Why Percat/Edwards combo works so well

Some drivers and engineers click; others simply don’t. For Nick Percat, he credits his working relationship with Andrew Edwards as a vital part of his rise up the grid in recent years.

WATCH: PERCAT EXPLAINS SURPRISE WIN

Percat teamed with his Car #8 predecessor Jason Bright’s engineer Paul Scalzo upon joining Brad Jones Racing in 2017, before switching to Edwards midway through ’18.

Percat has since finished both the 2018 and 2019 seasons inside the championship’s top 10 and continued his trajectory to the point of taking his first win with the team last month at Sydney Motorsport Park.

“The car has been getting better and better and better since when I had my engineer change to Andrew Edwards from Scalzo,” Percat told Supercars.com.

“That wasn’t because Scalz wasn’t a good engineer – we just didn’t click.

“He’s a bloody good engineer and he does a lot of work for us behind the scenes now which is benefiting the whole team.

“So pretty much since that moment the car has slowly gotten better and better and better and late last year a philosophy direction in the set-up kind of showed its head and we started using that around New Zealand… and we’ve just progressed on with that.

“The car we had at SMP was definitely the best BJR car I’ve probably driven. It was a pleasure to drive and that’s the beauty of our development.

“We’ve methodically chipped away at it and we haven’t just thrown erratic things on and had spiralling results.

“That’s why the last two years I have been inside that top 10 in the championship but slightly improving over 18 months to get to this point. The hard work is slowly paying off.”

Pressed further on why he and Edwards work so well together – similar to the combination Dave Reynolds and Alistair McVean enjoy at Penrite Racing – Percat pointed to personalities.

“I think it’s the wave of emotions they take you on and control,” he said of the role a Supercars race engineer plays.

“At the end of the day they’re basically a therapist on the run as well as an engineer, and understanding what triggers a driver has and then kind of not triggering those things that equal a negative and making sure that they’re massaging the areas that get the best results out of us.

“I think the relationship with me and Scalzo, we’re both pretty fiery blokes.

“We’d just rev each other up that hard that it would just be detrimental where I guess the way AE is, he keeps me a little bit calmer and yeah that’s probably the only difference really.

“They’re both very good engineers, just the way me and AE click at a race track is really good and I enjoy it. It’s hard to explain, it just works.

“But like I said, me and Scalz away from the race track or even at the race track now because he’s not direct on my radio and stuff, he goes through my data and we work together closely still.”

Percat will return to the site of his breakthrough victory for the Truck Assist Sydney SuperSprint next weekend.