UNFORTUNATE timing of a safety car put Bathurst driver Brad Shiels out of contention in Sunday’s inaugural Hampton Downs 101 in New Zealand.
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With Shiels ready to take his Porsche 911 GT3-R entry into pit lane – which he shared along with team owner and co-driver Andrew MacPherson – his chance at victory in the Australian Endurance Championship round was dealt a cruel and hefty blow.
After entering pit lane Shiels was forced to come back in on the very next lap.
The race never went his way from that point on as he and MacPherson eventually wound up with a DNF next to their name.
“The rule in Australian GT is that you can’t pit under safety car. We were on our way into pit lane and we had crossed the pit line four seconds after the safety car had been deployed,” Shiels said.
“We then did our pit stop in our compulsory time of around one minute and 43 seconds, and got a good advantage out of that, but then we got penalised, had to come back in and sit in pit lane for that time again. That ruined our race from that point on.
“I was still in 11th place after all that but then we got into a tangle with an amateur and I broke a valve in a tyre. The after that I got a left rear puncture.
“When Andrew got back in the car he got on the throttle a little too quickly on the cold tyres and he contacted the wall. It wasn’t a good weekend results-wise but I’m happy with the pace we had in the older car.”
David Russell and Roger Lago took out the race.
Outside of the race itself Shiels was happy with the way he handled both the track and his Porsche.
In fact, Shiels was busy making a statement across practice in his older car against some 2016 machinery.
“It was really good. It’s exciting going into a round where no-one has raced on the track before,” he said.
“Qualification was a combined time between drivers and we found ourselves towards the back [21st of 24], but that was alright because we were against some faster cars.
“My highlight from the weekend was going fastest in the practice session on Saturday morning.”
Shiels set a time of 1:35.667 in that warm-up session.
Perthville’s Grant Denyer was stripped of his third place race finish after co-driver Nathan Morcom was handed a 30-second penalty for illegal contact.
