Knight charged for final sprint round at Hampton

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Created on Monday, 28 May 2012 11:46

V8 SuperTourer driver Andy Knight says he is excited at the prospect of returning to Hampton Downs for the final round of the sprint series over Queens Birthday weekend.

Racing the Gulf Oil – Century Batteries backed KMS Falcon Knight showed real pace during the last round at Manfeild, including a podium finish in race 2. "We were a bit unlucky with tyre selection in that final race, the team expected the rain to continue and adjusted tyre pressures to suit and then the rain stopped" Knight said. "If the tyres hadn't gone off we would have had another great result in that third race as well"

Taking 4th position overall from round 3 at Manfeild saw the team shoot back up to 9th position in the series overall. This was a resounding response after the disappointment of Ruapuna where two DNF's were recorded due to mechanical failures. Team manager Andy Neale commented "The series is still in play for us. Teams can drop their weakest round from the point's calculations, which takes care of Ruapuna for us. The points system also favours the endurance races later in the season so nothing can be taken for granted"

Knight added "I'm more interested in looking forward now and the car and team are prepped to be contenders at Hampton Downs this coming weekend. There is a bit of a gap until the endurance races so we will be going all out for a great result knowing we have plenty of time after this round to get ready for the longer races"

The Hampton Downs track proved to be hard on tyres during the first round of V8 SuperTourers earlier in the year. "Tyre strategy will certainly be one of the key aspects to winning at Hampton," said Neale. "All teams will have learnt a lot from round 1. With the cars so competitive small calls such as tyre management can make all the difference"

The final round of the sprint series has qualifying and a 20 lap-opening race on Saturday followed by a 25 lap second race and 35 lap feature race on Sunday.