Drivers' Quoteboard: Race 21

07 Jul 2013

Here's what the drivers had to say about Sunday's Race 21 at the Sucrogen Townsville 400.

13 mins by James Pavey

Lee Holdsworth

Scott McLaughlin

Mark Winterbottom

...

Click here for quotes from the top three.

Mark Winterbottom, Pepsi Max Crew FPR, p4:

“We did a great job today and everything went as it should especially when we were driving away from the field, though there was a flipside as our tyre use yesterday maybe hurt us a bit today. I don’t believe the tyre allocation is quite right as some people that had poor results yesterday were advantaged today. We did the best we could and fourth was it. That aside it was good to claw back points today and without the early season issues we would be much higher. The last couple of events have given us a lot more hope and our chance at the title doesn’t look so unrealistic now. We came away with more points than our rivals so it wasn’t a bad weekend at all.”

Russell Ingall, Supercheap Auto Racing, p5:

"You don’t have to win a race to regard it as one of your best races.

“When you can go out with a competitive car and have good battles, it’s what I really enjoy.

“This will go down as one of the races I’ve most enjoyed, because of the tough run we’ve had lately, but everything worked today and I had a lot of fun.

“The cool suit problem made it hard work but I come from an era where we didn’t have cool suits, so I was able to cope.

“The crowd was fantastic this weekend; they were so enthusiastic and I really appreciated all their support.”

Tony D'Alberto, Team HIFLEX, p6:

"Stoked! Very happy to be finally up the front. Car held on with tyres very well after a great team effort for today's race.

"The car was really good, the guys did really well with the strategy and it all clicked for the team today.

"Had a steering issue with three laps to go (possible bent arm) but the guys told me to hang on and bring it home. Russell (Ingall) got past with two laps to go but I was confident I could hold off Lowndesy.

"Can't wait for the next round at Ipswich now, with confidence in the team up and roaring."

Craig Lowndes, Red Bull Racing Australia, p7:

“It was a bit of a weird race.

“We struggled a bit on the hard and with that early safety car we had to come in and to do 60 odd laps on the softs was going to be quite incredible. The boys did a great job to dig me out of a hole when I lost that rear left early and we ended up with some good points. We’ll obviously analyse because all weekend we had trouble on the hard tyre for pace. So it’s obviously disappointing given where we started but that’s racing and we’ll get on with it."

Tim Slade, Heavy Haulage Australia Racing, p8:

“We didn’t completely back up our qualifying performance from yesterday but we weren’t far off which was really good.

“In the race, I guess we had the advantage of having a couple of sets of soft from not running yesterday, but we still had to make that work within our strategy. The safety car at the start was very timely.

“It was pleasing to finish inside the top ten and it was good work by to the crew who had to do an engine change last night, which isn’t an easy thing to do. The car ran faultlessly all day and got through a tough 200km race, so thanks to Wes and Luke for their great strategy and the rest of my team.”

Scott McLaughlin, Fujitsu Racing GRM, p9:

"Pretty good day today for us, we qualified second on the grid which was a personal best for me, which was awesome for myself and the boys.We went on to the race, I made an alright start, I was pretty nervous I have to say. We ended up fourth at the end of lap one, Reynolds had a problem and I sat in third for a stint of the race.

"Some of the guys pitted and had a different strategy, a bit of a confident one or took a punt and we didn't we took the conservative one, same as FPR and we got sort of, half outsmarted. reasonable day, it could've been so much better. If there was a safety car at the end we would've been on. unfortunately there wasn't but we've made improvements to the car and stolen for all the boys. So good points and looking forward t othe next one, it's going to be good."

Will Davison, Pepsi Max FPR, p10:

“It was a disappointing day really after yesterday. I had a cracking start and moved from ninth to third pretty quickly. The car felt okay on the hard tyres but I could tell early on the set-up wasn’t quite where we wanted it and I picked up a lot of understeer which hurt the rear tyres. We then lost a lot of time getting carved up by all the cars running the alternate soft tyre strategy early in the race. We pushed to close the gaps in the second half but without a safety car that was pretty much impossible. We did all we could and made no mistakes but it just wasn’t our day. Today aside it has been a promising weekend and we’ve closed the gap and the car is improving all the time.”

