A relieved Cameron Hill says he’s thankful to have avoided panel damage to his Southern Star Truck Centre/Anytime Fitness Porsche GT3 Cup car, after a near miss in his maiden Porsche Wilson Security Carrera Cup Australia race at the Adelaide 500 today.
Hill reacted just in time to avoid being collected by Anthony Gilbertson at Turn 9 on the opening lap, taking evasive action as an errant Gilbertson collided with Nick McBride.
“I had overtaken Anthony earlier in the lap – coming out of Turn 8 he was quite a few car lengths back, so it caught me by surprise when I saw him firing down the inside,” Hill said.
“I feel for Nick McBride as he was very much the innocent victim and the incident put him out of the race. Fortunately I managed to avoid any contact, but because I had to stop and wait for Anthony and Nick’s cars to move, I fell to the back of the field.”
Despite losing a multitude of positions in the incident, Hill still staged a fighting recovery to 16th.
“We were pretty much last after the first lap, so to get back to 16th in 10 laps was not too bad – the car felt good and it was valuable to have the experience of overtaking people in one of these cars.
“We will have some more work tomorrow to recover to a position representative of our speed this weekend, but one of our main objectives this weekend was to avoid any damage and we achieved that today,” Hill concluded.
Race 2 for Carrera Cup will be held at 11:10 tomorrow morning.
