Rick Kelly: New Supercars tyre key to Nissan form

Kelly has enjoyed a positive start to the 2017 season, topping the all-in tyre test at Sydney Motorsport Park last month before qualifying third, right behind Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin, on the streets of Adelaide yesterday.

That improved form, according to Kelly, can be put down to the new-construction control tyre, with the factory-backed Nissan Motorsport squad having earmarked the switch in rubber as a massive opportunity to make inroads on the category’s front-runners.

“The tyre is a big factor for us,” said Kelly. “My engineer George [Commins] said to me six months ago that this could potentially be a game-changer, and it’s certainly a big opportunity for us to capitalise on the tyre quicker than others.

“We began working on what that might look like. Obviously we didn’t get the tyre data until a few weeks ago, and we did a lot of miles on the new tyre at the test day; I think a lot of people opted not to run the tyre due to the tyre bank restrictions, but we did, so we’re a little bit tyre starved from now on, but I felt that we learned a lot from it.

“[Friday] showed us just a little bit of that, and more so [Saturday]. I’m excited to see how the race plays out on that new rubber, because I think it will be a little different behaviour-wise throughout that race stint to what we’ve had in the past.”

When asked if he is confident of staying at the pointy end of the field for the remainder of the weekend, Kelly said it will depend on how the new soft compound tyre works across the 78-lap race.

“My strength has been as a racer more so than as a qualifier. We seemed to be fast in qualifying and practice, so the racing thing from my point of view should be the easier part to some extent,” he said.

“But again, it does depend on how that tyre behaves, because I expect it to be different to what we’ve had in the past.”

Kelly will run third-last in today’s Top 10 Shootout, which will determined the first 10 spots for the opening leg of the Clipsal 500 this afternoon.