Nissan Motorsport has secured a remarkable double podium at this afternoon’s opening race at the OTR SuperSprint.
Rick Kelly has finished in second place after 24 laps around The Bend Motorsport Park. The #15 Castrol Racing driver qualified on the second row and moved up to P2 following an early safety car period. The result has elevated Kelly to 6th place in the Championship points standings.
Michael Caruso has claimed his best result for 2018 with a third placed finish. Racing in an aggressive new Industrial Athlete livery, Caruso lined up third on the grid and then battled Rick Kelly for the first part of the race. After letting Kelly passed just before the early safety car period, Caruso maintained enough pace to hold onto third and join his team-mate on the podium.
Andre Heimgartner was unable to capitalise on strong car pace, as the #7 Plus Fitness Racing driver struggled with the conditions during today’s 120km event. Qualifying 19th on the grid, Heimgartner made up several positions in the opening laps, but a number of incidents dropped him back down the order. Crossing the line 18th, Heimgartner will look towards tomorrow to exploit a car with genuine speed.
Simona De Silvestro had a difficult 50th Supercars Championship race start this afternoon, as the #78 Team Harvey Norman driver finished in 23rd place. Lining up in 21st on the grid, De Silvestro was hit by the Tickford entry of Richie Stanaway and was forced to the back of the pack. The Swiss driver was unable to reclaim the lost positions. The team now set to make a number of changed overnight ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying.
Sunday at the OTR SuperSprint consists of 20-minute qualifying and 200km race.
RICK KELLY #15 CASTROL RACING
“We’re very happy to have two cars on the podium today. It’s quite a challenge to try and make zero mistakes at a track that you’re not completely used to yet. George did an unreal job to deliver a great car in qualifying and again in the race. We didn’t panic in practice and made good progress to start the race with a very solid package. I’m happy for the whole team, but now our focus quickly shifts to replicating that result again tomorrow. We’re in a good position to only need to give the car a light tickle overnight, so we won’t stray too far from where we are right now.”
MICHAEL CARUSO #23 INDUSTRIAL ATHLETE
« This is a fantastic result here at The Bend. The car has been speedy all weekend and it was great to be able to convert that and bring some trophies home. To get two cars on the podium is a great feeling for the whole team. The battle with Rick was a lot of fun and demonstrated how this track can produce some good racing. The car is pretty good but we’ll still make a few tweaks overnight to try and improve. The Industrial Athlete Nissan looks fantastic and it’s a great to start off a relationship with some trophies.”
ANDRE HEIMGARTNER #7 PLUS FITNESS RACING
« Learning the track wasn’t too difficult but it’s when you search for those little areas to make progress that you can get caught out. In the end we left with a good idea of what direction we want to take the car in. I don’t believe we left today with a fair representation of where the car speed really is. We have a couple of areas to resolve and I think we’ll be really well positioned for tomorrow. The track will be really interesting to race on. We did a race run during practice and there was almost no degradation. So the consistency required in the race will be down to the driver. I can’t wait. »
SIMONA DE SILVESTRO #78 TEAM HARVEY NORMAN
“We lost a bit of pace overnight, which made today a bit of a challenge. We replaced the engine yesterday but weren’t able to find the speed we had in practice. We’re not where we should be at the moment. We had a pretty good getaway and made up a few positions at the start of the race. But then Stanaway hit me and we fell back to last. We weren’t able to make it up again, so luckily, tomorrow is a new day.”
Press release Nissan Motorsport
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