BJR buoyed after first taste of Sandown

Brad Jones Racing’s cars employed a split strategy covering Friday’s practice sessions at the Sandown 500.

The Middy’s Electrical crew were heads down and focused on racing elements, from long fuel runs to driver changes.

Bryce Fullwood and Co-driver in the #14 Camaro Dean Fiore put in the hard yards today but will have to wait until tomorrow to see where they sit in the field, as the longer race runs had them out of sequence to the rest of the grid.

The #96 Pizza Hut Racing garage came out firing in the first session, topping the timing screens early before ending up fourth fastest.

The pair backed it up in the third session, finishing inside the top ten again.

Both Macauley Jones and co-driver Jordan Boys are happy with the balance and apparent speed for the Pizza Hut Camaro.

The duo in the #4 SCT Logistics Camaro are also quite positive about their running today and believe that they’re going in the right direction.

Jack Smith said that while the car was tricky to drive, they can make the necessary changes to extract speed out of the Camaro.

His co-driver Jaxon Evans, who has completed a whirlwind turnaround from testing at Winton Raceway last week, to heading back to Europe for his international driving duties.

Evans landed back in Australia earlier this week and is enjoying the balance of the car and the progress he’s had during practice.

Meanwhile Andre Heimgartner and co-driver Dale Wood made improvements to the R&J Batteries Camaro over the course of the day to get it in the window they were happy with.

Finishing the third practice session in sixth spot, the drivers will work to put a couple more tweaks on the car and hopefully move forward in qualifying tomorrow.

The team will be back on track tomorrow at 10:45am AEST for the final practice of the weekend ahead of qualifying.

Super2

Lochie Dalton wasn’t able to get the most out of his running over the two Super2 practice sessions today.

In the first outing the team lost time due to a technical issue, which kept Dalton in the pits for a lot of the session.

The car setup still wasn’t where Dalton would have liked it heading in the second practice but the team were able to see some forward progress towards the end.

Dalton will be on track for qualifying at midday tomorrow ahead of the first race of the weekend (16:20).

Supercars Quoteboard

Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"Good day, didn't start the way we would have liked but then came right by the end of it. We did some tunes and yeah just feeling right about it. We have gotta keep chipping away and can improve it a bit better for tomorrow . We finished 6th  in that one. hopefully we can get a bit further up and I think  we took some good steps forward "

Dale Wood
Supercars Co-Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"Definitely a lot of learning done today. The car is different beast to what we're familiar with here. And the biggest talking point I would say is tyre preservation or getting tyres to last over a long stint so it is something that we've got to work hard on. I think the pace is there in the car and we're just ironing out those little bits and pieces with the setup. I think the car is getting quite good and come the race is gonna be very interesting."

Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
"Today for us was just purely race running. So not really sure where we sit outright speed wise. We're  just working through the program. So yeah, a little bit hard to know where we really sit but looking forward to tomorrow where we can put some tyres on the thing and really see how it goes. "

Dean Fiore
Supercars Co-Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
" So today for us was all about taking a long term view for the weekend. So we were just purely focused on the race on Sunday, and what it's going to do in terms of tyre deg, so we did a lot of race running, full fuel, that type of thing and obviously in practice three, we were practicing driver changes and stuff and it's all good."

Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
"I think the results on the timesheet were manageable and we can work with what our speed is like. I think there's a lot of time to be found with the car. It was quite tricky to drive today, but it wasn't too bad timewise. I think going into tomorrow we've got a clear direction with how we need to go,so we're not confused."

Jaxon Evans
Supercars Co-Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro
" I mean I think we had a pretty good day overall. Happy with the progress from both Jack and I and the balance of the car. So just some fine tuning to do tomorrow and hopefully find a bit more speed. But I'm happy with that and to take the learnings from today into tomorrow and hopefully have a have a good run come race day."

Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro

“I'm pretty happy with today actually came out the gate really strong. I feel like you know the test day was pretty vital for us coming in, pretty happy with what we learnt from that and rolled it into toda. So the track will evolve a fair bit, we need to keep on top of that but Jordan is doing a really good job again. Very similar feedback which is always helpful. And we did a heap of the race running fuel stuff as well which was good, so I feel like all in all, there was a lot going on in the day but happy with the end result and the speed of the car so far. Hopefully we can tune it up a little bit more overnight and see what happens.”

Jordan Boys
Supercars Co-Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
”Positive day for us, did some good running on light and heavy fuel and I feel like the car is pretty speedy on both. So for us it sort of exceeded expectations today, it's been really good. Got to do some practice starts and we're really comfy so I probably won't do a whole lot of driving tomorrow, but Macca's on it and it's been a cool day.”

Super 2 Quoteboard

Lochie Dalton
Super 2 driver, #43 AWC ZB Commodore
"The car wasn't quite in the window. In the first session, we had a bit of a drama with the car. Just the rear end adjuster was sort of seized so we couldn't really adjust anything in practice one. We missed a lot of track time. Then practice two we tried a few different setup changes and the car still didn't really react. We were half all right towards the end, I think we're only like three tenths off and then would have been P2. So it's super tight. Just need to find a little bit more out of the car, we're sort of just struggling with the setup at the moment, but hopefully be alright."