Craig Lowndes returning to off-road racing with Finke Desert Race debut

Craig Lowndes has tackled many of Australia’s greatest races from the Bathurst 1000 to the Bathurst 12 Hour. In June, he will add the country’s top off-road event to his résumé when he tackles the Finke Desert Race in a Chevrolet Silverado ZR2 Off-Road Racer with Dale Moscatt as his navigator.

While Lowndes is obviously renowned for his Supercars Championship career as a three-time champion with seven Bathurst 1000 victories, he is not unfamiliar with off-road racing. In 2010, he dabbled in rally raid for the first time when he entered the now-defunct Australasian Safari. Despite being new to to the discipline, he and his Holden Colorado scored the overall win. Lowndes returned to the event in 2011 but retired following an early rollover while leading.

A decade later, he was invited to the Finke Desert Race to participate in the Prologue. Mark Dutton, the manager of Lowndes’ Triple Eight Race Engineering Supercars team, served as his co-driver in an SSV. Of course, 2024 will be his first time racing the Finke in its entirety.

Lowndes has also expressed interest in racing the Dakar Rally, though such an opportunity has yet to come to fruition. In the meantime, Finke will scratch his off-road itch as a race that has long been a bucket list item. This desire escalated when General Motors unveiled the Silverado ZR2 Off-Road Racer as a concept car in December 2022, which he quickly pressed for the company to manifest into an actual competitor.

The Silverado ZR2 is primarily used in American desert racing by Chad Hall, whose team maintains a close factory partnership with Chevrolet that allows him to also test parts that appear on the production vehicles. Former Supercars team Kelly Racing has a similar alliance with Ford Motor Company to field the Ford Ranger Raptor in Australia and America, culminating in Brad Lovell winning the Production 4WD class at the 2023 Finke Desert Race.

Should the Ranger Raptor return for 2024, Lowndes’ own effort means a new chapter in the longstanding General Motors versus Ford rivalry. Indeed, GM is pulling out all the stops for Lowndes as his Off-Road Racer is prepared in conjunction by General Motors Australia and New Zealand and GM Specialty Vehicles. Hall Racing was also involved in developing its suspension.

“It’s been a while since I won the Australian Safari, which was way back in 2010, this is going to be a great test,” said Lowndes. “I drive a Silverado ZR2 every day and regularly put it through its paces off-road on weekends, as well as towing our caravan yearly to the Bathurst 1000. It covers impressive distances and handles Australian conditions so easily, now we’re out to prove its off-road capability.”

Moscatt has extensive co-driving experience in the Australian Off-Road Championship, Dakar Rally, and World Rally Championship. He usually calls the shots for Glenn Brinkman, who finished runner-up in the AORC’s SXS standings in 2022 and third in 2023 before taking on the Dakar Rally in January; they finished twenty-sixth overall in the Challenger category.

The 2024 Finke Desert Race is scheduled for 7–10 June.