Red Bull Racing Australia remains confident about the season ahead despite being off the pace at this weekend’s SuperTest.
With a limited bank of tyres, both the No.1 and No.888 Holdens were far from setting the time sheets alight, but both Craig and Jamie are feeling positive about the looming season opener on the streets of Adelaide.
Lowndesy, who finished today’s inaugural SuperShootout in eighth with 1:31.2627, is satisfied that he and his new engineer, Grant McPherson will charge out of the starting blocks at the Clipsal 500.
“I’m still confident even though we’re obviously not fast enough at the moment,” he said. “Our feeling in the car and feeling working with Grant has been fantastic today. We’ve just improved on everything we found yesterday and what we went through yesterday.
“I’m quietly confident, we’re making inroads and obviously taking steps towards making it a faster car and trying to tune it up for qualifying. I think our race pace will still be very good and very competitive. All in all, I’m delighted – we’re in good shape and a good position and looking forward to Clipsal.”
The lack of fresh tyres was the biggest obstacle for Jamie as his time of 1:31.6259 took him to 12th in the shootout.
“It’s been great to get back in the car, but we’ve been running around on old tyres all day,” he said. “We had absolutely nothing left from yesterday, so to be honest we haven’t learnt as much as we were hoping to with the tyre situation.
“I just under-drove a bit at the first few corners of the shootout and then the car wasn’t that flash either. We didn’t really show our hand, so to speak. Twelfth was all we were good for, so we’ll do what we always do and keep chipping away and hopefully come out stronger in Adelaide for the Clipsal 500.”
The V8 Supercars are back on track for the first event of the year in Adelaide, February 26-March 1.