The Crittenden Automotive Library

SBR WITH A LONG RACE AHEAD

Topics: Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000

SBR WITH A LONG RACE AHEAD

Stone Brothers Racing
October 8, 2010

All three SBR Falcons will miss tomorrow’s Shootout after failing to qualify inside the top ten during today’s 40 minute qualifying session at Bathurst. After struggling in the earlier practice sessions the #9 SP Tools Racing Falcon’s pace improved with van Gisbergen securing a starting position of 13th for Sunday’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000.

Alex Davison and David Brabham will start the 161 lap race from ninth row on the grid in 18th position while Tim Slade and Jack Perkins frustrating start to the weekend will see the #47 car start from 25th.

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

“We started pretty good yesterday but fell back after my incident at turn 2. I made a mistake pushing too hard, the time just wasn’t coming so I kept trying different things and just braked too late and spun the car to soften the impact but just couldn’t slow it up in time.

“This morning it wasn’t looking too good but we made some improvements to the car for qualifying and I started to get my confidence back and was really pushing it but we just didn’t quite have enough to make the shootout. We definitely made the car better which is promising but we still seem to be a long way off from the front guys.

“Alot can happen on Sunday so I'm not concerned with starting from 13th, starting up the front does help but we have 161 laps to pass 12 cars!”

Alex Davison – Driver, IRWIN Racing Car #4

“Based on how I have gone here in the past and how we ran last year I had hoped we would at least be inside the top ten at the end of today. We have struggled to get the car to our liking, from a handling point of view we tried some pretty radical stuff as far as setup goes for qualifying and although it made the car feel quite different each time it still had the same problems.

“The frustrating start to the weekend has taken us down a new path that we will continue to follow, all we can do is keep plugging away. It’s a matter of working out which changes are useless and which ones are a decent direction to follow.”

Tim Slade – Driver, Wilson Security Racing Car #47

“Obviously it’s not where we would like to be but in saying that we have been struggling from the start of the weekend so qualifying didn’t really surprise us. We thought we had made a bit of progress in this morning’s practice session but it was just difficult to drive in qualifying, I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in it.

“There are 23 corners around here and if it’s not quite right you don’t have to have it that wrong to be a fair way off. All three SBR cars are struggling a bit with understeer and I guess since the start of the weekend our car has been the worst. Both Jack and I know that anything can happen on Sunday so we aren’t losing faith yet.”

Qualifying - RESULTS – Bathurst, Mt Panorama

1 14 Trading Post Racing/Jason Bright 02:07:0002
2 888 TeamVodafone/Craig Lowndes 02:07:0069
3 1 TeamVodafone/Jamie Whincup 02:07:3663
4 5 FPR - Orrcon Steel FPR Falcon/Mark Winterbottom 02:07:4526
5 33 Fujitsu Racing/GRM/Lee Holdsworth 02:07:4687
6 18 Jim Beam Racing/James Courtney 02:07:7278
7 22 Toll Holden Racing Team/Will Davison 02:07:7375
8 2 Toll Holden Racing Team/Garth Tander 02:07:7899
9 51 Castrol Edge Racing/Greg Murphy 02:07:8646
10 55 The Bottle-O Racing Team/Paul Dumbrell 02:07:8717
11 17 Jim Beam Racing/Steven Johnson 02:07:9635
12 15 Jack Daniel's Racing/Rick Kelly 02:08:0556
13 9 SP Tools Racing/Shane van Gisbergen 02:08:0656
18 4 IRWIN Racing/Alex Davison 02:08:4052
25 47 Wilson Security Racing/Tim Slade 02:09:0784