Holden Racing Team - Day 3 Report
7/4/2005 14:38 (Press Release) -
AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX – DAY 3
Albert Park, Melbourne; March 5, 2005
Weather: Heavy rain clearing, 16 degrees
Race 2 (19 laps x 5.3km)
3rd: Mark Skaife (HRT Commodore VZ)
DNF: Todd Kelly (HRT Commodore VZ)
Race summary:
Todd Kelly starting from pole wins race to first turn ahead of Mark Skaife (started 3rd). Five-car pile up on first lap brings out yellow flags and Safety Car, when Kelly slides off track and into wall after getting wheels on slippery kerbing. Kelly rejoins in 11th placing but soon after is called to pits to repair damage and subsequently retired.
Skaife assumes lead and continues to hold off Ambrose, running on wet tyres on a drying track. John Bowe and Brad Jones – the only drivers to gamble on dry tyres – charge from the back of the field to finish 1-2 ahead of Skaife.
Mark Skaife:
“You can be a hero or zero on your tyre choice and after all the years of us doing it, sometimes you look like a star and other days you don’t. All we could do was the very best we could with the tyres we had on the car. I had a great race with Marcos, we had a fantastic battle.
“Then I saw a couple of cars coming with their lights on and you didn’t have to be a lawyer to work out that they were coming pretty strong and I never looked like being able to block either of them. I take my hat off to them – if you’re going to take a risk like that you deserve to get a result.
“I thought our car was good – it was an intermediate setup, we weren’t game to go full wet and we weren’t game to go for a full dry car. I’m sure everyone else did a similar thing.”
Todd Kelly:
“It happened after the Safety Car board came out, I was trying to keep a bit of heat in the tyres and just got sideways onto the straight, hit the kerb and that was the end of the story. I went around, ran out of lock and knocked the front on the wall.
“I got a good start compared to the rest of the guys and the gap I got off the start I maintained quite easily for the lap until the boards came out. So the car was just as good or better in the wet compared to the way it was in the dry.
“We just have to see now whether we can get the car back together – it doesn’t look too bad. We have to start from the rear of the grid so we’ll see, if it’s too much of a drama we won’t run.
“It’s just a rear quarter at the moment and the biggest thing is whether the rails are bent so they’re just going to pull the front off it and pull the engine out and see whether it’s stressed or not. It’s about all we can do.”
Release Date: 05/03/2005
Holden Racing Team
|
|
