Skaife fastest in qualifying
V8 Supercar stalwart Mark Skaife set the early pace at the ING Australian Grand Prix in the inaugural Sprint Gas Manufacturer’s Challenge at Albert Park today.
Skaife was fastest in qualifying on day one ahead of tomorrow’s top ten shootout and first of three non-Championship races at the Grand Prix in his Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore. He came home ahead of Ford’s Steven Richards and Tasman’s Jason Richards.
The event will contest the first Manufacturer’s Challenge in which all Ford and Holden makes will combine to decide which is the overall winner. Today there five Holdens – Skaife, Richards, Garth Tander, Cameron McConville and Russell Ingall in the top ten and five Fords – Richards, Will Davison, Mark Winterbottom, Craig Lowndes and Steven Johnson.
For Skaife it is a familiar position. His team-mate Todd Kelly was on the front row of the grid the last time V8 Supercars were at the event in 2006 and 2005 with Skaife fourth and third.
The difference this year is that he needs to retain his position tomorrow with the introduction of a Top Ten Shootout for the first time at the event. Another great difference is the heat wave that has struck Victoria and made the engineers work hard to keep the cars cool.
“As the weekend goes on the cars will really feel it,” Skaife said. “There’s going to be some thought put into how the cars can last through the racing section.”
The field endured the extreme heat and a bumpy track in qualifying. On cooler tyres earlier in the session there were some near misses. Tander struck first despite the adverse conditions in the sweltering heat. It was in fact more than 100 degrees Celsius on the track itself.
The conditions led to many teams sitting out bulk parts of qualifying to retain good tyres for a last ditch attempt at the end of the session. Team Vodafone did exactly that, spending considerable time sitting in pit lane for a last second ‘shootout’ lap.
Skaife was one of those and was not going to go back out until a late red flag meant the whole field got back onto the track for one last dash.
“I knew after the red flag that everyone was going to go and as a consequence we had to go because it was going to change things dramatically,” he said.
“I would have preferred to not go again but we had very little choice.”
Lowndes and Jamie Whincup did not even start the session, waiting in pit lane until there was less than ten minutes remaining in the session. For the two that finished fastest in practice it was a huge gamble by the Vodafone pair.
While Lowndes gets a crack at the shootout Whincup was just outside the loop finishing 11th when he got stuck behind traffic as a result of the red flag.
