Team BOC has made a productive start to the V8 Supercar Challenge weekend after Andrew Jones snared a place inside the top 20 in qualifying for the Gold Coast event.
With his car having been rebuilt following a fire at Bathurst, Jones had a great run though qualifying one, finishing the session inside the top twenty, giving him a ticket to qualifying two.
However, bad luck managed to fall in this session however as, while setting his fastest lap of the weekend, the red flags came out to nullify his time. With not enough time left in the session to heat a set of fresh tyres, Jones was forced to accept 20th position on the grid for Saturday's 27 lap race.
“It was quite a busy day for us today, with two practice sessions and qualifying,” he said. “The car was reasonably good and we made it though to the second session of qualifying in about 17th. In qualifying two, I went out on roaded tyres and banked a time that wasn't all that flash, then we came in and went to green tyres and did a 1:49.8 lap which would have put us about 16th. As I came out onto the final straight though, they hung the red flags out so all the timing systems stopped and we didn't get that lap counted, so that was a little disappointing, but it was good to get into qualifying two and show that we had some good speed.”
Team-mate Simon Wills suffered an off during the first practice session of the day and things didn't get much better in qualifying when a fuel issue left him with little time to set a timed lap – the #14 Falcon only 25th as a result.
“Qualifying was very frustrating for us because we knew we had quite a quick car after the two practice sessions, we were hovering around the top 15,” he said. “Unfortunately we had an issue with the car during qualifying and I only got out with two laps to go, on I tyres I had used on a previous run. So that was the end of the session for me and we were probably 10 places further back down the grid than we really should have been. Extremely frustrating, but we have a straight car and some good speed for the race tomorrow.”
