Castrol Perkins Motorsport Gold Coast Indy post-event report
26/11/2004 20:55 (Press Release) -
Motor racing is all about highs and lows and Castrol Perkins Motorsport certainly explored the latter in a tough weekend at the Gillette V8 Supercar Challenge on the Gold Coast on the weekend.
A shocking weekend, headlined by its main championship challenger Steven Richards now no longer being in contention for the title due to scoring no points, has fired the team up to finish the final two rounds strongly.
The weekend actually started relatively strongly for Richards, who cheekily sported a ‘Kangaroos Next 5 Kms’ sticker on the front of his #11 Castrol Holden as a reference to the unbelievable incident that eliminated he and father Jim from contention at Bathurst a fortnight earlier.
Back behind the wheel of the VY Commodore he debuted in the Sandown 500, Richards Jr qualified seventh on the tricky and tight street circuit, which played host to round 11 of the 13-round V8 Supercar Championship Series.
That gave him a strong spot in the Top 10 Shootout on Saturday and Richards pieced together a solid lap, good enough for fifth and an improvement of two spots over his original qualifying position.
With the new pit lane proving to be very much a tight squeeze and something of an embarrassment given the amount of time and effort that had gone into its planning, race officials decided to run the weekend’s two races without compulsory pit stops.
That placed even more of an emphasis on qualifying strongly, due to the difficult nature of pulling off a successful passing move on the 4.47-kilometre circuit.
The first chicane on the first lap at Indy is always a ‘hold your breath and wait’ moment, but it played into Richards’ hands perfectly. Contact between Rick Kelly and Russell Ingall eliminated the duo from race contention, setting Richards loose on chasing down race leader Mark Skaife and second-place man Marcos Ambrose.
The #11 driver quickly started laying down some competitive times, getting stronger as the 20-lap distance drew toward halfway. Skaife spun on lap 11 and Richards sailed through to second, but disaster wasn’t too far away for the latter.
While closing on Ambrose, his gear lever broke in lap 14, leaving Richards with no option but to limp back to the pits to allow the Castrol Perkins team a shot at fixing the drama. With gear lever back in place, Richards re-joined the fray deep in the pack and was simply out there to at least score some championship points.
But that didn’t happen either, as he was caught up in a concertina accident involving John McIntyre (WPS Racing), Paul Weel (PWR Racing) and Castrol Perkins team-mate Tony Longhurst.
Richards saw the WPS car tipped into a spin by Weel and backed off the throttle to avoid the situation, but former team-mate Russell Ingall, following right on the bumper of the Castrol Commodore, simply didn’t know what was happening and drilled Richards.
The hit pushed Richards into Longhurst and popped his radiator as well as knocking off the power steering belt. He was forced to limp to the pits and into retirement.
That left him with plenty of work to do in Sunday’s 30-lapper from the back of the grid and he settled into picking off the cars in front of him. A mature approach landed Richards in 18th spot by lap 18, but he tapped the wall exiting the Beach Chicane and that damaged the car too much to continue.
Scoring no points for the weekend has dropped Richards to sixth in the championship.
His younger team-mate Paul Dumbrell was looking to carry the momentum he has built through the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst and was odds-on to be in the Top 10 Shootout with a strong lap in qualifying.
Unfortunately he encountered a stranded Falcon at the final corner and was forced to come to a standstill to miss it. The team’s data showed he had been on a lap good enough for fifth quickest, though he was forced to settle for 20th spot on the grid.
The 22-year-old worked his way up steadily in the first race on Saturday, move up five spots in the early running before undoing his work by missing the Beach Chicane and, under the rules, bringing the car to a complete stop to avoid receiving a penalty.
On lap 12 he tagged the wall exiting the Beach Chicane and the contact destroyed a tyre, which also in turn caused problems with diff that cause the car to retire from the event.
Starting from the back in the second race alongside Richards, Dumbrell picked his way through the traffic where he could, running through to 18th spot at the end of the 30-lapper.
His co-driver for the endurance races, Tony Longhurst, was back behind the wheel of the team’s older model #7 Castrol Commodore VX, and back in the sprint race mode, struggled for overall speed.
He qualified 30th in the 32-car field and had an incident-packed first race on the Saturday, being involved in plenty of on-track drama, particularly with Paul Weel’s PWR Commodore. Then the duo were involved in the same incident that eliminated Richards’ Castrol car and Longhurst was forced to settle for 24th position having risen to the top 20 at one stage.
The final race on Sunday ended in retirement for Longhurst, who now sits 25th in the series.
The V8 Supercar Championship Series now has a three-week break before it moves to Symmons Plains in Tasmania. It will be the first time since 1999 that the category has raced at the Launceston venue.
In fact, the ’99 Tassie Trek was when Dumbrell made his V8 Supercar debut as a rookie at the tender age of just 16. Richards has three starts in a V8 Supercars at Symmons Plains with a best of ninth in a Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore in 1998, while Longhurst finished fourth there in 1994.
QUOTEBOOK
Steven Richards (32nd - #11 Castrol Commodore VY)
“We’d fixed the gear lever in the first race and there were a few slower cars ahead. The WPS car (of John McIntyre), Paul Weel and Tony Longhurst were in front of me. Ingall was behind me and the WPS car had a spin, which I could see coming so I got onto the brakes. Russell hadn’t obviously seen the incident ahead and smashed into the back of me unsighted.
“It pushed me into Tony and holed the radiator and knocked off the power steering belt. But the car had very good pace at the start and was very comfortable, so the weekend is an all-round shame, considering the speed we had in the early stages of the weekend and the first race.”
Paul Dumbrell (26th - #8 Castrol Commodore VY)
“If you don’t get a high qualifying position here, you’re in for a tough weekend and that’s what happened to me on the weekend. All of the ‘would haves and could haves’ under the sun won’t change the facts in terms of the drama that slowed me in qualifying.
“After two positive race meetings this one is a little bit of a downer but I’m looking forward to Symmons Plains. Most of the guys who’ve come into V8s since 1999 have never raced there before so I will have one up on them! Considering I was a teenager at the time and we were racing VS Commodores on completely different control tyres then, it will be all pretty different when we head south in a few weeks time.”
FINAL RESULTS – Round 11, Gillette V8 Supercar Challenge, Gold Coast, Queensland, October 24 2004:
1. Greg Murphy #51 Kmart Commodore VY, 189 pts
2. Marcos Ambrose #1 Pirtek Falcon BA, 189 pts
3. Todd Kelly #22 HRT Commodore VY, 180 pts
4. Jason Bargwanna, #10 Orrcon Falcon BA, 171 pts
5. Simon Wills, #44 Dodo Commodore VY, 165 pts
6. Max Wilson, #888 Betta Falcon BA, 156 pts
7. Cameron McConville, #33 Valvoline Commodore VY, 147 pts
8. Jason Richards, #3 Tasman Commodore VY, 144 pts
9. Paul Radisich, #88 Betta Falcon BA, 138 pts
10. Steven Johnson, #17 Shell Helix Falcon BA, 135 pts
26. Paul Dumbrell, #8 Castrol Commodore VY, 45 pts
28. Tony Longhurst, #7 Castrol Commodore VX, 30 pts
32. Steven Richards, #11 Castrol Commodore VY, 0 pts
Release Date: 25/10/2004
Castrol Perkins Motorsport
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