Todd Kelly tops first official V8 Supercars test day
The Kelly Nissan brothers topped all three sessions of the first official V8 Supercars test day of 2015 at Sydney Motorsport Park, with Todd Kelly setting the fastest overall time of the day in the final session.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. There is quite a lot of time left in the car, and I’m not sure whether many people ran quality tyres, so I don’t want to read too much into where we ended up. We’re genuinely in the top 10 … we’ll see tomorrow,” said Kelly.
Holden Racing Team driver James Courtney was a mere 0.0008 seconds behind the Nissan Motorsport driver, claiming the second fastest spot of the final session and the day overall.
Nissan’s off-season development of, primarily, the aerodynamic package has seemingly paid off as the Japanese manufacturer had all four cars in the top seven. Michael Caruso and Dean Fiore shared car and claimed the third fastest time of the day, with Rick Kelly in fifth position and James Moffat in seventh position.
Lee Holdsworth, who has joined Walkinshaw Racing for this season, was fourth fastest in his Holden Commodore, 0.1733 seconds behind the top.
David Reynolds was fastest of the Ford drivers in sixth position, three tenths behind Kelly’s top time. Reynolds is still driving the older specification Ford Falcon, while Mark Winterbottom only managed 12th position as the top Ford Falcon FG X driver, 0.5507 behind the top.
Craig Lowndes claimed eighth fastest time for Triple Eight Race Engineering while team mate and reigning champion Jamie Whincup was down in 18th position.
Ashley Walsh managed to break into the top ten for the Mercedes Erebus Motorsport team, just 0.0543 seconds behind ninth-placed Garth Tander.
Volvo Polestar Racing driver Scott McLaughlin only managed 21st position in the final test session, over 1.3 seconds behind the top time.
The Sydney SuperTest continues tomorrow with one test session and a shootout session.
