Kelly pair have eye on history books
The Sunday Age
Sunday October 11, 2009
A FOURTH consecutive win to Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup in today's Bathurst 1000 would make history, but Rick Kelly is planning on creating a new page for the Mount Panorama history books.The Jack Daniels Racing driver and brother Todd Kelly would become the first siblings to win the "Great Race" if they steered their Holden to victory.Geoff and David Brabham won 12 years ago in a BMW, but that was in the Super Touring Car version of the race rather than the rumbling, awe-inspiring V8 supercars.Rick Kelly, 26, found himself in a verbal stoush with FPR driver Mark Winterbottom on day one of practice, but brushed off the incident as "no big drama for us" and said the team was focused on today.Kelly had the last laugh after Winterbottom was fined yesterday over a separate incident, but it will count for little if FPR crosses the line ahead of the newly formed Kelly Racing team.The Kelly brothers (Todd turned 30 last week) have the added responsibility of team ownership to manage this year as they chase the Bathurst crown. Both have tasted success on the mountain previously with Rick winning in '03 and '04 and Todd winning in '05."A fresh team like this has its restrictions; we're not that well developed in the componentry side of things, but we had a reasonable base to start on," Rick told The Sunday Age."We put the team together in a couple of months and it was a lot of work for all the guys . . . it was an achievement for us just to have four cars on the grid (in the Clipsal 500) at Adelaide."Thirteenth place in the team championship heading into today is proof of Kelly Racing's fledgling status, but that means little to the ultra-competitive Rick Kelly on the biggest weekend of motor racing in the country."Starting our team we knew we were never going to have a fantastic shot at the championship, so we've had a lot of focus on the endurance races."Phillip Island was a disappointing result, but very exciting with the pace we had. It gave us confidence coming into this weekend (and) we just needed to make a few adjustments to get it as competitive as it was at Phillip Island."The '06 V8 supercar champion has failed to finish at Bathurst only once and said it was important to "find your rhythm" on the 6.2-kilometre track."We do an enormous amount of preparation, watch all the in-car vision from the previous year and track vision to see where the car gets positioned."Even after all that, the first two sessions are almost uncomfortable and it takes a little while to get your comfort back and start to relax in the car," he said.Todd was seventh fastest in yesterday's Top 10 Shootout with a flying lap of two minutes 9.8986.Before Todd climbed into their distinctive black-and-white Commodore VE to settle the grid positions, Rick was showing few nerves. "Todd and myself have won it before, we know what it takes," he said.
© 2009 The Sunday Age
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