Stone Brothers Racing has made a strong start at the final V8 Supercar round at Pukekohe Raceway with JELD-WEN Motorsport’s James Courtney second fastest after today’s opening practice session.
Caltex Racing’s Russell Ingall also made a solid start, seventh fastest at the end of the two-and-a-half hour session.
The JELD-WEN Motorsport crew put together a text-book session, consistently in and around the top of the times, trading places with Todd Kelly, Garth Tander and Rick Kelly in the final minutes of practice.
While all went to plan for Courtney, the same could not be said for Ingall and the Caltex Racing crew.
Ingall was quick out of the gate early on and was eleventh fastest until he left the track 30 minutes into the session, damaging the Caltex Racing Falcon’s differential in the process.
After quick repairs, the Caltex Racing Falcon was back on track with just over 50 minutes remaining in the second session. Not appearing to suffer any ill effects from the incident, Ingall was quickly back into the top ten where he remained for the rest of the session.
Ingall and Courtney will be on track at 12:00pm tomorrow for qualifying, followed by race one at 4:25pm.
Russell Ingall, car #9, Caltex Racing “We had a reasonable start today despite losing a lot of track time.
“I made a small mistake and fell off the track, unfortunately damaging the diff which took some time to fix.
“Once we got back out in the second part of practice, we were back on it pretty quickly.
“We are still not quite quick enough. James (Courtney) is obviously carrying good speed so we will throw in his set up for qualifying; there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. ”
James Courtney, car #4, JELD-WEN Motorsport “The JELD-WEN crew had a lot of work to do over the break since Barbagallo, getting a new front and new side finished on the car.
“We decided to work hard in the shop and get some new parts on the car this weekend rather than test and it’s worked really well so far.
“The JELD-WEN Falcon felt really strong. There are a few areas where we feel we can pick up more time but overall the package feels good.
“We were doing some fast times on old tyres in today’s practice session. The lap times remained pretty consistent. It seems that we have a good race car as well as a fast qualifying car so the signs are good. ”
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