HRT's Adelaide set back

There are no points on offer for the V8 Supercars in the support races at the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne's Albert Park Lake; it's a non-championship race meeting; it's supposed to be a demonstration only; it's less than 2 weeks before the Championship-opener in Adelaide...

Yet the usual "sheep stations' appeared to be up for grabs - especially in Friday's race - as the drivers biffed and barged their way around the 5k circuit. At the end of the weekend, there were some fairly hefty damage bills, including Rick Kelly's Kmart Commodore, both entries from Adelaide-based Team Dynamic and Mark Skaife's HRT Commodore.

Skaife had nowhere to go when he found the spinning Simon Wills Team Dynamic Commodore sideways in front of him at turn one of lap one on Sunday and while the #2 HRT car's speed was relatively low (around 70-80kph) the impact registered 7Gs on the vehicle's in-car data logger.

To have the vehicle repaired and turned around in time for the V8 Supercar Championship opener in Adelaide on the weekend of March 20 and 21, the HRT crew had Skaife's car back at the team's Clayton workshop by the end of the F1 GP, stripped back that night and at the team's chassis repairers Dencar first thing Monday morning - swapping places on the repair jig with Rick Kelly's Kmart Commodore after that vehicle's "shunt" on Friday afternoon at Albert Park!

Dencar has had to virtually replace the right front corner of the Skaife car, including the chassis rail, cross member, inner guards and all the relevant panels and support panels, with an all-up repair bill in the vicinity of $30,000.

The chassis arrived back in the workshop after painting that morning, with the crew now working to have the car ready to ship to Adelaide next Tuesday for the Clipsal 500.

It was certainly not the outcome the team was looking for from the Grand Prix weekend, after hoping that it could avoid drama and use the three races to not only be competitive, but also to gain useful data prior to the Adelaide round.

HRT's car speed seemed fine with Skaife grabbing provisional pole and second in the shoot out and Todd Kelly recording 5th in qualifying and 8th in the shoot out. Skaife grabbed the lead at the start of Friday's 10-lapper but received contact from Greg Murphy on lap three, relegating him to the back of the pack and 16th place at the finish.

From there Skaife was playing catch up and while he climbed back to ninth during Saturday's 19-lap heat, a spin while trying to gain more places dropped him back to 14th. Of course Sunday's problems followed when Wills was forced off in the first corner melee, with the Team Dynamic spinning while trying to regain the circuit and coming back on broadside to Skaife: Game Over!

Todd Kelly avoided such extremes to record 3 top 10 finishes, after the Team decided to use the 3 races for development prior to the season proper. Kelly and his crew kept making significant changes to the car each day and while that probably affected his chances of a podium, Todd and the Team felt they have learned much that will assist them over the coming rounds.

The weekend was a pleasing one from Holden's point of view, with Jason Bright's PWR VY Commodore taking 2 race wins and a 2nd, from the Steven Richards and Greg Murphy Commodores. Defending champ Marcos Ambrose still seems to be the Ford benchmark but that will become clearer after Adelaide.

After taking a back seat to the F1 pilots and cars in Melbourne, the V8 Supercars are the "show" again in 10 days time around the streets of Adelaide and the parklands in arguably the year's best event. The weekend consists of two 78-lap legs - one Saturday and one Sunday - each of 250 kilometres in length. The Clipsal event is one of the most demanding race weekend's of the season on both car and driver; the 3.2 kilometre street circuit is notoriously bumpy and, lined with concrete walls.