The Townsville street circuit made its return with all V8 Supercars Series teams excited for the longer format 200km race with two pit stops to mix things up. After qualifying 8th for the 70 lap race Fabian Coulthard was eager to get through the pack. He made his way up quickly throughout the first few laps; and after a good pit stop call to pit early he came in and managed to jump up through the pack even further.
“Our car was unbelievably quick today,” commented Coulthard, “especially in that second session. The team pitted me early and we caught up to David Reynolds. When we got the softs back on there at the end the car was humming. I wrecked the PRA parade today, they were looking at a 1, 2, 3 there for a while.”
The Prodrive Racing Australia team had their three cars in the top 3 positions are were looking to make it their podium. They had almost a ten second gap to Coulthard and made him work hard to bridge the gap. Ultimately he caught up and made a move on Mostert to take third place. Most of the field were struggling with tyres at the latter part of the race, and Fabian was hot on the heels of Reynolds and Winterbottom. He finished only a mere second behind the pair but took his well-deserved place on the podium.
“I was happy with our performance today. Our engineers; Phil Keed did a great job and really coached me the whole way through it. He was stressing there for a while that I was using the tyres more than I should have and I had to get him to calm down about it. We got there in the end. A podium from 8th is not a bad day.”
To top off a great finish to the day Coulthard also moved up to second place in the V8 Supercar Championship.
“What can I do to catch the guys in front of me tomorrow? Qualify up the front. That will give ourselves a better chance again at another podium position. Our car was good in qualifying today, I made a small error and that’s put us where we were. You don’t have to do a lot wrong here to put yourself down the order. It is so close at every event we go to, but especially here and a couple of tenths can make all the difference.”
Media: Freightliner Racing
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