Solid opening day for Jack Daniel's Racing

The Jack Daniel's Racing duo of Todd and Rick Kelly have had a solid opening day for season 2014, with the team's Nissan Altimas showing promising pace during practice and qualifying ahead of this weekend's Clipsal 500 on the streets of Adelaide.

Todd Kelly had improved qualifying speed over his practice times, registering a seventh place starting position for the opening race of the season, which was backed up with an 11th quickest lap in the second qualifying session.

Provisionally, Todd sat on pole position for race two in the dying seconds, before a series of quick times knocked him down the order.

Todd and Rick Kelly

Photo by: Jack Daniels Racing

Earlier in the day, the brothers practiced strongly in the three 30 minute long sessions, with Rick third fastest in practice two, while Todd was eighth best in both the first and second outings.

Tomorrow's opening two races of the season see a change of format for the Clipsal 500, with the 250km long race split into a pair of 125km sprints.

Saturday on track activity commences at 12:50am ACDT with the fourth and final practice session, with the first race scheduled to start at 4:20pm.

JACK DANIEL'S RACING QUOTEBOARD

TODD KELLY - #7 Jack Daniel's Nissan Altima
Qualifying Race 1- 7th
Qualifying Race 2- 11th

"It's not too bad a start, you always jump out of the car a little disappointed when you are not right up there," Todd Kelly said.

"There are a few big screens around the track that actually have the times listed, I saw my name up there in second position for ages in one of those sessions, and we just dropped back a bit at the end.

"We probably weren't exactly in sync with the other cars when they did their fast times.

"But nevertheless there were a few mistakes I made out there, and there is still a bit of tuning to do to the car, as I guess most people have.

"Seventh and 11th is a pretty good start for the weekend, it's definitely better than this time last year, but we've still got a bit of work to do."

RICK KELLY - #15 Jack Daniel's Nissan Altima
Qualifying Race 1- 14th
Qualifying Race 2- 17th

"Obviously I'm a little bit rattled by our qualifying results after we practiced strongly this morning," said Rick Kelly.

"Our practice pace was really repeatable, on green tyres we had good pace, on old tyres we had good pace, and we could maintain it.

"We came to qualifying and ran greens, and it wasn't anything blindingly obvious, the car just didn't grip up for us.

"You could see it in the times, a couple of guys that were up the top in practice, weren't able to achieve that in qualifying.

"The track grip came up, the track changed quite a bit, it caught us out and unfortunately favoured others.

"I'm excited by the initial form we've got, so we've just got to get back to having the car up the front like we had this morning, and work out way forward tomorrow."

Jack Daniels Racing