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Jack’s Chat: Shaping up for 2017

15 Feb 2017
Jack Le Brocq reports on what lies ahead this year
3 mins by James Pavey
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By the time you read this, I will be at Winton again for our second full test of the new GoGetta Nissan Altima in preparation for the 2017 Dunlop Super2 Series.

I cannot begin to tell you how exciting this year is shaping up to be.

Thanks to the fantastic support of GoGetta again, we’ve moved from PRA back to Matt White Motorsport, where I raced in 2015, but this time to head up a Nissan Altima push into the Dunlop Super2 Series.

But that’s just part of the deal.

I’ve also joined the official Nissan factory team as its “Reserve Driver” for season 2017 and I’ll co-drive Todd Kelly in this year’s Endurance Cup, aboard the Carsales Altima.

My role as “Reserve Driver” is a fantastic opportunity … basically I’ll be doing all the Test Days, Ride Days, Briefings, Debriefings and be totally involved in the Nissan Motorsport program, right through the season.

I’ll be at all the races too … basically I’ll be embedded in the team to learn everything I can, and of course share the knowledge and data gained from our Dunlop Super2 Series program.

It’ll be a two-way street … they will learn from us and I will learn from them.

I really can’t thank Todd and Rick enough for the opportunity, it’s been fantastic working with them already this year and I can’t wait till we get to Clipsal.

There’s another awesome opportunity headed my way this year … I’ll be doing several main game rounds as a ‘Wildcard’ entry, so the GoGetta Altima will be the fifth Nissan on the grid at some races!

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We are thinking Perth and QR at this stage but it’ll depend on budget, how the Dunlop Super2 Series rounds go and so on. But it’s going to be amazing!

I’ve had a full day’s Test at Winton in the Altima already, about two weeks’ ago, and it ended up extremely well.

The Altima is different to drive to the PRA Falcon and requires a different technique to get the speed out of it, so early in the day we were struggling a little. The track and the tyres weren’t great, either.

But then we fiddled a bit, I started to get my head around it, we worked closely with the Nissan Motorsport engineers on setup and we threw some better, though still used, tyres at it.

By the end of the day we had the GoGetta Altima in a sweet spot, it felt great and we were really quick … I won’t give away too much, but it was very encouraging.

We’ll continue that work with this second test.

Our aim is of course to go one better and win the Dunlop Super2 Series this year … and of course a lot of what we are doing now is all about what we do in 2018.

Can’t wait!

Jack.

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