While we may have taken two out of two wins in Adelaide (for the second year in a row) – on top of two pole positions – apparently there’s still a huge amount of work to be done with our all-new baby.
Yes, we actually thought our sleep-ins and (some) weekends were back…
Five out of six podiums is a great result for the shiny new Holden Commodore, but it could be better. The cars were fast in Adelaide, but how will they fare on the other styles of circuit throughout the season? How much further can they go before they reach their aerodynamic potential?
They’re all the questions our team is now going through back at the workshop, preparing for a huge year ahead.
“I’m hoping we’re just scratching the surface,” Red Bull Holden Racing Team Manager Mark “Dutto” Dutton told supercars.com.
“We do still feel that there is more potential with it, just because we know we haven’t had the time to refine it.
“We haven’t had the time to look for the half-percenters yet, the one [percenters], we haven’t even looked at the two-percenters yet. We know we have to.”
More: SVG does the Adelaide double-double
The Australian Grand Prix is a versatile and aerodynamic track which means that the full potential will start to come to light over the course of the four days on track.
“Believe me, it’s not perfect and we haven’t found a sweet spot ourselves yet, it’s not easy to set up yet,” continued Dutto.
“That’s the ultimate goal for a good race car, one that has a really solid base.
“When it’s got a good, solid base you understand how you make it go quick, how you address handling issues, then you’ll be consistent race-in, race-out.”
Celebrating our two wins over the weekend was fun, and a good result for the endless hours of hard work the crew have put in, but we’ve had the same results the year before and we aren’t too keen to jump the gun and relax… for now, anyway.
Check it out: The best snaps from our epic weekend in Adelaide
“We’re 100 percent not getting ahead of ourselves because as we said, this is what we did last year, and then we had a tough year for the rest of the year,” said Dutto.
“We’re definitely not getting ahead of ourselves.”
That’s motorsport for you… A win’s a win but there’s certainly no rest for the wicked. And we’ve got a long road ahead of us.
