Bathurst 1000 – Practice 5, 6 & Top Ten Shootout Results
Zach Bates/Craig Lowndes – Car #888
Practice 5 – 5th (2:06.0602)
Practice 6 – 22nd (2:07.0598)
“In the practice sessions today it was probably a less chaotic than yesterday, but equally as important trying to get our race car as speedy as possible for the race Sunday. We focused on race runs and setting up a car that we can drive around for one thousand kilometres tomorrow. I can’t believe I’m saying that – it’s very exciting to be on the eve of the biggest race of my career so far.”
“We’ll start back in the pack at 16th, so hopefully we can do what we’ve done in the past and make a few positions up, and then hand it over to bring it up a few more. It’s such a long day and looks like there’s some weather on the forecast, so it’s going to be exciting. It’s actually been good that we did some wet laps earlier this week. I put a bet on with our engineer Matt that it was going to rain so hopefully I get paid out on that one!”
“I’m honoured to be starting my last Bathurst 1000 with Triple Eight tomorrow. Today was another day of two practice sessions and making car race ready. We took another chunk of data and learnings from the two sessions, running heavy fuel, the car was working really nicely across the top of the mountain which is really important. 161 laps tomorrow, fighting a race car across the top is always going to be exhausting, but we’re really confident about tomorrow.”
“For me, you can’t win the race on the first lap but you can certainly lose it, so for us it’s just minimising any contact, keeping the car clean, seeing what the weather does bring, maybe look at some fuel saving to begin with if we can’t progress our way forward but hopefully we can jump some spots in the first few laps.”
“Of course, we’re all talking about weather but we’ll deal with that tomorrow. There’s no doubt that there’s areas where you’ve got to be a bit more cautious in the wet, especially across the top of the mountain. There’s no room for error. But it’s going to be the same for everyone, to look after the wet weather tire and hopefully hand the car over either way in a great position.”
“I actually just said to Zach to enjoy it, enjoy the race. I’m feeling really confident about tomorrow. This won’t be his last Bathurst, that’s for sure, but it’s always going to be his first. He’s got his great family and friends around him this weekend and I just hope we can talk to you this time tomorrow with a great result.”