Kelly Racing finishes in Ipswich with two cars comfortably inside the top ten

The Kelly Racing team has had a strong finish to this weekend’s Century Batteries Ipswich SuperSprint, finishing today’s 65 lap race with two cars comfortably inside the top ten. André Heimgartner and Rick Kelly kicked off this morning’s practice with fantastic pace and carried that through the day finishing seventh and eighth respectively. André Heimgartner qualified seventh of today’s race in the Plus Fitness Racing entry and drove a measured and controlled race to finish a strong seventh. Throughout the race André was never threatened for position and comfortably stayed with Cameron Waters ahead. During the middle stint André had a go for P6 but later decided any drastic moves weren’t worth the risk. Rick Kelly had a dominant race in the #15 Castrol car, coming from P14 where he qualified to P8 by the end of the race. Like yesterday, Rick had a fantastic start and got himself up to P10 on the first lap and from there some wise strategy moves by the team picked him up a couple more places. Simona De Silvestro had trouble with the car in qualifying and started today’s race from nineteenth. After 65 laps, she was able to hang onto that position and finish the race strong. Unfortunately, an engine-related issue forced Garry Jacobson to retire the #3 Rabble.club Racing car in the closing laps of today’s race. Kelly Racing Team quotes André Heimgartner, #7 Plus Fitness Racing « Overall finishing this weekend I’m pretty happy, if it wasn’t for the braking issue yesterday we would have finished both races inside the top ten so it’s been great to find some consistency. Since probably Philip Island I’ve qualified in the top ten at least once each event so to have that race speed again now is very good so we’ll go to the next round and try to consolidate again. I’ve moved up a bit in the championship too which is good, so good signs we just have to keep on working and fine tuning the car. » « That middle stint when I was behind Cam we were a lot faster but given the luck I’ve had over the last couple of months I didn’t want to do anything stupid and lose the position so it was a bit of a measured and controlled approach to today’s race, just looking after the tyres and got it to the end. » Rick Kelly, #15 Castrol Racing « We left qualifying extremely frustrated, we did a good lap in practice on a set of greens and we just couldn’t replicate that on any set of race tyres so we qualified fourteenth which was disheartening because I felt like we did a good job but it was the best we could get. « The race was a different story, we got a really good start, and settled into a rhythm, made a couple of little tweaks as far as my driving goes which unlocked a fair bit of pace and longevity in the tyre. That and some really good strategy from the team and a decent car got us up there. » « I’m really proud of the result today considering it’s been a pretty tough slog the last few months. I know seventh or eighth isn’t amazing and it’s ultimately not where we want to be but it’s a great improvement from where we’ve been. » « I didn’t know that Reynolds behind me needed to stop for fuel but he or De Pasquale couldn’t get by me anyway but it was very close with those guys, every lap was a qualifier to make sure I didn’t allow myself to display any weakness for them to capitalise on. Simona De Silvestro, #78 Team Harvey Norman « It wasn’t the most fun race unfortunately, we just struggled for pace all day. But the other guys had a pretty good day so I guess we can take some positives from that and look at what they’re doing that we are not so we can improve for the next race at The Bend. » « We just didn’t have a very good qualifying and that put us on the back foot for the race starting way back on the grid. The car just hasn’t been good to drive all weekend, normally we at least have pretty good race pace. » Garry Jacobson, #3 Rabble.club Racing « In terms of what I value from a personal point of view, I think I had pretty good pace during the race, we found a little bit more turn and throttle rotation which helped me a lot through turn six and I was holding my own and catching people during the race. Tyre life felt pretty good too and I was enjoying myself out there today. » « We had a similar engine drama to Townsville, we lost a cylinder. This time we were more prepared with what could potentially happen so rather than pushing on and risking doing further damage to that engine, we decided to park the car straight away. » Press release Kelly Racing]]>