By Daniel Powell
In what was his first appearance aboard a brand-new J&J car; Cameron Gessner recorded a pleasing result via a second place finish in the 10th round of the Queensland Sprintcar Series at Brisbane International Speedway.
After the CG Motorsport team had moved from the Australian made Cheetah to the American built J&J chassis leading up to last weekend, Gessner admitted that their first-up performance aboard the new car certainly exceeded expectations of the entire CG Motorsport team.
“To finish second first night out was certainly an impressive and surprising result because to be honest we weren’t too sure how we were going to fare since we were unfamiliar with the J&J style of car,” the QLD # 68 Metalcorp / AUS Fuel supported J&J driver commented. “With the J&J it requires you to be a lot more aggressive with it [the car] in the corners compared to the Cheetah and the harder you drove it, the more it worked with you.”
Although the night started off slowly for Gessner, as he battled with a car that was too tight and therefore recorded the 13th fastest lap in qualifying time trials, things improved rapidly from there on in. Gessner managed to score dominant wins in both of his heat races and that saw him collect enough points to qualify for the Top 6 dash. In that event he managed to drive from position four to finish in third place – which gave him the third starting spot for the feature race.
In the feature race Gessner moved into third place quickly and stayed there up until the closing stages when he inherited second place after Bryan Mann had slipped up and crashed into the wall. After the completion of the feature race Gessner said that he would’ve like to had moved into second place earlier, as he was confident he could’ve been able to have a better shot at challenging eventual winner Robbie Farr.
“I felt that we had a really good car for the feature race and it would’ve been interesting to see if I had anything for Robbie [Farr] as we had been carrying a lot of speed,” he said. “There was only one main race line in the feature race and if you got off that [the race line] there wasn’t really enough drive to be able to execute a passing move. I felt like I may have had better speed than Bryan [Mann] if I could have got into clear air and there weren’t so many restarts.”
Gessner and the CG Motorsport team head off to Dubbo’s Morris Park Speedway this weekend for the running of the $10,000 to win Diggers Cup on the Saturday night (April 16) and then they’ll following that up with the NSW Championship on the Sunday night (April 17).
Unlike a lot of his rivals, Gessner doesn’t know a whole lot about the Western NSW track.
“I don’t know anything about the place,” he openly admitted. “I’m sure that with the team that I have behind we’ll be able to get our heads around it quickly and hopefully be up there in the running on both nights.”
For the 2010/11 season Gessner and the CG Motorsport team are proudly supported by Metalcorp, AUS Fuel, Titan Plant Hire, TC Drainage, Centastate Civil Contractors, Direct Haul, Breast Cancer Australia, QLD Speedway Spares, Greenies Tippers, Fabmac and Scott Inglis Race Engines.