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[6-HOUR] Tough day for Aussies - Class B
by Stefan Bartholomaeus
Australian cars starting from behind
None of the four Australian built cars in the field will start the Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour from inside the top ten, after the two favoured HSV and FPV cars ran into problems during qualifying.
The Holden Motorsport entered HSV Clubsport of Steve Briffa and Christian D’Agostin suffered fuel pump issues in Qualifying 2, preventing an improvement from the earlier session.
Car owner Briffa has had minimal time in the car heading into the race, as D’Agostin sorted through various handling issues.
“Christian’s been making a few changes to it, trying to make it handle a bit more like a V8 Supercar I suppose,” said Briffa.
“It’s a very heavy car – that hurts us a lot, especially with the bigger fuel tank in it for this race.
“I’ve done 46s around here before, and we only did 48s in qualifying, but I don’t think anyone’s going to remember that by tomorrow afternoon.
“The weight makes the car very hard on tyres. It’s going to be hard work, but our fuel range is an advantage and we’ll give it a good go.”
The Boylan Traffic Solutions FPV F6 Typhoon of Peter Boylan, Geoff Morgan and FPV General Manager Rod Barrett ended the day a further 2.5 seconds adrift of the HSV, after a spectacular turbo failure on the front straight in Qualifying 1.
“It just blew the turbo, which we replaced no problem – we turned it around easily for the second session,” said team principal Ted Robinson.
“We’re still aiming to win our class, and the reliability of the Mitsubishis will really determine where we finish. It’s their race to lose.
“In an ideal world we will only do two stops, as we can run about 60 laps on fuel. But we’ll have to see what happens.
“All three of our drivers are grown men who don’t need to be told what to do, so I’m just going to sit back and let them do their job.”
The two cars will have to overcome the Tony Alford/Barrie Nesbitt Donut King HSV GTS and Dean Neville/Chris Delfsma FPV GT if they are to take out Class B honours.
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