Holden Racing Team - CLIPSAL 500 Day 2 Report
13/4/2005 18:00 (Press Release) -
CLIPSAL 500 – DAY 2
Adelaide Parklands, Adelaide
March 19, 2005
Weather: Fine, warm
Ambient temperature: 27 degrees
Track temperature: 36 degrees
Race 1 (78 laps, 250km)
8th: Todd Kelly, #22 VZ Holden Commodore
DNF: Mark Skaife, #2 VZ Holden Commodore
Race notes
- Mark Skaife started from 9th, Todd Kelly from 15th
- Kelly picked up four positions on the opening lap, and seven within the first 10 laps
- Skaife suffered a distributor failure on Lap 9 on the front straight, the car pushed back to the garage for repairs
- Kelly was among a small number of drivers to delay their fuel stop in the hope of a mid-race safety car period, which came too late. Kelly was shuffled back to 15th
- Skaife re-entered race on Lap 63, used remaining laps to test fixed car. Set new all-time lap record, 1min 23.1903sec, on second-last lap
- Kelly fought back to 9th, then engaged in enthralling battle over seven laps with Glenn Seton and finally got past on Lap 77
- Kelly finished 8th, Skaife classified a non-finisher due to lack of completed laps
Todd Kelly:
“Our strategies were not the best on the day – we didn’t make the right call on our pitstops so I had to make up plenty of positions to try to get a decent starting position for tomorrow.
“The car was probably fast enough to have picked off a few more positions – I really think we should be starting from the third row of the grid but (Glenn) Seton was blocking and making life difficult. My car was quicker, but there was oil down on some of the passing spots as well. I kept going at him because I had a point to prove.
“The car is running great. We’ll just press on tomorrow and chase as many points as we can get.”
Mark Skaife:
“Everything seemed fine for the first eight laps, then the car just stopped dead on the front straight. It was a distributor problem, the same one that sidelined Todd in practice and qualifying yesterday. It’s something we perhaps would have picked up in a pre-race warm-up, but this year’s rules have scrubbed them out.
“We decided to make the best of a bad situation so we came out towards the end to make sure the car was okay and to test a few things. We set a new lap record in the process, so I’m hoping we’ve not only got on top of the distributor problem but that we’ve got a good car to make a bit of charge tomorrow.”
Release Date: 19/03/2005
Holden Racing Team
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