Top ten finish for Rylan
BY JEM ANSHAW
Rylan Gray got to put his race craft to the test at the recent Excel Nationals event in Queensland.
The three-day race meeting last month consisted of practice on Friday, qualifying and two heat races on Saturday and the main 25-lap event on Sunday.
“We went to Morgan Park taking a bit of a gamble with the tires which didn’t really pay off, so we were dealing with that all weekend, just sort of wearing them down,” Gray explained of the need for roaded rubber for optimum performance at the circuit.
“The car was slowly getting quicker and quicker which was good, and it come on for the final race.”
Poor results in the heats put the Denman teen back down at 28th to start the 25-lap national title race, but he worked his way into the top ten, finishing seventh.
“We passed like five cars in the opening lap, just trying to progress through the field, putting good moves on,” he said of the eyes-forward racing needed to get through the pack.
“Of course we would have liked to be up there a bit more, the car had pace for the top three guys so it would have been good if we started a bit further up.”
While this race meeting was a bit disappointing, what wasn’t was getting behind the wheel of a V8 Supercar at Queensland Raceway.
“It was definitely a different experience coming from something like an Excel that doesn’t have much power to a supercar that has a lot and a lot more grip as well,” Rylan shared of getting to share the track with some of the top Supercars teams at a practice day.
“Driving it throughout the day, just working into it and I kept getting quicker and quicker, which was a great experience.”