Encouraging progress up in smoke
6/7/2004 0:00 (Press Release) -
The first outing of Tasman Motorsport’s new VY Commodore at Queensland Raceway has ended in disappointment as a small fire in the car’s airbox forced driver Jason Richards to prematurely retire the #3 car.
Richards started from 29th for the 280km race after being unable to find an effective qualifying set-up, but was a major beneficiary of a first-lap pile-up involving five cars in front of him. By the time the debris cleared and the race restarted on Lap 11, Richards was up to 20th position.
After completing an excellent compulsory pitstop for tyres on Race 40, Richards said he “banged” the accelerator as he exited the pit lane, possibly sending a rush of petrol into the airbox which ignited a small fire that was extinguished in pit lane.
“It was no fault of the car – I probably banged the pedal on the pit lane exit, and that’s what happens. You just can’t do that,” Richards said. “We’ll take it back home and have a good look at it, but I expect that’s what it was.”
He said it was a disappointing result to a difficult weekend. “We’ve struggled a bit for set-up this weekend but we were actually going okay today. We really wanted a finish today as a platform to get our season moving in the right direction so it’s tough to take when some thing like this happens.”
Richards now sits in 28th position in the championship standings. The next race will be at Winton on July 23-25.
|
|
