Two hours remain and the fortunes of a strong top ten finish for Pollicina Motorsports continues to grow stronger as their more experienced competitors keep falling by the wayside.
As the tenth hour began, John O’Dowd remained out on track as he continued to try and reel in the Hankook Lancer Evo X RS of Peter Conroy/Mark Brame/Anthony Robson. The Evo VIII Lancer got to within five seconds of the newer generation Lancer before O’Dowd had to pit for the second last time in the race for fuel and a change of driver to Simon Middleton.
Though the Lancer didn’t lose ninth position, the gap between the Hankook Evo X RS and the Pollicina Evo VIII had widened to just over a minute. Out of the car, O’Dowd was proud to have done so well in some of the most trying conditions faced at Mount Panorama for quite some time. “It’s been hard work out there,” O’Dowd said. “It’s very, very slippery. At different parts of the track, there are many different conditions we face. For example, it’s raining up at the top then it’s not raining at the bottom. It’s been very difficult and trying but I’ve just done over two hours out there and we’re now in ninth.”
A few minutes after the pit stop, the whole complexion of the race change again, when the works Team Mitsubishi Ralliart Lancer came into the pits and retired with a failed turbocharger. Then at end of hour ten, the sixth placed FPV F6 Typhoon of Ken Douglas/James Moffat/Ray Hislop spun and bogged the car at the Chase, the same place where Jim Pollicina spun and got stuck four hours before.
So with a little less than two hours remaining, Middleton is out on track and sitting in a highly respectable seventh outright with one pit stop to go. The prospects for a possible sixth place finish are now quite high as they still battle with the Hankook Lancer, who are currently in that position. But regardless of where they finish, the objective of finishing in the top ten is looking very strong.
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