BRAD Shiels couldn't have asked for a better start to his campaign on home territory at the Bathurst 12 Hour yesterday as he and team-mates Andrew Macpherson and Matt Campbell produced an impressive performance in practice.
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A shaky opening session saw Macpherson hit the wall at The Cutting after just a couple of laps was soon forgotten as their IMAK-KWIKMIT Porsche 911 cracked the top 20 later in the day.
With one hour of practice to go late in the afternoon, the team were comfortably in 20th and delighted with their progress throughout the day.
The lone Bathurst representative in the field said that the time sheets weren't the be-all and end-all and qualification today wasn't the biggest concern, but it was still a nice feeling to be so well placed.
"It was pretty cool to have a look at the numbers and see that I'm in among, and in some cases above, ex-Formula 1 drivers and World Touring Car champions and that sort of thing," he said.
"For us it hasn't been a case of looking at times as such, we have been all about getting things ready for the race and making sure we have a nice, comfortable car for the 12 hours we're going to be on the track [tomorrow].
"If we qualify well that's great, but it isn't the most important thing."
In the morning, Macpherson got through just one fully timed lap before his run-in with the wall and their time of two minutes, 24.4135 seconds didn't give much of an indicator as to what the car was capable of.
A few hours later in session two they got a better idea of how they were faring.
They managed to consistently break the 2:10 barrier as Shiels got some valuable time behind the wheel, and recorded a best time of 2:09.5816, putting them the best part of five seconds behind the Phoenix Racing Audi R8 LMS.
They were slightly slower in the third session, but the gap was less then a second, and they maintained a hold on 20th.
"We're pretty happy with the car at the moment, there were a lot of set-up changes throughout the day and I was pretty nervous early on," Shiels said.
"We had that bit of trouble when Andrew went off, but we got the car back quickly, fixed it up well and we were ready in time for the second session.
"Matt and I were able to get a feel for things, and by the end of the third session I think I'd probably had about 12 laps in the car, which wasn't a lot but it was enough to start to get comfortable and that's the most important thing."
