Garth Tander – Toll HSV Dealer Team
“We are happy with our progress today. We are very mindful that it is early in the weekend. The car needs to be better and I need to do a better job yet. To be honest, my lap time today should not have been any slower than last year’s – it was very average. The track has probably lost a little bit more grip than last year, as it has done every year since the re-surfacing. The car itself was pretty much behaving the same as last year’s car. We managed to dial in last year’s set up and fine-tune it from there for the conditions. I think tomorrow is going to be all about track position and getting a clear lap. It is going to be luck of the draw. The first session tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun. Obviously, this round is important to me because this is my home track, but you have to be careful not to try too hard just because it is your home race.”
Mark Winterbottom – Ford Performance Racing
“We spent the majority of the session working to improve the car in a number of areas and we held on to the top ten using very old tyres. So we knew when changing to new rubber that we would be able to set a good time. Another lap may have seen us in P1 given the pace that we had today. A positive start to the weekend, but the real truth will be known when all 31 of us are on new tyres tomorrow.”
Mark Skaife – Holden Racing Team
“It's now a matter of getting organised for qualifying. Still a fair bit of work to do. Barbagallo is a difficult place to do a great lap in traffic and sometimes you have to back off a touch to get the best time.”
Rick Kelly – Toll HSV Dealer Team
“It is always good to roll the car out quite well. Obviously we were on top there for a little while to start with, which is good. We tried a whole menu of things, and the car probably wasn’t exactly as we needed it at the end there. But, we have enough changes in the bank from that session to just tweak it just that little bit to get us up a couple of spots.”
Craig Lowndes - TeamVodafone
“We made numerous changes to the car to give us a direction but in the end it was the move to our second set of tyres that made the biggest difference. The newer tyres not only gave us a second in time, but also completely changed the feel of the car. The team made some more minor adjustments but due to the red flags, we ran out of time to finalise our set-up. I am very happy with what we achieved today, we now have good direction for tomorrows qualifying.”
Todd Kelly – Holden Racing Team
“Before the Clipsal 500, I wasn't too sure how our new VE Commodore would perform virtually straight out of the box. With a limited testing schedule it is always difficult to know where you stand competitively, but things turned out for the best. Last year we had the fastest car in Perth but things turned pear shaped for me due to a broken gear shift. If we merge our VZ performance with the VE Adelaide effort then we should be looking pretty good. Last year both red cars qualified well, but with sub 60 second lap times there is no room for error on a circuit that rewards a consistent driving style. It is unique in that a pretty simple layout is actually quite technical, with emphasis on getting corners absolutely correct. As usual, it will be a cut throat affair.”
Steven Johnson – Jim Beam Racing
“The car felt good after we made some changes in the set up and as a result, my lap times were getting quicker toward the end of the session. I’m looking forward to qualifying tomorrow; the car is strong and I didn’t use any new tyres today so I’m confident that a Top 5 qualifying position tomorrow is a strong possibility.”
Russell Ingall – Stone Brothers Racing/Caltex
“Eighth in practice wasn’t really indicative of where we should have been. Most top teams ran their second set of practice tyres today. Unfortunately we didn’t get a good run on ours, we just ran out of time with so many red flags in the session. We never really dropped out of the top five over the two-and-a-half hours. We put that time in pretty early in the session so the car was good out of the truck, which is always promising. We are confident of making it into the final ten in qualifying which is a battle in itself in this field.”
![Garth Tander - Toll HSV Holden Commodore [pic credit: Toll HSV media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/294482.jpg)
