It was a day where Pollicina Motorsports took one step forward and two steps back. Despite showing plenty of promise from Friday practice, the team of Jim Pollicina, Anthony Loscialpo and Gerry Murphy struggled for pace, ultimately qualifying ninth overall for tomorrow‘s Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour.
Split into two sessions, Pollicina and Murphy shared the driving duties during the first session with Loscialpo attempting to set the trio‘s best time in second. Pollicina started the session and immediately dialled in the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII by setting the team‘s fastest lap of the two sessions with a time of 1m47.2372s. But his personal goal of obtaining a 1m46s lap time would prove to be elusive with the car struggling to find some grip out on the Eastern Creek circuit, particularly through the corners where the car was pushing through some of them.
Pollicina handed the car to Murphy who set a few laps before bringing the car in to end the first session. Loscialpo was then given the job of achieving the 1m46s lap, but he too found it hard to obtain. Despite lowering the car slightly and putting ‘green‘ tyres on the car to improve the car‘s handling, Loscialpo was stuck behind traffic throughout his time on the track. In hindsight, he commented on how he would‘ve handled his time out on the track.
“My plan was to sit in the car and wait for ten minutes, let the traffic smooth out and then go out and have a relatively smooth run,” Loscialpo said. “But I encountered traffic, unfortunately. But that happens in qualifying. I‘m happy with where we are though, I think there is a bit more in the car but that‘s what happens.”
Murphy looked back on the session quite candidly, as he pondered what his chances were of setting the team‘s fastest lap. “It was an interesting mindset that I had,” he said. “I had to go from ‘yeah I want to do a good lap‘, but the good lap had been set down by Jim. So I was torn between wanting to do a good lap and having to look after the car for the six hours tomorrow.”
Overall, Pollicina was not as happy as he was on Friday, but remained confident of a good showing on Sunday. “I‘m not entirely impressed with the times we set,” Pollicina said. “We‘re lucky that we made the top ten, but our main focus now is with the race. Where we qualified is irrelevant, I really wanted to get into the 1m46s and we were half a second off that time. For me, it was more about time than grid position for the race.”
The inaugural Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour will be held on Sunday, July 18, beginning at 10:30am.
For more information on the Dial Before You Dig Australian Six Hour, visit www.thenationals.com.au/australian6hour