With a 20 minute qualifying session in the morning and a 200km race at noon, the team had a busy day of action.
Qualifying didnt go as well as the team would have hoped, Tony qualifying back in 26th."We made some changes over night to the car and it wasnt very happy! With the session being so short we didnt get a chance to improve the car"
After a quick autograph session and a bite to eat, Tony was ready to tackle the 67 lap race.
Tony lined up to the grid, and with 5 minutes to go before the green flag Tony made a pitstop of his own. " I hate it when that happens, but I had to go otherwise I would have been uncomfortable all race" Tony got stapped back in the car and set off for the warm up lap.
Green light went and Tony set about moving up the grid in the early laps. "I got a pretty good start getting past Perkins and Alex Davison".
The race quickly settled down and Tony found a pace that was fast enough to keep him with the pack. Holdsworth had a problem on lap 18, the Bottle-O crew made a call to pit hoping that there would be a safety car to retrieve Holdsworth's car. Tony dived in the pits and the crew had him serviced and back on track as the Safety car boards came out. This meant Tony got a huge advantage, and mangaed to rejoin 10 spots up the field! " Glenn made an awesome call to pit and we managed to pass heaps of cars in the pits".
Once the race got underway again, Tony was under pressure from Whincup, Jamie finally found a way past but couldnt pull away from the green machine. With 5 laps remaining Tony was in 12th position, however Reynolds and Marshall were on a mission, they had kept their soft tyres for the end of the race. Tony couldn't hold them off and dropped to 14th.
As Tony pitted early due to the safety car, fuel was always going to be tight. With 2 laps to go the car ran out of fuel and Tony had to switch to the reserve tank. Generally the team will only rely on the reserve tank for one lap, luckily Tony had enough of a gap that he could back off and conserve fuel, Tony crossed the line with 100 grams of fuel in the tank! " What a race, we didnt have a fantastic car, but we had the best pit strategy, I was so nervous for those last few laps hoping we would make the end!"
' The results we got this weekend are the ones we have been on the verge of for the last few rounds, I'm confident we can continue this form in Tassie in a few weeks"
Last Modified on 04/05/2009 17:15