James Moffat scores first podium of 2014 with battle-scarred Nissan

James Moffat and Taz Douglas wrestled a battle damaged Nissan Altima to a surprise second at the Bathurst 1000, capitalising on late race woes for Ford Performance Racing and Triple Eight to score Nissan’s first podium of the 2014 V8 Supercars Championship season.

Moffat had qualified the Altima in seventh spot in yesterday’s pole position shootout, but the Nissan, along with the majority of other competitors in today’s action-packed race, ran into difficulty at Griffins’ Bend, with Taz Douglas knocked into the barriers by Cameron Waters’ Charlie Schwerkolt Racing Ford early on, and then hit the barriers again when the surface began to break up, causing a red flag stoppage after 61 laps.

“The red flag in a way kind of saved us because we managed to stay on the lead lap and obviously it bunched us all up again, and I knew from that point on it was about digging deep,” said Moffat. “The cars were really sketchy to drive, and through the middle of the race I was quite uncomfortable in the car, I was screaming on the radio giving the engineers a bit of an ear bashing, but I can’t thank the team enough, the amount of work that’s gone into the team so far to get it to this point, all that’s happened in just the last three weeks since Sandown has just been phenomenal…we’re definitely making ground, and to finish second is hopefully a reward for all their hard work.”

“Taz here brought me back a car that looked like it’d been in a scene from The Dukes of Hazzard, but that was good enough for me.”