FPR drivers qualify 19th and 20th in Sydney
14/8/2004 18:36 (Press Release) -
Ford Performance Racing (FPR) V8 Supercar drivers Craig Lowndes and Glenn Seton have qualified 19th and 20th for the first of two 54 lap races tomorrow at Sydney's Oran Park Raceway.
Both the CAT FPR Falcon and the Ford Credit FPV Falcon took part in the first 20 minute qualifying session which was held in sunny and windy conditions.
Lowndes and Seton's fastest laps were separated by less than 4/100ths of a second today, with a flat spotted tyre and traffic playing its part to stop Lowndes from moving higher up the order. Seton's lap time did not reflect the traction problems he encountered during the session, the double Champion somewhat surprised with his pace given the differences between tyres on the 2.6 kilometre circuit.
Fastest in qualifying was Holden driver Rick Kelly (1:08.7205s) ahead of Ford's Marcos Ambrose (1:08.8269s) and HRT driver Mark Skaife. The top ten shoot out saw the top three order change to Mark Skaife on Pole position, Todd Kelly second and Simon Wills (Holden) third.
Sunday's two 54 lap races at Sydney's Oran Park Raceway get the green light at 11:20am and 2:30pm.
#6 Craig Lowndes - "I didn't get a good run on my first set of new tyres and we got our best run from a combination of new rear tyres and used fronts - this made the car balance very good. We put a new set of tyres on with two minutes to go to see what I could do with them but I pushed them too hard too early and half flat-spotted one of them at turn two. Then I was caught up in traffic which is something that you have to expect when you qualify in the lower 50% group. The car was better than what we displayed today and I'm looking forward to tomorrow."
#5 Glenn Seton - "The car was reasonably well balanced on my first set of tyres and I thought that the car would be quicker on the next set but those tyres were fairly ordinary and I struggled for front grip and drive. It was good to have got the time out of the car that we did as I didn't believe that we had the pace here today."
FPR Chief Engineer, John Russell - "A pretty good qualifying session and our results are a legacy of being in the lower 50% group from practice. We didn't have enough car speed today and I don't think that Craig got the full potential out of his car. Having said this, our pace displayed that we would have struggled to make the top ten. We look forward to two reliable races tomorrow."
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