Photo: V8 Supercars Media

James Moffat, best placed Nissan, says “anything is possible”

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Celebrating 30 years since taking pole position at the Bathurst 1000 this weekend, Nissan’s best placed driver in the race is James Moffat, who qualified seventh in the top ten shootout, and is not setting any expectations going into the world’s most famous touring car event tomorrow.

The 30-year-old set a time of 2:07.745, 1.4 seconds off of the ultimate lap set by Tekno Autosport’s Shane Van Gisbergen in the session, and expects a good race tomorrow in a car which feels more comfortable to drive than many of his rivals cars appear to be.

“The worst we could have started tomorrow was ninth, and we’re starting seventh, it would have been nice to have sneaked up a couple more spots, but we just gave up too much time in the first sector,” said Moffat to TouringCarTimes. “We were not too bad across the top, but we know we were losing a bit of time down up and down the straight, but to be in position seven, that’s still a good starting position, and it’s a long day tomorrow.

The Nissan is down on top speed compared to its Holden, Ford and Volvo rivals, and so unlike many of their other shootout rivals which were clearly dialling in qualifying pace in the practice session, the #360 car were busy perfecting the car for race day.

“We knew we probably didn’t realistically have a car capable of pole this year, so in Practice 6 we didn’t focus on the shootout, but race set-up,” he said. “We’ve been quite comfortable in the car, which is full credit to the engineering team. Across the top of the mountain it’s quite settled, so I think we’re pretty confident with the race set-up. It’s a little bit of a compromise, as you’re going in and thinking about the back-end of the race and what you want the car to be doing as opposed to the start of the race.”

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s race and to what result’s possible, Moffat added:

“I think anything is possible. It’s such a long day and anything can happen. We’ve seen a couple of crazy things happen here over the years, so hopefully none of that craziness involves us, and like I say, anything is possible.”