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Surfers Paradise: Jack Daniel's Racing race 2 report

SCOTT DIXON CRASHES OUT ON THE GOLD COAST AUDIO AND IMAGES: Audio grabs and high resolution images for media use are available by clicking on the thumbnails on the right-hand side of this media release. IndyCar Series star Scott Dixon was the ...

SCOTT DIXON CRASHES OUT ON THE GOLD COAST

AUDIO AND IMAGES: Audio grabs and high resolution images for media use are available by clicking on the thumbnails on the right-hand side of this media release.

IndyCar Series star Scott Dixon was the innocent victim of a high-speed crash in the second race of the Armor All Gold Coast 600 at the Surfers Paradise street circuit in Queensland today.

The New Zealander had a spectacular and premature end to his race in the #7 Jack Daniel's Commodore that he shared with Todd Kelly.

Dixon was running in 15th place when on lap 34 under Safety Car he came up on slow-moving #8 car driven by Andrew Jones. With little time to react and with his vision of the slowing car ahead blocked by two others cars, Dixon had nowhere to go but into the back of Jones at high speed.

The impact heavily damaged the #7 Jack Daniel's Commodore even before lead driver Todd Kelly was able to climb aboard, but luckily the quick reactions of Dixon prevented an even bigger impact.

The failure to finish dropped Todd Kelly down to 19th place in the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship Series standings, while team-mate Rick Kelly's sixth place finish sees him maintain seventh in the points score with six races remaining.

The signs were good for Jack Daniel's Racing early on with Rick Kelly qualifying in 10th position and Owen Kelly making a fast start to be in sixth place by the first corner and into fifth place one lap later.

A set-up change overnight made the car unsteady under brakes, leading to Owen Kelly overshooting the Falken Corner on lap three and driving down the escape road, dropping the #15 Jack Daniel's Commodore to last.

But Owen Kelly, who finished fifth in his NASCAR Nationwide Series debut at Road America earlier this year, then pushed hard to move back up the order and hand the car over Rick Kelly in 17th place on lap 34, before Rick set about moving his way into the top 10.

Kelly was as high as fifth but was passed by a charging Mark Winterbottom, with Kelly then holding out Will Davison in the latter stages of the race to finish in sixth place, his 13th top 10 finish for the season.

Jamie Whincup and Steve Owen won today's second race of the Armor All Gold Coast 600 just ahead of Shane Van Gisbergen and John McIntyre, with Winterbottom and Luke Youlden finishing in third place.

The next event of the 2010 V8 Supercar Championship Series is the Falken Tasmania Challenge at Symmons Plains Raceway near Launceston on November 12-14.

JACK DANIEL'S RACING QUOTEBOARD:

SCOTT DIXON - #7 Jack Daniel's Holden Commodore

"I made a bit of a mistake and lost a spot to Tags there a bit before the crash," said Scott Dixon.

"Obviously the caution came out but you need to get back to the pace car and then I saw the cars immediately pull to the right and there was a car stopped on the left.

"I tried to avoid it as much as possible but it was all a bit too late and it obviously damaged the car pretty badly.

"I still loved this event. It was a lot of fun and it was great to work with this team. They are a great bunch of people.

"Next year I want to try and come back and do the same thing."

TODD KELLY - #7 Jack Daniel's Holden Commodore

"I was really looking forward to getting in the Jack Daniel's Commodore," said Todd Kelly.

"We had a pretty good race car yesterday and Scott was doing a good job out there.

"With the way the cars were dropping off there we were quite excited and having a good run and it was just absolute stupidity what ended up happening.

"To slow a car down that much in the middle of a straight to almost a standstill when everyone else is doing over 200km/h could have been a hell of a lot worse.

"The car is pretty bad so it is going to be on for young and old to get it repaired for the next one. That certainly could have been avoided.

"It's been great having Scott here all week as part of the team.

"He's lucky he avoided that accident as much as he did. If he hit that over car a bit further across it would have done twice the damage to both cars.

"He did a awesome job all weekend and it was refreshing to get someone different in the car with me. He has a fair old crack so it's been a great experience.

"Both Scott and Alex had a fair bit of input this weekend. They have both driven a lot of different cars and done 24-hour races and there are a lot of things that teams do overseas or ways that they tune the car that are interesting to hear.

"So we took everything they said onboard this weekend and will put it to use over the next few events."

RICK KELLY - #15 Jack Daniel's Holden Commodore

"We had a few things at the start of the race that caught us out," said Rick Kelly.

"There were a couple of 'niggly' things with the braking system on the car but that if that was the worst part of the day then I think we faired quite well compared to some of the others.

"You saw a lot of other teams making rookie errors in the pits and making silly decisions and from that point of view I think our team did an outstanding job.

"So to have a few of those dramas, to get caught up in a couple of smaller incidents and still finish sixth - I'm pretty happy with that.

"It was a pretty enjoyable race and it was good to add a third enduro to the season and have Owen in the car. We had three pretty solid events together and we had a lot of bad luck in all of them.

"We could have got a better result at all of them had we had things go a little bit differently with a few scenarios.

"I think we can take a lot of positives out of the endurance events and try to improve for the last three events of the year.

"The pace at Phillip Island was great, the pace at Bathurst was down because we missed two hours of practice. We had good pace there last year and I'm sure we would have had good pace there this year if we had the same amount of practice as everyone else.

"Yesterday we had a car that was capable of staying with the leaders apart from the dramas we had with the fuel. Today we were a little bit off the pace of the leading bunch so we can go away and think about what did and did not work for us.

"The three tracks we go to know are all places that were good for us last year so we should be able to have a good finish to the season."

OWEN KELLY - #15 Jack Daniel's Holden Commodore

"I had a brake drama there early on but I made a really good start and we were up to fifth," said Owen Kelly.

"We made a change overnight and it has really affected the brake bias. We need to look at the data but it may well just be me making a mistake - and if that's the case I will cop it on the chin.

"But we had to run the bias a lot different to what we did yesterday and that caught me out early there.

"I managed to get back up there and the guys made some good calls in the pits. Rick drove a hell of a race yet again.

"Had our race gone a little more smoothly we might have been even further up there fighting for a podium but all in all it was a good points day for Rick's championship."

-source: kelly racing

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