Allen explains 'don't do anything stupid' survival mission
Dunlop Series
22 May
Kai Allen retained Super2 points lead after poor qualifying
Allen recovered to ninth after slumping to 13th in qualifying
Eggleston teen leads Aaron Cameron by 54 points
Kai Allen cut a relieved figure on the Perth podium after surviving a poor Sunday qualifying and chaotic race to retain his Super2 points lead.
Race 1 winner Allen arrived on Sunday with an extended 81-point lead over Aaron Cameron, with Zach Bates jumping from eighth to third, albeit still 144 points down.
Come Sunday, and Allen slumped to 13th in qualifying, and buried in the midfield, was in danger of being caught up in drama and losing his hard-earned series lead.
The Eggleston Motorsport driver ended up ninth in the Race 2 classification, with a Cameron McLeod rollover bringing the race to a premature end.
When asked if he expected to get on the podium after qualifying 13th, Allen replied: “Not really. It was a bit of a shock this morning.
"A bit like Cooper, we got a bit caught out on the tyres. Just out of sync on my lap. "I think I did my quickest lap on my Practice 2 tyres. So, I just didn't get a clean lap, unfortunately.
“[Started] 13th and then, yeah, it was just recovery from there on. I would’ve liked to have been further up. But, unfortunately we've seen a few accidents in that one.
"I think we had a good bounce back. To get third from where we were this morning, didn't look very promising, but yeah, we walked away."
Bates won the race and the round, and slashed his deficit to Allen to 84 points. Cameron finished fifth, and is a reduced 54 points behind Allen heading to the next round in Townsville in July.
Allen hailed Bates's performance, and reiterated that the message was to keep it clean after starting down the order.
"Huge congratulations to Zach. Seeing him on the top step is very special,” Allen said.
“All we had to do was just basically just recover as much as we could. Don't do anything stupid in that race. Dan [Kroehn, engineer] said definitely can't win the championship this race, but we can definitely lose it.
"So that was always on the back of my mind. Just play it safe, try and pick up as much as we could. We did the best we could with what the circumstances were.”
Allen is set to test with the Shell V-Power Racing Team later this month, ahead of his enduros campaign with the Ford team.
