Irwin Racing Comes To Grips With Bathurst
Show your support.
Buzz this article up.
Oct 04, 2007
IRWIN Racing’s Alan Gurr and Warren Luff have worked on improving the balance of their Ford Falcon during the opening practice session for the Supercheap Auto 1000 at Bathurst.
Changes made to the car since the previous round at Sandown were applied to the car today.
The IRWIN Falcon finished the session in 27th position.
A serious of adjustments was required to get the most out of the car with Gurr happy with the direction the team is heading.
“We have made changes to the front and importantly we are on the right track, “ said Gurr.
“It’s now about sorting the balance and making sure it does everything we need it to do.
“The practice sessions were disrupted by stoppages. With this place having such long laps we lost a few opportunities to further improve the car.
“We still have another three practice sessions, plus qualifying. Our focus is really about the race and making sure we get a strong race package sorted.
Luff completed the session, but had a scare when chasing a good lap time
“At the end we went out on a new set of tyres and I only had the one lap to do a time, “ said Luff.
“I got a bit crossed-up at the end of Mountain Straight and nearly hit the fence. As long as that’s my only scary moment for the weekend I’ll be more than happy.
“There have been a couple of other teams today who have already bent their cars, so we are clearly doing better than that.
“We are getting a good read on the car. We need to make a couple of more changes but we are feeling confident of finding a few gains through the next couple of practice sessions. “
Lead Engineer Greg Foletta was happy with the progress through the session.
“Setting quick times was not the goal today, “ said Foletta.
“We have made significant changes to the car since Sandown and the goal was to work on getting the car’s balance correct in today’s practice session.
“We only went out for short periods as we were constantly changing the car. We didn’t get to string together many consecutive laps.
“We really treated this as a test session; not like the usual session before qualifying. We have two more practice sessions prior to qualifying, so things are very much going to plan
Tomorrow’s schedule includes two practice session plus qualifying.
The IRWIN Racing Falcon is carrying a special logo to remember World Rally great Colin McRae. This is the same logo being run by the Ford World Rally Team and other manufacturer teams in the World Rally Championship this weekend in Spain.
