And just like that, the roar of those V8 engines are back soothing the earlobes of petrol heads around the nation.
Test day for Red Bull Ampol Racing, in simple terms, means one thing: flogging the hell out of our Commodores while our team of wizards (race engineers) cast as many spells (car setups) as possible to the delight of their minions (drivers and mechanics).
Test day was also the first time our Kiwi foreigner was back in the #97 after a stint of winning every race New Zealand could throw at him over the Christmas break. So, how’d you find it, SVG?
“Bloody hell it was hot today, but it was so good to get back in a V8 – to feel that power and using a sequential shift again after a couple of months out of the car was awesome,” SVG said.
We’ve been trying different setups and programs on each car throughout the day, working closely with (Dave) Cauchi and Wes (McDougall) to get the most out of the day. Obviously both Jamie and I have new engineers for this year, but it’s been great to get the first test day under our belts.”
In what feels like his 4,789th Supercars test day, JDub was ever the optimist when explaining what an ideal test day looks like.
“There are always new and better ways to do things, so test days are a fantastic way of getting everyone up to speed for the year ahead, because before you know it, round one at The Mountain will be upon us,” JDub said.
“It was also awesome to see so many fans at Queensland Raceway today as well. Seeing the crowd on the hill as we zipped past lap after lap was something we haven’t seen for quite a while.”
From here, the team will divulge in a mountain of data before we face the real mountain in the coming weeks. Bring it on.
