Burning questions: Todd Kelly
Nissan Motorsport experienced an upturn in results in the back end of 2015 and has continued to push forward this year.
Michael Caruso took the manufacturer’s second win in the NewGen (car of the future) era in Darwin, the team’s first victory since Winton 2013. The 33-year old has been the group’s standout performer this year, sitting seventh in the Championship after earning the most points out of the season opening Clipsal 500.
Both Kelly brothers have been noticed, with Todd qualifying on the front row in Darwin before being taken out by Mark Winterbottom, and Rick notching up a handful of top five finishes.
Newcomer Dale Wood is coming to grips with the Altima, with two 14th place finishes at Winton his best for the year – at the track he scored a podium finish in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship two years ago.
Nissan’s commitment post-2016 is still to be confirmed, and Caruso’s contract is also up at the end of the year, but Todd Kelly would prefer to keep things the same if possible. He spoke to supercars.com.
Drivers’ Championship: Michael Caruso – 7th; Rick Kelly – 11th; Todd Kelly – 13th; Dale Wood – 21st.
Teams’ Championship: Sengled Racing and carsales Racing – 6th; Nissan Motorsport and GB Galvanizing Racing – 8th.
Standout moment this season: Caruso’s win in Darwin, after qualifying second. Throw in Todd’s effort on Sunday, also qualifying second while Rick was fifth, and the Top End was a top place for Nissan.
VASC: Assess the team’s year so far.
TK: We’ve certainly improved and stepped up, which was what the plan clearly was.
I think the cars are a lot more competitive and all of the things that go towards getting results – pit stops, qualifying laps, the whole team working as a unit – are all progressing well and on-track.
There’s a couple of little bits and pieces that came up over the weekend that need improving, but as the year’s gone on those things have really reduced dramatically to this point, which is really good leading up to the enduros.
Obviously we would like more podiums and bits and pieces, but I think we’re certainly tracking in the right direction across the whole team, which is really exciting.
There have been the odd races where we probably should have got a result for one reason or another, they were taken away from us, but we’re in a good place at the moment, I think.
In terms of the cars, obviously you’re always trying to progress and push forward. But in general, do you feel you’re now where you want to be with them?
Yeah, there’s still a lot of little things we’re improving on. We’ve got a test day coming up [the pre-enduro test] with a lot of bits and pieces to prove to improve little issues we’ve had, more consistent issues we’ve probably had at most of the tracks that would get us a little further up the grid if we could sort those out.
I think we’re in a position now that if we get to most circuits, or really any circuit, and absolutely nail every aspect of the weekend, the cars can be on the podium – which is something that we haven’t had the luxury of having. So it really just comes down to getting that last little bit out of the cars and making sure we do a spot on job on the weekend, just the same as every other team. The cars are actually quite good.
On-track, Caruso has been your front-runner so far this year. What has separated him from the others in the team?
It’s funny – all the drivers are a little bit different. Some are more consistent from track to track and round to round, and Michael’s really got his car nailed to how he likes to drive it. It doesn’t work at every track, some tracks he struggles with; but the tracks that it all comes together, he’s right up the front. And that comes from a lot of things – he’s had a really long-standing relationship with his engineer and now the continuity they’ve had in our team working together since 2013 I think, without changing anything [Steven Todkill was Caruso’s data engineer from 2009 at GRM and moved to Nissan with him for ‘13].
They’ve really evolved their setup, not done anything massive, and that kind of result just comes from time. That’s what those guys have had and they’ve done a really great job of it, so hopefully that can keep going for the rest of the year and we can get some more really great results out of those guys.
How is Dale finding the Altima now he’s done half a season with the team?
Yeah, it’s the same as every driver that has changed teams, it takes time. That’s the opposite end of the scale to the Michael Caruso situation – I’m actually in the same boat now with a whole new engineering situation – but Dale’s really starting to come to grips with the car and how he likes it.
It’s hard, because you go through a period and every driver gets the same thing with a new team – do you try and make the car the same as one or two of the other cars in the team and make him adapt to it, or do you make the driver work out where he wants the car. That obviously is a lot longer process, to let the driver work out where he wants the car. But I think in most cases with drivers that have swapped teams, as long as the team tries to make them drive the car how they like it, they never quite get as good a result. So he’s really starting to work out what he needs in the car and the results will start to improve now they’re starting to find that window.
How are you going with your new engineer [Matt Rumfield, from Townsville onwards]?
It’s a massive step – it makes you realise how much is involved in this category to have someone come in. There’s so many new things that are different to any top world motorsport team, and everything happens so quick on a race weekend, there’s so many things to deal with. But he’s working pretty hard and trying to get his head around the whole thing, which is good.
Do you feel you and Rick are balancing the team boss/driver roles well this year?
It is the easiest it has ever been. The work that Scott Sinclair (team manager) is doing on the racing side is just unbelievable – how he pushes all the guys, he just grabbed the whole place and ran with it. And that’s taken a massive amount of load off us. We really just come in and oversee the key things in the team and don’t have to worry about all the trivial little things as much as we’ve had to in the past. Those guys have well and truly got the place under control so it’s operating at 100 per cent at the moment…
Over the years we’ve really worked hard with our staff and management to have some unbelievable people in the team and that’s the result in it.
Where are things at with Nissan’s decision at the moment?
Still waiting, no news on that unfortunately. So hopefully it’s in the very near future.
How does that affect you as a team at this stage of the year?
Day-to-day, performance-wise, it really has no impact. The guys have done a good job of not really letting that worry them, because there’s not really anything we can do about that. They go through that process.
The bigger thing is the medium to longer term decisions that we can’t really make and sign off on while that’s in the air. Driver contracts and bits and pieces are really those things we would’ve signed off quite some time ago, but obviously we can’t until we know exactly where we’re at with things. Other than that, we don’t let it affect the team in anyway – not on-track, that’s for sure.
In terms of your line-up for next year, as you said, Nissan play a part in that. But all things remaining equal with them, do you think it will be similar to what we see this year?
Yeah, I hope so. One of the keys to success is that continuity. Once you’ve got things right, you need time to build on them and get to the point where you can extract optimum performance out of them. And you don’t get that by changing everything every five minutes.
So we certainly would like to keep everything as stable as possible, which we have always done.
