Fraser's Bathurst wildcard wager
A good result in his first-ever Repco Bathurst 1000 will have a special bonus for Declan Fraser.
Fraser will share a Triple Eight Race Engineering wildcard with Craig Lowndes in October’s Great Race.
Tickets for this year's Repco Bathurst 1000 are on sale now.
For Lowndes, it will be Bathurst start No. 29. For Fraser, it will be his Great Race debut.
Now, a somewhat-friendly wager is riding on the outcome at Mount Panorama, between the Dunlop Super2 Series driver and his housemate.
With six weeks to go, Fraser has a bet that if he wins or gets on the podium at Bathurst, he will get a permanent memento.
“I’m going to get a tattoo,” Fraser told Supercars.com.
“I said even if I got a podium I would get a tattoo, I'm going to have to try and get Roland [Dane] to get another one on the other side of his arm.
“It’s something to remember it by and thought it was a little bit funny.
“My housemate and I had to deal that if I got a podium, I'd get a tattoo. He won't hold up his end, he won't get one with me. It will just be me!
“I’ll have to figure out what to get when I get there, we still have a lot of work to do before we even think about the podium at the moment.”
Fraser took to the #888 Supercheap Auto Commodore at Queensland Raceway on Wednesday for the team’s second wildcard test day.
It comes after the duo first tested the Triple Eight wildcard in June.
It was all systems go at the Ipswich venue, with the pair focussing on important processes ahead of the 1000-kilometre endurance race.
Fraser is set to complete double duties at the Mount Panorama, competing in the penultimate round of the Super2 Series alongside his Great Race duties.
Competing in both fields will see Fraser switch from his current VF Commodore to a ZB across the event.
“The cars are very similar in a lot of aspects,” Fraser said of the wildcard ZB Commodore.
“Obviously, they have their own little things that they do separate to each other, but the whole gist of the thing is, I'm in the same team.
“It's not like I'm here and then down at another team somewhere else, so I'm working with the same people, familiar faces all around me, and everyone's helped me in the Super2.
“That's really helped me in the wildcard so far, so, for me, I'm not afraid of the double duties. I'm just ready to take it with both hands and to see what we can do.”
Greeted with wet/dry weather conditions at Queensland Raceway, Fraser and Lowndes seized the opportunity to practice driver changes.
After completing several stationery simulations, the pair completed "hot changes", seeing them drive into the pit bay and use the air jack system.
It marked fresh ground for the Super2 Series leader, who claimed his second race win at Sandown last month.
“I've never done a driver change in a Supercar before,” Fraser said.
“I think the only driver changes I've done are in a Hyundai Excel!
“It's a little bit different in a Supercar, and a bit more procedural stuff to go through.
“Craig, and especially Roland [Dane] has been very influential in helping me and trying to gain as much experience as I can very quickly, with the limited testing that we do have before Bathurst.
“I feel like we got it down pat, with all of our procedures in check, so far, it's all going pretty well.
“We've done a lot of testing today and it's nice that Lowndesy trusts me in the feedback that I have.
“We've come to the conclusion that we're very similar in how we like our car, and also how we feel within the car as well.
“It's good to be able to go out there and have a baseline with one of the greatest in the sport and say that the feedback we have is pretty similar.”
The wildcard is set for one more test day before October’s Repco Bathurst 1000.
Tickets for this year's Repco Bathurst 1000 are on sale now.
