Valuable points from a difficult day..

Saturday, February 22, 2008

The Opes Prime Racing team of Marcus Zukanovic endured a tough day during the opening round of the 2008 Fujitsu V8 Supercar series, which saw the boy from Melbourne’s west struggling for a second day with severe headaches.

“I don’t know what it is about Adelaide,” Marcus said in frustration. “I look forward to it every year, and every year it starts off by biting me.. We had such high hopes - the car has never been better prepared, nor faster, we’ve got fantastic sponsor support, and I’m as fit as I have ever been, so it was all looking good, but almost as soon as I landed on Wednesday, I’ve been struggling with a really severe headache.”

Marcus’ handicap was reflected in his practice pace, which despite being quite strong, was down on where he wanted to be. “In P1 (practice one) we were pretty happy, but in P2 I was just pushing myself and the car too hard and chewed up a set of ‘green’ tyres, and the times were well off, I just wasn’t relaxed at all.”

An overnight review of data with new driver coach and data analyst Glenn Seton provided a gameplan for Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session, where Marcus improved his practice pace by up to two seconds, putting him 15th for the opening race of the season, just over a second and a half off pole-sitter, dual Fujitsu Series champion, Dean Canto.

“That felt a lot better and while I’m further down than I would have liked, I’m a much better racer than I am a qualifier, so I’m looking forward to this afternoon’s opening race, it will be a cracker..”

Typically Marcus was quick to react from the start and was classified tenth by the close of the opening lap.. From there though he struggled with a car that had developed a fair share of understeer. “It wasn’t nice to drive, and I probably contributed in the end by making adjustments on the run to the bars, and I think they may have been a bit detrimental because it certainly didn’t get any better. A quick review of the data post race backed up his analysis, prompting a slight suspension change for Saturday’s second 24-lapper.

“It’s never nice watching the guys in front of you pull away, but the important thing is we have valuable series points, and we weren’t the only team to struggle..”

Like Marcus, pole-sitter Dean Canto also struggled, retiring from the lead mid-race with fuel pickup problems. That left the lead and the race win to former Supercar ‘main game’ pilot Steve Owen, who along with Jack Perkins, ran away from the pack for a comfortable win, Zukanovic hanging on to be classified 13th at race end.

The second 24-lap race of the Fujitsu Series will be on Saturday, February 23 at 9:40am, with both races also broadcast in coming weeks on Channel 7, check your local guide for details.

Opes Prime provides prime brokerage services to financial market participants and sophisticated investors via the Opes Prime Wealth Platform. The prime brokerage services include securities lending and borrowing, asset management, structured products, trade execution and corporate finance/advisory. Opes Prime has offices in Melbourne (head office), Sydney and Singapore. Visit www.opesprime.com for more details.