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Walkinshaw races to rebuild and replace wreckage

13 Oct 2014
Factory team faces huge workload to be ready for Gold Coast.
3 mins by James Pavey
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Walkinshaw Racing is in a race against time to get its four car squad to Queensland next week for the Castrol EDGE Gold Coast 600.

But team technical chief Mathew Nilsson has no doubt the deadlines will be met: "It is going to test us, but we have been tested before and we got the job done," he said.

The team is transporting two wrecked V8 Supercars home to Melbourne from the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000; the Garth Tander/Warren Luff Holden Racing Team Commodore VF and the Supercheap Auto car of Tim Slade and Tony D'Alberto.

It also has the damaged #22 HRT entry of James Courtney and Garth Greg Murphy to repair and trace an electrical issue which effectively ended its chances in the race. Only the third place finishing Nick Percat/Oliver Gavin HHA car made it to the finish without serious damage.

Walkinshaw is one of the most seriously affected of a number of teams that will have to repair or replace cars before the final round of the Pirtek Enduro Cup. Others include Brad Jones Racing, DJR, Volvo Polestar Racing, Erebus Motorsport V8 and Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport.

The #2 HRT Commodore never made the race after Luff's spectacular crash in Saturday morning practice.

Meanwhile Slade smacked the walls on both sides of the track with both ends of the car as he climbed the mountain on lap 102, in much the same place as Murphy crashed in 2013.

One of the two cars will be repaired, while the team's spare chassis - the former Slade Supercheap car wrecked at Sydney Motorsport Park and since repaired - will be pressed into service to replace the other.

"We have got a spare car almost ready to go back at the workshop," confirmed Nilsson on Sunday night at Mount Panorama. "It's repaired, painted and ready to go and it only needs a little bit of work to put it together."

Nilsson said it was more likely the Slade car would be the one repaired, although he admitted that might change after detailed examination.

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"I haven't seen it (Slade's car) yet, but I have heard it's not good and any crash with the wall here is ever good.

"But based on the damage to that one (#2) you have to say Sladey's - if it's not main structural or safety - will be the one we will repair."

If that process is followed it means #2, which is the newest Walkinshaw chassis and debuted at Sydney Motorsport Park, will most likely become the team's spare.

"The difficult thing is we have to go to the Gold Coast and fingers crossed we don't have any more dramas because we don't have any more spare chassis," said Nilsson. "Thankfully there is a bit of a gap to the next round of the championship after that at Phillip Island."

Nilsson admitted the wreckage rubbed salt into the wound for the factory Holden squad, which never managed to look convincingly competitive throughout race week.

"I think it was just understanding the new track," Nilsson said. "It has probably been the most changeable track conditions and grip levels through any Bathurst before with the new surface.

"There were times when you thought you were going half alright and the track conditions would change quite a lot, more than you thought, and that would put you back in the pack.

"We are disappointed, certainly post qualifying was a solid debrief trying to work out where we had gone wrong, because no doubt getting only one car in the top 10 wasn't good enough.

"We have to go back and spend more time trying to understand."

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