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Race against time for Hobson

10 Apr 2015
Despite Clipsal being seven weeks ago, repairs on Brett Hobson's bent car are still not complete with Perth quickly approaching.
3 mins by James Pavey
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RSport Race Engineering are in a race against time to repair Brett Hobson's Commodore for the upcoming Perth SuperSprint, with reparations from his heavy crash at the Clipsal 500 incomplete.

The Challenger Lifting Equipment-backed Holden suffered major chassis damage when Hobson lost his steering at the Senna Chicane in the season opening race, falling victim to the infamous concrete walls of the Adelaide Street Circuit.

After abandoning their initial plans to purchase a new car to contest the remainder of the season, the Sydney-based team resorted to repairing Hobson's ex-Garry Rogers Motorsport Commodore, which hasn't been fully restored only three weeks out from the second round of the series.

"We rang around and couldn't find a car that we wanted, and with the Car of the Future coming in [to the Dunlop Series] next year, it just wasn't viable to buy another car," Hobson told v8supercars.com.au.

"It's kind of been a matter of where we're basically trying to get it back together in time. The car itself is going to be a massive, massive job getting back together, because every time we've gone to pull the car apart, we've just been finding more and more bent stuff.

"It's just a matter of just winging it, really, and getting it back together as quick as we can."

The beaten-up VE2 Holden was the last VE built by GRM before the transition into the Car of the Future, and was taken back to its old home for chassis repairs after its Clipsal shunt.

The #7 Holden will be picked up from the Dandenong South-based outfit on Tuesday and taken back to Sydney to be reassembled by RSport.

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While RSport has a spare car up their sleeve, Hobson said the team will avoid resorting to the ex-Kelly Commodore entered by Matthew Chadha at Clipsal.

"We've got a car there which I've driven a couple of times before, which is an older chassis," he explained to v8supercars.com.au.

"We don't want to have to use it. It's sitting there ready to go... but we don't want to use it because we've spent so much time and effort trying to get myself up to speed in this car.

"We don't want to put ourselves behind the eight-ball getting back in that, and obviously we want this car fixed anyway."

While Hobson has confirmed he will see through the entire 2015 season, the Clipsal crash may have implications on the 29-year-old's Dunlop Series budget, following the damage cost.

"It's thrown a whole new outlook on the season because the crash itself has basically just chewed up nearly over half of my budget that I had for the year," Hobson said.

"We do have sponsors but they don't cover everything, I've still got to foot a lot of it myself.

"I've committed to the full season, I'm going to be here for the full season. "I'll still be able to get through, it's probably just going to have an affect more on next year."

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