Moffat convinced crashed Volvo will be “100 per cent”

Golding, coming off the back of a massive Lap 1 crash at the Sandown 500, fired the #34 GRM Volvo into the wall at Reid Park midway through yesterday’s dedicated co-driver session.

It meant that not only did he miss the remainder of that session, but that Moffat also missed the entire one-hour afternoon session that rounded out the opening day of track action.

Despite the lost track time, Moffat is confident that he, Golding, and the Garry Rogers Motorsport crew can turn the weekend around – particularly given that Golding had been reasonably quick before his brush with the armco.

The key, however, will be how he adapts to the changes made before Golding jumped into the car.

“I wasn’t that happy with the car in my session this morning, so we definitely made some changes between Practice 1 and the co-driver session,” Moffat told Motorsport.com.

“It seemed positive. The time that James put in before the incident, given the tyre quality he had, was pretty respectable. I was really keen to get back in it and see if those changes were in the right direction.

“We would have probably put a better set of tyres on at the end, too. Obviously we didn’t get to do that… that’s how it is.

“If the changes we made were in the right direction, then it’s a small setback. And if you’re going to have one of those setbacks at Bathurst, then you take it on the Thursday. You don’t want to have to do that, it’s a bit more extra work for the guys that they didn’t need, but the thing with the guys at GRM is that they get stuck into it.

“They’ll get the car back to 100 per cent and we’ll be fine.”

One thing that will help Golding get back up to speed after the confidence-denting shunt is that he is on double duties with the second-tier Dunlop Series, which means for the next two days he’ll be jumping between a GRM Volvo and a GRM Commodore.

“The fact that he is doing Dunlop Series I only see as a benefit, especially with the 250-kilometre race,” added Moffat. “It’s just more laps. The obvious difference between the cars is that one is a Volvo and one is a Commodore, but from a feeling point of view they are pretty similar.”