetings. And there is no doubt we need to turn things around.”

Lowndes’ poor New Zealand results culminated in the 200km Race 13, where he could only finish 20th. He had qualified 15th after a power steering failure that has since been traced back to human assembly error and then had a flat-spotted tyre put on the car by mistake during a pit stop.

Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom scooped up the 150 points for the win and now has a 107 point lead over Lowndes in the race for the Drivers’ Championship.

Lowndes, who last won the title in 1999, concedes the Pepsi Max Ford Falcon FG II driver now has an advantage that will be a challenge to wear down.

“They (Winterbottom’s points lead) are big numbers. We know how competitive the competition is, we know how consistent ands reliable the cars generally are, so it will be hard to start pegging him back.

“If he now maintains his consistency he is going to still be scoring points as well as us, so we have to beat him to close that gap down.”

Lowndes was involved in the intense round of self-assessment by RBRA after the Pukekohe event and was confident any issues had been identified and dealt with. Importantly, the analysis had reinforced the team’s belief it was fundamentally on the right track.

“We don’t see that what we are doing is wrong,” Lowndes said. “It is just the setups that we had for both Winton and New Zealand didn’t suit. We are now looking to the future and what we know works. Once we get that baseline Jamie and I will work extremely hard to get that momentum going again.”

The team has also confirmed that tech guru Ludo Lacroix will attend Barbagallo. The Frenchman rarely ventures to the track these days, unless there are performance issues to be dealt with.

“There is no doubt he has a wealth of knowledge and experience,” said Lowndes. “He will definitely contribute to the weekend there’s no doubt about that.

“But if we have a good weekend this weekend – which I am predicting we will – it won’t just be because Ludo is here, I think it is a matter of the whole team being really focussed on turning things around.”

Lowndes said “balance” would be the key to producing a car capable of winning at the Perth 400, which is a Super Sprint round comprising two ARMOR ALL qualifying sessions and 100km races on Saturday and another ARMOR ALL qualifying session on Sunday followed by a 200km mini-marathon on Sunday. There will be three practice sessions on Friday.

“It’s a hard track that is really tough on the tyres. You need a well balanced car, not one that necessarily just has good front grip or good rear grip,” Lowndes explained.

“I enjoy the challenge of getting the car right, getting to the point where you can flow the car up over the top and down the back into ‘the bowl’ (turn six). That’s the section of the track I love the most.”