Loose wheel disrupts FPR at Winton

Mark Winterbottom's faltering championship challenge has received a boost with the return to health and to pitlane of engineer Grant McPherson for Tuesday's Ford Performance Racing test at Winton.

McPherson missed the Sydney Motorsport Park 400 with glandular fever but is now well on the way back to full fitness and will engineer the #5 Pepsi Max Falcon FG II in the opening round of the Pirtek Enduro Cup, the Wilson Security Sandown 500, on September 12-14.

While Winterbottom and Pirtek Enduro Cup co-driver Steve Owen completed 150 laps between them and felt they made solid progress towards improving the recently recalcitrant Falcon's pace, the car did grind to a halt on-track late in the day on the second lap of a run.

The problem turned out to be a loose wheel, but rather than risk the car by driving it back to the pits, Winterbottom elected to park on circuit, bringing out the red flags for about 30 minutes, stopping activity on the track for all teams testing at the track, which also included Walkinshaw Racing, Volvo Polestar Racing and Brad Jones Racing.

"I had a wheel nut failure so we couldn't get the wheel nut back on and we would have had to drag the car on its nose to get it back, so we had to repair it to physically tow it back," Winterbottom explained to v8supercars.com.au.

"In a race you would have driven it back to the pits, but on a test day you are not going to wreck the gear to get back."

Winterbottom was quick to point out the failure had no relationship to FPR's 2013 wheel nut dramas, which cost the team several good results until fixed just before Bathurst: "It was completely different. The bit that you screw the nut on to had lost its thread so we had nothing to screw the nut on to.

"The guys will get to the bottom of the problem at the shop tomorrow."

Despite that issue, Winterbottom, who has watched a 161 point Championship lead turn into a 135 point deficit to Red Bull's Jamie Whincup over the last three events, was positive about the improvements made to the car and his prospects at Sandown.

"It felt pretty good actually," said Winterbottom. "Last test day I felt pretty disappointed, but this one I felt better. I am sure what we concentrated on today will help us at Sandown."

Meanwhile, McPherson said he was just about over his illness, which saw former FPR engineer Campbell Little step into the breach to engineer Winterbottom at SMP.

"I had all of last week off, but I have made a lot of progress. I had no drama today and I will be in the workshop tomorrow," he said.

Meanwhile, English import Oliver Gavin has been given the thumbs up by Walkinshaw Racing team boss Adrian Burgess after an intensive two day test at Winton.

Gavin, 41, will share the HHA Racing Holden Commodore VF with hot rookie Nick Percat in the Pirtek Enduro Cup.

"Oliver did a bloody good solid job," Burgess told v8supercars.com.au. "We did some really good long runs with him.

"He gets on well with Nick and his crew, so it was very productive. He felt there was a good improvement in both the engine and the chassis of the car since he last drove it at Eastern Creek in the pre-season test."

Gavin, who drives for the factory Corvette Racing team in the US endurance championship, will stay with Percat until Sandown.

Tim Slade and Tony D'Alberto had an untroubled first test in the new Supercheap Auto Commodore, which replaces the car crashed at SMP. News Limited journalist Paul Gover also drove the car.

The two Holden Racing Team Commodores also ran without incident, with the James Courtney/Greg Murphy and Garth Tander/Warren Luff combinations getting plenty of laps.

As per all teams at Winton, the WR crew split its time between enduro preparation, practising pit stops, driver changes and brake pad replacement, as well as the continual development of components and geometry.

After pulling the pin on Monday due to forecast bad weather, Brad Jones Racing ran all three team Commodore VF Championship entries as well as the Dunlop Series VE Commodore of Macauley Jones on Tuesday.

Both the Fabian Coulthard/Luke Youlden Lockwood Racing #14 and Jones' car suffered suspected cracked heads in their high kilometre test engines. Race engines for all three Championship cars are currently being serviced prior to Sandown. However, much-anticipated power upgrades are now not slated to arrive from Noonan Race Engines until Bathurst.

Andrew Jones joined Jason Bright in the Team BOC #8 Commodore and Chris Pither and regular Dale Wood shared the #21 Advam/GB Gal entry.

The team also continued development of the new generation Triple Eight front-end, which debuted for the team in #14 at Darwin, while #8 was upgraded for Queensland Raceway. Limited spares means #21 won't be upgraded for Sandown.

"We did a lot of operational stuff and we also did a lot of changes and validated the changes," team manger Chris Clark told v8supercars.com.au. "It was quite hard because it was a funny old day, quite cold ... and we had a little squall of rain come through which wet the track and then it dried again, so that changed the track again.

"A low one minute 24 ended up being a good time across the board."

News Limited journalist James Phelps drove Bright's car for five laps on Monday, but the test was not without drama.

"First lap he got through the second last turn and nearly stuck it in the wall which was a bit of a heart stopper for us all," Clark said. "But then he managed to drive it around and get it back on the track and pump out five laps.

"That was the end of it then: 'let's have it back thanks mate'."

While Volvo Polestar Racing has yet to officially confirm its enduro pairings, the Winton test gave a pretty clear indication as to team owner Garry Rogers' thinking.

Scott McLaughlin teamed up with Frenchman Alex Premat in the #33 Valvoline Volvo S60, while Greg Ritter joined Robert Dahlgren in the #34. This is how the lineups are expected to stay for Sandown, the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 and the Castrol EDGE Gold Coast 600.

"We had a good day, everything we wanted to do we got done," Rogers told v8supercars.com.au. "Each car probably did about 100 laps and all four drivers got about the same number of laps.

"They all seemed to go pretty well and seemed pretty happy at the end of the day. None of them were sooking."

Three Queensland-based teams also tested today, Triple Eight and TEKNO Autosports at Morgan Park and Erebus at Queensland Raceway.