Clipsal: Tasman Motorsport Friday report

Richards qualifies career-best fourth for Clipsal 500

Tasman Motorsport's Jason Richards has begun the new V8 Supercar season with a bang, taking his Sleepyhead Commodore to a career-best fourth fastest qualifying performance for tomorrow's Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.

He was part of a Holden blitz today, and will start from the second row of the grid alongside HSV driver Garth Tander. Holden drivers fill the top five grid positions for tomorrow's 78-lap first race.

Richards had earlier topped the second 35-minute practice session, lapping in 1m22.4429s before running fifth fastest in provisional qualifying.

His team-mate Andrew Jones had a tough debut with the team, qualifying 24th in the team's #23 Commodore.

QUOTEBOOK

Jason Richards (#3 Sleepyhead/Tasman Motorsport Holden Commodore VZ)
"The car is very good. We can repeat those sorts of times over and over as well, which is great. It was really close between the top few and we're only just over two tenths of a second off a front row start. It's a great way to start the weekend. We haven't been out of the top 10 all day so we've had quite an amazing run."

Andrew Jones (#23 Sleepyhead/Tasman Motorsport Holden Commodore VZ)
"Naturally, I'm disappointed with where I am on the grid. Things perform differently with different teams and I'm still getting comfortable and building relationships within the team. We can improve on today a lot. Every time we changed the car's setup it was going in the right direction but you're limited with time in these sessions."

-tasman-