Loose wheel brings early dramas for Slade

The Blanchard Racing Team’s Symmons Plains debut has got off to a shaky start, with Tim Slade brought unstuck on the first lap of the event.

The #3 CoolDrive Mustang stopped on track at the end of its opening installation lap, no longer with its right-rear wheel attached.

That triggered red flags to be displayed little more than two minutes into Practice 1 at the Beaurepaires Tasmania SuperSprint.

“Just heard on the radio Sladey said there was something weird going on with the car coming down the back straight,” explained team owner Tim Blanchard.

“We were coming in that lap anyway. Obviously not a good start to the weekend. It’s only first lap in practice so a long way to go yet.”

Blanchard expects the incident may draw his one-car squad a penalty.

“I’m not really up to spec on the rule for that but I’m sure there will be something along those lines,” he admitted.

BRT crew members ended up wheeling a replacement tyre down to Slade’s stricken Ford in order to get it returned to the lane.

Blanchard noted a review will take place to avoid a wheel flying loose again in future.

“We’re still a new team, we’re only in our third event so there’s still a lot of procedural stuff,” he said.

“We’ve got a few new guys on the team this weekend and a few guys in new roles so we’ve just got to finetune our processes and the communication within the team so there’s still a lot of things we’ve got to work on and improve.

“Obviously we just found a big one there.”

Practice 1 has since resumed, with Slade circulating once more.