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Eleventh Place For Alajajian In Opening Oran Park Encounter |
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Sunday, 13 August 2006 |
| Attachment 16836 |
| Protecnica Racing and Chris Alajajian continued to tick off the objectives in Round 4 of the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series at Oran Park Raceway today. |
Protecnica Racing and Chris Alajajian continued to tick off the objectives in Round 4 of the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series at Oran Park Raceway today, with Alajajian just missing out on a Top 10 finish in Race 1.
Having qualified a strong ninth fastest earlier in the day, Alajajian was shuffled back a number of places in the opening corners. Early incidents saw most of the opening half of the race run under Safety Car conditions, as Alajajian settled into 13th position.
When the field returned to race conditions, the Sydney resident set about coming to grips with the Jack Hillermans / Elf Lubricants Commodore, while looking to climb back up the order.
By the end of the 16-lap duration, Alajajian had advanced to 11th place, falling just 0.0008 of a second shy of snaring the final top ten position from Luke Youlden.
“I lost one or two places off the start,” said the 19 year-old. “Then
someone made a desperate move up the inside at Turn 3, so to avoid a
collision I had to go very wide to the outside.
“As I was trying to get back onto the racing line, there was a string
of cars and I couldn’t just slot back in, so I lost places to a couple
more cars in Turn 4 and Turn 5.
“We made a small change to the car before the race, so I didn’t know
exactly what to expect from the car. After all the Safety Cars periods
it took me a couple of laps to adapt to the car, but towards the end it
came together well.”
Alajajian now turns his attention to Races 2 and 3 tomorrow, confident of continuing the strong showing.
“The car was excellent today, which is very promising,” he said. “We’ve
got two more races tomorrow; hopefully we can put together two good
runs and get some good results.”
Saturday will go down as another productive day for Protecnica Racing
in their second Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series round, with the team
crossing off a number of performance targets set before the weekend.
“Obviously our focus is still on gaining experience, but we had a
couple of key things we wanted to achieve in the first two days here
this weekend,” said team owner Scott Anderson. “We set a goal of
getting into the upper 50% group for qualifying, and then qualifying in
the Top 10, both of which we have achieved.
“Chris lost a couple of places early in the race, but racing in this
field is still a very new thing to him. He stayed out of trouble,
didn’t damage the car and got a good result to set us up for tomorrow.
“We’re looking forward to playing again tomorrow and working towards finishing the weekend on a positive note.”
Protecnica Racing thanks the ongoing support of Jack Hillermans Smash, Elf Lubricants and Nudie Juices.
For more about Chris Alajajian, head to www.TheChris.com.au
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 06 January 2007 )
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