A punctured tyre during today’s first race at Symmons Plains  has left Bundaberg Red Racing’s Fabian Coulthard in 27th place after 120km of racing. His team-mate Andrew Thompson finished just ahead in 24th.

After qualifying 13th this morning, things looked promising for Coulthard. He made a positive start to the 50 lap sprint race this afternoon, however, contact with Will Davison’s #22 Commodore caused a puncture to the right front tyre of the #24 Bundy Red Racing Commodore. 

Coulthard was forced to pit for a second time on lap 37 for a new set of control tyres. As a result, he dropped back down the order eventually finishing in 27th place.

Andrew Thompson was left disappointed after qualifying, only managing the 28th fastest time of the session. Left with a task ahead of him, the race was always going to be tough. 

It was made that little bit more difficult after a melee on the opening laps left him stationary on the circuit and queued behind traffic. From there, Thompson kept his nose clean and drove on to finish the race in 24th.

Craig Lowndes won the race ahead of the Toll Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander. Greg Murphy was third for a Holden 1-2-3.

The Falken Tasmania Challenge continues tomorrow with a further qualifying session and the second race for the weekend.

Fabian Coulthard - #24 Bundaberg Red Racing VE Commodore:

“I thought Will went a little bit wide on the initial approach and at the last minute cut back quite sharp. There is a blind spot in these cars and maybe Will didn’t see me. We made contact which damaged the right front tyre and we were forced to pit. The soft tyre on our cars wasn’t bad, I had a fair bit of understeer and the drive off the corner wasn’t as good as it could have been but I think it stemmed from the front more so than the rear. But we will try and fix that for tomorrow and hopefully have a better day.”

Andrew Thompson - #10 Bundaberg Red Racing VE Commodore:

“We didn’t start from where we wanted to back in 28th. We didn’t have the qualifying we were after but we got off to a reasonable start. Things were going ok and then there was a bit of a bingle at Turn 1 with Dean Fiore and Alex Davison and a couple of other cars and we got unlucky. I was virtually stopped on the track and had to wait for a few seconds for them all to get going. It was a bit of a boring race from there, we just tried to finish on that lead lap and keep out of any further carnage. I think we had some respectable speed but unfortunately we were just too far behind.”