Positive Red Bull test no silver bullet
Defending and five-time V8 Supercars Champion Jamie Whincup was happy with Wednesday's test at Queensland Raceway, but warned it wouldn't necessarily mean instant success on track.
Whincup sits fourth in the Championship standings, and while the last event in Perth saw him leapfrog James Courtney in the positions, he was more focused on the fact that the gap between he and leader Mark Winterbottom had widened with 231 points now separating the two.
"Time will tell how beneficial the day was," Whincup said of the test day, after an initial debrief with the Red Bull crew.
"We certainly learnt a lot about the car and answered a few questions we had and generated over the past three or four months. But it's now up to the engineers to go through the data and if they do a good job with that we should be in better shape come Darwin."
No mechanical dramas and "perfect conditions" meant the team was in the box seat to make the most of the running, having gathered plenty of data.
"The critical part is what you do with that information and that's the be all and end all," Whincup noted.
"Hey, I've got full faith that our engineering team will absolutely maximise what we found (Wednesday) but they've got a lot of work to do. They're going to be under the pump the next couple of weeks, but fingers crossed that turns into results.
"Not results," he corrected his words. "We just want to make sure the car's easier to drive, which makes my job more enjoyable and makes them faster as well."
While team principal Mark Dutton flagged tyre life as one of the key focuses of the test day, Whincup didn't give it as much weight.
"Tyre life is a big part of motorsport, certainly in our category, it's a big factor - but it's up there with qualifying pace and just having a good car as well...
"So it's a factor but it's no more of a factor than a qualy car and quick car over flying laps as well."
Whincup enjoys test days - the opportunity to make changes to the car without risk to the Championship. And with already limited running on Fridays, with three 20 minute practice sessions at many rounds, he did not want to see that culled like in New Zealand, where teams went straight out to qualify after one 20-minute practice.
"Test days are fantastic. You can get a free swat - you can change the car and get a free swat. Nothing's for free on a race weekend," he explained.
"You've got very limited practice, and you can try something in qualifying or a race but it's not for free - if it doesn't work it costs you a qualifying position or Championship points. Test days are great, you can just have a crack at things and get all this info free of charge...
"As I said, getting information has been the hard thing for the last three or four months - we haven't had the right info to do the job."
The million dollar question - does the team have the right information to do the job now? As Whincup said, time will tell, and it is up to his crew to decipher and maximise Wednesday's findings.
"It was a great day that's given us a lot of information and it just comes down to the tricky bit - filtering down the info and using it to our advantage to ultimately make the cars go faster in the long run."
Whincup and Lowndes won one race apiece at the SKYCITY Triple Crown event in Darwin last year; both have won five races at Hidden Valley in their V8 Supercars careers.
The V8 Supercars head there from June 20-22 with tickets available now.
