Lockwood Racing’s Fabian Coulthard ended a hectic day of racing on the podium at round 7 of the V8 Supercar Championship in Townsville today.
The Super Street format featured two ten minute qualifying sessions and two 125km races on the Reid Park circuit and the qualifying sessions showed how close the category truly is.
Coulthard finished 14th in qualifying for race one but bounced back spectacularly in second qualifying to claim pole position.
In race one, Coulthard tried to stay out of trouble in the frenetic midfield battle but following a safety car restart a concertina accident damaged both the front and rear of the Lockwood Racing VF Commodore – Fabian eventually finishing 15th.
With only an hour between races the Lockwood Racing crew swung into action and with only minutes to spare the car was successfully patched together for race 2.
Off pole, Coulthard’s start was trouble free and he led the field until the compulsory pit stop mid race. Rejoining in front of Tander and Courtney in the HRT Commodores, Coulthard was the effective race leader but on cold tyres the car ran wide and both HRT drivers squeezed past.
From there it was a case of bringing the battle scarred Commodore back in one piece and Coulthard claimed third and another podium to add to his 2014 collection.
Fabian Coulthard:
“The morning race was tough, the car got battered from pillar to post and we were lucky to make it out for the second race. It’s credit to the boys, they did a fantastic job fixing it and it looked pretty battered and bruised but it seemed to trundle around OK. I think the car’s good. A weakness of ours has been on the hard tyre and I feel like we’ve bridged that gap a little bit and obviously there’s still more to come but it’s all very promising.”
