HRT PlaceMakers V8 International practice report
19/4/2005 13:26 (Press Release) -
PLACEMAKERS NZ V8 INTERNATIONAL – DAY 1
Pukekohe Park Raceway, New Zealand
April 15, 2005
Weather: Fine, sunny, 20 degrees
Practice 1 (2 hours, max 50 laps)
Fastest time: 55.8130sec
4th: Mark Skaife (#2 Holden Commodore VZ) 55.8961sec, 38 laps
15th: Todd Kelly (#22 Holden Commodore VZ) 56.2199sec, 45 laps
Notes
- Of 32 cars to contest Practice 1, 21 bettered the previous Practice record set last year. Since last year’s race several sections of the track have been resurfaced and several bumps removed.
Mark Skaife:
“You definitely need to aim for maximum points and aim to get the most out of yourself and your team every time we race. That’s not to say we don’t have a good package this year, it’s a lot better than last year. When you look at how close it is between the top 5, or the top 10, anything can happen this weekend. It’ll be a cracker race. The (changes to the) circuit has probably levelled it up a bit, it’s taken a little bit of the compromise out of how you used to have the car.”
(Regarding an off-track excursion at the hairpin late in session)
“I’m sure we’ve all had a crack down there to see how late (on the brakes) we can possibly be. It’s that little bit more difficult as a braking area now and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a few more blokes firing over there over the weekend.”
Todd Kelly:
“We’ve still got a bit of work to do on it. I’m losing a bit of time into Turn 1 and we put a good set of tyres on towards the end to see where we were at and it was a lot quicker, but then everyone put good tyres on and we ended up back where we were. We made a fair few changes so we’ve just got to go back and have a look at it. The track has changed a fair bit so we’ll probably find out a bit from the data.”
Release Date: 15/04/2005
Holden Racing Team
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