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Ford Performance
Racing (FPR) has once again led the V8 Supercar field in today's final practice
session of the season at Victoria's Phillip Island Grand Prix
Circuit.
Orrcon Ford Credit FPR Falcon driver Mark
Winterbottom set the fastest lap time of 1:33.9659s with under two minutes
remaining in the two and a half hour session. Castrol FPR Falcon driver Steve
Richards was 11th fastest today (1:34.7093s), his best lap time not a
true indication of his pace at this track as he experienced an
off-circuit moment while on a significantly better lap towards the closing
stages of the long and hot session.
Sharing the top three spots today were
Holden drivers Garth Tander (2/10ths of a second slower than
Winterbottom) and Todd Kelly. Tander is Winterbottom's closest rival for
the 2007 Armour All V8 Supercar Pole Position Award, the two drivers heading
into tomorrow's final qualifying session of the season tied at four
Pole positions each. Should either of them take their 5th Pole position of
the season tomorrow, one of them will take this coveted
award.
FPR returns to the Phillip Island Grand
Prix Circuit at 11:40am to fight for the Prodrive team's 5th Pole position of
the season, followed by the first of three 27 lap races which will start at
3:45pm.
#5 Mark Winterbottom - "It is a good
start to the weekend, you can’t get much better than setting the fastest
time. The track conditions here change quite a bit depending on
which support category is on the track before us, especially when it
is the Historics as they can make it quite slippery. This is something
we will have to keep our eye on for qualifying. If we can do the same lap
time tomorrow we should be pretty close to the front. Richo and
I can’t progress any higher in the Championship so the goals
are to win the Pole award and finish one-two for the
round so we can end the year on a high - setting our sights
on next season being the one for us.”
#6 Steve Richards -
"Today was a pretty frustrating day, we
spent the session searching to find a good balance with our car
set-up but a lot of the changes we made didn’t seem to make any real
impact.
As a result of this, there was a lack of forward progress
throughout practice. We didn’t put new tyres on the car so once we
bolt some on for qualifying I’m confident of moving up the
order tomorrow.”
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