Tough weekend for Marshall

IRWIN Racing’s Marcus Marshall has completed the second round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series at Sydney’s Eastern Creek after a tough weekend on the track.
The IRWIN Racing Ford suffered a set-back during Friday practice, when a broken valve in the engine forced the team to park the Falcon early in the extended practice session.

The crew changed the engine before Saturday’s qualifying session, but the team had little information to fine-tune the Ford Marshall started the first race from 28th.

Marshall got a very good start, but he was to be involved in two incidents that halted his progress. Both incidents involving Michael Caruso and then Chris Pither, both brought drive-through penalties to the other drivers. Marshall battled-on to finish 26th

In race #2 while running with team-mate Jason Bright, Marshall suffered fuel-pressure problems late in the race and was forced to park the Falcon on the final lap.

The final race of the weekend was by far the best for the IRWIN Racing Falcon. Starting 28th Marshall got a great start to be 16th at the end of the first lap. Running consistent times, Marshall made his compulsory tyre stop, but stalled and lost a valuable five seconds.

A crash involving Steven Richards with eight laps remaining looked to bring Marshall a chance of a finish inside the top-20. The IRWIN Racing crew decided to make an extra stop for fresher tyres. However, the crashed Ford took longer to clear and only two racing laps were allowed at the end. Marshall gained one position to finish 22nd.

“In each of the races I got really good starts, but couldn’t take full advantage,” said Marshall.

“The only driving error I made all weekend was stalling the car in the pits in the final race. However, you have to have everything working for you and that didn’t happen this weekend.

“The car was pretty good, but we never got to tune it into something that could challenge. The loss of practice time really hurt us.

“Eastern Creek is a track that when you miss the mark on set-up you get punished.

“The team has a lot of resolve and we know that moving up the order will take a little while.

“We have the Grand Prix support event next week and with no championship pressure we will try a couple of things. It’s an event I enjoy. I’m sure we will get a lot out of a non-points event.”

After losing so much track time in practice, IRWIN Racing Lead Engineer Greg Foletta knew it would be a challenging weekend.

“After losing the engine in practice it was going to be a long hard road back,” said Foletta.

“It must be remembered that this was Marcus’s first time at Eastern Creek in a V8 Supercar.

“Compared to last year, the grip level in the track had gone away and although we have made improvements in the chassis, we couldn’t show it.

“Importantly there is a lot more left in the chassis and we will continue to work at getting more out of the car.

“This game is very tough. We do need to improve as a group and I’m sure once we get better as a group, the performance will come.”