Engineer Keed ecstatic with Fullwood breakthrough
Bryce Fullwood claimed first podium for BJR on Sunday in Tasmania
First podium came in 80th start for BJR
Engineer Phil Keed and Brad Jones both buoyed heading into enduros
Brad Jones Racing engineer Phil Keed hopes that his driver Bryce Fullwood’s return to the podium in Tasmania can be the start of a resurgence for the Albury squad.
After making the most of the debut of Gen3 last season, BJR’s form began to dip in the back end of last year, with but 2024 in particular has been a tough pill to swallow.
Save for Andre Heimgartner’s second career victory, and first for BJR, in New Zealand, it has been an extremely difficult season for BJR, with Heimgartner the only driver in the top 15 in points.
However, the performances of Heimgartner and Fullwood at Symmons Plains suggests that there may be light at the end of the tunnel heading into enduro season at Sandown and Bathurst.
Fullwood claimed his first back-to-back top 10 finishes of the season, and claimed his first trophy for BJR on Sunday in his 80th start for the team he joined in 2022.
The 2019 Super2 champion also broke a 1429-day podium drought, with his only other podium coming at The Bend in 2020.
Meanwhile, Heimgartner grabbed headlines after a heated incident with Mark Winterbottom on Saturday, and then claimed sixth on Sunday, capping off BJR's most competitive weekend of the season.
Keed, who has been Fullwood's engineer since the Territorian joined the team, said the result was especially sweet given a major effort at BJR's Albury base between Sydney and Tasmania. "Yeah, it was really cool, really exciting. I think 2020 [was] the last podium for Bryce, the same feels like the whole team actually," Keed said on the Schick Cool Down Lap.
“We've been working really hard, been in a bit of a slump. It's really nice, really exciting.
“When you start sort of dropping down a little bit — and we have the last 18 months, we've sort of not been as good as we want it to be — it just starts to all culminate and everybody starts working almost too hard, it starts not being constructive.
"I think it's just been a period of really hard work and hopefully it's the start of the up-tick.”
Keed's sentiment was repeated by team owner Brad Jones, who said the off-season technical changes made to the Chevrolet Camaro have forced a change in setup philosophy.
But with the big step in performance that was made in Tasmania, Jones is now looking for BJR to go one step further than their best Bathurst result of second in 2001 and 2009.
"Very happy to get a trophy, we've had a pretty tough year, you know, I think with the change of the cars, with the aero, the tyre pressure changes, it really hasn't been great for us," said Jones.
"And it's affected where we find our speed a little bit. So, to be able to come here with a bit of a reset and have the boys on point. Yesterday didn't go all that well for us, to be honest. But you could see glimpses, when it was really wet.
"We're probably a bit more conservative than we would normally be. Where we used our greens before we got into the final 10, last year we would have sat on them, but we're a bit gun-shy this year.
"We’ll go to Sandown, which I wouldn't say is normally a happy hunting ground for us, but Bathurst is and I'm really looking forward to the enduros now.”
The Supercars enduro season begins at the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 from September 13-15. Tickets for the 60th anniversary event are available through the Supercars.com website here.
