Just One Lap on Softs for Webb

He came out of the last event having scored the most points of any driver, but TEKNO Autosports’ Jonathon Webb’s run came to an end yesterday.

While his teammate Shane van Gisbergen put his Holden Commodore on ARMOR ALL Pole Position for Race 20 of the Championship, Webb – whose qualifying has been inconsistent this season – could only manage 17th on the hard Dunlop tyres, starting one position below Jamie Whincup.

Mid-way through the race, Webb pitted and his team bolted another set of hard tyres onto the Darrell Lea car, rather than changing to softs. Shortly after he received a pit lane penalty for an infringement during the stop, and toured pit lane again.

Add in two more pit stops to complete one lap on soft tyres – required to qualify as a finisher of the race – and it meant finishing in 22nd. A real change for the man who brought home 228 Championship points from Darwin.

However, yesterday’s showing hasn’t seen him drop in the standings – he still holds 10th comfortably, but has lost ground to James Courtney ahead – and he now has an additional set of soft tyres for today’s 200km, 70-lap race up his sleeve.

An alternate strategy worked for Craig Lowndes yesterday, so why not for Webb this afternoon?

Having gotten straight out of the car and not looked at the numbers, he wasn’t sure what the extra set of softs could possibly do for him today. Or, for that matter, what was going on with the car.

“We’re just slow!” Webb said after qualifying. “The car’s just been slow all weekend. I can’t put my finger on it, it’s starting to get pretty frustrating.

“Qualifying didn’t work...

“I did just one lap because I had to (on softs), because to qualify as a finisher you have to – but otherwise we were nowhere.

“I had a drive through for whatever drama that was in the pit stop, so I thought there was no point wasting a good set of tyres, we’ll just wobble around and finish the race, and worry about (Race 21) … All we can do is rethink and regather and see what happens.”

There have been plenty of pit stop dramas this year with Ford Performance Racing having been under the spotlight – and even Red Bull Racing Australia with an uncharacteristically bad stop in Darwin, with Whincup handed a penalty for spinning wheels prematurely.

But the pit stop gremlin was at TEKNO yesterday, with a mistake refueling taking van Gisbergen out of contention after starting from pole and running first of the cars on hard tyres early in the race. To add insult to injury, the team under-filled the car by approximately eight and a half seconds’ worth of fuel, so van Gisbergen had to return to pit lane to make the end of the race. He finished in 17th and has tumbled in the Championship standings from fourth to seventh. Pepsi Max Crew FPR’s Mark Winterbottom, who finished second, has lunged to fifth despite a difficult start to the 2013 season.

Winterbottom’s teammate Will Davison won the race – his first win at the Reid Park hybrid street circuit – and it was FPR TEKNO would look to in order to determine how to use the additional set of softs today.

“FPR was obviously pretty strong – we’ll see how long they did run on the soft tyre and whether the pace was good and what we can do,” Webb said post-race.  

“It can only get better!”

It was another interesting tyre strategy from the team, who didn’t use any pre-marked soft tyres during practice on van Gisbergen’s car. His first time running on the soft compound tyre at the Townsville circuit was the Top 10 Shootout – and he nailed it.

Once again the cars will qualify on hard tyres – the result of that 20-minute session determining the grid for Race 21, the final contest of the Sucrogen Townsville 400.