In a sopping wet qualifying – paused midway through to let a thunderstorm pass – Gordon Shedden took pole position for the first race at Rockingham. Mat Jackson and Josh Cook took second and third in a mixed up grid.
We caught up with some of the drivers after qualifying
Gordon Shedden: P1
“[I’m] happy. It’s all good. So, fingers crossed it rains tomorrow. [The rain]’s great. Same for everybody, isn’t it? A bit of a leveller so it’s all good fun.”
Ash Sutton: P6
[Qualifying] was ok. It wasn’t the best – could’ve gone a little bit better but P6. Can’t complain.”
“I don’t know [about tomorrow]. It’s very up in the air. The conditions – we don’t know what they’re going to be doing. I think they’re going to be dry. We don’t know our pace in the dry, despite FP1, FP2, we didn’t actually get a lap up so it’s going to be going into the unknown.”
Hunter Abbot: P10
“I was pretty pleased with that because I’ve not got much experienced with front wheel drive in the wet. It’s a big learning curve. It’s very different to rear wheel drive in the wet. So I’m pretty pleased with top ten. To be honest, after FP2 in the dry, my target was top ten anyway so we did the target even though it’s wet so I’m feeling good.”
“At the moment, no one knows what the weather’s going to do, essentially. I think we’ve got a reasonable chance of doing well tomorrow. Well, as good a chance as you can have in touring cars.”
Jeff Smith: P15
“It was pretty damn wet. It was just a case of being on track at the right time, on the right position lap wise, down to even half a lap, being in the right place when the rain was either clearing or coming. We were virtually half a second up the road on our second quickest lap and then it just started to lash it down in the last corner there so it just caught us out a bit.”
“We should be able to race [tomorrow]. We’re mid-pack so if we can get away – mid-packs some pretty decent drivers so if we can get away with them, nice and clean for the first few laps, we should be alright.”
Jake Hill: P18
“Alright. Wet, aquaplaning, horrible, dark, lightening. No, it was alright. It was interesting. The wet always mixes things up. I didn’t have any new tyres, unfortunately, for the wet, so I was on some scrubs. They were ok. They weren’t the optimum and obviously the top teams had the optimum so I unfortunately lost out a little bit due to that but, all in all, not bad.”
“Again as always, try and get into the top ten. It’s always tricky to do so but we’ll see. The wet will be interesting. I think at least one race is going to wet, definitely, so we’ll just wait and see about the others. That’s my aim: to try and get into the top ten in one or two of the races.”
Feature image credit: Caroline Rhea
