We worked very hard on the initial setup of the new VE before the round and made a few changes from last years setup to suit the new car based on what we had learnt at our last test day at Winton.
The car was pretty good straight out of the truck in the opening laps of Friday’s practice session. We got straight into fine tuning the set up and managed to get through a lot of changes ended up fastest by the end of the session. It was a good way to start the weekend.
As usual, every race track continually changes with more rubber going down over the course of the race meeting as well as ambient temperature and cloud cover. With the new qualifying format, it’s very important to keep on top of all of these factors. You not only get 3 goes at qualifying to get your final position on the grid but you have 3 sessions in which to further improve the car for the last run which is obviously the most critical.
The first 2 runs went to plan and our pace was good.
In the last session I initially posted a time on used tires from the prior run to assess a change before putting the last new set on. On the opening lap on the new rubber I locked a wheel and decided to come straight in and check it. Coming into pit lane I was explaining the situation and new plan to the crew I missed the red light to get the car weighed. The penalty was that we lost our fastest time. We also had to re-pit to get weighed costing valuable time in the closing minutes.
From then on the session was quite stressful and I only managed 10th position which was really disappointing because we were definitely capable of getting a lot closer to the front of the grid.
The rest of the weekend was spent playing catch up. I tried to stay out of trouble and worked my way back to where I really should have been in the first place.
Overall we achieved some of our goals, we had good pace and managed to get back to 2nd position by the last race. Pukekohe is not a track that promotes passing and with the current speed of all the top 10 cars hard going to get back up the front.
From here on in it’s going to get more and more important to try and win races as the gap to the lead has slightly increased.
Looking forward to racing at Winton next month!
Thanks for your support and all the best.
Thanks and all the best,
