Winton: Tasman Motorsport Saturday report

Jason Richards second quickest in Winton practice

Jason Richards set the second quickest time in his GMC Tasman Motorsport Holden VE Commodore during today's practice for the fourth round of the V8 Supercar Series at Winton Motor Raceway.

Richards recorded a time of 1m 24.1358s and was pipped by just three-hundredths for top spot by Supercheap Auto Racing's Paul Dumbrell in the closing stages of the rain-affected session.

"Today's result is similar to last year's where I was third quickest and PD beat me by just six-thousandths," Richards said.

"We're pleased, but we still need to improve the car as we ran on greens [new tyres] but didn't really pick up as much as hoped - we'd earlier set the third quickest time on used tyres.

"Conditions were extremely difficult and you only had to make a slight error and you were off into the dirt, I did it a number of times . I hope everyone else did too otherwise I'd look a bit silly!"

Team-mate Greg Murphy was 18th overall, missing much of the first session of practice due to a rear end issue.

"We struggled badly with grip and it was tough out there," Murphy said

"Jason did a terrific job, and his performance is encouraging for the team. We'll put our heads together tonight and see if we can make it a two car Tasman attack tomorrow."

Qualifying begins at 12.00pm tomorrow afternoon, with Race 1 following at 3.50pm. The final two 40 lap races take place Sunday.

-credit: tm