Kelly gets to grips with wet Sandown

RICK Kelly tamed the wet conditions at Sandown to set the fastest time in yesterday’s first practice session of the Supercars endurance season.

Winding back the clock to 2011 when he stormed his way to a wet-weather pole in a Sandown shock, the Nissan driver blasted through the puddles to edge out Holden’s Garth Tander.

Championship contender Fabian Coulthard was a casualty of the soaking conditions, slamming into a tyre barrier after slipping off the track.

“I enjoy the wet,’’ Kelly said. “There are so many different surfaces, so many different lines, rivers running across that you have to be aware of as well.”

Coulthard compared the Sandown track with an ice rink after his car sustained moderate damage in his crash.

“It’s the nature of this business,” he said. “Unfortunately sometimes you come a cropper and in this instance we did.”

His Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin finished 13th in a slow but safe start for the championship leader.

“It wasn’t as wet at the start, [but it got] wetter and wetter and wetter as practice went on,” McLaughlin said.

Nissan set the pace early when Dean Fiore went fastest before the rain. Tony D’Alberto, who went out in Coulthard’s repaired car, won the final session and declared the car was back on pace.