BJR positive after first round in the Gen3 era

Brad Jones Racing takes positives out of the opening round of the Repco Supercars Championship in Newcastle. 

Andre Heimgartner in the R&J Batteries Camaro sits fifth in the championship now after a stunning drive to seventh from a starting position of 13th.

While Middy’s Electricals' Bryce Fullwood charged from 19th to finish 11th, in one of his best drives to date for the team.

Jack Smith in the #4 SCT Logistics Camaro held his own in a battle in the latter stages of the race and brought the car home nice and clean.

In the Pizza Hut Camaro, Macauley Jones was involved in a startline incident which caused a red flag. 

He was able to be a part of the restart but suffered massive braking issues throughout the remaining part of the race.

The brake issue had reared its head on other cars in Newcastle and the team are going to investigate once they get back to the workshop. 

The team are largely positive after the first race weekend for their Gen3 Camaros, with all four cars returning in one piece from the tough street circuit and no major issues to report.

The Albury squad heads back to base before the next Supercars round alongside Formula 1 in Melbourne (March 30 - April 2).

Super2
Lochie Dalton had a disappointing day in the Super2 Series, while he was speedy in qualifying traffic played a part and ultimately ruined his shot at being higher up the grid.

Further to that, with only a handful of minutes until he was due to roll out of pit lane the crew discovered a flywheel failure on his Commodore ZB.

The failure meant that the Tasmanian wasn’t able to start the race, however he will take the confidence from the speed the car did show prior to that into the next round in Perth (April 28-30).

What the drivers had to say…

Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro

"Had a decent day, got a really good start and up to eighth and then after the restart just battled away. I struggled a little bit with pace here and there. But overall I think we did a pretty good job, fifth overall and championship. So pretty happy with that and a few areas to improve."

Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro

"I felt like qualifying, I didn't quite get it together which was really disappointing on my behalf because I felt like the car was was reasonable .We should have been a bit further up, but it was really positive in the race. This the second stint was really, really strong for us and we were able to pass a few cars and climb our way up. So yeah, really, really happy. And I felt like yesterday, we had some good speed, but we didn't really get the shot after the incident on the first lap. So happy to convert something today."

Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #14 SCT Logistics Camaro

"The race was an improvement on yesterday, that's for sure. Fixed a few things on the car, fixed a few things with myself. And yeah, we had much better pace. Few little unfortunate things happened that set us back a bit. But yeah, overall, it was a better day than yesterday but would have been nice to finish further up>

Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro

“Our race was hurt by the incident at the start but our braking issues certainly didn’t help things. The brakes made our life very difficult in the race. We’ll get the #96 back to the workshop and have a look at that and hopefully get on top of it.”

Lochie Dalton

Super2 driver

"We rolled out for quali, we made a few little changes and we set a pretty good banker lap and then put a set of greens on and unfortunately same old, caught traffic for nearly all three of our flying laps so that they really hurt us. But the car was still super quick so it's really disappointing. And then yeah, we went to fire up for the race and then unfortunately our flywheel had broken so we couldn't crank the motor over at all. So we just found that with one minute to go so the boys worked hard to try and get it going.

"The frrustrating thing was we had speed all weekend so it's always like the what ifs and buts. But yeah, we know we've got a fast car so we just need to piece it togethe"