The Crittenden Automotive Library

SOLID START FOR SBR IN THE TOP END

Topics: SkyCity Triple Crown

SOLID START FOR SBR IN THE TOP END

Stone Brothers Racing
June 18, 2010

Stone Brothers Racing have had a solid start to the Hidden Valley, Skycity Triple Crown weekend with all three SBR FG Falcons finishing inside the top ten at the conclusion of four 30-minute practice sessions. Alex Davison lead the way for the SBR cars finishing the day 6th fastest in the IRWIN Racing Ford while his teammates, Shane van Gisbergen and Tim Slade were directly behind in 7th and 8th position.

Shane van Gisbergen was one of many drivers to test the new Detroit Locker differential today (Friday) as part of the Car Of The Future project that will be implemented from 2012.

Alex Davison – Driver, IRWIN Racing Car #4

“If we can stay up here over the weekend I’ll be really happy. The car is good but seems to be using the green tyres up pretty aggressively and I wasn’t really happy with our pace on used tyres.

“Obviously Darwin is pretty tough on tyres with the hot conditions so it’s very important that you have a car that looks after its tyres and that’s what we are working on at the moment.

“It’s always good to be in the top ten at the end of the day but I think there is still a bit of work to do for us to stay on the pace for the rest of the weekend.”

Shane van Gisbergen- Driver, SP Tools Racing Car #9

“In the first practice we tried the different rear differential and the car was certainly different but I can see it as a good thing for the sport and moving forward to the Car Of The Future.

“Alex and Tim did the running in the first two sessions which gave us a heads up on how the cars were and the track. I jumped back in for the third session and we ran straight out there and tried a qualifying run and set a pretty respectable time straight up.

“For the rest of the day we just worked on purely race stuff, trying to make the tyres last and what’s going to help us later on in the weekend when it counts.

“At the end when everyone put new tyres on we dropped back from 3rd to 7th pretty quickly but to finish the day fastest was never our objective, we were always just focusing purely on getting the car right for the race.

“Every time we are all up there on a Friday we seem to drop back on the Saturday so we need to make sure we keep up with the track as it changes and know what’s going to happen and then when we put new tyres on tomorrow we will be up the pointy end.”

Tim Slade – Driver, Wilson Security Racing Car #47

“It’s been a great start to the weekend. The last few races I have been saying that Wes [McDougall] and I are getting to know each other really well and now we are talking the same language, we know the car really well and the window that it works in.

“We only ran the one set of tyres for P3 and P4 so we have actually saved a set that we can incorporate into the race. We tried a heap of different things staying within that window and the car was good so we didn’t do anything drastic, it responds to every little change which shows its right there in the window.

“I feel really comfortable and the guys did a great job all day, hopefully we can carry all this on tomorrow when it really counts.”

The V8 Supercars hit the track tomorrow at 11:20am for qualifying before the 42 lap race at 3:35pm.

Hidden Valley, Darwin Practice (Combined) – RESULTS

1 1 TeamVodafone/Jamie Whincup 1:09.8066*
2 5 Orrcon Steel FPR Falcon/Mark Winterbottom 1:09.8289
3 7 Jack Daniel's Racing/Todd Kelly 1:09.9989
4 6 Dunlop Super Dealer FPR Falcon/Steven Richards 1:10.0262
5 18 Jim Beam Racing/James Courtney 1:10.0289
6 4 IRWIN Racing/Alex Davison 1:10.1218
7 9 SP Tools Racing/Shane van Gisbergen 1:10.1473
8 47 Wilson Security Racing/Tim Slade 1:10.1562
9 22 Toll Holden Racing Team/Will Davison 1:10.1612
10 11 Rock Racing/Jason Bargwanna 1:10.2182