For the team at Pollicina Motorsports, the first Friday Practice session at the 2010 Armor All Bathurst 12 Hour was a case of re-educating everything all over again. Team drivers Jim Pollicina, John O’Dowd and Simon Middleton spent all of the first one-hour practice session re-adjusting their driving styles and braking points around the 6.213km layout that is Mount Panorama.
Before this weekend, the only time the trio drove the ex-Gary Young Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII was at a test day organised by Greg Murphy Racing in mid-January. All three were initially impressed by the agility and handling of the Lancer, but a test day doesn’t translate into what the team was facing against them in the first session.
Middleton started the one-hour session in the Lancer, before handing over the driving duties to O’Dowd. Pollicina then took over near the end of the session to complete the final 10-15 minutes. Despite hoping to be relatively on the pace from the word go, all three drivers found the adaption from rear wheel drive cars to an all wheel drive such as the Evo VIII a bit of a task.
Initially aiming for around the 2m35s bracket, the trio ended the first session 21st overall with a time of 2m41.0083s, set in the session by O’Dowd. For Pollicina, stepping from his tried and proven HSV GTS into the Lancer was a different kettle of fish.
“The Lancer and my Commodore are completely different cars”, he said. “In the Lancer, you have to learn new braking markers, you carry different speeds through the corners, you accelerate well before you would in the Commodore because the way the Commodore corners is totally different. It’s a whole new learning curve. There’s a lot of pace in the car, it just comes down to learning how to get the best out of it.”
Echoing Pollicina’s comments were Middleton and O’Dowd, who both remained optimistic. “ For me, it’s going from left hand drive to right hand drive and a sequential gearbox to a manual gearbox,” Middleton replied. “Other than that, everything just seems to happen a little slower and you have a bit more agility in the car. If it moves about, you’ve got time to catch it whereas in the Porsche, if it moves about and you lose it, there’s not much you can do about it.”
Before the 12 Hour, O’Dowd competed in the Targa Wrest Point in a Subaru Impreza WRX and had a taste of all wheel drive for the first time. Although he was one up on his co-drivers in terms of experience, he still found it a bit of a task to re-adapt. “I still had to re-acclimatise myself to it,” he said. “It’s just a matter of getting used to the car, but it feels good. The brakes we have in the Lancer are different to the Subaru I drove in the Targa. Our car has a booster whereas the Subaru doesn’t, so it’s a matter of getting used to the brakes in this car. But we are getting there.”
Pollicina Motorsports will return to the track for the second one-hour practice session at 1:50pm.