Points mission succeeds for Dynamik
13/4/2005 18:18 (Press Release) -
The cards fell for Team Dynamik today at the Clipsal 500 as driver Simon Wills and the crew worked together to salvage championship points from the opening round of the 2005 V8 Supercar Championship Series.
Wills gritted his teeth to stay out until lap 44 before changing tyres and the strategy paid dividends as he kept clear of traffic and gained places through attrition at the testing Adelaide street circuit.
Wills collected 42 championship points for the Round, after a 19th place today following Saturday’s retirement and points wash-out.
Ford’s Marcos Ambrose was again dominant today, winning the race and the round. Craig Lowndes finished second, closely tailed by Holden’s Mark Skaife.
Today’s race 2 was another dominated by safety cars, with fewer retirements than yesterday but four safety car periods bunched the field after numerous incidents.
One of those involved Wills and Holden driver Garth Tander at the entry to Turn 8, and ended in Tander’s retirement.
“I was coming up on Tander into Turn 8 pretty quickly when he jumped on the brakes … there were chunks of rubber from his tyres hitting my windscreen and there’s nowhere to go on a corner like that.,” Wills said.
The Boomerang Phonecard VZ survived that tangle despite suffering some significant front end damage, and Wills kept the #44 off the wall and away from the mid-race ‘madness’ for the remaining 63 laps.
“It’s mayhem when you are stuck in the middle of the pack and you’ve got the speed to get past other cars,” he said. “I reckon the Clipsal is the most demanding of the races in the Supercar series, because there’s just no rest, the driver has to focus all the time on what’s going on. At least at Bathurst, you have some long straights to relax for a little while.”
Late in the race, Wills even managed to slip past race leader Marcos Ambrose to regain one of the laps he was earlier penalized, raising some belated cheer for hometown Holden fans.
The mechanical gremlins that struck the Boomerang Phonecard #44 earlier in the Round were sorted today, and Technical Director Oscar Fiorinotto was delighted to have finished the race strongly.
“We had a good strategy today and showed really solid car speed. The whole Team did a great job but there’s some panel work to be done on #44,” Fiorinotto said.
The Team now prepares itself for the Championship’s second round, to be held at Pukekohe Park Raceway in New Zealand from 15-17 April.
Release Date: 20/03/2005
Team Dynamik
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