IPSWICH, Queensland, Australia – Nissan Motorsport have left Queensland Raceway with a pair of top 10 finishes following the Ipswich SuperSprint last weekend in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship.
The weekend started off strong for the team with Rick Kelly qualifying fifth for the first race, and eventually promoted to fourth following another driver's penalty. Kelly would go on to finish 13th in the opening race after struggling with tire degradation in the latter stages.
Michael Caruso scored the highest finish for the NISMO team in the first race of the weekend, finishing seventh.
"It's good to be back racing near the front," said Caruso. "It's a nice reward for the guys that have been working long hours to get us on the track."
Kelly's time to shine came in the second race of the weekend where he finished ninth in the ultra-competitive Supercars series. The drive helps solidify his place in the top 10 in championship points.
"We moved from 8th to 7th in the championship, so lots of positives from the weekend," said Kelly.
The next race on the Virgin Australia Supercars calendar is the Sydney SuperNight 300, a single 300km race event held under lights, in August.
"Sydney is going to be one heck of a challenging race," said Kelly. "Three hundred km is the longest we'll ever do as a single driver; it's 50km longer than Adelaide. We've had good single-lap speed there recently, but we'll need to keep working on our race pace considering it is such a long event."
We’ve got all the pics from Sunday’s @Supercars action for @Nissan_MSport – another top ten for the @Nissan Altima squad at Queensland Raceway.
— Nissan NISMO (@NISMO) July 24, 2018
➡️ See the full gallery at: https://t.co/H5GXJh1sTE pic.twitter.com/KXJdez6usI
The day started well, qualifying 9th. We didn’t have the speed today to keep it up there but that won’t stop us from working our butts off for the next event. #VASC pic.twitter.com/yCrPewyTzg
— Michael Caruso (@michaelcarus0) July 22, 2018
NISMO Calendar
July 28-29
Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hour, Spa, Belgium
Nissan Micra Cup, Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Canada
August 4-5
Super GT, Fuji 500, Fuji, Japan
IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Road America, Elkhart Lake, WI, USA
Virgin Australia Supercars Championship, Sydney, Australia
British GT Championship, Brands Hatch, England
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Contact
Anna Teslik
Global Motorsport Marketing and Communications Manager
Phone: +33 7 7614 7286
ATeslik@nissan-europe.com
Paul Ryan
Global Motorsport Marketing and Communications Manager
Phone: +1 678 644 0404
paul@nismosupport.com
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Get more information about Nissan motorsports on NISMO.com
