Career-Best Finish for Bates Among Carnage-Ridden Race

August 20, 2011

Career-Best Finish for Bates Among Carnage-Ridden Fujitsu Race

Tony Bates has finished as the best of the Greg Murphy Racing Fujitsu V8 Supercar drivers in Race 1, Round 4 of the series at Queensland Raceway today.

Despite qualifying back in 19th position, Bates capitalised on some carnage in the race to improve to a career-best seventh place in his SportsAlive.com / Alternative Freight Services VE Commodore. Bates also set the fourth-fastest lap of the race.

“I was actually in sixth for most of the race,” a delighted Bates said. “There was some oil at Turn 2 and Rodney Jane was able to overtake me on the last lap, but I’m stoked with seventh.

“Qualifying was close and even though I was back in 19th, I was only a few tenths of a second away from being in the top-10.”

Bates will start tomorrow’s top-10 reverse-grid Race 2 from fourth position.

Next best of the GMR entries was James Brock in the Tricor / Drillpro / Olympus entry, moving from 24th on the grid up to 12th at the finish with a consistent and intelligent performance.

Unfortunately, the other two entries of Geoff Emery (AC Delco / Simworx / National Directory Distribution) and Daniel Jilesen (R & J Batteries / Earthex / King Gee) failed to finish after being involved in separate incidents on the opening lap.

Emery spun at Turn 1 after contact with another competitor, and was collected by several other cars. His VE Commodore sustained heavy damage, creating a heavy workload for the team to repair the car for tomorrow’s two races.

Jilesen’s race ended a couple of corners further up the road when he sustained differential damage from a rear-end impact.

“I made a good start and moved from sixth up to fifth,” Jilesen explained. “At Turn 3, Jack Perkins went for a dive down the inside and he missed me, but he hit Nick Percat and both Perkins and Percat spun right in front of me, and then Paul Morris hit me from behind.

“The impact bent the differential, which put me out of the race. It was a shame to have my first DNF for the year, but tomorrow there should be some good racing with a lot of fast cars coming through from the back of the field.

Click here for the full results from qualifying.

Click here for the full results from Race 1.

Races 2 and 3 will be held tomorrow, with Race 3 to be shown live on 7Mate.

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