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Wednesday, 06 September 2006 |
This week the TK Racing team, growing in confidence, headed to Sandown raceway in Melbourne Victoria to compete in round 5 of the Aussie Racing Car championship.
Team TKR arrived early as usual, with a Sandown setup and made sure the Aussie Racer was ready to go for the 3 race weekend.
With the weather looking like holding out and a warm sunny day greeting competitors Friday morning, practice and qualifying were going to be a straight out fight for speed and lap times.
Practice went well for TKR with a solid 6th from the 20min session. “I was just out there looking at the lines and corner speed for the up
coming qualifying session, but basically just took it easy” said Kipper
Qualifying was held late in the day on the Friday, with all teams
hoping the light would hold as it was getting darker and darker! As
usual Kipper was in the first few out on the track, maximizing his
track time for his shot at that ultimate lap.
With the team and driver working towards a plan, Kipper produced the
goods on lap 4, exactly as planned whilst clear of traffic he set about
smashing the current lap record, and further dropping it on each
subsequent lap. The final time was over 1.3 seconds faster than last
years time, and even more significantly it was .7 faster than the next
competitor.
“The car was just a jet!! The guys gave me the car to just press on, I
was really just cruising around using hardly any curb but the times
kept on coming!” said Kipper after qualy.
As it turns out, the team called Kipper in on lap 11 and even on his pit lap smashed the first sector time by over a tenth!
Saturday was always going to be treated as a second Qualifying session
for team TKR, as it is only finishing in or around the top 5 that
matters in that vital first race.
Sunday morning brought cloudy skies with the threat of rain! By 9am it
was raining heavily, and TKR were seriously looking at running a full
wet setup, until 1 of their team of weather spotters predicted the
weather to clear by midday, and with the carrera cup cars cutting up a
dry line it was decided to revert back to a full dry setting.
Kipper got a blinder of a start and raced with the usual suspects,
Kemal from VIP and James Ward. It was going to always come down to that
group of 3 for the final victory.
The race was shortly interrupted when there was a large 7 car pileup at
the turn 2/3 complex with the safety car requiring deployment. On
resuming it was Kipper, Kemal, and Ward fighting it out until Ward fell
to another unlucky engine failure.
With Sandown being so much about the draft on the front and back
straights, it was lead changes every lap with Kemal and Kipper going at
it for the coming laps. Until the race was shortened with Kipper coming
out on top!
“I just can’t believe it!! I now lead the championship in my first year
in ARC and with only 2 rounds to go” said an ecstatic Kipper.
“I am just thrilled to do it for my guys, they have just worked so hard
all year and to have all of them here plus the workshop’s support it is
a great end to the weekend” said Kipper
This great result gave him 2nd for the weekend behind Kemal and blew
the championship wide open with TKR taking the lead for the very first
time!
Kipper and Team are now looking forward to consolidating their
championship lead, with team and driver growing in speed and confidence
with every race meeting!
The next Aussie Racing Cars meeting will be held over the weekend of
the 5th - 8th of October at Bathurst supporting the annual Bathurst
1000 Supercar event.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 29 December 2006 )
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