Happy Days for Team Vodafone at Eastern Creek:

By: Team Vodafone

Team Vodafone enjoyed a pleasing performance during the sixth and final round of the NSW Formula Ford series last weekend (September 24 & 25) at Eastern Creek Raceway in Sydney, with all three team drivers, Derryn Harrison, Wensley Carroll and Adrian Duncan pleased with their overall result.

The weekend for Team Vodafone didn’t kick off in the best of fashion after limited laps were completed in practice on Friday, with Harrison unable to manage any laps. Despite this setback, the team battled on and took their place in qualifying on Saturday morning where they recorded 19^th (Carroll), 23^rd (Harrison) and 25^th (Duncan) fastest times respectively in the 15 minute session.

In the opening race over a 5-lap journey on Saturday afternoon a relatively trouble free event took place and this saw Carroll (# 96 Spectrum 06B) finish 17^th with Harrison (# 60 Spectrum 06B) and Duncan (# 60 Spectrum 06B) recording 21^st and 23^rd place.

On Sunday morning for race two (7 Laps) saw Carroll’s strong weekend encounter a setback when after a strong start he was a victim of a rival’s spin in turn two on the opening lap. Contact with the spun car saw Carroll forced back to the pit enclosure without a lap completed after sustaining front end damage. However, Harrison and Duncan managed to stay out of the wars and finish in 18^th and 21^st.

For the third and final race (7 Laps) of the weekend and the final race for the 2005 NSW series, Team Vodafone were eager to finish the year on a solid note. Despite a non finish in race two Carroll was able to fight his way from the tail of the grid to place 18^th which capped off arguably one of his strongest outings in Formula Ford.

Having battled setup issues for the majority of the weekend, Harrison managed to save his best showing for the third race and finished 20^th. Although 20th position is no where near his highest finish of the year, the personal lap times of Harrison’s had improved substantially. Meanwhile, Duncan capped off the weekend by posting his best laps times of the weekend too in the third race and finished 22^nd.

“It was certainly not my strongest weekend, but not my worst either, but overall it was a good weekend as we had good qualifying and race speed,” commented Carroll on summary of his weekend. “It’s been a good way to finish the series as I was moving forward all weekend and despite being involved in an unfortunate incident in the second we were far from disgraced.”

Harrison, who missed Friday’s practice, explained that those missed sessions were of vital importance to any successful weekend.

“Missing practice really hurt my weekend and as a consequence we didn’t get going up until the final race,” explained Harrison. “We struggled with wheel spin out of the corners and under steer in turn one for most of the weekend and we couldn’t work out as to why this was happening. After relaying through some old data we found the problem and made some adjustments, which improved the car immensely.”

The next scheduled appearance for Team Vodafone will see a return to Eastern Creek Raceway when the Formula Fords will be on the support program for the A1 GP on November 4 – 6.

Team Vodafone:

Release by Daniel Powell – Redline Media – www.RedlineMedia.com.au

Phone: 0246 832464

Mobile: 0439 639 992

Email: Daniel@redlinemedia.com.au