Today’s shakedown is now complete and from all reports it was a roaring success, aside from the huge under-eye bags and bed hair a majority of the crew was sporting this morning.
It was so good that we packed up at lunch time and took an early mark (that’s a joke), before heading back to the workshop to keep cracking on with the huge job list we have… It really is a busy time of year around here.
Preparing three cars for a shakedown three weeks out from the Adelaide 500 was ambitious but after a 3am finish for the crew this morning, there was nothing better than seeing three brand spanking new race cars roll out together.
The new next-gen body kit has created a new set of new challenges for the team – we wouldn’t be the Red Bull Holden Racing Team if it weren’t for the challenges – and the results have been extremely positive, so much so that Managing Director, Roland “RD” Dane had a smile on his face at the end of the day.
Car #1 Race Engineer David Cauchi also had glowing reviews of how the day panned out and said there was plenty of learning going on today.
“It was very positive today. We still have a lot of work to do in understanding the package we have. It’s very different visually, and performance-wise it will give us different outputs so we need to make sure we optimise the package moving forward,” said Cauchi.
“We didn’t have any major issues, like in the past, so it allowed us to use the day learning instead of spending that time diagnosing major problems.
“It was definitely one of our best shakedowns and considering it’s an all-new car, it’s quite impressive.”
Gallery: The first photos of the two bulls on track
You’d be forgiven if you thought you saw SVG rocking around in Lowndesy’s green machine because that’s exactly where he was for part of the short 19-lap test.
Fellow team mate Jamie “J-Dub” Whincup was also seen car swapping throughout the test day in the team’s attempt to run some quality assurance across the cars.
And what better way to do that than with three of the best current racing car drivers… We’re pretty lucky in that respect.
“We wanted to make sure all the cars feel like they should to make sure there’s not one car that has characteristics different to the others,” said Cauchi.
“If we can build three cars and they can all perform the same, and feel the same to the three different drivers, than that’s the ultimate. All of the differences that they felt make sense to what they should be feeling and it’s positive that they were giving the same feedback.
“We’re lucky we have three exceptional drivers and we can use that to our advantage.”
After some debriefing back at the workshop, the team will work through the little things to sort out before a full test day at Sydney Motorsport Park next Friday.
