Ryal Harris set a new lap record, with in a time of 1:25.51, and has moved back into the series lead after Race 2, Round 7 of the Auto One V8 Ute Racing Series – protected by ARMOR ALL at the Gold Coast 600, Saturday, 27th October.
Kim Jane started on the front row alongside Jesus Racing’s Andrew Fisher; Jane got the jump on the start and was gaining a comfortable lead, until a safety car was deployed when Todd Zani and Peter Burnitt were unfortunately caught up in an incident at the top chicane. Burnitts’ car went up on his two wheels, showing great control not to flip the car.
“I came into the chicane and saw Todd to the right hand side of me and I got a massive shunt into Todd, I got up on two wheels and I worked it so it came down on all 4 wheels, and it did. My car’s finished for the weekend and Todd’s car is too, so pretty disappointing as we were having a great weekend,” said the Brisbane based driver.George Miedecke was also forced to retire The Boat Works Holden after a battle with Race winner Harris for third position. Miedecke hobbled into the pits with his left tyre hanging out the side.
“Ryal ran me up to the fence and under the safety car I made the decision to bring the car back into the pits. It’s a massive blow to Tony Longhurst and Cliffy who made such a big effort to get the car here,” said Miedecke.
Harris had a different view on the incident and relieved to move back into the ENZED Drivers Championship lead.
“I gave George enough racing room ,obviously Dave Sieders had a bad race then, so that was good for us. We’ve been struggling with speed, the Sieders cars are that ridiculously quick off the corners, we don’t’ know what they’re doing but whatever they’re doing is working. We got a win and Dave had a bad race, we got the lead back in the championship and hopefully we’ll stay there,” explained Harris.
Harris was right on the heels of Andrew Fisher on the restart, and took him half way through the lap. Harris then moved in on Jane’s Bob Jane T-Marts and the two battled for the top spot for half a lap changing positions, but Jane decided to back off in the end.
“We know we don’t’ have the speed of the other utes, and that we need a good track position and good consistency and got that at Bathurst. I got a great start and it was disappointing when the caution came out, I got an excellent restart and I could see everything behind me, and could see that they’re obviously faster, I knew the inevitable and the laps were counting down, Ryal got me in an area I wasn’t that comfortable in and he was quite desperate in his manoeuvres to get through, so best thing to do was to let him go and carry on for later,” said Jane.
Fisher closed in on the two, but settled for third for the Race ahead of Nathan Pretty in fourth, Rhys McNally in fifth and Craig Dontas in 6th. The battle was on for 7th and Wayne Wakefield, Gerard McLeod and Adam Marjoram all posted some of their best results this year in 8th, 9th and 9th whilst Gary Baxter wrapped up the top 10.
The V8 Utes will be back on track at 12:10pm and will be televised live on Network Seven (check local guides).
ENZED Drivers ChampionshipRyal Harris 782David Sieders 776Rhys McNally 743Nathan Pretty 741Kim Jane 681Kris Walton 681
