Racing among the frontrunners, Glenfords Racing showed further performance gains in the weekend's fifth V8 Supercar Championship round at Sandown, but misfortunes denied the team the expected top ten results.
Continually making gains in the series, the bar was again raised for the team's Ford Falcon as Fabian Coulthard posted the fifth fastest qualifying lap, earning Glenfords' best-ever starting slot, and underlined his genuine outright pace in race one by continuing his strong fifth-place run until a slow pit-stop dropped him back to eighth.
Wet conditions for race two saw the #111 Falcon fitted with a set of wet weather control tyres, which then failed to perform, dropping the still battling Coulthard from his hard-earned eighth place back to 25th. Completing its compulsory pit-stop, the Glenfords team opted to change all four tyres for fresh wets in an attempt to rectify the situation, and Coulthard was immediately back up to speed, carving his way through the field to 14th before the chequered flag fell at the end of lap 39.
Despite all that had gone before, however, the weekend's third and final race delivered the team's lowest point, with an uncharacteristic engine failure putting an early end to their Queen's Birthday celebrations.
"It's a wee bit disappointing to qualify fifth and come away with 19th for the round," Coulthard admitted, "We had a slow pit-stop in the first race, which bumped us from fifth to eighth, which is where we stayed for that one, but we had a dud set of tyres for race two. They were pressured as they should be, but I couldn't get the feeling of
the car through them - it just under steered and over steered and we basically went from eighth to 25th.
"We were in a no-lose situation to try changing all four tyres instead of just the rears like usual. We put four new wets on and the car was back to normal. We got back to 14th, which shows that we had car speed but, in a situation like that, you've already lost valuable places at the start. And to DNF in the last race was obviously disappointing.
