1600 What can we say? We missed the mark today, guys, and we’re sorry about that. Let’s look at the positives though – two straight cars, lots of squiggly lines of data to pore over and only two weeks until we head west for Perth. Here’s what the drivers had to say after a tricky weekend on the Island:
Jamie Whincup – Car #1
Qualifying Race 2 – Fifth (Fastest Time: 1:30.4956)
Race 2 – Ninth
Championship – Fifth (805 points)
“The car was on edge in qualifying, really hard to drive, and when it’s on a knife-edge that’s when things go wrong and I just went a bit wide at turn four. It was a tough weekend all round. We seriously lacked grip. Between myself and the engineers we just didn’t get it right this weekend, in particular today. We’re not sure why at the moment, but that’s what all the data’s for and we’ll go over that next week to try and work out what went wrong. We missed the mark by a fair bit, but we’ll move on and try and be stronger next time.”
Shane van Gisbergen – Car #97
Qualifying Race 2 – Ninth (Fastest Time: 1:30.6055)
Race 2 – Sixth
Championship – Third (849 points)
“We made some changes overnight, knowing that we didn’t quite have the speed to the other teams and I think we made a little bit of a backwards step so therefore we ended up ninth in qualifying. It’s super competitive, super close. In the race my car didn’t start out very good at all, but it just got better and better as the race went on. It still wasn’t quite perfect, but I think we played the strategy pretty good by running the second set of tyres longer and we came home with new tyres and made some passes.”
1320 Pit exit is moments from opening. Who’s excited to see our bulls charge?!
1215 It’s always great to hear your support during our autograph sessions, thanks to all our fans!
1110 We’ve set the grid for race 2. Jamie will be starting 5th and SVG will be lining up 9th. We have a long 250km of racing coming up and we hope you will be watching!
1020 We’re wearing these fresh white suits ahead of the Wings For Life World Run – a charity run held simultaneously in numerous locations around the world!
0910 Breakfast has been served and the team are straight into briefing, the all important qualifying is just over an hour away.
0800 Final day here at Phillip Island. We had a crazy day yesterday, what will be in store for today. After a post race penalty, Jamie was stripped of his second place – that’s old news, we are focused on today!
