Colin Sieders has shown constant improvement in his City of Townsville Racing Falcon to finish 17th overall for Round Three of the Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series on the Reid Park Street Circuit in Townsville this weekend, 8-10 July.

The 29 year-old from Penrith closed the gap in lap times to the front-runners with every session over the weekend, and whilst happy with the progress, Sieders was a little disappointed to see the weekend end.

“We were making so many improvements over the weekend,” said Sieders, “I just wish we could restart it from now, and have a few more sessions now that the car feels so good”.

“We were on a pretty steep learning curve this weekend, and whilst the car still isn’t perfect, we’ve got it to a point where it is giving me a lot more information and feeling, which allowed me to drive it much better in Sunday afternoon’s race.”

“We got better results this year than 2010, so we’re heading in the right direction.”

Joining Sieders in Townsville was Rob Storey, son of Brad Jones Racing Engineering stalwart Wally Storey, who was being given his debut Engineering/Team Manager role with a V8 Supercar entry, as the Team’s regular Engineer was overseas in France.

“Rob did a great job this weekend,” said Sieders, “and because we had someone different, we did different things and found ourselves thinking outside the box of what we might usually do, which was really good”.

“With Rob’s partner Jo helping out as well, we actually had two fully qualified engineers looking over things...and there was a little encouragement from Wally over the weekend too.”

This weekend was also the first time that Sieders had competed with a sequential gearbox, installed after the Adelaide round, but limited testing and a broken rear sway bar also hampered early results, starting the weekend 3.5 seconds off the lap times of the session leaders.

“I hadn’t been able to get a good run with the sequential gearbox before the round, so I was looking forward to Practice One, but I wasn’t able to get much out of it with the broken sway bar.”

Running a number of minor adjustments in Qualifying, Sieders had found himself a little more than two seconds off the pace of the second fastest placed driver for the session, and would start Race One from 23rd position (Pole Position of A.Thompson being 0.7 seconds faster than anyone else).

Just like 2010, turn two of the first lap in Race One saw cars scattered everywhere, and despite making contact with the sideways Falcon of Aaren Russell, Sieders escaped the race without too many issues, and finished the race in 17th, with six of the 28 entrants not finishing the race.

“We only really suffered damage to the front bar,” said Sieders, “we were lucky not to suffer more damage, and able to stay in the race, unlike last year when we had to visit the pits to fix some damage”.

In Race Two, Sieders struggled to get rear grip during the race, which meant any gain made going into the turns was lost with lack of drive through them, however, he had made vast improvements in his lap times to be 1.5-2 seconds off the race winner’s pace for most of the final laps, and finished in 21st.

The final Race of the weekend had Sieders starting from 18th on the grid, and a much better set-up had the City of Townsville Falcon feeling significantly easier to read, and the difference in lap times to the front runners was shortened to an average of 1.5 seconds.

“The car felt so much better to drive,” said Sieders, “it may not have been the best set-up, but you could really feel what the car was going to do, which ultimately made it better to drive”.

“To be able to circulate around 1.5 seconds off the pace of some current spec and main game supported cars, especially on older tyres, is really encouraging for the Team, and it’s just a shame we not starting the weekend now.”

The Fujitsu V8 Supercar Series will next compete at Queensland Raceway in August, however, Colin Sieders is likely to skip that round and return to the track in his full Bisley Workwear livery at Bathurst, 8-11 October.

“I still need some more time in the seat, which shouldn’t be a problem into Bathurst, hopefully we can start like we’ve finished.”