Jason Richards hits a century

Sprint Gas Racing’s Jason Richards notches up his 100th V8 start at the L&H 500 at Phillip Island this weekend.
Richards’ career highlights include a second place at Bathurst and a third at Sandown in 2005, his first race win at Winton in 2006, a podium at Indy in 2006 and fourth place at Bathurst in 2007.

“Without doubt the best moment of my V8 career so far was the podium at Bathurst in 2005,” Richards said.

“We were a small team that was able to race hard with the best and just fell short of the race win.

“It was a magical time as we’d just had the team’s first podium at Sandown a few weeks earlier.”

If Bathurst was the highlight, the career low was at Sandown in 2003 when he came within a whisker of winning the prestigious endurance race.

“I was running second behind Skaife with less than two laps to go and then disaster struck,” Richards said.

“There was an opportunity to overtake going into Dandenong Road, we made very minor contact with each other which bent my steering arm and I was stranded in the sand.

“I had a car that wouldn’t steer within sight of the finish line.

“To come so close in such a big race was heart braking; it was definitely the lowlight of my career, followed closely by the roll at QR in 2005.”

Richards will partner Greg Murphy in the car (car 3) that was wrecked at Winton almost six weeks ago.

“Had the incident occurred at Darwin, Queensland or Bathurst we couldn’t have raced Jason’s new car in the round that followed, we would have been forced to use the old car,” Sprint Gas Racing Team Manager Jeff Grech said.

“In the end we were fortunate that there was a good gap between rounds (Winton & Phillip Island), this gave us the time to repair the car properly.”

Richards’ #3 Sprint Gas Holden was completely stripped and the rear quarter of the car rebuilt.

“It was expensive, about $80,000 worth,” Grech said.

“The rear of the car was a mess and needed a lot of work done to repair it.”

There was significant cosmetic damage to the car that added to the repair costs.

“We basically had to replace every body panel,” Grech said.

“The shocks, the fuel cell, the seat and the belt system, the boot, damper mounts and diff assembly also needed to be replaced.

“We were also fortunate that Jason wasn’t injured, he felt sore the day following the accident for sure.”