Team Sydney eager for driver continuity
Team Sydney boss Jonathon Webb has given the strongest indication yet that he could look to keep both Alex Davison and Chris Pither on next season as the fledging squad seeks continuity.
Just five drivers raced for the team full-time under their decade-long previous guise as Tekno Autosports; namely Jack Le Brocq, Will Davison, Shane van Gisbergen, Michael Patrizi and Webb himself.
With an off-season rebrand to Team Sydney came a clean slate: An additional car, an all-new driver line-up, new sponsors, almost an entirely new crew and new headquarters at Sydney Motorsport Park.
It’s made for a learning year filled with ups and downs; headlined by Pither’s fifth at Darwin, mixed between five DNFs for the team.
Webb said driver continuity is a factor he’s mindful of when looking ahead to season 2021.
“We have got a couple of drivers that are well settled in, crew-wise much the same, we’re getting on top of pitstops,” he told Supercars.com.
“All the little detail bits that come from that continuity has been really good over the last couple of rounds so as much as we can, sooner rather than later we’ll try to lock those things in for next year.
“We have got everything we need, the cars are current Triple Eight-spec.
“We’re getting closer and closer this year to having exactly what those two Red Bull cars have so everything that we can work through and talk through with drivers, engineers, crew all relates directly to those guys.
“We’re getting closer… last year we were qualifying around that 18th to 20th mark and were a second and a bit off pole, which wasn’t ideal.
“We have all worked very hard this year at being able to close that gap massively to sort of five or six tenths off pole but unfortunately that’s still that sort of 16th to 20th window. Everyone has just stepped up so much this year and it is super competitive.
“We’re getting better each weekend as a group, the drivers are improving every weekend and getting themselves back in the groove of being back in a full-time Supercars drive.
“So as hard as we have worked to get there, it would be nice to carry over as much as we can for next year with drivers, sponsors, crew.
“At the moment everyone is happy, everyone is smiling. We want to survive 2020, it’s been a pretty rough year for everyone, but certainly looking forward to ’21 being a strong one.”
Speaking further about his drivers, Webb noted Davison had generally been stronger in qualifying trim whereas race pace had often been in favour of Pither.
“Alex has been able to find that one-lap pace reasonably quickly and the balance of the car and his driving style seems to suit that one lap but yeah for sure we have seemed to struggle a bit for balance in the races,” Webb assessed.
“And with Chris, he just hasn’t been in a full-time seat for a while.
“It’s going to take time and that one-lap pace has been a bit of an issue that we’ll just keep working on trying to find that last little bit in him to get the most out of the car.
“But certainly his race pace, consistency, looking after tyres, all those sort of things that will make or break you in races, particularly with soft tyres, he’s done a great job and the boys have got the strategy and pitstops really well down pat.”
Next up on the calendar is the Repco SuperSprint at The Bend Motorsport Park this coming weekend.
