Ingall: Capable of Running in Top Half

Supercheap Auto Racing’s Russell Ingall carved through the field in yesterday’s Race 22 at the Coates Hire Ipswich 360, having made up 10 positions to finish 14th.

However, while he admitted moving forward through the field was salvaging something, qualifying poorly was a problem for the veteran racer.

“That’s the problem, we are where we are in qualifying,” Ingall said ahead of today’s back-to-back qualifying sessions for races 23 and 24 in the V8 Supercars Championship.

“We keep giving these dudes a head start. We seem to have minor things hindering us – and when you have the field split by a few tenths of a second small things can make a difference.

“On the up side of it, we’re moving forward and we are capable of running up with the top half of the field. We proved that at Townsville we can when everything does go right.”

At the last event, the Sucrogen Townsville 400, Ingall came home in fifth, which in fact was not his best result of the 2013 season – at the opener the Clipsal 500 ‘The Enforcer’ finished Race Two in fourth, just shy of the podium. He left that event fourth in the Championship points, but has now sunk to 18th.

However, Ingall felt the team made good ground post-race yesterday.

“I hope we’re on the right track with it and it’s a little bit hard because we’ve got no practice and have to fire straight into qualifying – fingers crossed,” he said.

Back-to-back 15 minute qualifying sessions begin at 9.35am AEST ahead of two 100km races this afternoon.