 Older Article | Newer Article |
[6-HOUR] Holt on top - Class D
by Stefan Bartholomaeus
The heavily favoured Garry Holt/Ryan McLeod Holden Astra scored an easy Class D pole position for the Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour, amidst some confusion as to the car’s eventual driver line-up.
Despite Paul Morris’s name now appearing on the window of the car, Tasmanian Dean Crosswell completed laps in the second qualifying session.
While the situation will not be confirmed until tomorrow, much of the Class D attention was focussed on the fortunes of the Renault R-Sport team.
Although R-Sport’s involvement in the race signifies a more prominent return to Australian motorsport for the French car manufacturer, it was far from smooth sailing for the team during qualifying.
The lead Richard Gartner/Francois Jouy/Carl Schembri Clio 197 qualified third behind the Astra and the Hankook Honda Integra, but suffered a gearbox failure during the second session.
R-Sport team principal Ian Thorp confirmed that the Renaults also suffered from niggling brake issues throughout the day, but said it was not unexpected to have issues this weekend.
“At the end of the day we’re doing something new with Renault and it’s a long term project, so there’s bound to be niggling little issues in our first event,” he said.
“We also got caught with homologation. Somewhere they discovered the cars weight should be 1280kg, yet the manual and the websites say 1160, so we’re trying to load back in as much weight as possible – that’ll be something we’ll look to address after this weekend.”
Starting one spot ahead of the lead Renault will be the Class D Toyota Corolla Sportivo entry of Lauren Gray/Michael Gray/Jake Williams, who experienced a trouble-free qualifying day.
“We’re quite pleased with the performance in qualifying and I think it puts us in a good position tomorrow,” said Lauren Gray.
"There’s nothing between the drivers which is also important as consistency is key for long races like this."
| Older Article | Newer Article |
| Browse 'NATIONAL' | |
| Browse 'NATIONAL' Archive | |
