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[Australian Production Cars] RYAN, OSBORNE AND NATOLI FROM SCRATCH |
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Monday, 22 August 2005 |
Class leaders Colin Osborne and Daniel Natoli stretched their respective Class B and Class C advantages with wins in race one of the fifth round of the Shannons Australian Production Car Championship at Phillip Island today.
Albeit the respective pilots of a Toyota Celica and a Proton Satria were behind the faster Class A cars in the ten-lap scratch race, the pair were dominant over their adversaries.
In the meantime David Ryan was an all-the-way winner, taking the Class A points en route. The Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo driver’s task was made that much easier as class leader Drew Russell fried the clutch of his Honda S2000 and dropped to the rear of the field.
In other opening lap incidents, Allan Shepherd (Honda Integra) went too deep under brakes at Honda, shooting off the circuit and nearly taking Osborne with him in what could have been a nasty accident. Leigh Mertens led Class C but he overshot at MG and couldn’t get back onto the circuit.
John Houlder made a great start in his Ford Falcon XR8 and held second until a misdemeanor at Honda midway through, dropped him to fifth.
Focus centred on the battle for second from there to the flag as Russell recovered, found a way around Veijo Phillips and then harried Nick Dunkley’s similar XR6 Turbo. The latter drove precisely for the remainder and held off Russell narrowly.
Osborne was clearly ahead of team mate Trevor Keene who had to see off early attention from Natoli who was clearly ahead of David Mertens. The latter who was aboard a Holden Vectra was dicing with Dane Rudolph’s Citreon Xsara in the early laps
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