Richards can smell Touring Car Masters win

Australian Touring Car legend Jim Richards isn’t getting carried away with retaking the lead of the Touring Car Masters at Sandown Raceway on the weekend.

After being voted fourth amongst the country’s top Touring Car drivers of all time, Richards qualified on pole and won a race at the suburban Melbourne track.

Thanks to some misfortune for his title rivals John Bowe and reigning champ Gavin Bullas, Richards’ success has given him a handy 20 point title lead ahead of the final round of the series at the Sydney Telstra 500 in two weeks time.

Richards said that while he doesn’t need to win, he does need to maintain his good form.

“It looks like the championship will go down to the wire at Homebush,” he said.

“For us, it’s good to be in the position that we don’t have to go out and win all the races, but as we’ve just seen with Gavin (Bullas) and (John) Bowey anything can happen, so we’re not getting carried away with ourselves yet.

“If we can have three good races in the best series in the country, that’ll be great.”

Richards scored pole at Sandown before his title adversary Bowe won Race 1. A crash between Tony Hunter and Steve Makarios in Race 2 brought out a red flag and no points were awarded.

In Race 3, the field gridded up using the results from Race 1. That was not good news for title challenger Bullas, who was forced to start from the rear of the grid and carve his way through the pack all over again.

Richards took the win, with Steve Mason in second and Andrew Miedecke racking up his second third place finish for the weekend, Bullas was fourth.

Bowe struck trouble and scored no points and will find it difficult to recover from his distant third place in the series. See below for full points

CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS (after round 7):

GROUP 1:

Position	Car #	Driver	Total
1	2	Jim Richards	851
2	1	Gavin Bullas	831
3	18	John Bowe	777
4	95	Andrew Miedecke	642
5	11	Leanne Tander	640
6	3	Steve Mason	596
7	15	Bill Pye	555
8	57	Graham Alexander	531
9	56	Brett Youlden	516
10	28	Brad Tilley	471
11	8	Mark King	443
12	83	George Nittis	312
13	14	Alastair MacLean	297
14	22	Nigel Benson	273
15	10	Tony Hunter	270
16	9	Tony Edwards	264
17	27	Matt O’Brien	257
18	99	Steve Makarios	243
19	62	Doug Westwood	196
20	85	Bob Middleton	174
21	55	Michael Acheson	102
22	52	Keith Kassulke	98
23	20	Garry Treloar	78
24	74	Elliot Barbour	34
25	44	Les Walmsley	0

GROUP 2:

Position	Car #	Driver	Total
1	36	Bernie Stack	991
2	6	Chris Stillwell	877
3	5	Ian McAlister	840
4	60	Cameron Tilley	826
5	91	John Nelson	613
6	13	Rory O’Neill	561
7	43	Mick Wilson	557
8	21	Gary O’Brien	525
9	33 / 26	Greg Keene	492
10	33	Amanda Sparks	426
11	76	Trevor Talbot	359
12	26	Ross Almond	141
13	19	Garry Treloar	111
14	61	Graeme Cook	104

GROUP 3:

Position	Car #	Driver	Total
1	4	Phillip Showers	1040
2	88	Tony Karanfilovski	932
3	7	Cameron Mason	428
4	7	Jason Humble	164