Slade penalised for last-lap clash with Kelly – V8 Sleuth

TIM Slade has been stripped of a third-place finish in his National Trans Am Series debut for a last-lap incident with Owen Kelly yesterday.
Slade, who is making a cameo appearance for The Racing Academy at the Symmons Plains season-opener, was fourth behind Kelly as the field embarked on a one-lap dash to the flag following a late Safety Car intervention.
The PremiAir Racing Supercars driver appeared to make front-to-rear contact with Kelly at the hairpin and subsequently outdragged the 2022 title runner-up to third.
Slade was slapped with a five-second which relegated him to 13th and re-elevated Kelly to third.
Out in front, James Moffat cruised to victory after beating pole-sitter Ben Grice to the first corner.
There was further drama for another Supercars regular in TCR Australia yesterday, with Will Brown unable to capitalise on pole position due to a driveshaft failure.
The very same gremlin also sidelined another upgraded Audi of Zac Soutar and had threatened to rule both out of the entire weekend.
“The spline broke on the differential that comes off the end of the driveshaft,” Soutar explained.
“There are no spare parts in the country, so we thought we were out for the weekend.
“The guys at MPC have found someone locally in Launceston to fix up the broken parts with some pretty special engineering, and fingers crossed it will hold for today’s races.”
Bailey Sweeny won Race 1 from Tony D’Alberto and Kody Garland, while in S5000 it was Joey Mawson who took the first-up honours.
Each category has another two races to come today.
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