Rick Kelly has finished the OTR SuperSprint at The Bend Motorsport Park strong by picking up seven positions in this afternoon’s race to come home in eleventh. Rick had a rough time in qualifying when some dirt on the track caused his flying lap to become compromised, but a quick race car and smart strategy from the team meant he came close to a top-ten finish.
Garry Jacobson was the next best Kelly Racing driver as he drove a consistent race and stayed out of trouble in the #3 Rabble.club car. Garry put in his quickest laps at The Bend today, finishing twelfth in Practice Four this morning.
André Heimgartner’s race didn’t go to plan when he was given a drive-through penalty for an error in his first pit stop. This put him on the back foot for the remainder of the race.
Simona De Silvestro had a tough race in the Team Harvey Norman car coming off the track on a couple of occasions which hampered her progress. She remains positive after two fantastic qualifying results this weekend.
Kelly Racing Team quotes Rick Kelly, Castrol Racing #15 « We didn’t have the greatest practice and we were down on pace and we turned it around for qualifying and were actually on for a really good lap but we know if there’s dirt on the track from a car in front going off it’s all over and we got to turn thirteen and went from the apex to the exit on all the dirt and we lost all of our time. That put us on the back foot and we did I think the best job we could have to move from eighteenth to eleventh, the car was a lot better and once we settled in behind Fabian we just kept chipping away at it. For us considering the weekend we’ve had, that’s a decent positive. We don’t want to walk away with a smile because we finished eleventh because for us that’s not good enough but it’s certainly a big improvement and it’s good to be able to end the weekend unlocking some pace. »
Garry Jacobson, Rabble.club Racing #3 « I felt like the conversion today to a setup more similar to what the guys were running in the other garage really helped me today, so I really appreciate the teamwork between the engineers at the team. I think our pace was pretty strong today, we were twelfth in practice and another tenth would have put me in the top ten so I think I’m definitely moving forward with my green tyre pace. Qualifying we just missed out on Q2 and qualified seventeenth for the race. In terms of race pace, I think there’s definitely still work to do there, I feel like my car handling is coming together but we seem to lack a bit of straight line, if we can unlock some more straight-line performance I think it’ll really help me. »
Andre Heimgartner, Plus Fitness Racing #7 « Today was pretty disappointing, we definitely had the car pace to be further up the grid but a mistake in the first pit stop cost me a drive through penalty and put as at the back. Unfortunately the fuel gun was still in the car when I was dropped, is what it is but yeah annoying for me. After that first stop we jumped a couple of cars and would have been around P7 so we definitely unlocked race pace after an average qualifying, we just couldn’t put it all together today. »
Simona De Silvestro, Team Harvey Norman #78 « We had another pretty good qualifying session today so we’re really making some gains with that and in the race I got a pretty good start but somebody got into us a little and that put me off the track at turn three and then kind of recovered from there, had an off at turn nine – that was just me, I lost the rear – and then it was just a struggle to get anywhere from there. I’m still positive though, I think we made really good improvements in qualifying because that’s kind of been our weakness and I’m really happy about that. I think the test day we did with Gio was really positive, I think we can be proud of ourselves because I feel like we’re really starting to get to where we need to be, we just need a bit of luck on our side for the race. »
Press release Kelly Racing
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