The Kelly gang of V8 Supercar racing have surprisingly fin൩ished outside of the top ten in the opening practice session f♔or the Betta Electrical 500 Melbourne.

Rick Kelly couldn't quite match the pace of the frontrunners in the session, however was pleased with the♏ efforts presented by he and his elder brother as the Dunlop control tyres they utilised didn't perform as expected.

"I am pretty happy with that. My job today was to go out t꧂here and do the best we can with getting a race car," said Rick Kelly.

"I think we did OK. The tyres we had were definitely not as good as we expected, espec𒆙ially our better set, so it really allowed us to focus on the race package, and we found some good gains where we don't normally.

"So, frღom that, we are l🀅ooking pretty good for the race."

Kelly junior's thoughts were echoed by elder brother Todd, adamant that the pair w🅺ill be around the mark during qualifying despite a lowly effort (by th🉐e team's standards) in first practice.

"It is a lot better than it looks. I am rea𝔍lly comfortable in the car and the set up is not too far away. We are at the point of real fine tuning at the moment," said Todd Kelly.

"The time is definitely there - there are no problems there. We had two sets of tyres that weren't 100 per cent. The other guys put on greens, so we know t𓄧hat when we bolt a new set of tyres there will be plenty of time left in it.

"We are really concentrating on making it a goꦬod race car. It is really easy at this point to make your car as good as possible here for qualifying. But here 💜at Sandown, what counts is a good race car."

The second Toll HSV Dealer Team Commodore of Anthony Tratt and Tony D'Alberto was twenty-eighth, but the non-full-time pair suffered from the lack 𝔍of testing experience inside the car.

"It is a really,♛ really nice car to drive - no doubt about that," said Tratt, Toll's former frontman in the V8 Supercar championship.

"I am still getting used to the throttleꦰ - it is like a light switch. I just need to get up to speed with the car, ap🦩proaching it smartly and not rushing into it."

"We didn't put any new tyres on, so we had inferior grip. The car feels quite good. It can do a 1:12.6 every lap. So, I thinꦏk with a new tyre, it will change it straight up there."