"Overall, though, I am very happy with the sessions,” he insisted, "It was extremely close at the top and we were right up there all day. We had an exceptionally good car in the middle of the final session, but we decided to make a few changes which lost us front end grip. We then ran out of time to change it back, so we put our new tyres on but didn't make any gains. I am very confident we will have a much better car for qualifying.”
Rounding out the top ten were Rick Kelly, Tander's team-mate Mark Skaife, Lee Holdsworth, Paul Dumbrell and Fabian Coulthard, although the latter lost a Dunlop control tyre due to a brake lock-up and had to set a time when the track wasn't at its optimum.
Kelly commented that he was surprised to see the times covering the top ten so close together, with just a couple of tenths separating the leading positions.
“Rolling the car out of the truck as fast as we did, it is difficult to find a better set-up," he reported, "We basically went up and down with several changes on the car just to confirm we were on the right track and towards the end we bolted on the better tyres. It was tough to get a good flying lap at that time with all the traffic.
‘Apart from that, the times are a little bit closer than I imagined - a tenth-and-a-half gets us up to where Garth is. We haven't got much time to find out there but, because it is a short lap, it will be tough to get that last bit out of it”
Further back, Jason Richards was enthusing over his brand new Sprint Gas VE Commodore, which puts him in comparable equipment to fellow Kiwi Greg Murphy.
“This new car is so stable under brakes, and we are back as a team now that we can share data – although I'm going to have to learn the Pi acquisition system as I've used Motec almost ever since I was in a Formula Ford back in 1995!” Richards commented.
