The Bend 500 – Practice 4, 5 & Qualifying Results
Zach Bates/Craig Lowndes – Car #888
Practice 4 – 5th (1:51.1862)
Practice 5 – 19th (1:50.3532)
Qualifying – 26th (1:50.7119)
“After yesterday we made a few changes overnight. This morning we felt pretty comfortable, we were going in the right direction but alongside that the overall feeling is it’s so tricky around here. The track has got so many different styles of corner and you can’t make the cars suit one specifically. It’s quite a tricky place if you lose the one corner because then all the corners flow on through the lap you’re trying to build. But the crew’s done a fantastic job in just trying to get a little bit better in everything we do every time. I’ve got to clean it up ahead of tomorrow, it’s obviously a long race so we’ll get dialled in and go for i,t doing what we know works for us.”
“Craig is great, he’s trying to keep it positive, but it has been pretty difficult so far I won’t lie. When he’s been in the car, he’s had some really great feedback to take on board for the team and I get to learn from that as well. That’s what experience looks like. Tomorrow, I just have to make sure that we look after the rubber and just keep it clean. It’s easier said than done.”
“Compared to yesterday the car felt much better today, I think that obviously in hindsight we had time to look at it overnight. We made some adjustments. We did a bit of a semi race run today and I felt much more comfortable with the car. The car flows better. So for me it gives me a lot more confidence now going into the race tomorrow. But of course, you can always learn a little bit more. We’ll sit down tonight, we’ll look at strategies and we’ll look at how we can improve what we’ve got to get better.”
“Interesting to see the safety car trial on track. Always good in theory. I think that it’s going to be interesting if it does pop up in the race, it’s obviously something brand new for all of us, stewards included, so it’s going to be really interesting to see how it’s executed in a race if it is. You just hope it doesn’t influence the race. What happened today could’ve happened to any of us getting used to something new, it’s a wakeup call and learning for the rest for us.”
“From here with Zach and I we just need to have fun, don’t overthink it, like he’s one of those drivers that loves to analyze everything so try not to get too deep into that. Don’t overthink it and just drive to what he feels the cars is doing and needs to do.”