Kelly Racing positive despite tough Bathurst qualifying

Aiden Taylor 16 October 2020

User Rating: 5 / 5

Today Kelly Racing returned to Mount Panorama for the second day of action at the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000. After a successful start to its Bathurst campaign yesterday, the team continued to make progress ahead of qualifying late in the afternoon.

The day kicked off with the co-driver-only Practice Four where Dale Wood and Dylan O’Keeffe took to the circuit under mixed conditions. Both co-drivers continued to do a fantastic job and the team was able to execute some high fuel load race simulation with both drivers doing long stints during the session.

Dale Wood showed exceptional pace in the Castrol Racing Mustang, setting the quickest sectors for the session in the first and third sectors heading up and down the mountain. Dale finished the one-hour practice in third place.

Following Practice Four, the main drivers jumped in for their final laps ahead of qualifying. The team spent the entire session doing qualifying runs and making setup tweaks to the cars to extract the maximum one-lap pace. André Heimgartner found the limit of the NED Mustang at the end of conrod straight with a big brake lock-up which sent him into the dirt but he was able to recover safely and continue the session.

Rick Kelly and the Castrol team weren’t able to strike the ideal qualifying car balance at the end of Practice Five and finished just a couple of tenths away from the top-10.

The team’s attention then turned to qualifying for the great race which took place late this afternoon. The forty-minute session established the grid from position eleven through to 25, with top ten places on the grid confirmed via a Top-10 Shootout tomorrow afternoon.

The session was red-flagged only a few laps in with a car in the fence which held-up running by around ten-minutes. With around five-minutes left in the session, both drivers were a few tenths off the Top-10 when rain hit the circuit and removed all possibility of moving further up the grid. At the end of the session André placed the NED Mustang in P14 with Rick not too far behind in P19 after he wasn’t able to complete a fully committed lap.

Tomorrow the team has a further two practice sessions to refine its race package ahead of the Bathurst 1000 on Sunday.

QUOTES

André Heimgartner, #7 NED Racing

“It was a little disappointing not to get in the shootout this afternoon, but it doesn’t have too much of an impact on the end result at this place so tomorrow we’ll just concentrate on race setup and I think there’ll be rain so we’ll get a good idea of wet weather pace around here.”

“We’ll also have a good amount of time to practice driver changes, pit stops and all that stuff which is critical for a good race come Sunday. At least now tomorrow is a little more relaxed, we can just focus on the race without having to continue to chase a qualifying setup so it’s not too bad.”

Dylan O'Keeffe, #7 NED Racing

“It was good this morning to get some more miles in the car, I’m feeling a lot more comfortable compared to yesterday and was able to push a lot earlier in my stint on used tyres. And then I got a better set and the pace was around the top-ten which was good at the time.”

“The focus for me is just to get comfortable with the car, not make any silly mistakes and just to get used to it all ahead of Sunday.”

Rick Kelly, #15 Castrol Racing

“We had a little bit of work to do from yesterday, we had a car that was a little bit tail-happy so we needed to tidy that up and then build confidence back in Dale and I. Today was very much about building that confidence and I think we did that pretty well.”

“Qualifying didn’t quite go our way, we had a messy first run, we then made a change to the car which put us back a little bit and used up some time which made our third run quite late in the session. That lap ended up being the time which was solid but wasn’t a full attack lap, we really needed to do that banker lap and then build from there earlier in the session.”

“I don’t think we were quite there with setup but probably could probably have got close to the ten. Little bit disappointing walking away with that qualifying position because I think we’re a bit better than that.”

Dale Wood, #15 Castrol Racing

"Today I felt like we definitely made a step forward in terms of getting me comfortable in the car. We made a tweak to the seating position and I found it definitely helped me in the seat and with the changes we made to the car overnight, it was quite a lot nicer to drive over a long stint."

"I felt pretty confident in the car, we were the quickest in the first and final sector in my session so the car felt good, My job today was mainly just to get miles out there, obviously not go flat out and as a race car I think we have a pretty good package and we'll obviously have some more time to refine it tomorrow so I'm positive at the moment."

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Kelly Racing positive despite tough Bathurst qualifying

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