Evos dominate as Pro Duct claim 2nd and 3rd!

It just wasn’t to be it seems. Pro Duct couldn’t take the top step but in the pits, it sure was exciting. Glenn Seton ended up only six-one-hundredths of a second behind pole position, with Jason Bargwanna only another half second behind.

I had arrived in the pits with around 20 minutes to go till qualifying started, and it all seemed very cool and collected.

“This morning in the wet, both our cars set the fastest lap times, so I think we will be fast,” said Steve Glenney, one of the Pro Duct drivers.

“All we want to do is beat the factory works team (Team Mitsubishi Racing),” said Terry Thompson, “but we are VERY confident.”

Qualifying lasted an hour, in which there were many highs and lows. For starters, Steve Owen’s first flying lap – a 2:26.8, was 2.2 seconds a lap faster than Bargwanna. That had to have been the lowest point for the team.

Being 2-3 seconds off the pace can very disheartening for anybody.

As Bargwanna came back into the pits after two fliers, things started to get hectic. All the driver’s gathered around trying to make sense of all the information.

“There is heaps of traffic out there,” Bargwanna started, ripping his balaclava off, “but man, 2:26 is fast. I’m thinking a low 28 at the state the car is in now, really.”

A quick check around the car found the tyres had blown up in pressure – very different to the wetter conditions they had been in during practice. But they were still dumbfounded a little as Seton came back in with a 28.6. Glenney tried to explain it to me:

“Owen’s in an Evo 9, and got pole last year as well,” he said. “The 9s just have more grunt out of corners and down the straights, where the 10s have more chassis. We can catch them up the top, but it seems like there is just so much difference.”

“Yeh, six tenths on the first sector alone?” Bargwanna added. “That’s ridiculous!”

Despite the confusion though, they put their heads down and went straight to work. Bargwanna did two more runs, on two different compounds and ended up with a low 27s time. Huge improvement from the original 29s time he posted in the beginning.

It was Seton though who really impressed me. The two time Australian Touring Car Champion was so calm and collected, and missed pole by only six-one-hundredths of a second.

After his first run, he pulled into the pits and just sat there, seemingly concentrated on the road ahead as if he was replaying the lap he just did, or visualised the lap ahead. Then bang! On his next lap, he pulled out a time so close it was funny – the commentators had a laugh, but the team looked almost slightly disappointed – Seton set a blinding second sector, but fell short on the third.

At that point it was still OK, he had access to just one more lap, so he pulled into the pits and they put on a fresh set of tyres on the right hand side and he was off. But it wasn’t to be.

The team looked slightly disappointed to not have won pole, and a cool $5,000, but team manager Terry put it all back into focus:

“Hey, we smashed TMR didn’t we?”

Check back tomorrow as I cover the first 6 hours of the race, with Timothy Luc covering the second - Narada