Holden Racing Team’s Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly will start 17th and 7th respectively in the first race of the Clipsal 500 tomorrow in Adelaide.
Following two solid practice sessions, the battle for poll position was fought out this afternoon under the new qualifying rules, which relegates the ten slowest drivers to the back of the grid over three fifteen minute qualifying periods.
When the dust settled, Todd Kelly managed to break his way into the Top 10 and will line up alongside Craig Lowndes on the starting grid for the first race, while Skaife will sit halfway along the grid, for the most anticipated Clipsal 500 in many years.
#2 Mark Skaife
“The car started out really well today. First in the first session, fifth in the second, for whatever reason there was no new tyre gain in the third session and we didn’t put the third and fourth sets of tyres on, so that probably strategy wise hurt us a little bit. Overall the car feels good, should be a pretty good race car for the big time tomorrow. “
#22 Todd Kelly
“ I am sort of a little disappointed but given the fact it’s a new car and we really have only done minimum testing we really can’t complain. We are going to be a lot wiser by the end of this weekend, as far as what the car needs and particularly what it needs to go fast because we really haven’t had much of a chance to do that – especially on a track like this which is a little bit faster than our test track. So given all that we are reasonably happyâ€.
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