A century, a surprise and great speed in qualifying
7/4/2005 19:03 (Press Release) -
Triple Eight proved once again that it’s all about qualifying. With the Team Betta Electrical drivers making it through to the Top 10 Shootout by qualifying 3rd and 4th, Steve Ellery went on to record his best ever starting position.
“I wasn’t as happy as I wanted to be with my practice sessions, but to come out in third position in the Shootout was a great way to start my one hundredth race weekend,” said Steve.
“I’m finding the real advantage of being with a team like Triple Eight is that I now have a team mate and we can share data on the cars and tracks. This helps me enormously in making adjustments and fine tuning my driving style.
“At the end of the day, we know we have the performance in the Falcon BAs so it’s just a matter of working with the engineers to make sure I get the best performance out of the car.”
Despite both cars having misfiring problems during first practice, Steve and Craig performed well in the Upper 50% Qualifying session, finishing third and fourth respectively. Craig was first car out for the shootout, encountering some ‘unusual’ problems on the track.
“As I’m heading around turn 8 – which is the fastest corner on the circuit - I see one of the stunt bike riders still on the track! We managed to avoid each other, but it did break my rhythm a bit. It’s certainly not the kind of thing you would expect,” explained Craig.
Team Principal, Roland Dane was extremely happy with the Team’s first day at Clipsal.
“Steve was easily the quickest car in the last section of the shootout lap and Craig’s rhythm was unfortunately somewhat upset by the incident on his warm up lap. However, both performances have set us up well for races on Saturday and Sunday, with Steve starting third and Craig in eighth position.”
Race 1 of the Clipsal 500 starts at 2pm on Saturday (Adelaide time) with 250kms over 78 laps.
Release Date: 18/03/2005
Team Betta Electrical - Triple 8
|
|
