Hidden Valley: FPR Saturday report

Lowndes & Seton Qualify 11th & 20th in Darwin

May 22, 2004 - Ford Performance Racing (FPR) drivers Craig Lowndes and Glenn Seton have qualified 11th and 20th for today's opening 17 lap V8 Supercar race in Darwin.

The hot top end qualifying session saw the top 28 drivers separated by less than one second - without a doubt one of the most fiercely competitive fights for starting grid positions of the 2004 season.

Lowndes powered his CAT FPR Falcon to a best lap time of 1:09.7590s during the hot session, missing out on a top ten shootout appearance by just two tenths of a second.

Seton qualified 20th in the Ford Credit FPR Falcon, setting a best lap time of 1:09.9867s following a high speed off track excursion early in the session.

Holden driver Jason Bright set the provisional pole time of 1:09.2821s ahead of the shoot-out, with Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly rounding off the top three. (Top three grid positions to be decided by the top ten shootout)

The first of three Darwin V8 Supercar races gets underway at 4:30pm (local time).

#6 Craig Lowndes - "We have improved the car throughout the day and we elected to make a rear spring change during qualifying. That was an improvement, but we ran out of time to fine tune it. We just missed the shoot out by a few tenths and this tells you how competitive the series is here. We will now concentrate on developing a fast race car as opposed to a fast single lapper."

#5 Glenn Seton - "I locked the rears on my first lap out in turn four and speared off while giving it a real go. We are struggling with front end grip on my car, when we fitted new tyres the rear grip improved but the front didn't, so this was the best I could do today."

FPR Chief Engineer John Russell - "Glenn did the best that he could with the car today and we haven't progressed with Craig's car as much as we would have liked to. That being said,11th is a reasonable starting position for the first race."

-fpr-