Craig Lowndes opens up in detail about serious death threats aimed at him and Mark Skaife after switch from Holden to Ford

Supercars legend Craig Lowndes has opened up in detail about the death threats made against him and Mark Skaife after he moved from Holden to Ford in 2000, revealing he had to be shadowed by a bodyguard – and his former teammate had a frightening encounter with the man responsible.

Lowndes also recalled an alarming phone call he got from Skaife soon after his change in allegiance, which triggered headlines across the country, as he recalled the episode on the Dos and D podcast.

4

“I’d moved from Holden to Ford and I was living on the farm at the time, and he [Skaife] actually rang me up. He said, ‘Have you got anyone at your front gate?’ I said no, the front gate’s probably a three quarters of a kilometre drive away,” Lowndes said.

“He [Skaife] says HSV at the time, or HRT, were getting phone calls from a random number, obviously a guy threatening to kill both Skaife and I, or shoot us. 

“If you remember, Skaife at Eastern Creek [Sandown in 2007] had his appendix burst, so he had to go to hospital, [he was] raced to hospital and had it operated on. Then the next phone call from the same guy was that ‘I was the anaesthetist on the operation, so I could’ve killed you then’.” 

Police tracked down the man responsible and he served time in jail for making the threats. However, according to Lowndes, he wasn’t quite done with Skaifey.

3

“The end story was that Skaife was still driving at the time, [at] Queensland Raceway … you parked the cars where the public were as well,” Lowndes recalled. “Skaife was having a great chat with this guy [on their way] to his car and he said, ‘I’m the one you put in jail.’ So I think his little hackles went up, and he [Skaife] jumped in the car and took off.”

Lowndes, a three-time Supercars champion, said the threats were so “real” that he was given a “six-foot-eight” bodyguard, Darryl Reid, to protect him from what he had previously described as “any psychos who wanted to put a knife in me”.

While Skaife last raced as a full-timer in 2008, Lowndes finished 10th overall at the Bathurst 1000 earlier this month as he surpassed Peter Brock’s mark with 33 consecutive starts in the Great Race.