A RETURN to base will see Kelly Racing assess damage to the Nissan Altima it runs in Super3 following a high-speed Townsville incident for Mason Kelly.
The 18-year-old son of Bathurst 1000 winner Todd endured the biggest crash of his young career last Saturday when a steering failure sent him into the outside wall at Turn 1.
That had followed a clash with Chris Smerdon just three corners earlier, and left the Altima – raced by Todd throughout the 2017 Supercars Championship – worse for wear.
“You don’t really realise how fast you’re going until you realise your steering is gone… it was definitely a big shock,” Mason told V8 Sleuth in Townsville.
“We’ll have to obviously remove all of the bodywork and cut a fair bit of the steelwork out to really know if it’s repairable or not.
“There’s a lot of damage, the chassis rails are damaged and even the rear birdcage is damaged as well so it will probably be touch and go whether we can fix it or not but we won’t really know until we’re back at the workshop.”
Kelly, who is still in Year 12 and ventures to the workshop most days after school, had run solidly in Super3 to that point, qualifying third in class on three occasions this year and finishing third in Perth ahead of Jett Johnson and Matthew McCutcheon.
“This year was always going to be a big learning year,” said Kelly.
“I’ve done a bit of racing but I haven’t got a whole lot of experience in cars like these.
“I guess the way we’re doing it this year, it’s not as much pressure on me as there is probably on some of these other guys especially in Super2 who are driving for Supercars programs.
“There’s a lot more pressure (for them) whereas we’re more doing it as a family for this year at least.
“Obviously it still hurts but probably not as much as it might for someone with a lot more on the line.”
With Todd filling roles such as engineer and truck driver, Kelly is running somewhat as stablemate to fellow Nissan drivers Johnson and Cameron McLeod.
“All the cars are based in our workshop in Melbourne and they all get transported together,” he said.
“We all have our independent teams within our group but at the same time we do work together and overlay each other’s data and things like that a little bit.
“It’s definitely good to have them as well to learn off each other rather than being completely on our own.”
Round 4 of the Dunlop Series is in mid-September at Sandown.
