AGP RACE 3 - Ominous Radisich wins in ideal title warm-up
4/3/2001 17:37 (V8 Wire - Jason Whittaker) -
Loaded Ford gun Paul Radisich cruised to an ominous victory in the final V8 Supercar showdown at the Australian Grand Prix this morning, primed to shift to top gear come the season-proper later this month.
Radisich completed an almost-perfect warm-up to his 2001 Shell Championship Series campaign, claiming a commanding flag-to-flag win in the 10-lap curtain-raising Formula One sprint.
"It’s a great way to start the season, now we’ve got to repeat this when the Shell Championship starts at the end of the month," Radisich said.
The New Zealand native fended-off early challenges from Craig Lowndes (a remarkable debutant performance in the Ford) and Russell Ingall before racing away for a comfortable victory. Steven Richards’ challenge was a formidable one early, but lost its way after the front spoiler was torn from the car. He retired soon after.
"I made a tremendous start,” Radisich explained, ”I probably got two lengths on everyone by the first corner, but we’d made some changes to the car after yesterday and it took a couple of laps to get the tyres up to temperature.”
"So for the first couple of laps I had Steve Richards and Craig all over me, but once the tyres were right it was pretty easy from there. The car’s good and I just cruised it,” he said.
While expectations were exceedingly high in the Gibson Motorsport garage before the event, not even Craig Lowndes could have predicted he’d be back on the podium so quickly after his defection.
"The team is very excited with our weekend’s work,” Lowndes enthused.
“It was great today to be able to match speed with Russell Ingall as he was pushing me from behind. It shows that we are closer to competitiveness than what we thought we were. We’ve learnt a lot about the car this weekend and we have two more days testing before we get to Phillip Island, so we hope we can keep performing well," he said.
It seems Lowndes’ army of fans continues to follow his fortune despite the switch, much to the relief of Lowndes.
"The fans have been pretty positive towards me despite the switch to Ford. They have been really supportive and I really appreciate it," Lowndes said.
Most of the action occurred further back in the field, as a myriad of big names and fast cars muscled their way through the pack from the back of the grid.
Mark Skaife, Jason Bright, Garth Tander and Marcus Ambrose stormed through the field to join Brad Jones and David Besnard in a fight for tenth position. However, shot rubber hampered the challenge of the late arrivals.
"You need a few lucky breaks to do that," Skaife said. "I used the tyres hard early, and got up to Ambrose. We were in trouble all weekend with straight-line speed, and that doesn’t make it easy.
Greg Murphy completed a clean-sweep in the Lamborghini Supertrophy event, taking his fourth win in as many races. Wayne Gardner stormed through the field to finish fourth.
Albert Park was awash with Ferrari red following Michael Schumacher’s dominant display in the Formula One feature race. Schumacher defeated David Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello to take an emphatic victory.
Tragically, the race was marred by the death of a track marshal, killed by flying debris from Jacques Villeneuve’s spectacularly mangled wreck.
The points-scoring action of the 2001 V8 Supercar season begins in three week’s time – round one of the Shell Series at Phillip Island Raceway.
**RACE THREE - TOP TEN**
1st PAUL RADISICH (Shell Helix Racing) - AU Falcon
2nd CRAIG LOWNDES (Gibson Motorsport) - AU Falcon
3rd RUSSELL INGALL (Castrol Perkins Racing) - VX Commodore
4th GLENN SETON (Ford-Tickford Racing) - AU Falcon
5th TODD KELLY (K-Mart Racing Team) - VX Commodore
6th JOHN BOWE (CAT Racing) - AU Falcon
7th PAUL WEEL (K & J Thermal Products Racing) - AU Falcon
8th STEVEN ELLERY (Super Cheap Auto Racing) - AU Falcon
9th CAMERON McLEAN (Greenfield Mowers Racing) - AU Falcon
10th MARCUS AMBROSE (Pirtek Racing) - AU Falcon
For complete Race 3 results:
http://www.v8supercar.com.au/2001results/spevent/agp/race3.htm
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