Jamie Whincup, Red Bull Racing Australia, p11:

“We spent a lot of time to get the car right and the set-up but we probably didn’t focus enough on strategy in the end.

“But we get it right nine times out of 10 so that’s just how it goes. We had our challenges this weekend and overcame a lot of them but there’s a lot more to a race than set-up and today we just didn’t quite get it right.

“We’ve got our first testing day in a very long time before the next race so we’ll have a look at it then and hopefully be back to our best for our home race at Queensland Raceway.”

Jonathan Webb, Darrell Lea TEKNO Autosports, p12:

"I think for the team, the day was good. As we know it wasn't the best, but for Shane (van Gisbergen) to recover today and push towards the front was brilliant. We were side by side there for a while but my car, just like all weekend, we haven't got the speed. We had the speed a bit falsely from the tyres left over from yesterday so we looked good in the middle, but at the end there I just tried to keep the thing together as best as we could but the car wasn't handling that well and chewed up the tyres pretty quickly, so we got pushed around towards the end and lost six or eight spots in the last few laps."

Chaz Mostert, Wilson Security Racing, p13:

“Looking at the times after the race, a two stop strategy was the go today. Some of the guys that did this had strong top 10 finishes. For us, we had decided to go on the one stop I was pretty happy and knowing I had the pace to run in the Top 10 was pleasing. We did 40 laps on the soft’s and the car set up was good to last that long. Overall a good weekend for the Wilson Security #12 Falcon."

James Moffat, Norton Hortnets, p14:

“It was a pretty difficult day again, punctuated by another poor qualifying performance. “We need to get a handle on the hard tyre, especially in qualifying conditions. As soon as you start the races in the 20s, you’re on an uphill battle. “I battled away in the first stint on the hard tyre. The car wasn’t great. I put the soft tyre on and the car came to life, particularly late in the race, but when you’re coming from that far back, it’s difficult to do much. “We probably missed the strategy, not coming in on that Safety Car. We got swamped on the soft tyres and lost a lot of track position. Of the cars that didn’t take the Safety Car, we might have been the car that finished the furthest up. Not that it counts for much, but we’ve stayed in the top half of the Championship.”

Todd Kelly, Jack Daniel's Racing, p15:

"It was a frustrating race, I ended up near last a few times after getting caught up with other cars and then I worked my way back through and once we got into a rhythm, especially on the soft tyres, I got a lot of positions back.

"I had a monumental electronic drama in the car from about half race distance, everything just shut down and then the car leaned the engine out and all the gear changes and all the electronics weren't working.

"That cost me a huge amount of time and although it came back for a few laps, it went again towards the end, so given all the dramas we had, 15th is not too bad. The car is certainly fast enough to press on."

Alex Davison, JELD-WEN FPR, p18:

“It was good to back up yesterday’s shootout run with another top 10 in qualifying. I have no idea though why the car stalled at the start. I did everything exactly the same as always and as soon as I went to take off the engine stalled immediately. There wasn’t even a chance to catch it and that put us way back in the field. Once we got going the car felt pretty good and we moved through and while our car felt reasonably well balanced it just didn’t hold onto the rear tyres very well. I am just shattered that our qualifying didn’t translate to a strong race. It is the first time in 15 years I have ever stalled a car on the start line. I’ve always wondered how you could do it and I still don’t after today so we’ll have to look into it.”

Alex Premat, Fujitsu Racing GRM, p19:

"It started as a good day – top 10 in qualifying was quite good I could've done maybe top 6 or 7, if I'd put all my sector times in the same lap time. I'm in the top 10, it's a good improvement this is what we've been hoping for. The race was quite long, quite boring, the wrong call for strategy but that's motor racing. I had a pretty good start I think, I was P8 just ahead of … I could keep the base from the first lap to the 10th lap, we got the SC, didn't pit and stayed with FPR cars. We thought it was the right strategy at the end of the day it was the wrong one, we finished p19."

