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Finger injury can’t stop Thomas Randle at The Bend
Tom Randle jammed his fingers in a car door less than an hour before he went to the grid for the first of three S5000 single-seater sprints at The Bend, but no-one would have known.
The Supercars young gun won the start, held the spot in the first-corner scrum, and then ran mistake free at the front to claim the race from Anton de Pasquale and John Martin.
“I was fine once the adrenaline kicked him,” laughs Randle during his first-place celebration.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad. Nothing is going to stop me racing.
“It was eyes forward and I got quicker as the race went on.”
He set the quickest lap time of 1 minute 41.2560 seconds for an S5000 record and his winning margin was close to 10 seconds over his team-mate this weekend, Pasquale, who admits he has no answer yet to Randle’s speed.
“He’s the quickest dude,” he admits.
“I was able to pull away from the guys behind me but he was pulling away from me. We’ll see what we can do for tomorrow. It’s a cool circuit and I’m having heaps of fun.”
Martin, a single-seater veteran, is having less fun with a car which he eventually used to fend off James Golding for the final podium place.
“It was alright. But we have way too much understeer in the car,” says Martin.
“They got away from me and at the end I was just managing the gap to Golding.”
The only major incident in the 14-lap race was a spin by Tim Macrow, which dropped him back to eighth, as the thundering field of 10 noisy V8s lapped in a high-speed freight train.
With his first win in the bag, Randle – who swapped race suits between qualifying and the race – is now working on a plan for Sunday’s two contest.
“I’m starting seventh in the morning, so that will be something different,” he says.
“I don’t know yet how they will race around here, but I’m about to find out.”