The Crittenden Automotive Library

SBR WITH HEAVY WORKLOAD AFTER GOLD COAST EVENT

Topics: Armor All Gold Coast 600, David Brabham

SBR WITH HEAVY WORKLOAD AFTER GOLD COAST EVENT

Stone Brothers Racing
October 28, 2010

Even though last weekend’s Armor All Gold Coast 600 event ended in elation and a back to back podium finish for SBR the massive damage to the IRWIN Racing Ford will see the team work around the clock up until the Tasmania event.

David Brabham, who was driving the IRWIN Racing Falcon was involved in an accident on Lap 4 of Sunday’s 300km race. Brabham, was being closely followed by HRT’s Cameron McConville out of the fast beach chicane when contact was made between the two. McConville hit Brabham from behind, turning the Ford Falcon violently into the concrete barrier, causing massive damage and forcing immediate retirement from the race.

The damage sustained to the IRWIN Falcon has been described as “one of the worst repair jobs we have ever had”, by Team Principal Ross Stone.

“We've been running cars since 1998 and outside of the accident at Bathurst in 2002 (when Wayne Gardner crashed his Caltex Racing Ford in practice) this is the worst accident we've had”.

“I don’t want to put a price on the damage, let's just say it's going to be expensive.”

“As much as we were thrilled with the team’s weekend results the celebration is short-lived as we have a lot of work to do between now and Tasmania.”

Thanks to the tight turnaround between the Gold Coast and Tasmania events the team do not have sufficient time to repair the damage and will now turn their attention to debuting the new chassis at Symmons Plains in a fortnight’s time.

“The car suffered damage to the floor, the outer chassis rail and tubes in the roll cage,” said Team Manager and Car #4 engineer David Stuart.

“In order to make it a safe and effective repair it all needs to be cut out and renewed. It's quite a big job to do; we wouldn’t be able to get this done in time to make the ferry for Tasmania so we are focussing on the new chassis.”

“We have the new IRWIN FG4 chassis painted, plumbed and wired, so it’s going to be more effective and beneficial to build that chassis and have Alex (Davison) in that for the remainder of this year,” said Stuart.

Stone Brothers Racing, who have a test day planned for Tuesday next week will proceed without the #4 car, with a new car 20 lap ‘shakedown’ to take place at QLD Raceway when the chassis is ready.

The 13th round of the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship is at Tasmania’s Symmons Plains Raceway, November 12-14.