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[Australian Motorsport] BROKEN DIFFERENTIAL SHORTENS INDIFFERENT WEEKEND |
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Monday, 10 April 2006 |
BROKEN DIFFERENTIAL SHORTENS INDIFFERENT WEEKEND
Global Racing Industries' trip to Tasmania’s Symmons Plains Raceway for Round 2 of the Australian Production Car Championship was one to forget.
Team driver Drew Russell entered the weekend with the Class A and Outright Championship lead to his name, however his hopes were dealt a blow before the start of the round.
Series officials elected to make a parity change for the weekend, which saw the Go Karts Go Honda S2000’s rev limit reduced by 600rpm, taking it from 9,100pm down to 8,500rpm.
Battling with a lack of speed in a straight line, the Newcastle-based youngster qualified in fifth position for the scratch race, a position he maintained during the eight-lap duration.
Fifth place was also where Russell ran in the early stages of the opening handicap race. His run didn’t last long, with the car suffering a differential problem on lap three of 15.
Without the sufficient time nor parts to fix the problem in time for the final race, it ended Russell’s weekend.
“It hasn’t been a good weekend,” Russell, 17, said. “Our car is at it’s best around the corners, and there aren't enough of them here to make up for the lack of speed in a straight line.
“In the second race, coming out of Turn 2, I heard the telltale noise, the same as we hard at Oran Park last year when we had a diff problem, so I knew it was over. I just pulled over and stopped the car.
“We were just out there hoping to pick up points this weekend and keep our tally ticking over.
“In practice we had some handling issues, but we worked on those and had them fixed for qualifying but there wasn’t anything else we could do to improve our speed.”
The weekend dropped Russell from the lead of the outright championship to fifth place, and relinquish the lead of the Class A standings.
“For a car which makes it’s power with a 3000pm band at the top of the rev range, the parity change has been very detrimental for us,” said team owner Wayne Russell.
“The parity board have taken away 15% of our horsepower, which means we can’t mix it with the top cars, like the V8’s and XR6 Turbo’s in Class A.”
Global Racing Industries thanks the support of Go-Karts Go, MC Racing Group, Oran Park Raceway, Kloster Honda, Koala Glass and Bells Radiators.
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