Dave "Sideways" Sieders has had an impressive return to form and will start from grid position two for tomorrow's opening race of the East Coast Bullbars Australian V8 Ute Racing Series at Barbagallo Raceway (Perth, WA).
Having suffered several mechanical issues in the last round after switching to Holden, the 30 year old from Western Sydney took until the final 'Top 10 Shootout' session of qualifying to show some real pace, finishing second position, being pipped in the final session by Kim Jane.
"We weren't really on the pace during practice, so to turn things around and end up on the front row is a great achievement for the team," said Sieders, "I was probably putting a little pressure on myself after that last round in Adelaide, so to get it to the front row is definitely a big relief".
"I'm pretty happy for Kimbo [Kim Jane] and his team, they put in a lot of effort, so we'll line up against each other just like last time he got pole, which was here in 2012, with me in P2."
Coming into the round in 16th position, things didn't look good for Sieders, who finished the opening practice session in tenth, improving slightly to sixth for practice two.
"We had to try a few things in practice to give us a read on the Holden here," said Sieders, "the car wasn't bad, but not exactly what we needed to top the times".
Qualifying was split into two sessions for this round, with Sieders' best time bumped down to tenth position as he sat in pit lane, but holding on to progress into the second 'Top 10 Shootout' part.
"The team made the call not to send me back out after changing tyres with five minutes to run," said Sieders, "Rhys [McNally] went out and improved his position, pushed me to tenth, and I was sitting in the lane watching the times with Ryal [Harris], George [Miedecke] and Kris [Walton] all on the track and outside the ten with some green sectors, I just couldn't keep watching."
Whilst Sieders, and the team, watched the times of the three fastest drivers from the morning for any improvement that may have dropped Sieders out of the Top 10, there was a real threat that actually came from within their own garages.
"When we looked at all of our data after qualifying, we found that Jordan [Skinner] missed a gear coming onto the straight, which slightly baulked Jero [Jeremy Gray] and if he hadn't Jero would have knocked me out of the 10."
The final qualifying session was for the Top 10 drivers from the first part, with drivers getting on average just three flying laps, Sieders improved his times on each run to finish the session in position two with a couple of laps only two-and-a-half tenths behind Kim Jane.
"The car felt really good and we kept finding those tenths and hundredths to get us up the front," said Sieders, "Barbagallo was a bit of a hoodoo track for me for so long and now we've got three front row starts, we just need some strong race results".
The V8 Utes will hit the track for race one at 10:05am tomorrow followed by a reverse grid race at 4:05pm, with all sessions televised live on FoxSports5.
