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Ford Performance
Racing has started its assault on Barbagallo Raceway with two top-five finishes
in today’s V8 Supercar Championship Series practice at the WA
circuit.
After running in the
mid-teens for much of the afternoon’s track time, Steve Richards vaulted to the
top of the table with a 0:56.5758 and held strong until just minutes from the
end.
Reigning champion,
Garth Tander, managed to edge the #6 Castrol FPR driver out by just 0.04 of a
second before the chequered flag fell.
Mark Winterbottom,
who was concentrating on race set-up, posted a time of 0:56.7590 to finish
fifth-fastest overall.
Steven
Richards
#6 Castrol FPR
Falcon
“The track was a
little bit slippery off-line, but if you’re off-line you’re not going fast!
“I wasn’t concerned
mid-session because I could see Frosty was going well on the other side of the
garage. Sometimes when you’re trying to learn new things about the car and
trying changes, you’re in unfamiliar territory but once we put the second set of
tyres on it just clicked.
“While this result is
a good gauge for the weekend, it’s not qualifying and we don’t know what the
other teams were doing.”
Mark
Winterbottom
#5 Orrcon Ford Credit
FPR Falcon
“The car’s really
strong in race set-up but when we put green tyres on we didn’t get the most out
of them for qualifying. We need to fine tune that because I was getting quite a
bit of under-steer; I just couldn’t turn enough to get into the corners.
Otherwise I was really happy with the car.”
Tim
Edwards
Team
Principal
“It was a good strong
start to the weekend; we did plenty of work on race set-up but still have a bit
more to do on qualifying. That’s just looking through the data and we’ve got
enough from the two cars. Both had separate test programmes; one was a better
race car and the other was a better qualifier.”
BigPond 400 - 2008 V8
Supercar Championship Series,
Round
4
BARBAGALLO RACEWAY
WANNEROO
1.
Garth Tander HRT
0:56.5381
2. Steve
Richards Castrol FPR Falco
0:56.5758
3. Craig
Lowndes 888
0:56.6550
4. Russell
Ingall PMR
0:56.7316
5. Mark
Winterbottom Orrcon Ford Credit FPR Falcon
0:56.7590
6. Rick
Kelly
HSV
0:56.8037
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