Auckland’s Daniel Gaunt has achieved a star result from his first weekend of racing the Fujitsu V8 Supercar series – finishing fourth overall during the Clipsal 500 Adelaide event in The Mad Butcher Ford BF Falcon.

The first of seven rounds on the 2009 calendar, 25-year old Gaunt piloted the #50 car toward podium contention after a come-from-behind start in the two 24-lap races around the 3.22 kilometre street circuit.

Starting 13th after only one full practise and a truncated qualifying session, Gaunt finished the opening race in eighth position.

“Race one was just a case of survival and move up the grid a bit more,” said Gaunt from the Adelaide V8 compound.

Benefiting from another competitors penalty, Gaunt started the final race from seventh to thrill the crowd by moving to fourth on the last turn of the last lap.

“We were going for gold – full attack,” Gaunt described of the second race.  “The front few cars had a good start so I chipped away – the car didn’t go away as much as the others so I was able to pick off three other guys for the result.”

Run by McElrea Racing, ‘The Mad Butcher’ car team head Andy McElrea was full of praise for the young Kiwi’s first result – putting the Stone Brothers Racing backed squad to fourth overall in the championship standings.

“He was the only guy in the top-ten who was genuinely passing cars – he was very very professional,” said an expressive McLrea.  “We hoped we’d be genuine top-five.”

After an early brush with the tyres during the Friday practise, McElrea said the odds were stacked against Gaunt and the team: “When you consider the top-ten guys in the category have all done the series before and all been to Clipsal, we weren’t totally disappointed with where we qualified.  So going in to race one we still hadn’t done twenty laps of the place.” “About five laps before the end of the first race, the sector times showed he clicked with the car and track – his race pace gave us the confidence he had nutted everything out.”

Still in touch with the championship leaders, Gaunt now has a one-month break before the second round at Winton Motor Raceway in early May (1-3 May 2009).

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...