Murphy Edge-ing Closer to Big Result

Run on a tough 3.4-kilometre street circuit winding its way through the Frankton business district, the venue has proven to be a real challenge for drivers and teams alike and it certainly tested the four-time Bathurst winner and his team.

The #51 Commodore began the weekend in great form, proving to be one of the strongest cars in Friday practice. Murphy topped all comers to be fastest in two of the day’s four practice sessions until he made a minor mistake and clipped the wall on the exit of the final corner and bent the steering, meaning he could not improve in the final session when the front-runners all moved to new tyres.

Nevertheless the Kiwi ace was happy; however things did not translate into the 20-minute qualifying session on Saturday.

Murphy qualified 13th, finding a lack of tyre temperature severely hampering his chances of progressing into the Top 10 Shootout.

His 2010 race car – which was designed by Triple Eight Race Engineering and built by Paul Morris Motorsports – works well with ‘soft’ set ups, however that makes it difficult for a driver without much experience in Triple Eight machinery to feel the grip being offered by a brand new tyre, as is run in qualifying to achieve fast times.

The 59-lap race that followed proved to be a difficult one, as the Castrol EDGE Commodore developed what Murphy originally believed to be an engine misfire. However it was subsequently determined to be an ‘engine over run’, where a small percentage of throttle remains on when the driver’s foot is no longer applied to the accelerator pedal.

This in turn overheated the brakes, although the experience of Murphy – in his 13th season as a full-time V8 Supercar driver – managed to keep the Commodore away from the concrete barriers and cross the line in 18th place.

The single 20-minute qualifying session on Sunday again saw similar problems to Saturday’s session, with Murphy clocking the 18th fastest time in front of his massive home crowd.

Murphy found himself with plenty of damage at the first pit stop in the second 200-kilometre race as Jim Beam’s Steven Johnson drove slowly down pit lane when the Safety Car came out, bottle-necking the following cars as he waited for team-mate James Courtney to complete his pit stop and free up the team’s pit boom.

That resulted in Murphy being hit as the frustrated field slowed, the damage to the front of the Castrol EDGE car superficial but hardly a help to its performance.

At the end of another tough race, where Murphy’s speed on used, older tyres was good, the #51 car crossed the line 18th, however this result improved to 15th when Johnson, Steve Richards and Mark Winterbottom were all excluded for brake irregularities.