D’Alberto parks Honda TCR

Drama has enveloped the Supercheap Auto TCR Championship round at Symmons Plains, with championship contender Tony D’Alberto parking his Honda in pit lane, as a form of protest, instead of contesting the third and final race of the weekend.

The problem appears to go back to a red-flagged and re-started opening race on Saturday – the scheduled 30-lapper run ending up as a fresh 10-lap race (including its own Safety Car) – and extended debate over why this race, which was completed, did not count towards the feature race grid – which would have seen D’Alberto, who won the race, much better placed on the key Race 3 grid..

Saturday’s race didn’t get far before a collision involving Ryan Casha and Brad Harris ripped a front wheel off the Cash Peugeot.

The second attempt at the race got as far as lap two, before a Safety Car was deployed to retrieve Harris’ car from the Turn 4 gravel trap (a separate incident).

In the end, the race ran just 10 laps before ‘time certainty’ kicked in..

Much of the lead-up to Sunday’s final race was centred around the grid, which was ultimately only decided using Qualifying and the finishing result of the Race Two (reverse grid) earlier Sunday race.

D’Alberto’s Honda team are of the view that the first race should have been included in the calculation.

Drivers meetings and team meetings with officials continued until close to the start time of the Race 3 finale, questioning the decisions made by MA race officials.

In the end, D’Alberto completed the warm-up lap, only to pull in and park in pit lane as the race started.

D’Alberto said “I had to take a stand” due to the “unprofessional” decision making process from the officials.

“It is very much a sad situation having the car in the garage,” D’Alberto said.

“We out it on pole and won the first race so then we conserved in race 2 and knew we had enough points to start on pole for the last one.

“Then a decision has been made that race 1 is now non points and we started that race back in seventh so I just think it is so unprofessional to happen so late in the piece. I had to make a stand.

“The team were encouraging me to do the race but I decided to pull the pin on it because I thought it was so unprofessional that I don’t want to be a part of it.

“Everyone was talking the same thing but some were not quite as brace as I was.

“The championship want to have myself, Honda and some big sponsors in the category and teams operate at a professional level and this weekend it has clearly been sub par.

“Everyone makes mistakes but it just keeps continuing.

“I am so disappointed in the whole process.”

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