Rick Kelly, Jack Daniel's Racing , p20:

"Qualifying today wasn't too bad, I think everyone was probably a little bit tired after yesterday's race and I didn't feel like I got the most out of the car by a couple of tenths, but even if I gained that I would have only been a few spots further up, so 12th wasn't too bad.

"We made a few changes for the race, the car wasn't quite ideal yesterday and there's no point us going out again on the same setup, so we tried a few things that we thought would work.

"A couple of the tuning items did and I think we had better pace around turn two and three, but it still wasn't quite enough.

"Obviously the interesting part of the race was the safety car and differing strategies, and for us we rolled the dice and it just didn't go our way. We lost a lot of track position and it put us back in the 20s unfortunately.

"We also had a little pace issue, not a big one, but we just weren't quite as quick as we could have been."

Scott Pye, ekol Racing, p21:

"It was a tough race actually. There were obviously a lot of different strategies out there and we looked after the tyres yesterday so we could have a good shot today. We stayed on our tyres in the middle stint for too long though... End of the race we were coming strong but we lost I reckon 10-12 seconds to what we could've had if we'd put the tyres on early – which is what van Gisbergen and even Webb to a lesser extent did when we were racing those guys in the first stint."

Michael Caruso, Norton Hornets, p22:

"It was a tough day. Unfortunately, we got turned around by Brighty and that put us behind the eight-ball. “It was an uphill battle, so we need to go away and go over things. Obviously, we need a solution to find a way forward. “It’s disappointing, because I thought we had a decent car on softs, but I never got a chance to show it.”

Tim Blanchard, Wilson Security Racing, p23:

“The strategy was spot on and the Safety Car arrived at the right time but with about 20 laps to go we sort of fell of the cliff. Those last laps were extremely difficult and holding out the guys behind me was nearly impossible. I’m a bit lost to know why the drop was so severe so we will have to have a good look at it when the car gets home. We are testing prior to Queensland Raceway so we have lots to work on to improve the car for the next round.”

Dean Fiore, Dodo Insurance Racing, p24:

"Disappointing with the lack of speed. We are actually closer I think to Triple Eight, but they were a bit off as well, but they seemed to get through it and pull out a decent result whereas we can't do that, so it was a very tough, long trying weekend. Character building to say the least."

David Reynolds, The Bottle-O FPR, p26:

Maro Engel, SP Tools Racing, p27:

“I have to say a huge thank you to my team who did really great work to repair my damaged front end and get me back so I could score some points.

“It’s obviously quite disappointing that we received that damage on the first lap as I thought we had a good race car and the balance seemed really good. I think we could have raced well and finished inside the top 15 or even higher.

“My team demonstrated again just how good they are and we will now go onwards and upwards from here.”

Lee Holdsworth, IRWIN Racing, DNF:

“We can’t catch a break at the moment, but they say things come in threes and that was our bad luck number three. We had a really good start and I jumped up a fair few spots and I think I was up into 15th. I was following Sladey and we were trucking along nicely, and I had the speed on the a few others in front.

“I was just waiting one or two more laps before we could get out of the hustle and bustle, and get into the pits to put our soft tyres on. Then we would have been out of trouble.

“For some reason we dropped oil pressure which was probably the spot on scenario for Tim Slade as he needed a safety car with his soft tyres. Unfortunately it was just not our weekend, not one little bit.”

From the teams

Tim Edwards, FPR Team Principal:

“While today certainly didn’t reach the heights of yesterday we again secured a large haul of points which has capped a successful weekend for the team. Mark’s pole and fourth place, coupled with yesterday’s podium, have revived his points tally and he’s continued his strong run of form. Will was solid but both he and Frosty just couldn’t quite match the outright pace of the two-stoppers around them. There was a risk with that strategy but it paid off for those that chose it. Dave was on for a good result until his engine issue and Alex was lucky to survive the opening lap. His experience helped him a number of times today but again the two-stop runners restricted his progression."