Tyres Cost Bargwanna Top Five

Bargwanna made a strong start rising from eighth to fifth but steadily lost position when his tyres started to wear. A wheel lock up on lap three cost the new Sprint Gas driver more track position.

Greg Murphy was having similar problems thanks to the loss of several quality tyres in incidents during the first two races of the weekend.

Bargwanna finished the third and final Australian Grand Prix V8 race in 17th position and Murphy 20th.

“It was a shame to finish the weekend in this way, I really thought we’d be able to get a top five race and a top ten round result, but my tyres let me down and the (wheel) lock up finished me off,” Bargwanna said.

“We were racing with the front runners which was our goal. If our tyres had had a bit more life in them I reckon we would have been right.

“Overall the weekend has been okay; we went from 27th to fifth on the road and found some good speed. It has certainly given us a platform to work off and a direction.

“Whether you’re talking about my car or Murph’s we had initial pace early in the weekend but you don’t get many tyres at the AGP and tyre conservation is critical. You could see that everyone had problems at one time or another over the event.”

Murphy, whilst disappointed with the weekend, managed to focus on some of the positives.

“Ok so it wasn’t the weekend of results that we were expecting but we learnt more about what works and what doesn’t,” Murphy said.

“This weekend we tested some new ideas, on the whole they didn’t work as well as we hoped but it’s good to know this now.

“The next step is to get these cars right for Hamilton. We’re now coming up to the circuits that we’ve competed at before with the new cars. We had good pace in New Zealand last year so I hope that we’ll be competitive.”