Good News Week Buoys Norton Hornets

Norton Hornets pair James Moffat and Michael Caruso head to their ‘home’ V8 Supercars event at Winton Raceway buoyed by a week of good news in their respective worlds.

Moffat yesterday announced he has signed a new multi-year driving agreement with Nissan Motorsport to remain at the factory squad for the coming seasons.

And for Caruso, his good news came on the home front, when his wife Danni recently gave birth to baby girl Lola.

Both also experienced a fruitful test day at Winton last week, giving them extra confidence ahead of the race meeting at the rural circuit this weekend.

Between Moffat and Caruso, the pair logged over 600km of testing laps between them.

“I’m feeling good about Winton,” Moffat, who sits 15th in the Championship, said.  

“It’s our home test track, so we go there with a little bit more confidence in what the car should do.

“The test confirmed some of the stuff that we were looking for. We didn’t have a raft of new components to test, but certainly on paper, Winton should be one of the tracks that least affects us with some of the deficiencies were trying to overcome in our new cars.

“If we get everything together on the weekend, I’d like to think that we can get into the top 10. The real question will be how far inside the 10 we can be.

“This Championship is so competitive that you have to have everything right and be on top of your game the whole weekend. We’ll certainly be giving it our best shot.”

Caruso agreed it was helpful to test prior to the event. He is currently 22nd in the points. 

“The last round where we had those two longer practice sessions on Friday, we had some mechanical issues, which held us up. At Winton, we got to bank lots of laps,” Caruso explained.

“We won’t know until (the event) if it will pay any dividends, but we definitely learnt a lot of things and confirmed stuff too. What that means is that we’ll go to the race track with the knowledge that we know what works and what doesn’t.

“Theoretically, this track should be goods for us, but the category is so close. Every little bit counts, and being down on power doesn’t helps, but we feel we have enough in the car that we can put on a good show.

"It was great to welcome Lola into the world recently, but the old saying in motor racing is that when you have kids, you lose a bit of speed. I'm going out there to prove that one wrong!" 

The Winton V8 Supercars event kicks off on Friday with three practice sessions. Saturday will see qualifying, followed by another 60/60 Super Sprint. Sunday’s action will feature two qualifying sessions and two 100km races.

Tickets are still available to the Winton 360.