hero-img

Team Sydney’s upside through time on road

04 Aug 2020
Chance for team bonding during tough period
2 mins by James Pavey
Advertisement

As far as making the best out of a bad situation goes, Team Sydney may have benefited more than any rival Virgin Australia Supercars Championship squad in recent weeks.

The two-car Holden team has had a much-needed opportunity to bond while displaced from its Sydney Motorsport Park headquarters.

Following a generally underwhelming SMP doubleheader, the team joined the sport’s five Victorian outfits in taking refuge in southeast Queensland in the lead-up to the BetEasy Darwin Triple Crown this weekend.

Team Sydney instantly had a superb facility at their disposal in the form of the Webb family’s Tekno workshop in Yatala.

More importantly perhaps was the chance to have their staff spend an extended period of time together.

Having only officially moved to the NSW capital in June, many employees are based interstate.

That includes drivers Chris Pither and Alex Davison, who ordinarily live in Victoria and Queensland respectively, and Davison’s Melbourne-based engineer Chris Stuckey.

“By no means am I undervaluing the sacrifice it is for [the team to be on the road] but to be honest it has actually sort of been good for us in a way,” Davison told Supercars.com.

“For sure it’s tough for those guys being away from their families and there’s a lot of challenges around that but from a selfish point of view from the team perspective it has been really good for everyone to spend more time together.

Advertisement

“From our side we have probably got catching up to do so that time has been valuable.”

The upcoming Darwin doubleheader arrives at a good time for Davison, given his long affinity with Hidden Valley Raceway.

The 40-year-old was disappointed to have a less than straightforward outing at the recent Truck Assist Sydney SuperSprint, leaving him hungry to make gains at the Top End.

“All these things will help us find our way,” he said.

“The events where you do struggle, if you use the post-event analysis properly, it can often help you find a new direction or help iron out some procedures and systems to use to stop it happening in the future.

“It might just be a matter of how we prioritise different things and the way we go about working with the car and setting the car up and analysing things.

“Just your normal procedural things, hopefully we can learn from the mistakes we made in Sydney and be better moving to Darwin.

“We’re not trying to jump from 20th to first. We’re very realistic in our goals and we’re just trying to build our understanding of what we’re doing and build some consistency through using the correct processes.

“We know where we’re at and we’re just trying to build some nice foundations.”

Related News

Advertisement