Bring on Bathurst, says PWR Racing
18/9/2004 17:55 (Press Release) -
PWR Racing is choosing to focus on the positives to come out of the Sandown 500 after its cars finished 10th and 11th respectively on day when every car in the field had dramas of some description.
The PWR Holden Commodores of Jason Bright/Paul Weel and Matthew White/Marcus Marshall were not immune, with a number of dramas and minor errors combining to rob the team of a potential race victory.
But it was the speed and reliability of the two cars, as well as steady, mature driving from team newcomers White and Marshall, which spelled out the team’s potential for the all-important Bathurst 1000 in four weeks.
“We’ll go back to the workshop and figure out what happened with a few of the incidents today, and try to make sure they don’t happen again,” said team general manager John Panozzo.
“We had a big chance today and events conspired to take that away from us – some were our fault, others weren’t, but we’ll look at everything and try not to put ourselves in that position again.”
After Weel started the race from 7th position and drove an exceptional first stint to hand over to Bright in 3rd place, Bright dropped to 5th in an incident with Glenn Seton then fought back to 3rd. He was handily placed when race leader Greg Ritter – co-driving with Bright’s main championship rival Marcos Ambrose – spun and lost almost a full lap.
With only Greg Murphy – who had a scheduled pit stop to make that was longer than Bright’s should have been – in front of him, the #50 car was briefly in the box seat.
But it all went awry only a few laps later when Bright locked a wheel on some mud which another car had tracked across the racing line. He speared off and then across the track, miraculously threading between fellow Holden drivers Murphy and Mark Skaife, before rejoining the race in 7th.
Worse was to come as on the next lap Bright made his scheduled tyre stop during a safety car period, a jammed wheel nut costing valuable seconds, then a few laps later Bright and another car made incidental contact which sent Bright into a high-speed spin that miraculously only caused a rear tyre blowout.
After pitting for a new tyre Bright was hit with a drive-through penalty for illegally overlapping at the re-start following the previous Safety Car period. Further drama loomed in the shape of a leaking diff cooler, but careful management eventually avoided a potential further stop for a diff oil top-up.
With all of this happening in a 20-lap period, Bright was shuffled back to 15th, but gathered his wits over the final 40 laps to forge ahead and finish 10th, minimising his points loss to Ambrose who recovered to win the race.
“We couldn’t take a trick,” he said. “The dirt on the track, getting tangled with other cars … it was a tough race. It was bloody slippery out there, and I didn’t think the flag marshals were waving nearly enough to warn us there was debris on the track.
“At the end of the race we’d had so many knocks, I doubt there’s a corner of the car that’s not damaged.”
By comparison the race of White and Marshall’s #16 car was steady and unremarkable – exactly as the team would have wanted.
White made a good start from 23rd position and had reached 14th position when he handed over to Marshall at one-third race distance, another jammed wheel nut during the compulsory brake pad change relegating him to rejoin the race in 24th position.
Marshall, who drove with the team in an identical role in 2003, stayed out of trouble. When he handed the car back to White with 45 laps to go, had reached and exceptional 15th place. White finished the job, following Bright home to finish a creditable 11th.
“The car was good today, very good,” White said afterwards. “It was a really enjoyable day where not too much went wrong. In the second stint I got on the radio and asked the guys what we had to do, and they said we just had to keep going around.
“I’d had a few anxious moments in the early stint as I tried to really press on, so I backed off a little towards the end because the only car that was available to catch and make up a position was Brighty.
“It was good to get that under us on the way to Bathurst.”
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