New sim rig on the cards for Rick Kelly

Aiden Taylor 14 May 2020

User Rating: 5 / 5

The BP Supercars All Stars Eseries touched down in Texas, USA last night for an action-packed Round 6. The Circuit of the Americas is an international venue that hosted the Supercars Championship back in 2013 and has been a regular feature of the Formula One World Championship.

In typical Supercars Eseries style, the complete line-up of full-time Supercar drivers were joined by wildcards, McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris, veteran Craig Lowndes, Indycar legend Will Power, plus NASCAR rising star Austin Cindric.

Qualifying saw a 20-minute session followed by a top-ten shootout to establish the starting grid for Race One. Unfortunately Kelly Racing drivers André Heimgartner and Rick Kelly missed out on the ten with André claiming P12 and Rick P28.

André got a strong start to Race One and was able to claw his way into the top-ten. His race was relatively drama free in the NED Racing Mustang and he came home in eighth spot.

Rick Kelly also managed to keep out of trouble in his Castrol Racing Mustang and race past a few squabbles to claim P23 – a solid improvement on his starting position at the rear of the grid.

Race Two was a wild reverse grid start with André starting P24 and Rick P11. It was chaos at the first corner with both Rick and André taken out and André in particular sustaining big damage to his virtual Mustang. André and Rick took their pit stops early to repair damage from the lap one carnage and were able to race on from there.

André was able to get within sight of the top-ten until he copped a hefty penalty for using up too many incident points (points for going off track or colliding with other drivers) and fell to P30. Rick meanwhile came home in P21.

The Race Three starting grid was established from the combined points earned from races one and two so both drivers had their work cut out starting at the back of the field – André P19, Rick P24. Both drivers were able to get a great start, André settling into P15 with Rick not too far behind in P20.

With a solid pit stop strategy and clean air ahead André was able to claim P11. Rick was having a solid race and enjoying some battles until he got turned around at the last corner on the final lap and dropped a few spots to P23.

Next week we continue our virtual North America tour with oval track races at the iconic Daytona and Talladega Speedways.

QUOTES

Rick Kelly, #15 Castrol Racing

“When you start at the back of the grid it’s almost impossible to avoid the carnage on lap one, same as last week, every race we were caught up in incidents on the first lap which makes things tricky because you get damage and that actually slows the car down a lot so you have to pit early and then you run out of tyres well before the end of the race so that’s not ideal.”

“On the plus side I was able to enjoy some good clean battles with a few guys out there which was fun, when you’re genuinely wheel to wheel racing on these things it is intense and quite enjoyable.”

“I think the timber frame on my sim is holding me back a bit, with all of the torque from the Simworx steering box it’s actually created a bit of slack in the whole frame and now it flops around and isn’t really rigid so I’m also losing a bit of steering feel from it.

“I did an Instagram pole to see if people thought I should upgrade the camp chair to a race seat and do a proper frame and it was 50/50 so I reckon it’s time for an upgrade and get chassis #002 ready for the second half of the series.”

André Heimgartner, #7 NED Racing

“Last night was pretty rough on the old sim, we didn’t get a good lap together in qualifying and missed the shootout which wasn’t ideal. Even though we had an average starting position we were able to have a pretty good and clean race still, I think everyone has stepped up quite a bit and the mid-field guys are now all extremely close on pace so we had some good battles.”

“Race two with the reverse grid was a disaster, we got taken out big time at the start like a lot of guys, I don’t think there was any bodywork left on the car after that crash. So I clocked up a heap of incident points in that carnage and then once we had it repaired and fought back up to around P14 I must have exceeded track limits and I got a penalty for getting too many incident points and that put us pretty much last.”

“Race three wasn’t too bad, got a good start and we nailed the pit stop strategy and were able to pick up a few places from that.”

“Next week should be interesting, I think we’ve got a few NASCAR oval tracks coming up which should be interesting, me and Rick will have to start practicing our Ricky Bobby slingshot moves!”

Rating

( 1 Rating )

Articles

New sim rig on the cards for Rick Kelly

QUOTES

Team links

Follow us

Latest Team News Newsletter

Search