Long night ahead for Nissan Motorsport at Bathurst

Nissan Motorsport Australia has the misfortune of having a busy night ahead of them to repair the #15 Jack Daniel’s sponsored Altima ahead of tomorrow’s practice and qualifying day, after co-driver David Russell damaged the car heavily in the afternoon’s second practice session.

Russell had shown good pace at the start of the session, but an off at The Chase, shortly followed by a slide a lap later at The Cutting saw him damage the two right corners of the team’s Altima, missing the last half of the session. Rick Kelly was then forced to miss the third and final practice session of the day as the team worked to repair the car for tomorrow.

The total crash count for the day was relatively light. Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport had the most to do after Practice 1, when Tim Blanchard ran wide at Hell Corner and also sustained damage to the right-hand side of his Holden Commodore.

The team were able to get the car repaired for co-driver Karl Reindler for the last half of Practice 2, who in turn benefitted from the red flag delay after Russell’s crash, while Blanchard finished Practice 3 in 22nd position.

No cars were damaged in Practice 3, leaving Nissan with the task of turning around the #15 car for Practice 4 at 9:10 AEST on Friday, when Russell would again be set to be behind the wheel.

“It’s a shame, the car was pretty quick up until that point,” said Russell.

“I think we came here with a reasonable package, and the car felt really good out of the blocks, and Rick was really quick straight out of the gate in the opening session.

“In my session there, I don’t know whether we had more track temperature, but I had a bit more oversteer in the car than what I had anticipated. I had some new brakes, and I was just fighting a bit of locking, and unfortunately I locked the rears going into The Cutting and tried to guide it off the fence as much as I could, but when you are carrying that much speed, it’s hard to keep it off the fence.”

“Unfortunately it did a bit of damage, so it’s very disappointing.”

Co-driver Rick Kelly added: “Dave just had a slight mishap into a very unforgiving section of the track. That’s just what The Mountain is like unfortunately.

“The positive for us is that all four cars have shown really good progress, especially when you compare it to Thursday last year, the cars are really strong here.”