James Golding eliminated from Finals contention
BRT driver was on the outer after Tailem Bend disqualification
Golding/Richie Stanaway eighth in Sunday's Bathurst 1000
Having straight race cars was some solace for Tim Blanchard, who was powerless to watch James Golding miss out on a Supercars Finals berth.
In a race that ran green for the first 155 laps, the Golding/Stanaway and Aaron Cameron/Zak Best Fords were unable to make significant inroads to challenge for victory.
Golding was up against it in his mission to make the Finals, and it was made near impossible as Jack Le Brocq, who was 10th in points, challenged in the top 10 all day.
At the start of the day, Blanchard maintained his team wasn't thinking about the Finals, instead putting focus on winning the Great Race — something that looked possible given the consistency of the #7 Ford all weekend.
All told, eighth in the race wasn't near enough for Golding, with Le Brocq clinching the last Finals spot in fourth.
At the very least, however, the Blanchard Racing Team needs only service its cars after weekend some of its rivals — such was Walkinshaw TWG Racing — have big turnarounds ahead for the Gold Coast.
"It was a good weekend for us, but not a great weekend,” Blanchard said.
"We had solid results, but didn’t qualify as well as we needed and with no Safety Cars in quite a boring race, we didn’t get much chance to recover. The team executed well and it was a solid day but we didn’t have quite enough pace.
“We’re looking forward to the Gold Coast next as Jimmy Golding goes well there and Aaron Cameron got into the Shootout last year in his first season. We had reasonable speed at Bathurst and we’re preparing, not repairing, cars to head to Queensland.
"We’ve got quite a lot of confidence so we’ll use the lessons from last year to keep improving this year.”
Track action at Surfers Paradise commences on Friday October 23.
