Caruso's lap of Sandown Raceway
The Wilson Security Sandown 500 kicks off the V8 Supercars endurance season this weekend -and the track has seen plenty of excitement in the past.
Norton Hornet Michael Caruso will pair up with former full-timer Dean Fiore for the Pirtek Enduro Cup, and the Nissan driver believes the pair could threaten the regular front-runners, if everything goes their way.
"To be completely honest I think we're one of the dark horses in the whole scheme of things," Caruso told v8supercars.com.au.
"Deano's obviously got experience in this category, particularly with (the new generation) car. And also I think with the job we've been doing in the recent past, the cars have been showing some good speed."
Caruso -who will run the 'inverted' black Norton livery this weekend, before the retro Bluebird colours for Bathurst -explained a lap of Sandown Raceway to v8supercars.com.au.
"The start of the lap at Sandown is pretty cool, because you've got the huge grandstand on your right hand side that's always full of people waving flags and what have you," he began.
"Heading down into turn one- it's a very difficult braking zone because you're well and truly in top gear, I'm not sure how fast exactly but around 250, 260km/h.
"Down to turn one and really difficult corner because it's actually off camber, and the car doesn't want to go around the corner too well because of that, so it makes it difficult.
"But in saying that, there's a nice bit of run-off that you can use, or the exit kerb to carry momentum down into turn two, which is a really fun corner because you've got a little 'S' chicane which you can really be aggressive with the car and smash the kerbs through there.
"Which leads into the left hander, which again ... drops off, not off camber, but goes downhill a little bit into the braking zone. So that makes it a little hard to stop the car and get it turned for what's probably one of the most important corners, because it leads onto the very fast back straight.
"You go through the kink, which isn't much of a corner in the dry -but in the wet, can be extremely difficult given the slippery conditions you can have a bit of a moment through there.
"But it's nice to get up along the back straight, hopefully run the limiter in top gear. That would be the fastest we go -around 270km/h...
"Turn six is the scariest corner on the circuit. It's very fast, fifth gear, and we've seen in the past some of the big accidents in the exit there.
"So you have to have your wits about you and it's a good passing spot, but at the same time you need to have the car handling really well to get through that turn six and use a bit of the kerb in seven and get down into what we call Dandy Road in turn nine.
"Again you have to pull the car up and you can smash the kerb on the left hand side, which is really cool because it's nice to be able to be aggressive with the car at this track. The run out of nine is good, good tarmac there and sort of through a little kink in 10, which leads to a hard braking zone in 11, which pretty much determines how you exit the last corner, which again is very important for the whole lap because it leads on to suck a long straight."
Caruso stressed it would be important to do well in the qualifying races - one completed by the co-drivers, followed by the main drivers, to determine Sunday's starting positions -given chaos has broken out in previous years.
"We just need to put ourselves in a good spot for those two races, because they've brought plenty of entertainment the last couple of years!
"It definitely makes the Sandown 500 a harder event to win given you have to go through those two sprint races. But nonetheless, same mentality for the 500 races, it's going to be very, very crucial to play the game smart and have a bit of luck on your side as well."
Tickets are available now for this week's Wilson Security Sandown 500, beginning Friday September 12.
