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Youngest Sandown V8 Supercar Driver Price Lines Up For 500 |
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Monday, 21 August 2006 |
MOST 19 year-olds have just finished school and are busy at university or starting life in the workforce, but Melbourne V8 Supercar driver Shane Price is getting his career underway at a speed faster than most could dream of.
A former go kart racing protégée, 19 year-old Price will line up as the youngest driver in the
field in next weekend’s Sandown 500 endurance classic in Melbourne.
He will share the second Jack Daniel’s Racing Holden Commodore with
regular Fujitsu V8 Development Series teammate Jack Perkins, the son of
sixtime Bathurst winner and JDR team boss, Larry Perkins.
The duo have been competing in their rookie season in the secondtier
Fujitsu V8 Series and impressed experts with their speed, consistency
and levelheaded approach.
Price has finished second on the podium in the last two rounds of the series at Queensland Raceway and Oran Park respectively.
He won the final race in the latter round, his first since making his fulltime debut in a V8 Supercar at Adelaide in March.
He sits second in the Fujitsu Series at the halfway mark, and is widely
tabbed as the handsdown favourite for the prestigious Mike Kable V8
Supercar Rookie of the Year Award.
He also has the added benefit, like codriver Perkins Jr, of being a secondgeneration racer.
Price’s father Drew is a former works Toyota touring car driver who won
his class at Bathurst in 1985 and 1988 and competed in a range of
touring car and open wheeler racing cars.
These days he runs Drew Price Engineering, a worldleading company in the manufacture and export of racing go kart chassis.
DPE has one of the largest kart design and manufacturing facilities
outside of Europe and in addition to its Arrow kart chassis, is agent
and distributor for many top karting components including being the
sole Australian importer of Bridgestone kart tyres and Rotax engines.
Shane works part-time as part of the DPE family business when he’s not
racing and has the perfect source of advice from his father in addition
to his team boss, Perkins Snr.
“I’m extremely excited about Sandown, but I’m also extremely nervous about it,” he says.
“Our aim is to simply finish the race and do it without getting into
any trouble. If we can do that, we should be in a good position.
“I’ve done a few laps around Sandown in other types of cars and I’ve
got a bit of knowledge about the place so it will be a good opportunity
to judge where I can place myself with the drivers in the main series.
“Having said that, both Jack and I have to drive within ourselves and
be fairly cautious and concentrate on not making any mistakes.
“I’d hope we can stack up as reasonably competitive with as many of the
drivers who drive regularly in the main series as possible.”
Price Snr thinks that a solid drive by Shane in his first time in a
main series V8 Supercar race would be the ideal Father’s Day present
come race day on September 3.
“It’s wouldn’t be a bad Father’s Day present at all, but it’s a little
tougher act (the main series) than the one he’s been performing in so
far this year,” he says.
“Speaking from my own experience, you just never know what is going to
happen in those endurance events at Sandown and Bathurst.”
While he may have a son making major steps up the Australian motorsport
ladder, Price is happier to sit back in a simple advisory role to Shane
than get handson with his career.
“Right through his car racing career I’ve gradually stepped back
further and further from things,” says Price Snr, who had a best result
of fifth in 1990 from five starts in the Sandown 500 endurance classic.
“I’ve gone and watched him race this year but completely stayed away
from the garage. He calls on me for a little advice here and there but
he has to learn to deal with a lot of things on his own.
“I’m there for him in an advisory capacity and when it comes to the
Perkins Motorsport team themselves, they’ve delivered so well on what
they agreed to deliver that the communications I’ve had with the team
have been extremely few and far between.”
Price and Perkins will test their Sandown 500 mount tomorrow at Winton
Motor Raceway in Victoria before first practice for the endurance
classic on Friday, September 1.
They will also become the youngest ever combination in the history of the Bathurst 1000 a month later on October 58.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )
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