SBR SHOW PROMISE AT WINTON |
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Topics: Winton Motor Raceway
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Stone Brothers Racing
May 20, 2011
At the conclusion of today’s four practice sessions at the Winton Raceway in Victoria, Stone Brothers Racing (SBR) are in contention for some great results this weekend, with all three drivers posting some respectable times - at a circuit that normally causes the Queensland-base team much head-scratching.
At the conclusion of today’s four practice sessions at the Winton Raceway in Victoria, Stone Brothers Racing (SBR) are in contention for some great results this weekend, with all three drivers posting some respectable times - at a circuit that normally causes the Queensland-base team much head-scratching.
Tim Slade, in the #47 Lucky 7 Racing Falcon was the quickest driver in SBR’s stable today, and the fastest FORD driver of the day - lapping the 3.0 kilometre circuit in 1min22.50secs, taking him to third fastest overall for the day.
The only drivers quicker than Slade this afternoon were veterans Russell Ingall and Craig Lowndes –the latter setting a blisteringly quick benchmark of 1min22.03secs.
#9 SP Tools Racing driver Shane van Gisbergen, just missed out on a top ten result, finishing the day 11th quickest - just ahead of his team mate Alex Davison in the #4 IRWIN Racing Falcon who finished the day in 12th.
Today’s practice sessions also allowed SBR’s enduro drivers Daniel Gaunt and John McIntyre some seat time in the SBR Falcons – teaming up with Tim Slade and Shane van Gisbergen respectively.
Winton hasn’t been too kind to SBR in the past, so today’s results set a solid foundation for the team to build on overnight to further tune their Falcons towards a strong qualifying result tomorrow.
With no top ten shootout this weekend, tomorrow’s grid positions will be decided by one solitary 20-minute Qualifying session at 11.05am, followed by race one at 4.05pm.
Tim Slade – Driver, Lucky 7 Racing Car #47
“There wasn’t anything too special about today with regards to our car set-up. We just worked through our program as per our schedule and stuck to our plan. I had a quick run this morning on hard tyres to make sure the car was right for Daniel and then he took over for the rest of the session. I jumped back in later on and we bolted some softs on it and finished the (second) session on top so I knew things were pointing in the right direction. All the changes we made today were positive so it was a text-book performance by the team that we should be able to build upon tomorrow.”
Shane van Gisbergen – Driver, SP Tools Racing Car #9
“The car was pretty average to drive today. We really struggled but somehow we still managed to come out in 11th place which is respectful. Hopefully we can sort out a few things overnight and be more competitive tomorrow.”
Alex Davison – Driver, IRWIN Racing Car #4
“Practice disappears very quickly, the one down side to being in the top half of the championship points is that you don’t get much time on the track. The IRWIN Ford is not as good as we need it to be at the moment, but it will get there. The positive is that Tim (Slade), who did all four practice sessions, did really well. Once we debrief there will be some good information that he can share that will help us for qualifying. We know what we need to do to the car to improve it, it's just a matter of making the right changes in the right places. Achieving this will give us a good IRWIN Racing Ford tomorrow.”
Daniel Gaunt – Co-driver, Lucky 7 Racing Car #47
“It was good to get back amongst it today. Working with the #47 Lucky 7 crew again was good in the respect that having worked with them before there’s some continuity which helps our understanding of each other and allows us to get on top of things pretty quickly. I only ran on ‘hards’ today so the testing we did is relative to our enduro events – it would have been nice to have a go on some ‘softs’ but that’s just the way the day and our program was scheduled. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the car at Townsville.”